# Privatsphere of composers?



## Daniel (Jul 11, 2004)

What I am asking myself often (with all respect for research in science): All the private scripts/letters to friends and related people, etc. which are used by historians and come to the public, doesn't it violate the privatsphere of the composer/famous people?

I think, also if they want to legitmate it with new aspects about the person, it doesn't allow often (I say often, because fully it wouldn't lay in the tension of composers, because sometimes they had allowed it with their will) to this invasion in an environment which only belongs to the the private life of a composer.

Myself, I wouldn't want all my letters published and read by all people....composer are not a good, but humans!...I admit the research will get more difficult, and their will come up different questions....myself I am very critical in this point!

What about you?

Daniel


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## James (Jul 11, 2004)

they are dead?


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## Nox (Jul 22, 2004)

Well...I don't know...everyone wants to live forever...and one way to do that is to leave a legacy...

...would Beethoven have been sad that people are still fascinated by his life so many years after his death? Analyzing his hair? Trying to figure out why he died...or if his disease contributed to his genious...

...plus, the interest we show in personal lives increases interest in the music itself...we want to see what the individual has produced...

...my guess is not...and that his ego would be flattered!


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## Daniel (Jul 11, 2004)

A very easy view, James.....

Another point in this matter is how much a biographie is necessary for the undestanding of music...in my eyes not...

I must admit, I love reading biographies which also includes personal scripts, but this question comes to my mind.

As I said above: Imagine you are away, lets say in school or in jour job, then some people would come and search in your dairies, mails etc.. I would be really hurt! All my inner life which is really not for public would be enlarged in the great public. I don't see any difference in this point if someone's dead or if he is living. It comes to wrong hands in which it doesn't belong to.


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## max (Jul 17, 2004)

stop it with these ridiculous questions!

Truthfully though, I agree it's an invasion of privacy, and I would hate somebody to do that to me...

BUT, there's nothing that's ever going to stop it from happening...


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## Quaverion (Jul 20, 2004)

Well, ask anyone who knows me and they will say I am an authority on ridiculous questions. I myself agree with James, though.


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## Nox (Jul 22, 2004)

...I still don't think most people would mind...unless the details of their private lives became more important than their art...

...and don't forget...in those days people were both more accepting and fascinated by death...hence the taking of hair souvenirs...the making of death masks...and later, the death photograph...

...we find such interest more morbid now than they did then...


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## 009 (Jul 16, 2004)

From a music learner's point of view... I think it's almost essential that music historians dig much into their private lives and so on.
I don't think it would do us any good, trying to assess their music, with purely just their, umm.. Music.
Caz U are what u write. And I think it's fair to say that a big part of them actually goes into their music. U need to know the nitty gritty, or at least their time lines and happenings to understand their music more. If not , the interpretations might be 'shallow' at times.
I think it's OK, so long as they are SIX FEET UNDER.
:huh: :blink: :lol:


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## Daniel (Jul 11, 2004)

I was thinking more of dairies or letters...I am still against it...But beat me, I love to read them too, so exciting! But...


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## oistrach13 (Jul 14, 2004)

I am completely with daniel on this point.

if I was one of them, I would be turning in my grave,

to give an example, I don't know exactly the relation between clara schumann and brahms, but suppose that brahms was madly inlove with her, suppose that he wrote all about it in his diaries. I don't think he would be very enthusiastic about people reading his most intimate feelings, particularly when they involve a crush on his best friend's wife.

I don't know what atheists believe with regard to the soul/immortality issue, but I believe brahms' soul is still there, and I seriously doubt he would be very pleased.

I am 100% against it, the composer's feelings which couldn't be expressed in words (in a diary or a letter or so), are really encoded into his music, that is where we should be looking, not in his personal life.


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## Daniel (Jul 11, 2004)

A very good example, oistrach!  In a way, as you said is really the religion or own believe the point where all things go around. But also without them, I think it is against laws of humanity. Are they humans or goods? :blink:


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## Anton (Oct 17, 2004)

Yeah, as a matter of fact, maybe it should be considered a violation. But I must try to see both sides. Maybe if the persons letters or story was published, more people would be interested?


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## oistrach13 (Jul 14, 2004)

> _Originally posted by Anton_@Oct 26 2004, 06:12 PM
> *Yeah, as a matter of fact, maybe it should be considered a violation. But I must try to see both sides. Maybe if the persons letters or story was published, more people would be interested?
> [snapback]2625[/snapback]​*


I haven't read a single letter or diary of a composer (or pretty much anybody) in my entire life, and I'm pretty much interested.

another example, my knowing about the circumstances leading up to the composition of a certain symphony would surely make me more interested, but these are things like "his mother died", or "he was on vacation on lake Thun", or general things like that, personally, I have never found it necessary to wade into personal details to get interested in a work. (what really does it for me is reading reviews, not personal letters).


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## Daniel (Jul 11, 2004)

The lake Thun is very very lovely btw....


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## oistrach13 (Jul 14, 2004)

> _Originally posted by Daniel_@Oct 27 2004, 07:49 PM
> *The lake Thun is very very lovely btw....
> [snapback]2652[/snapback]​*


from what I've read, brahms had the same opinion :lol:


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## godzillaviolist (Jan 21, 2005)

*Privacy*

I think some attention is flattering i.e. people trying to geuss how one's life and times affected one's music, but this dissecting of one's personal papers... it seems wrong. I always find the love letters embarrassing especially. Did these composers really want their personal thoughts immortalised rather than their music? When I think of some of things I've written in letters to people   , I know I wouldn't want it being discussed by a room full of intellectuals a hundred years later.
However I'm not saying we should hide aspects of composers that were fairly obvious ( Tchaikovsky's homosexuality; Holst's extreme health problems; Mussorsky's alchoholism; Rossini's, and other's, syphlis; Mozart's bizzare characteristics; Ravel's asexuality; Wagner's many personality flaws ect. )
godzilla


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## EddieRUKiddingVarese (Jan 8, 2013)

No sure could lead to problems I think


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

EddieRUKiddingVarese said:


> No sure could lead to problems I think


Not after 12 years in rest I think


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## cimirro (Sep 6, 2016)

This is why I do not write letters... :lol:

Seriously now, I just want remember you, almost every famous composer who wrote letters also destroyed some of them because he/she was aware of the future of these letters. So if they keep them...

You can ask also - how about the privacy of the stone age people? the study on bodies and the painting art in caves
must we forget the history?

All the best
Artur Cimirro


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

"The dead have no rights," a quote, perhaps ironically, from a letter from Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, July 12, 1816. I suppose the lesson is that if you think you might die famous, make sure you write quality letters.


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## SnakeGnim12333 (Jun 26, 2020)

Well, I, having grown up in a background that inclines more towards science than religion in times of crisis or doubt, believe that there is nothing after death. Death is part of the life cycle, but I do not continue in it after that stage; no one does.

So, though perhaps I would not have wanted my letters published and read by all people during my time living, I'm not quite sure how I would mind having it done after my death?


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret; that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it! Something of the awfulness, even of Death itself, is referable to this. No more can I turn the leaves of this dear book that I loved, and vainly hope in time to read it all. No more can I look into the depths of this unfathomable water, wherein, as momentary lights glanced into it, I have had glimpses of buried treasure and other things submerged. It was appointed that the book should shut with a spring, for ever and for ever, when I had read but a page. It was appointed that the water should be locked in an eternal frost, when the light was playing on its surface, and I stood in ignorance on the shore. My friend is dead, my neighbour is dead, my love, the darling of my soul, is dead; it is the inexorable consolidation and perpetuation of the secret that was always in that individuality, and which I shall carry in mine to my life's end. In any of the burial-places of this city through which I pass, is there a sleeper more inscrutable than its busy inhabitants are, in their innermost personality, to me, or than I am to them?

Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities


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