# Characters & personalities of composers



## Sid James

Here's a thread where we discuss things about the great (& perhaps not so great) composers lives, but not their music. This can include say their manner of playing or just how they came across to people, both in their personal and professional lives. I'm reading a number of books on the lives of the composers and have taken the following quotes from there (references are at the bottom of the page). I am interested particularly in sharing historical accounts or the views of scholars/writers. If you have any from the net, or even better books (though I know it's laborious to type), put them here. I will be adding my own over the next few weeks as I get through these interesting books I recently bought.

*Please feel free to add your own here, or comment on the ones I post.*

I'll start with the great *Franz Liszt *(1811-1886), the great pianist, composer and teacher:

In the 1850's, many distinguished people visited the Liszt's Villa Altenburg at Weimar. Among these was George Eliot, who gave the following account:



> ...During a reading of poetry George Eliot sat next to Liszt and was carried away by 'the sweetness of his expression. Genius, benevolence, and tenderness beam from his whole countenance, and his manners were in perfect harmony with it. Then came the thing I had longed for - his playing. I sat near him so that I could see both his hands and face. For the first time in my life I beheld real inspiration - for the first time I heard the true tones of the piano. He played one of his compositions, one of a series of religious fantasies. There was nothing strange or excessive about his manner. His manipulation of the instrument was quiet and easy, and his face was simply grand - the lips compressed and the head thrown backward. When the music expressed quiet rapture or devotion a smile flitted over his features; when it was triumphant the nostrils dilated. There was nothing petty or egotistic to mar the picture.'


Ernest Newman in _The Man Liszt _ gives a vivid picture of Liszt in Rome:



> He 'tried to persuade himself that now he would give himself up heart and soul to his true vocation of solitary and saint. He settled down in a cloister that had been placed at his disposal in the church of Santa Maria del Rosario, on the Monte Mario. There was no one in the vast place but Liszt, a Dominican priest, and a servant. The priest read mass every morning; Liszt was always present, sitting in a stall a few yards from his cell. In the latter he had a long work-table, a small library, about a dozen pictures of saints, a marble cast of Chopin's hand, and a small piano of advanced age, badly out of tune, and with a D in the bass missing. But, as usual, he was making the best of two worlds. His tribute having been paid to the spirit in the morning, in the evening he let the flesh have its fling in the kind of company it loved. Shrewd observers were conscious of something suspiciously like a pose in his way of living.' In 1865, for some reason best known to himself, Liszt took minor orders and became an Abbe...


Ralph Hill writes "some time in 1873, Amy Fay, an American young lady, came to Weimar in the hope of studying under Liszt. On the day after her arrival she went to the theatre, where she saw Liszt in a box. Her first impressions of the great man are interesting."



> 'Liszt is the most interesting and striking looking man imaginable. Tall and slight, with deep-set eyes, shaggy eye-brows, and long iron-grey hair, which he wears parted in the middle. His mouth turns up in the corners, which gives him a most crafty and Mephisophelian expression when he smiles, and his whole appearance and manner have a sort of Jesuitical elegance and ease. His hands are very narrow, with long and slender fingers that look as if they had twice as many joints as other people's! They are so flexible and supple that it makes you nervous to look at them. When he got up to leave the box, for instance, after his adieu to the ladies, he laid his hand on his heart and made his final bow - not with affectation, or in mere gallantry, but with a quiet courtliness which made you feel that no other way of bowing to a lady was right or proper. It was most characteristic. But the most extraordinary thing about Liszt is his wonderful variety of expression and play of feature. One moment his face will look dreamy, shadowy, tragic. The next he will be insinuating, amiable, ironic, sardonic; but always the same captivating grace of manner. He is a perfect study. I cannot imagine how he must look when he is playing. He is all spirit, but half the time, at least, a mocking spirit, I should say. All Weimar adores him, and people say that women still go perfectly crazy over him. When he walks out he bows to everybody just like a King!'


Jeremy Nicholas tries to sum up the "mass of contradictions" that was Liszt's personality:



> Part of the fascination of Liszt lies in his contradictory personality. He could be as arrogant and egocentric as, at other times, he was humble and self-effacing; he was profoundly spiritual, yet delighted in the pleasures of the flesh - he had at least 26 major love affairs and fathered several illegitimate children; he was attracted to the life of a recluse, yet loved luxury and the adulation of the public; he practised at the highest level of his art, yet could indulge in meretricious theatrics; he was a Casanova, yet having taken orders in the Catholic Church, in 1865 he became an abbe...


*Sources:*

Bacharach, A. L. (Ed.) (1935) Lives of the Great Composers (Volume II). Article on Liszt by Ralph Hill. UK: Pelican Books.

Nicholas, J. (2008). The Great Composers: The lives and music of the great classical composers. London, UK: Quercus.


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## Aramis

Character of Richard Wagner:

Paladin
level 10
Health: 70/70
Mana: 20/20
Skills: anti-semitic rage, heavy insults, strangling sideburns, deadly beret (ranged attack)


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