# Composers as 'naturals,' 'hard workers,' 'volcanoes' etc. . .



## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Based on what I know about composers - eg. at what rate inspiration came to them, their speed of working, the quantity of their output, and so on - I have made three broad categories.

*1. The 'naturals'*
These are guys to whom producing music was as natural as breathing air or living itself. *Saint-Saens *is one, he said that "I produce music like an apple tree produces apples." Another one was *Dvorak*, who Brahms said was the most natural melodist of his time. *Schubert* as well, who was known to quickly sketch a song at a cafe straight after being given the lyrics freshly written by the poet. Maybe *Mozart* too, even though I remember reading that he wrote in a letter to his father that things did not come as easy to him as people thought.

So this category is linked in my mind primarily to great melodists. So *Rossini, Mendelssohn and Gershwin *belong here too.

*2. The 'hard workers' and 'ultra perfectionists'*
These guys toiled and toiled away until they got things 'perfect.'

Look at* Beethoven *writing three overtures to his only opera_ Fidelio _and only being happy with the fourth one. Or *Brahms and Bruckner *being around aged forty before being happy with publishing their first symphonies. Its not only the shadow of Beethoven that affected these guys, but aslo their 'ultra perfectionism.' Brahms composed maybe 2 or 3 times more violin sonatas, for example, than now exist because he burnt the rest, he saw them as not being good enough. & Bruckner's obsession with revision also feeds into this issue too.

Its not that composers in this category are necessarily more perfectionist than 'the naturals,' just that these guys are kind of more preoccupied with perfection (or they have to work harder to make what they consider to be perfect music).

Also in this category can be put composers who where not virtuosos on any instrument, like *Berlioz and Wagner*. I know the latter especially was not one to just publish anything, he worked for years on his operas. & this is hard when you can't just travel around Europe and do some (say) piano recitals to make your 'bread and butter' so to speak. So these guys had to work extra hard (and despite his efforts and talent, Berlioz never got a permanent conducting post, he was always hired as a guest conductor only).

...So far so good? Its interesting how some of the 'naturals' are great song-writers, while some of the 'hard workers' I associate more with being comfortable in the instrumental genres. An anomaly is *Tchaikovsky* though, obviously a great melodist, but he was at the same time highly self-critical, rarely happy with his work (even regarding his best work, he was his own worst critic, which is mixed in with his depression). So maybe he's in the *'uncategorizable' group?*

*3. The 'volcanoes'*
These guys have bursts of high activity, maybe in between or before/after periods of low activity. One was *Schumann*, who wrote a good deal of his great chamber works in a single year, in 1842. Then there is *Janacek*, all of his great works came after he hit about the fifty mark. & maybe *Elliott Carter's *decades long 'Indian Summer' belongs in this group too, he has been very prolific in his senior years, and now he's over 100!

*So what do you think of these categories? Good, bad, ugly? You can make up your own 'categories' with regards to these issues. My knowledge of things like all major composer's working methods is not exhaustive. People can add to what I've said and relate this to other composers they are familiar with. . .*


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## PlaySalieri (Jun 3, 2012)

If you consider that Mozart knocked off La Clemenza Di Tito in a couple of weeks - surely he must be considered a natural.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

Webern must belong in category 2 but because he worked slowly as well as methodically - legend has it that he was spotted hunched over his latest composition for at least an hour before abruptly leaving the room and then when the observer peeked at his work all he ended up doing was to add a rest sign. Others with relatively low output due to their painstaking ethic would presumably fall into this category as well (Dutilleux, Berg, Varese, Durufle etc.) but perhaps another factor is whether certain composers had other responsibilities (or maybe psychological/physical maladies) which prevented them from writing more.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

elgars ghost said:


> Webern must belong in category 2 but because he worked slowly as well as methodically - legend has it that he was spotted hunched over his latest composition for at least an hour before abruptly leaving the room and then when the observer peeked at his work all he ended up doing was to add a rest sign. Others with relatively low output due to their painstaking ethic would presumably fall into this category as well (Dutilleux, Berg, Varese, Durufle etc.) but perhaps another factor is whether certain composers had other responsibilities (*or maybe psychological/physical maladies) which prevented them from writing more*.


Hugo Wolf certainly falls into this category. He was either clinically depressed or mad from syphilis for most of his life.


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

I would say Bach and Debussy were type 1. Ravel, Boulez and Ligeti type 2.


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## HarpsichordConcerto (Jan 1, 2010)

All greats were indefatigable workers. JS Bach was quoted as saying something long the lines of "_...anyone who works just as hard will get just as far_". Mozart was suffering from being over worked, fatally so, writting _La Clemenza di Tito, Die Zauberflöte_ and the _Clarinet Concerto_ one after another, for example in 1791 before even taking on the _Requiem_. Unless one is a thoroughbred-devout-Mozart-hater (and we all know there are plenty of those breeds here at TalkClassical, speaking of irony), how could one not believe that all great composers were hard workers?

I would say both the "naturals" and the "hard workers" were the ones we now consider them as the elites.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

violadude said:


> Hugo Wolf certainly falls into this category. He was either clinically depressed or mad from syphilis for most of his life.


Yep - although to be fair Wolf managed to be fairly prolific with his song settings up until the syphilis completely unbalanced him. And then there was Duparc (composing career ended by neurological condition), Mussorgsky (had a time-consuming civil service post that he hated plus much of his creativity was blotted out by serious drinking), Dukas (self-critical, alternative career as critic and later teacher), Borodin (chemist)...


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## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

Sid James said:


> An anomaly is *Tchaikovsky* though, obviously a great melodist, but he was at the same time highly self-critical, rarely happy with his work (even regarding his best work, he was his own worst critic, which is mixed in with his depression). So maybe he's in the *'uncategorizable' group?*


I don't think Chaikovsky is so anomalous. He seems pretty clearly to fit into your "hard worker" group, though in his case I would call it "professional" as much "hard worker." For him and for most Russian composers, composing was very much a _craft_ requiring technical know-how in addition to, and probably more than, emotion or expression. For better or worse, these days we are more apt to associate Chaikovsky with the latter two; because of the suicide myth, for example, we seem to prefer to hear his symphonies as his personal diary. But like all St. Petersburg Conservatory alums he was taught that the whole point of technical know-how is to be able to create the effect of emotional expression. (This can pretty easily be corroborated by reading Alexander Poznansky's research on Chaikovsky documents that became available only in the early 1990s and which show that the "depression" we hear in this piece or that had no discernible correspondence with anything going on his life.)


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## jani (Jun 15, 2012)

Btw could you link sites were i could read Mozarts&Beethovens letters?

I would also consider Beethoven as a natural as well. He was a great improviser probably one of the best ones ever, to get to the Mozart/Beethoven/J.s Bach level i think that you need both
Talent&hardwork!


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## Krisena (Jul 21, 2012)

Isn't 3 a sub-category of 1?


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## Klavierspieler (Jul 16, 2011)

I'd say Schumann really belongs more toward the second category. I was also going to give reasons why, but I feel tired right now, so I'm not going to bother.


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## SottoVoce (Jul 29, 2011)

I also think the distinction between 'natural' and 'hard-worker' seems to be the distinction between the musical textures of their work; the old Mozartian cliche that his music "fell down from heaven" I think comes from the fact that the texture seems to emphasize clarity and aesthetic sparseness (to an almost Webernian extent in some cases), and Wagner's, Bruckner's, and to a lesser extent Beethoven's music seems to be dense and rich in textur.

It seems that it all comes down to the fact that dense textures seem to be very much more flexible to fiddle around with, as it seems like a lot can be added to it, while adding anything to a sparse texture can ruin the whole work. The notable exception here is Webern, whose texture is incredibly subtle and crafted but he, as noted before, worked tirelessly on his works. 

Just speculation, probably am wrong but this is has been my line of reasoning for the past month; it is the reason why I think music that is why some music such as Mozart's and Bach's music tends to work so well with Schenkerian analysis (relies on background progressions), while Wagner's music is almost entirely impervious to it (relies a lot on texture and foreground formulation). Very interesting stuff.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Eschbeg said:


> I don't think Chaikovsky is so anomalous. He seems pretty clearly to fit into your "hard worker" group, though in his case I would call it "professional" as much "hard worker." ... For better or worse, these days we are more apt to associate Chaikovsky with the latter two; because of the suicide myth, for example, we seem to prefer to hear his symphonies as his personal diary. But like all St. Petersburg Conservatory alums he was taught that the whole point of technical know-how is to be able to create the effect of emotional expression. (This can pretty easily be corroborated by reading Alexander Poznansky's research on Chaikovsky documents that became available only in the early 1990s and which show that the "depression" we hear in this piece or that had no discernible correspondence with anything going on his life.)


I know Tchaikovsky was a hard worker, everyday he composed to a set routine/timetable. I'd neither dispute that he was a highly skilled craftsman. Re the depression issue, I see it as linked to at least how he saw his music (which was often through a very dark lens, very negative). The suicide thing is less a myth and more a question, its highly controversial & hotly debated as I understand it, not resolved. But that's for another thread.



jani said:


> Btw could you link sites were i could read Mozarts&Beethovens letters?
> ...


The Mozart letter I sort of paraphrased I read in a book.



> ...
> I would also consider Beethoven as a natural as well. He was a great improviser probably one of the best ones ever, to get to the Mozart/Beethoven/J.s Bach level ...


I kind of see improv as different cos its so ephemeral. But I know Beethoven was great at that, so where the other two you mention. So its linked to the 'big picture' of their talents.



> ...i think that you need both
> Talent&hardwork!


I agree, I'm not saying you don't need both, but some composers put more emphasis on one or the other. Maybe most composers, even.



Krisena said:


> Isn't 3 a sub-category of 1?


Could be. Category three was an afterthought, more or less. A kind of 'in-betweeners' category. Thus its name 'volcanoes' is a bit wierd.


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