# Which composer had/has the biggest ego?



## Kjetil Heggelund (Jan 4, 2016)

Read somewhere here a quote by Wagner that made me start this thread. Does he elevate over the others or are there other composers with an overwhelming self-esteem... ?


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

Artists of all kinds are some of the most corrupt people on the planet. They fortunately never learn to use weapons and prefer images, sounds, or words for intangible soul violence. But give them a chance... they get these ideas sometimes, you know... _that they're better than the average human being..._

Make sure to _only _put pens and brushes in their hands!


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## The nose (Jan 14, 2014)

Huilunsoittaja said:


> Artists of all kinds are some of the most corrupt people on the planet. They fortunately never learn to use weapons and prefer images, sounds, or words for intangible soul violence.


Not always a lot of Futurists died in the first world war and Wagner himself fought in the May Uprising in Dresden.

I think anyway that Wagner can easily win the contest of biggest ego. If your read the Art and Revolution he's practicaly saing how his concept of Gesamtkunstwerk is way batter that any other prior attempt to do opera.


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

Scriabin, Stockhausen and Berlioz also come to mind ... but it doesn´t really matter, IMO.


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## Abraham Lincoln (Oct 3, 2015)

Let's just say that if egos were waistlines, Wagner wouldn't be able to fit through most conventional doorways.


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## Gaspard de la Nuit (Oct 20, 2014)

I wouldn't say Wagner wins hands-down. Wagner wrote more of an expository nature than any other composer so his egoism just shows more. He had an extraverted personality so there were more chances for his ego to reveal itself.

Plus, there are tons of people who pretend to be humble but in reality are anything but. I know this based on my own autobiographical evidence attained through lived subjective experience.


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## Abraham Lincoln (Oct 3, 2015)

Don't forget Beethoven!


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## Chronochromie (May 17, 2014)

Scriabin. Alexander Scriabin...


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

I would agree Scriabin, Wagner had some insane ideas about how his music would revolutionize society, but Scriabin earnestly believed he would be responsible for instigating the apocalypse.


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## Abraham Lincoln (Oct 3, 2015)

Couchie said:


> I would agree Scriabin, Wagner had some insane ideas about how his music would revolutionize society, but Scriabin earnestly believed he would be responsible for instigating the apocalypse.


But Scriabin was genuinely bonkers, while Wagner had always been self-centered.


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## Potiphera (Mar 24, 2011)

I agree about Wagner having the biggest ego, he knew he was a genius. King Ludwig II of Bavaria sponsored him, basically turned over the State Treasury to Wagner. 
He then came into contact with another man with a gigantic ego, Fredrick Nietzsche , but they inevitably fell out when Wagner was not being worshiped enough by the great philosopher.


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## Potiphera (Mar 24, 2011)

Berlioz was another egoist and a bit nuts with it.


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## HaydnBearstheClock (Jul 6, 2013)

Wagner or Beethoven?


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

Berlioz may have had just as big an ego as Wagner, but he also had a more impulsive and wild personality, a sort of animal quality that probably at times diminished and at times enhanced egotism. Beethoven had surpreme confidence and guts that probably manifested as ego often, but I believe him to have had a bigger heart than Wagner, and Berlioz too in his own way.. Stravinsky had less ego but was nearly as great a prick/jerk as Wagner. It's possible the same could be said of Brahms.
Scriabin was in his own world beyond such things as egotism, kind of...


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

Couchie said:


> I would agree Scriabin, Wagner had some insane ideas about how his music would revolutionize society, but Scriabin earnestly believed he would be responsible for instigating the apocalypse.


On top of that, he wrote compositions such as _Prometheus _in order to convince his audience that he was the reincarnated Prometheus of their time, a living god. That's why there's a piano part to that piece, HE'D be the pianist, the center of attention. That was his aim.

But like Liadov told him once, he wasn't a god... he was just a chicken!


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

I'm impressed with some of the suggestions so far, but I'm still going to vote Gesualdo.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

I think Stravinsky had a big ego but he was more in control of it. And he was always careful about letting the public see through it.


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