# Salute to a very special composer on his birthday



## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

Once upon a time...

Oh, if only I could finish a sentence...

Nah, too lazy to write this post, will try tomorrow instead... 


(Thread to be finished tomorrow, May 11)

:tiphat:


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

But it is May 11th already


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

Ah now where was I...

Once upon a time, there was a young boy whose parents passed away while he was still in childhood. He knew his mother even less than his father, and ended up living with relatives instead. But the boy was talented, yes, very musically talented.

But while his musical training was a bit shoddy due to lack of careful supervision and discipline, his talent didn't go unnoticed. At the town Conservatoire, the new up-and-coming composition teacher of the day with his glasses and long beard took notice of this young man, and offered him a position in his composition class. Needless to say, the young man really was glad for it, since he did love music. But oh, if people only noticed that, well....

Because of lack of formal schooling beforehand, Conservatoire was much too hard for his brain. Or, was that the only reason? No, upbringing was only half the battle really. He had trouble... focusing...

The young man, in order to improve himself in his failing courses, offered a proposal to his sister: I have to finish this fugue assignment, today. If I don't finish it, don't give me any dinner! That way I'll be motivated to finish it. Well, his sister accepted the deal, and by the time dinner time came around, he still wasn't finished. The sister told him that he couldn't have any dinner then. But the young man smiled, folded up his assignment in his book, and walked out the door. He would dine at his aunt instead.

At age of 21, this young man was expelled from the Conservatoire on grounds that he skipped too many classes. I guess he could have seen it coming (smh), but he was indeed upset that his training was abruptly brought to an end. When he attempted to reenter about 2 years later, he scored about 100% on the exam, no big deal...

Over the course of his life, he certainly loved to compose, but he always had such _trouble _doing it. He even had trouble listening to concerts because of how much his mind would wander. In many ways, life was a huge bore for him, an endless stream of boring things. Except music at its essence. But you couldn't count on him to make a deadline, ever. Resorting to the piano as his main medium, most of his pieces are hardly a few minutes long, not even a sonata, a concerto or a symphony to his name.

He married a rich heiress, but he was kind of bad at running her establishment, and rather than being able to live comfortably ended up having to take a job as teacher at the very Conservatoire he had pursued his education in. It too was such a bore to him, even though he loved music, that he often had worse attendance to teaching his own course in Harmony than his own students. Luckily he had a good friend, a very good friend, who helped him out in those cases and was happy to be his substitute teacher. There was a lot of dissatisfaction with his life... even when life was right in front of him.

On his 50th birthday a critic wrote an essay about him: "He has every conceivable gift: a marvellous technique, originality, a genuine poetic fancy, an abundance of rare humour … unerring taste, great intelligence: and all he gives us, year in year out, is about ten pages of music, or even less. This is a mortal sin against Apollo who endowed him so lavishly. He realizes this himself, I think."

Yes, he knew it... but what could he do?

He is classical music's representative of the ADD artist. It was a condition unknown to physicians of his day, who only blamed such things on poor upbringing. But there are many other composers who also were orphans yet grew up to be very disciplined artists (take Tchaikovsky and Scriabin). No, clearly from the lack of satisfaction he found in everyday life and his lack of attention span that never got better, there was undiagnosed mental condition in the case of this one "marvellous" but also deeply pathetic example of an artist... Anatoly Liadov.

Listen to some of Liadov's miniatures today, and his short pieces for orchestra. It really _was _all that he could do. For those of you on TalkClassical who have ever been diagnosed with ADD or ADHD, he _is _your voice. In however few words he chose to express himself, he is still your voice. And think... he's still remembered today for that tiny voice...


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