# Composers and their collections



## yofaka (May 27, 2019)

Hi all,

Do you know any composers who are building up a collection (stamps, postcards, dolls, coins etc?) as a hobby?

I am curious about your thoughts,

Ilja


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## Rogerx (Apr 27, 2018)

yofaka said:


> Hi all,
> 
> Do you know any composers who are building up a collection (stamps, postcards, dolls, coins etc?) as a hobby?
> 
> ...


Do you mean still living composers? 
I am not sure that in Vivaldi's time to name just one there where any stamps.


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## flamencosketches (Jan 4, 2019)

Interesting thread. I don't know of many, but I know that many composers (Brahms for example) used to collect scores of their contemporaries and predecessors.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

We had a thread about composers' hobbies, but no collections were mentioned (link).


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## RICK RIEKERT (Oct 9, 2017)

Varèse had an extensive collection of gongs.

Gershwin was one of the most prominent collectors of modern art in his day.

Vaughan Williams, Kodály, Bartok, Grieg, and Percy Grainger were avid collectors of folk music. Grainger also had a collection of homemade whips (some hewn out of conducting batons), and lots of pornography. 

John Cage collected mushrooms and his extensive fungi collection is now housed at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Morton Feldman was an avid collector of Middle Eastern rugs.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Ravel used to collect clothes.


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## CnC Bartok (Jun 5, 2017)

Dvořák was into trainspotting, but please do not let this - albeit severe - character defect, put anyone off his music.....


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## infracave (May 14, 2019)

Beethoven was into collecting dirty dishes and full chamber pots.


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## Orfeo (Nov 14, 2013)

RICK RIEKERT said:


> Varèse had an extensive collection of gongs.
> 
> Gershwin was one of the most prominent collectors of modern art in his day.
> 
> ...


That reminds me of Eugene Goossens, who collected esoteric artworks of Rosaleen Norton, with whom he had an affair. Consensual adults no less, who shared things in private, Goossens was essentially surveillanced, nevertheless. And upon his arrival to Sydney Airport, he was detained, his baggage searched, its contents confiscated, interviewed (interrogated), fined, then let go, only to return to England disgraced, his reputation ruined. This was in 1956, around the time when it was believed, for instance, that homosexuality could be cured through medication. Well, that was wrong, as we saw in Alan Turing's case.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

A separate subject, but some listeners are collecting stamps about composers:

https://www.classicfm.com/discover-music/latest/beautiful-music-postage-stamps/mozart-piano/
http://musiconstamps.blogspot.com/?m=1


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

Berlioz amassed a significant collection of shoelaces.


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## yofaka (May 27, 2019)

They can be dead as well .


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

Erik Satie collected umbrellas, but that might have been a genuine eccentricity rather than a hobby in itself.


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## Dimace (Oct 19, 2018)

My Master was collecting small training keyboards to make practice in his long journeys. This stopped this habit when he turned to composition and teaching. Some of them (two octaves long) are very beautifully crafted.


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## RICK RIEKERT (Oct 9, 2017)

elgars ghost said:


> Erik Satie collected umbrellas, but that might have been a genuine eccentricity rather than a hobby in itself.


Satie owned 100 umbrellas at the time of his death, most of them unused. He carried an umbrella at all times and protected them under his coat when it rained to keep them new. Satie loved the rain but hated sunshine. He told his brother Conrad that 'the sun was his personal enemy, [it was] brutal and said bad things about him'.


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## Rogerx (Apr 27, 2018)

yofaka said:


> They can be dead as well .


Did you got enough information?


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## CnC Bartok (Jun 5, 2017)

These East German stamps were infamous in their day.

Fun quiz question: Anyone fancy hazarding a guess why?!?


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

I know the answer, won't spoil it.


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## CnC Bartok (Jun 5, 2017)

Do you know which is which, though? :tiphat:


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

Schumann is the composer featured but without looking is it something to do with the music?


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## CnC Bartok (Jun 5, 2017)

.....pray continue?........


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

It might have been a misprint or something?


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## CnC Bartok (Jun 5, 2017)

The top set are correct. They hastily replaced the stamps below, which have SchuBERT's music. Daft idiots!

Recently the Post Office here announced commemorative stamps for the 75th anniversary of D-day. The original picture included American troops (fine) landing at Iwo Jima, which I believe is not in Normandy!!! They did correct their error.....


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## RICK RIEKERT (Oct 9, 2017)

The eighteenth century Croatian composer Luka Sorkočević was recently honored in his homeland with a postage stamp. In its Prominent Croats series, the Croatian Post mistakenly printed the figure of US President Thomas Jefferson instead of Sorkočević. The error was detected by the Croatian Post, but 22 stamps had been already sold in Dalmatia. One of the stamps fetched several thousand euros at a recent auction.


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## CnC Bartok (Jun 5, 2017)

Seems this thread is flushing out the closet philatelists!


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

CnC Bartok said:


> Seems this thread is flushing out the closet philatelists!


I think I'd be tempted to become one if I was told that I had a real rarity fall into my lap.


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## regenmusic (Oct 23, 2014)

Dimace said:


> My Master was collecting small training keyboards to make practice in his long journeys. This stopped this habit when he turned to composition and teaching. Some of them (two octaves long) are very beautifully crafted.


This is true. I had a piano teacher named Russell Warman who owned one of them.


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