# Composers and their interests.



## isridgewell (Jul 2, 2013)

Many composers have interests and passions outside of music. 

For me it's the story of Shostakovich being obsessed with football/soccer. Apparently (according to his son), he would stop everything to go to a live game and whilst there, despite being a fairly introvert person, would shout and yell from the stands!

Elgar shared a similar passion and was a Wolverhampton fan (Honegger supported Paris St Germain passionately).

But this thread is not just about football!

Share your stories.


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## TudorMihai (Feb 20, 2013)

George Gershwin, aside from being a composer, was also a painter. There's a photo of him painting the portrait of Arnold Schoenberg:








Sergei Prokofiev was a very good chess player and he beat the world chess champion José Raúl Capablanca at an exhibition match in 1914. The photo below is not from that match.








Dvorak was a great railroad enthusiast while Mahler enjoyed hiking.


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## Wicked_one (Aug 18, 2010)

Alkan used to study theology while Atterberg was an engineer.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

This area has fascinated me, and I did this thread on it the year I joined TC, but its old and stale (2009 vintage!).

Others I would add:

Webern - Hiking (like Mahler) and study of crystals and flowers.

Mendelssohn - Drawing (especially on his travels, some brilliant sketches made on those), his letters also show that this man was very good with words!

Rossini - Cooking

John Cage - Mushrooms (mycology)

Morton Feldman - Collecting Persian rugs

Schoenberg (like Gershwin) also painted

Mozart - Billiards

Percy Grainger - Sado-masochism (dunno if this is a hobby, or...something else?)

Satie, Holst, Vaughan Williams, Kodaly, Janacek - Walking

Elliott Carter - Reading contemporary poetry & literature, also literature in various languages

Verdi - Politics (became a member of parliament once Italy was unified)


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

Beyond the trivia it's interesting how much these outside interests may or may not reflect on their music.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

Saint-Saëns was a lepidopterist (butterfly expert) of some renown, and apparently also a quite gifted amateur mathematician. 

Bach seemed to have taken up procreating as hobby whenever his busy musical life allowed it. 

Borodin was a professional scientist and composed when he had time.


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## Garlic (May 3, 2013)

Sid James said:


> Webern - Hiking (like Mahler) and study of crystals and flowers.
> 
> Rossini - Cooking
> 
> ...


I like these, they seem to suit the composers' music very well.

More mathematicians - Babbitt, Boulez, Xenakis


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Messiaen, as is very well-known indeed, was an ornithologist, and transcribed birdsong from all over the world.

Takemitsu loved watching movies. He would go to see hundreds every year.


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## TudorMihai (Feb 20, 2013)

isridgewell said:


> Shostakovich being obsessed with football/soccer.


It would be interesting to know which was his favorite team Maybe Zenit Saint Petersburg (since he was a native of Saint Petersburg).


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## ptr (Jan 22, 2013)

TudorMihai said:


> It would be interesting to know which was his favorite team Maybe Zenit Saint Petersburg (since he was a native of Saint Petersburg).


It was absolutely Zenit, check this letter at *Bonhams* where he writes about it!

/ptr


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Excessive alcohol, unfortunately, for some (e.g. Mussorgsky).


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

I'd like to know - which famous composers were also physicists or mathematicians?


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## TudorMihai (Feb 20, 2013)

Mathematicians: Hans Sommer, Lorenz Christoph Mizler (also a physician) and Georgy Catoire as far as I know.
Physician: Alexander Borodin (also a chemist), Thomas Campion

But frankly, music IS mathematics after all.


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## isridgewell (Jul 2, 2013)

Honegger was a steam locomotive enthusiast/driver.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

Penderecki really likes trees. His house has an arboretum with more than 1,000 varieties of them.


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

Dvorak was fascinated by locomotives and train schedules and was always paying attention to what was going on at train stations in terms of arrivals and departures . He also raised pidgeons .
Richard Strauss loved to play a card game called Skat with his buddies , who included some renowned conductors and other musicians . He was known to cut orchestra rehearsals for concerts he was conducting short in order to make time for the game at times .
There is a Skat game scene in his autobiographical opera Intermezzo .


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Manxfeeder said:


> Penderecki really likes trees. His house has an arboretum with more than 1,000 varieties of them.


That really makes sense (but I didn't know it). I recently listened to his 8th symphony which ends with the song "O grüner Baum des Lebens" (O Green Tree of Life). So there you go, and nature as a theme goes right through that work.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Sid James said:


> Percy Grainger - Sado-masochism (dunno if this is a hobby, or...something else?)


Masochism only I believe (at least, not sadism). It was certainly a hobby since I don't believe he was ever paid for it. When they set up the Grainger Museum at the University of Melbourne, he donated quite a few whips and bloody shirts, among other things. What a guy!


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

Glazunov was a good drawer when he was young, perhaps he continued to draw throughout life. Anyhow, he liked art and portraiture a lot, and was an avid reader. He also loved astronomy. 

I looked back at a 3-year-old thread where we discussed the same thing as here, only I send then that Glazunov would "surreptitiously" drink while teaching as a hobby... actually, probably drinking while doing everything. :lol: That was actually before I discovered the other hobbies I mentioned above. Sigh, at least he cut the alcohol addiction in the last years of his life, thanks to his wife. She was who he needed all along...


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Some more:

*Lenny (Bernstein)* liked sports, eg. skiing, swimming, tennis, sailing, football.

*Wagner* loved fine materials like silks and satins, and also perfumes (probably why the guy went into debt again and again - loved the high life)

*Hovhaness* also liked hiking (another one apart from Mahler and Webern). Makes sense in terms of many references to mountains in his music.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

*William Herschel*, who composed 24 symphonies, liked astronomy. A lot.


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## HaydnBearstheClock (Jul 6, 2013)

I've read that J. Haydn was an art collector. He was also interested in all kinds of data - for eg., during his London journeys, Haydn wrote down detailed descriptions about London, its population, prices there, etc. G. P. Telemann collected and was interested in flowers.


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## Orpheus (Jul 15, 2012)

KenOC said:


> Masochism only I believe (at least, not sadism). It was certainly a hobby since I don't believe he was ever paid for it. When they set up the Grainger Museum at the University of Melbourne, he donated quite a few whips and bloody shirts, among other things. What a guy!


So far as I remember he regarded himself as primarily a sadist who happily accepted the jackboot being on the other foot (so to speak) quite frequently in order to whet his appetite for the next sadism session. "Sado-masochist" therefore seems fair enough on the whole, otherwise just "Sadist", unless there is someone here who knows how to define these things more precisely.  I remember reading a quite remarkable letter he wrote with the intention of exonerating himself or his wife "If one of us is found dead covered in whip marks", or something to that effect. A very practical idea, when you think about it.

Grainger seems to have been quite an extraordinarily eccentric character, with far more than his fair share of extra-musical interests/obsessions (there is in his case little practical distinction between the two). He might not rank highly among many people's preferred composers, but he surely can compete with the greatest in sheer eccentricity. Just off the top of my head:

He was quite convinced (or affected to be convinced) that English needed to be thoroughly purged of words which were not of Germanic/Nordic etymology, and invented and used his own alternative lexicon for this purpose, I believe he called it "Blue-Eyed English". Of course it goes without saying that he refused, as a point of principle, to use the standard Italianate musical terms in any of his own work, preferring to use standard English, "enriched" with words from his own lexicon. (Trying to play from one of his more advanced scores must be an interesting experience, particualrly given his fondness for unusual instrumentation, tuning, and playing techniques.)

He was a health faddist and exercise fanatic, who for a large portion of his life subsisted almost entirely on rice and oranges, and frequently ran between concerts (and performed in the clothes he had worn while running) rather than taking more conventional forms of transport. He was a dedicated amateur inventor, who loved to design and build things, particularly new musical devices or instruments, often out of old junk he had collected. (Dumpster diving in order to find such junk was of course, another interest.) This contraption, whatever it may be, is apparently some sort of device he constructed for composing, or possibly performing, "Free Music":









I don't know where, with all this quota of craziness to fulfil, he found the time to do the things by which he was meant to be earning his living and reputation, such as collecting folk songs, composing, being an international concert pianist, or actually practicing his piano (it's probably in keeping with his strange and contrarian personality that he is on record as expressing disdain for his own instrument).

But, as KenOC said, "What a guy"!


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## LindnerianSea (Jun 5, 2013)

Hugo Alfven, the Swedish symphonist, was a decent painter too, apparently.


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## Ramako (Apr 28, 2012)

science said:


> I'd like to know - which famous composers were also physicists or mathematicians?


As a general rule it seems to be mathematicians who have an interest in music rather than the other way around.


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## TudorMihai (Feb 20, 2013)

HaydnBearstheClock said:


> I've read that J. Haydn was an art collector.


Yes. So was Arcangelo Corelli. At the time of his death he was in the possession of 150 paintings.


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## TudorMihai (Feb 20, 2013)

Probably the most multi-faceted composer was Camille Saint-Saëns. Aside from being a composer, he was a skilled astronomer, geologist, archaeologist, botanist, lepidopterist, mathematician, scientist, writer, poet and playwright. Absolutely incredible! He was a very good example of what we would call a "Renaissance Man".


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## HaydnBearstheClock (Jul 6, 2013)

TudorMihai said:


> Yes. So was Arcangelo Corelli. At the time of his death he was in the possession of 150 paintings.


Oh yeah, and Haydn also liked fishing.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Wagner's chief interests outside music appear to have been:
1) himself
2) other people's wives

Beethoven's chief interests included:
1) the countryside
2) abusing his long-suffering friends and anyone else who happened to displease him. As Beethoven appears to have been exceedingly easy to displease this latter hobby became somewhat an obsession, one might say!


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Smoking appeared to be Berstein's chief interest. Never saw him without a ciggie.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

KenOC said:


> *William Herschel*, who composed 24 symphonies, liked astronomy. A lot.


So much so that he is nowadays more known for his astronomy than for his music. Contrary to popular belief, he did not compose the "Uranus" movement from _The Planets_.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

TudorMihai said:


> Probably the most multi-faceted composer was Camille Saint-Saëns. Aside from being a composer, he was a skilled astronomer, geologist, archaeologist, botanist, lepidopterist, mathematician, scientist, writer, poet and playwright. Absolutely incredible! He was a very good example of what we would call a "Renaissance Man".


And, like many of the great Renaissance artists, he seemed to have had a slightly unholy interest in boys and young men.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Orpheus said:


> Grainger seems to have been quite an extraordinarily eccentric character, with far more than his fair share of extra-musical interests/obsessions


And, as Tom Lehrer sang of Oedipus Rex, "he loved his mother."


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

ptr said:


> It was absolutely Zenit, check this letter at *Bonhams* where he writes about it!
> 
> /ptr


During Stalin's time the Politburo's club of 'choice' were supposed to have been Dinamo Moscow, so maybe this was another reason why DSCH got into trouble!

Ives played US football in his younger years and I think he liked baseball, too.


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## Lunasong (Mar 15, 2011)

KenOC said:


> *William Herschel*, who composed 24 symphonies, liked astronomy. A lot.





brianvds said:


> So much so that he is nowadays more known for his astronomy than for his music. Contrary to popular belief, he did not compose the "Uranus" movement from _The Planets_.


Herschel was the first person on our planet to discover another planet (Uranus). He did so whilst music was his prime profession. I'm currently reading a biography of Herschel.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

In his spare moments, Herschel
- Cataloged binary stars and determined they revolve around common centers of gravity
- Discovered infrared radiation
- Discovered that the Martian ice caps change size with the seasons
- Coined the word "asteroid"
- Cataloged nebulas and galaxies with a numbering system still used today
- Discovered numerous moons of other planets
- Discovered the planet Uranus
- Built over 400 telescopes (remember, he had to grind his own mirrors) including a behemoth with a four-foot mirror, the largest of its time.


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## rrudolph (Sep 15, 2011)

elgars ghost said:


> Ives played US football in his younger years and I think he liked baseball, too.


Here's Charles E. Ives (L) in his uniform as pitcher for Hopkins Grammar School:


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## TrevBus (Jun 6, 2013)

LindnerianSea said:


> Hugo Alfven, the Swedish symphonist, was a decent painter too, apparently.


Sailing as well I believe.


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## Geo Dude (May 22, 2013)

Putting aside his most well known 'hobby' Brahms was a very devoted hiker and a voracious reader. He also enjoyed taking long walks through town and dispensing candy to children, who probably took him for Santa Claus in his later years. In his later years he also made a habit of getting home early before supper so he could help the landlady cook dinner.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Speaking of helping to cook dinner, how about that Rossini guy?


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## Joris (Jan 13, 2013)

Erik Satie liked white food


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## TrevBus (Jun 6, 2013)

Joris said:


> Erik Satie liked white food


And umbrellas:tiphat:. I don't know if with the "food'.


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## waldvogel (Jul 10, 2011)

Giuseppe Verdi was an integral figure in the Risorgimento - the reunification of an independent Italy. He was actually elected as a deputy in the legislature of Italy for four years, but then resigned. He was later appointed to the Senate of Italy, which seems to have been an easier job that didn't require periodic promise-making and photo-ops.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Ignacy Pederewski had side gigs as a diplomat for Poland, and then as prime minister.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

KenOC said:


> In his spare moments, Herschel
> - Cataloged binary stars and determined they revolve around common centers of gravity
> - Discovered infrared radiation
> - Discovered that the Martian ice caps change size with the seasons
> ...


Yeah, yeah, he wasted his time on all manner of tripe, but as we all know his really great achievement is his symphonies...






:angel:


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## Celloman (Sep 30, 2006)

I can think of two composers who played a considerable role in other walks of life.

1. Borodin for his work as a chemist - he researched aldehydes.

2. Charles Ives for his influence on life insurance.


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## Avey (Mar 5, 2013)

We made it _this_ far without touching on the cat hunters.


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