# Where can you read some composers diary?



## ethanjamesescano (Aug 29, 2012)

can someone please tell me how can I read diaries of some great composers.
whether it's online or not
Thanks!


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## GGluek (Dec 11, 2011)

Many -- maybe most -- great composers did not keep diaries. Too busy composing, and diaries are a more writerly thing. I don't know of any offhand, but would be happy to be enlightened. Beethoven had notebooks in which he jotted musical ideas (and which were mostly torn apart and scattered to posterity, page by page, by his executors). He also had his "conversation books" -- which are kind of reverse diaries. Because he was profoundly deaf in later years, he carried notebooks in which people talking to him could write their half of conversations. We can often use them to guess at his answers. I think a reasonable number of Brahms' letters survive.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

GGluek is right: not much in the way of diaries survive. But for many composers, we do have lots of letters. Well, at least for the ones who lived in the days before e-mail. In another hundred years, biographers are going to have their work cut out for them to write biographies of our current crop of composers, seeing as all their letters will have disappeared into cyberspace.


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## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

Robert Schumann left behind a diary (jointly shared with Clara). The highlight by far is his sublimely succinct entry of October 1831: "Overdone technical studies. Laming of my right hand."


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## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

I don't know if you consider him a "great composer" but Ned Rorem also left behind extensive diaries and memoirs that have been published.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Not all composers kept diaries. Beethoven for instance didn't -- but he kept a "tagebuch" from about 1812 to 1818, where he jotted entries irregularly. Many of these were philosophical, or quotes for others, or just random thoughts. I don't know whether an English translation is available.


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## Klavierspieler (Jul 16, 2011)

You can find the marriage diary of Robert and Clara Schumann here.


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