If you admire a composer you want to be like him/her...No?????

[cardeno]

I do admire several composers and would like to be like them, do what they did and lead my life like they led theirs, it is the love of their music that prompts me to do that.

 Bach is on top of the list. He had 20 children so I`ve started breeding like a rabbit with any woman available to be like him.  Beethoven is next on my list and tests have proved he died of lead poisoning when they tested a lock of his hair kept to this day, that lead was due to the vasts amounts of wine he drunk, the lead was used as wine finings in his day, so I`ve started drinking like a fish to be like him. Next is Schubert who died of syphilis due to his visits to the red district of Vienna, so I`ve started going to seedy clubs and red districts to find women of dubious virtues to be like my hero Franz. I do love Schumann and want to end up like him in the piece and quiet of an asylum just to be in the environment he ended up so I`m looking for a supply of substances.......Chopin with his strange partner George and his melancholy who cheered no one and who wrote his own funeral march, what a cheerful chap he was, just the kind of guy you would invite to your own funeral..........Johann Brahms another favourite with his sneaky affairs with Clare Schumann while poor Robert was in  the asylum, so I`ve started an affair with my next door neighbour.... while hubbie is at work..... The only woman composer I admire is Clare Schumann not only for her music but how available she was at least to Johann, so I`m looking further afield for women like her......John Field with his nocturnes and bottles of drink above all vodka while he lived in Russia, he invented the drinking nocturne, no wonder, and the only one I got something positive from is Munzio Clementi who was a very good business man besides composing quite easy sonatinas so I`m thinking of starting a business selling pianos like him.

So besides their music I do love the life my heroes led in their time.....drunkers, sexual adventurers,  sneaky Casanovas...they sound like most of us, perhaps we should admire their music only and stop there........

[indianajo]

Well, no.
JS Bach had a good marriage perhaps, but if he had a bad year  or two financially some of those children might have had ricketts like my undernourished father.  One should plan for one's children that they should flourish whatever ones' luck is. My father planned, he had only two children. We ate okay in the bad years.  But there was no money for a new band instrument when my brother was 12, so he was stuck with my used clarinet when he was definitely brash like a trombone player .  
Beethoven was an idiot when it came to relationships with women.  I'm not following him.  Nor two other composers I admire, Mick Jagger & Chuck Berry.  Mick paid child support to how many? And skated on which other children?  John Lennon & George Harrison wrote some compelling music, and got themselves shot.  George Gershwin's fondness for big cigars may have contributed to his death from cancer in his forties.  
One composer who did okay is Carol King.  No scandalous biography from her kid, that turned out okay.  She has a nice estate in Montana and is not desperately touring any new dreck songs to cover any bad spending habits other pop composers have.  
Put your money in stocks & bonds and real estate in the good years (the way my Dad did) , not in Lear Jets & mansions. Take care of the kids even if you're touring. Mavis Staples was okay even though her Dad was famous.    And audit the accounting yourself; Billy Joel was burned by his wife.  

[ted]

Our affinity or otherwise with a person's artistic (or scientific for that matter) achievements have nothing whatever to do with the creator as a human being. If I only played and listened to the music of people I liked my musical cupboard would be almost bare. It has always puzzled me why so many have so much difficulty in making this separation.

It has a serious side in the thoroughly mistaken assumption that creativity, imagination and freedom of thought in art necessarily imply the abandonment of health and common sense in life. This entirely false notion has hurt a lot of talented people in the past and continues to do so today.

[ronde_des_sylphes]

Our affinity or otherwise with a person's artistic (or scientific for that matter) achievements have nothing whatever to do with the creator as a human being.  

[...]

It has a serious side in the thoroughly mistaken assumption that creativity, imagination and freedom of thought in art necessarily imply the abandonment of health and common sense in life. This entirely false notion has hurt a lot of talented people in the past and continues to do so today.

Very well said.

And I suggest that no sane person should emulate Frantisek Kotzwara

[rachmaninoff_forever]

I like their music but aside from the money and fame and performing, I'd HATE to have a life like theirs.  I'm pretty happy with the way my life is now.

[outin]

It has a serious side in the thoroughly mistaken assumption that creativity, imagination and freedom of thought in art necessarily imply the abandonment of health and common sense in life. This entirely false notion has hurt a lot of talented people in the past and continues to do so today.

Yet it was and still is not often easy to be creative and a free spirit in a social setting so people who were creative in a less conventional way often did and still have problems in adjusting to their surroundings. So it's not necessarily a matter of choice for them to abandon health and common sense.

Many composers also had a less than optimal childhood and youth and that contributed to their personality and health.

[klavieronin]

It has a serious side in the thoroughly mistaken assumption that creativity, imagination and freedom of thought in art necessarily imply the abandonment of health and common sense in life. This entirely false notion has hurt a lot of talented people in the past and continues to do so today.

Extremely talented people are, almost by definition, freaks. It's not that surprising that many of them have extreme personalities in other areas of their life too. I don't think it's a case of abandoning health and common sense, it's part of their genetic make up. It's not always true but there does seem to be a correlation. Plus, as outin noted, there is the issue of how these people are often raised and exploited as children.

[ted]

We might just notice the stupidity of very talented people more than we notice the stupidity of a likely equal proportion of less talented people.

 

...I'm pretty happy with the way my life is now.

I do not see why that state is incompatible with exceptional talent. The question has arisen several times in the fifteen years I have been on music forums. Some people assert that the creative impulse is best served by discontent and about the same number assert it is nurtured by comfortable stasis; a wretched Socrates or a happy pig ? In terms of artistic product perhaps it doesn't matter which we are.

[rachmaninoff_forever]

We might just notice the stupidity of very talented people more than we notice the stupidity of a likely equal proportion of less talented people.

 
I do not see why that state is incompatible with exceptional talent. The question has arisen several times in the fifteen years I have been on music forums. Some people assert that the creative impulse is best served by discontent and about the same number assert it is nurtured by comfortable stasis; a wretched Socrates or a happy pig ? In terms of artistic product perhaps it doesn't matter which we are.

I never said it was. I just think my life is more fun than theirs outside of music.

[zxiao9]

Clara did NOT have an affair with Brahms. I get the point you want to make but leave my Clara alone!

[cardeno]

Clara did NOT have an affair with Brahms. I get the point you want to make but leave my Clara alone!

Most biographers say she did have an affair with Brahms, but don`t worry I`ll leave her alone, she is not my type, too slim for me, above all now......I like bigger women like Walkyrias with horns.

 I did visit her 6 years ago in my second visit to Bonn to again visit Beethoven`s house and Bonn`s cemetery where Beethoven`s mother is buried. Robert and Clara Schumann have a huge monument with their busts on top there. They made sure they didn`d bury Brahms there too in case trouble would ensue with Robert....