somewhat worldly or suave in his earlier years, or at least striving to appear so...hard-working and a ladies' man. Then grappled with ageing and personal distress later in his life. It all comes out in his music. The later music is quite unique.
Mendelssohn, despite (?) his incomparable genius, was a normal, deeply humane and kind man. His music radiates that humanity. Definitely worthy of this list..
@@charlesreed3327 I'm guessing one of Dave's criteria for this list was a long lifespan. That's why Mozart, Schubert, Mendelssohn and Bizet didn't make it.
Haydn is my favorite composer. His music always makes me feel great and has got me through my darkest moments in life. I like that it's uplifting and optimistic, but also real. I'm especially fond of the Sturm und Drang era.
The composer I would most like to add to the list is Janacek. Even though his operas often revolve around sad and tragic events, he somehow manages to leave you in a mood of optimism, whether it’s a disfigured woman who has lost her child finding a good man, the natural world carrying on regardless after a life cut short, or the prisoners in a gulag nursing an injured bird back to health and releasing it into the wild. These works reflect the reality of life that you have to take the rough with the smooth to appreciate what is good in the world.
"A lot of people love music for what it gives you, not for what it is" (14:14) I've never thought of it this way, but it explains so many things. Thank you for continuing to enlighten our minds!
I've been hooked on Rimsky-Korsakov for years now. His operas are absolute treasure troves of beautiful music. The opera suites capture some of it, but there's quite a bit more waiting for anyone willing to take the time to dig. The fourth act of Kitezh is one of the most beautiful things I've ever heard -- somehow a perfect marriage of Wagnerian depth with Russian songfulness. The second act of the Golden Cockerel coud be seen as a brilliant parody of Tristan's Liebesnacht, with contrasting episodes of impressionistic opulence and comical banality. The sixth tableau of Sadko rivals Ravel's Daphis and Chloe for its ubiquitious use of harp glissandi, and Mlada is uncannily proto-Stravinskian. I could go on and on.
I nominate Boccherini. Suffered personal tragedy but wrote a kind of classical style with quirks and castanets. He's what would have happened to Haydn if he'd moved to Spain.
I personally perceive Nielsen as optimistic most of the time but not completely sane. There is often something strange in his music, almost if he couldn't stay in a certain mood for more than 6 seconds. I am studying the flute concerto now and it's very cute at times but I feel like I have to be a bit schizophrenic to follow all the mood swings and the unexpected development of characters
This is a clip where I find myself in more agreement with you than disagreement. Rimsky-Korsakov was a rare mix of technical mastery and beautifully created art. He wrote music that just seems right.
Fabulous review, David. I was particularly happy to see Nielsen, Dvorak, VW and Haydn featuring. But how could they ever be left out of such a list? 🙂 As you say, their music speaks for them.
Loved the list, Dave. I agree that I was waiting for Mendelssohn also, but that's okay. I agree with you about Nielsen in the sense that I can confidently listen to his music when I need to be taken out of myself and my own preoccupations. Contemplating the musical language he uses is enough to absorb me.
Of all the great composer, the one I would love to have known personally is Haydn. His music radiates goodness, and is utterly straight forward, almost always joyful, and on times very funny as well. All the most difficult things to bring off in music. Thanks for a thought provoking talk. Best wishes from George
Listening to Ozawa and the BSO after a topsy-turvy week, I would add the minor composer, Ottorini Respighi. He was only 56 when he died in 1936, and so did not have a chance to write the crowning Roma tone poem, Trappole per Turisti di Roma.
You have articulated better than I ever had why I so love Handel, and rank him in my top handul. As a man, he was universally admired. As a musician, he found the sound of majestic joy and happiness. When I just want to celebrate being alive, I always find myself turning to Handel.
Love this, thanks Dave! I'd hesitate about including Stravinsky and Hindemith on my own list - much as I love tart sorbet - so I'll give them both further listens. Off the top of my head, five more I'd add are: Vivaldi, Boccherini, Mozart, Glazunov, and Rodrigo. Like the others on your list, their music brings undistilled sunshine into my day.
Glazunov? He was very, very alcoholic. According to Shostakovich, he would sip vodka from a concealed bottle through a rubber tube while lecturing at St. Petersburg Conservatory. He also ruined the premiere of Rachmaninoff's 1st Symphony by conducting it while apparently drunk.
Antonin Dvorak's music radiates sunshine, yet his 7th Symphony can match any of the Brahms for drama. If you haven't done a reference guide of the 7th, I hope you'll do one soon. Thank you.
Handel was the first name I thought of when I saw your title. He got me through the pandemic. Rossini, of course. I'd add Sullivan as well. Some of which he wrote in horrible physical pain, but you'd never know it from the music. We don't hear enough of Ibert, but his music always makes me feel good. The flute concerto, Divertissement, Escales. Who doesn't get enraptured by that "Adventures in Paradise" theme that wells up in the first mvt of Escales?
Wonderful list. A few contenders on my list include Bruch, Braga Santos, Glazunov, and Malcolm Arnold (despite the sadness of old age, and supposed difficulty of Symphony 9).
True, he didn't have the best of lives (besides dying young). Yet he remained a loyal friend, lover of nature, the good life, and above all, his music reflects this. Even Schubert's densest or saddest music is always coated with beauty, with hope. I didn't think the point here was just the biographical data, Bach lost his wife and children and had a sad end, but he talks about these experiences of loss with his faith (although it's not mine) and conveys this with sincerity and beauty. Stravinsky had a controversial family life to say the least. Rimsky-Korsakov and Dvorak did not have "light" lives. I don't know, but until the final works, Schubert always seems to nod with affection. But it's really just my opinion.@@johntiscornia1241
As a big Schubert lover myself, I see where you're coming from. The sincerity of his music is incredibly heartwarming. But sometimes it gets so emotional that I don't think we can qualify it as completely sane.
I thought for sure Verdi would be on this list. He managed to survive 88 years and be continuously active professionally virtually all his adult life (unlike Rossini). And I'd also add the similarly long-lived Richard Strauss to the list. Like Haydn and Handel earlier, Verdi and Strauss were both able to make composing a business while still creating great music. And RE Stravinsky: it's odd to see him on this list when the three most famous pieces he wrote, the early ballets "The Firebird," "Petrouchka" and "The Rite of Spring," are tumultuous, ultra-emotional and far from the comfortable but sometimes arid nature of his later works.
I totally agree for Grieg, who is far more than the composer of Peer Gynt, and Vaughan Williams, for me the most human of all composers. I should have add three big 'R': Ravel (Daphnis et Chloé, Piano Concerto, Rhapsodie Espagnole...), Respighi (Roman Trilogy, Botticelli Triptych) and Reich (Octet, Music for 18 musicians, Tehillim, The Desert Music...).
Dave, I devour all of your wonderful videos as you make them. Your knowledge and word smithing is a treat. If I may offer up just a small single correction, given the rare opportunity: the last 's' in Saint-Saens is pronounced; it's not silent.
No, you may not correct my pronunciation of anything. Please don't do it again. I appreciate the kind words, but you might want to see my video about this topic.
Oh such a lovely video felt like crying at the end😊 These sane composers had a humility to their craft and appreciated the magic of simple sounds. Nielsen said something like let us savour simple thirds in parallel. Also Martinu my all time favourite with those chugging rhythms that build up and up. Later in life I "got" Haydn as I was tempted to wallow and use music to drown emotionally when younger. Not healthy and not sane😂
Have to say, Dave, seems you could have/should have included England's greatest composer, Sir Arthur Sullivan. Doesn't get more sane than a late Victorian gentleman like him..
Very interesting you didn’t include Mozart there, who is my paradigm of a “sane composer”. More than Haydn actually as Mozart had a steadier love life. Being fair, you rightly didn’t include Schumann. But Martinu? No that was not sane, however marvellous the results.
Well ok but I doubt that has just been “modern scholars”. Respectfully disagree here, see very little evidence of bipolar disorder here (and the degree to which scholars try to pathologise almost all the well known composers is really troubling, I think). At least Mozart wasn’t throwing himself off of balconies or into the Rhine and stuff. Not even syphilis or affairs as far as consensus says But suppose they all have to have additional drama to make them interesting 🤷♂️
@@murraylow4523 In fairness to Mozart, this is something that I've read in a generalized sense, with no citations given of specific scholars submitting precise analyses. I do however think that creative people who are bipolar have an edge over creative people who are not in the drive to create and promote their art.
@@barrymoore4470 hiya. Yes I get you and I can see how that theory might work in explaining some creative people. But I’ve read a lot of biography of Mozart and if there is any evidence at all it’s that he was in a bad mood in his letters one week and excited elsewhere because he had a success. I mean, that’d apply to anyone but it’s not remotely enough evidence to diagnose “bipolarity”, good lord!
@@barrymoore4470 not arguing...but the MUSIC makes me focus and get sane. there are some that wrote their neuroses into their works, and some that were neurotic in everything BUT their works. Debussy fits that, just like Mozart. (on the whole, always itemized exceptions to everything artistic) Takemitsu and Reich - true professionals and clearly not in that category at all. both have a humility that is pretty refreshing as you learn about them.
I'm guessing that the 15 most mentally ill composers are coming, I suppose that Schumann, Beethoven, Chopin, Wagner and Tchaikovsky are probably going to head the lineup. I think it is true that mentally ill great composers often transcend their circumstances quite effectively. The folks who suffer from poor mental health often still project a wonderful sense of humanity (it is tough to be a great musician without doing this) it can be reassuring to listen to the music in spite of the mental condition of the poor soul who wrote it. I think the opposite is less likely, it is tough to think of or even imagine perverse or tortured pieces of music by composers like Bach, Handel or Dvorak. (Although we do have Vaughan Williams's 4th Symphony).
Yes, absolutely - descriptions of the man, and a listen to his early music, suggests he'd have made the "healthy and sane" list under a more humane regime. By the later phase of his life, accounts suggest he was a neurotic, despairing mess, and who of sensitive temperament wouldn't be under the conditions he faced and the losses he suffered?
When I read your headline, my first thought was, "This doesn''t exist!" An old and very experienced composer once said of my own compositions, "Saint-Saens already did the same thing better!" Your appreciation of Saint-Saens reconciles me with this remark. Some of Dvorák's music leads me to doubt in your "diagnosis": the Seventh Symphony and "Rusalka" are deeply tragic.
"The three watchwords of great music are sincerity, simplicity, and serenity." - Ralph Vaughan Williams
I know a certain Alfred Schnittke who would not agree with that!
Faure strikes me as a sane composer. He also calms me with his beautiful music.
somewhat worldly or suave in his earlier years, or at least striving to appear so...hard-working and a ladies' man. Then grappled with ageing and personal distress later in his life. It all comes out in his music. The later music is quite unique.
Mendelssohn, despite (?) his incomparable genius, was a normal, deeply humane and kind man. His music radiates that humanity. Definitely worthy of this list..
Absolutely. I was surprised that he didn't make the list.
I thought he would have been right after JS Bach, especially given his known admiration of him.
he died quite young, so not so healthy
@@charlesreed3327 I'm guessing one of Dave's criteria for this list was a long lifespan. That's why Mozart, Schubert, Mendelssohn and Bizet didn't make it.
@@mgconlan Mozart was famously into shit, so
Haydn is my favorite composer. His music always makes me feel great and has got me through my darkest moments in life. I like that it's uplifting and optimistic, but also real. I'm especially fond of the Sturm und Drang era.
The composer I would most like to add to the list is Janacek. Even though his operas often revolve around sad and tragic events, he somehow manages to leave you in a mood of optimism, whether it’s a disfigured woman who has lost her child finding a good man, the natural world carrying on regardless after a life cut short, or the prisoners in a gulag nursing an injured bird back to health and releasing it into the wild. These works reflect the reality of life that you have to take the rough with the smooth to appreciate what is good in the world.
"A lot of people love music for what it gives you, not for what it is" (14:14)
I've never thought of it this way, but it explains so many things. Thank you for continuing to enlighten our minds!
I would add Jean Francaix. His music is some the most carefree and whimsical stuff out there.
Holberg Suite and Dvorak #8 are certainly healthy brain food
I've been hooked on Rimsky-Korsakov for years now. His operas are absolute treasure troves of beautiful music. The opera suites capture some of it, but there's quite a bit more waiting for anyone willing to take the time to dig. The fourth act of Kitezh is one of the most beautiful things I've ever heard -- somehow a perfect marriage of Wagnerian depth with Russian songfulness. The second act of the Golden Cockerel coud be seen as a brilliant parody of Tristan's Liebesnacht, with contrasting episodes of impressionistic opulence and comical banality. The sixth tableau of Sadko rivals Ravel's Daphis and Chloe for its ubiquitious use of harp glissandi, and Mlada is uncannily proto-Stravinskian. I could go on and on.
Of course much of Rimsky-Korsakov's music anticipates Stravinsky. Rimsky-Korsakov was Stravinsky's composition teacher!
I nominate Boccherini. Suffered personal tragedy but wrote a kind of classical style with quirks and castanets. He's what would have happened to Haydn if he'd moved to Spain.
I personally perceive Nielsen as optimistic most of the time but not completely sane. There is often something strange in his music, almost if he couldn't stay in a certain mood for more than 6 seconds. I am studying the flute concerto now and it's very cute at times but I feel like I have to be a bit schizophrenic to follow all the mood swings and the unexpected development of characters
Same with his Clarinet concerto and the snare drum in it.
This is a clip where I find myself in more agreement with you than disagreement. Rimsky-Korsakov was a rare mix of technical mastery and beautifully created art. He wrote music that just seems right.
What a great unique and helpful video! I always look forward to your videos! Thank you!
Fabulous review, David. I was particularly happy to see Nielsen, Dvorak, VW and Haydn featuring. But how could they ever be left out of such a list? 🙂 As you say, their music speaks for them.
Yay for Handel!!! I was waiting for it. He is sure my top of the list feel-good composer! His music re-organizes my brain😊
Loved the list, Dave. I agree that I was waiting for Mendelssohn also, but that's okay. I agree with you about Nielsen in the sense that I can confidently listen to his music when I need to be taken out of myself and my own preoccupations. Contemplating the musical language he uses is enough to absorb me.
Great video!
I'm in a great mood and haven't started anything playing yet!
Thanks, Dave!
Of all the great composer, the one I would love to have known personally is Haydn. His music radiates goodness, and is utterly straight forward, almost always joyful, and on times very funny as well. All the most difficult things to bring off in music.
Thanks for a thought provoking talk. Best wishes from George
Listening to Ozawa and the BSO after a topsy-turvy week, I would add the minor composer, Ottorini Respighi. He was only 56 when he died in 1936, and so did not have a chance to write the crowning Roma tone poem, Trappole per Turisti di Roma.
Poulenc's chamber music is delightful.
One of your best. And absolutely true.
Thank you! Just what I need right now!❤
You have articulated better than I ever had why I so love Handel, and rank him in my top handul. As a man, he was universally admired. As a musician, he found the sound of majestic joy and happiness. When I just want to celebrate being alive, I always find myself turning to Handel.
Thanks Dave, great chat as always. Very interesting topic.
I enjoyed this one a lot. Nice way to end the workweek.
GREAT LIST😊Thank you oh so much...
Thank you!
Dvorak and Saint-Saens stand out for me most in the list; not to the exclusion of some others.
saint saens was famous for saying that Milhaud belongs in an asylum
Love this, thanks Dave! I'd hesitate about including Stravinsky and Hindemith on my own list - much as I love tart sorbet - so I'll give them both further listens. Off the top of my head, five more I'd add are: Vivaldi, Boccherini, Mozart, Glazunov, and Rodrigo. Like the others on your list, their music brings undistilled sunshine into my day.
Glazunov? He was very, very alcoholic. According to Shostakovich, he would sip vodka from a concealed bottle through a rubber tube while lecturing at St. Petersburg Conservatory. He also ruined the premiere of Rachmaninoff's 1st Symphony by conducting it while apparently drunk.
Yes, a well-known fact. But for me his music belies that - it’s unfailingly sane.
Antonin Dvorak's music radiates sunshine, yet his 7th Symphony can match any of the Brahms for drama. If you haven't done a reference guide of the 7th, I hope you'll do one soon. Thank you.
I have.
Handel was the first name I thought of when I saw your title. He got me through the pandemic. Rossini, of course.
I'd add Sullivan as well. Some of which he wrote in horrible physical pain, but you'd never know it from the music.
We don't hear enough of Ibert, but his music always makes me feel good. The flute concerto, Divertissement, Escales. Who doesn't get enraptured by that "Adventures in Paradise" theme that wells up in the first mvt of Escales?
I hope we're getting 15 unhealthy nutbag composers next. ...
Of course.
Two words:
Hector Berlioz
It will be tough to limit it to just 15.
@@leestamm3187 Indeed! I think they're the rule rather than the exception.
Percy Grainger
Wonderful list. A few contenders on my list include Bruch, Braga Santos, Glazunov, and Malcolm Arnold (despite the sadness of old age, and supposed difficulty of Symphony 9).
Oh, and Respighi!
Malcolm Arnold didn't just suffer from sadness in old age, he was a lifelong alcoholic and depressive
Great video!!!! Just a personal contribution to this list, my dear Schubert.
He had a crappy life
Schubert? Healthy???
True, he didn't have the best of lives (besides dying young). Yet he remained a loyal friend, lover of nature, the good life, and above all, his music reflects this. Even Schubert's densest or saddest music is always coated with beauty, with hope. I didn't think the point here was just the biographical data, Bach lost his wife and children and had a sad end, but he talks about these experiences of loss with his faith (although it's not mine) and conveys this with sincerity and beauty. Stravinsky had a controversial family life to say the least. Rimsky-Korsakov and Dvorak did not have "light" lives. I don't know, but until the final works, Schubert always seems to nod with affection. But it's really just my opinion.@@johntiscornia1241
As a big Schubert lover myself, I see where you're coming from. The sincerity of his music is incredibly heartwarming. But sometimes it gets so emotional that I don't think we can qualify it as completely sane.
This argument made more sense to me. I need to think about it.@@MisterPathetique
I thought for sure Verdi would be on this list. He managed to survive 88 years and be continuously active professionally virtually all his adult life (unlike Rossini). And I'd also add the similarly long-lived Richard Strauss to the list. Like Haydn and Handel earlier, Verdi and Strauss were both able to make composing a business while still creating great music. And RE Stravinsky: it's odd to see him on this list when the three most famous pieces he wrote, the early ballets "The Firebird," "Petrouchka" and "The Rite of Spring," are tumultuous, ultra-emotional and far from the comfortable but sometimes arid nature of his later works.
Thank you so much, Dave. I particularly appreciate your insight about humility before one's art as the mark of sanity. Thank you.
Thanks Dave. Great additions to my "must hear" list!
I love the way you talk to your cats! "Girls, cool it!"
I totally agree for Grieg, who is far more than the composer of Peer Gynt, and Vaughan Williams, for me the most human of all composers. I should have add three big 'R': Ravel (Daphnis et Chloé, Piano Concerto, Rhapsodie Espagnole...), Respighi (Roman Trilogy, Botticelli Triptych) and Reich (Octet, Music for 18 musicians, Tehillim, The Desert Music...).
When I first saw the title, I thought: who are the other fourteen? Meaning Haydn, of course.
A salubrious list, many of them happen to be my favorite composers!
Great Guns! You overlooked Darius Milhaud, who wrote an autobiography titled, "My Happy Life!"
No, I didn't overlook him. I just didn't include him.
Dave, I devour all of your wonderful videos as you make them. Your knowledge and word smithing is a treat. If I may offer up just a small single correction, given the rare opportunity: the last 's' in Saint-Saens is pronounced; it's not silent.
No, you may not correct my pronunciation of anything. Please don't do it again. I appreciate the kind words, but you might want to see my video about this topic.
That's not what the composer himself said. He wanted it pronounced without the final s.
Poulenc does a have a special kind of magic.
Oh such a lovely video felt like crying at the end😊
These sane composers had a humility to their craft and appreciated the magic of simple sounds.
Nielsen said something like let us savour simple thirds in parallel.
Also Martinu my all time favourite with those chugging rhythms that build up and up.
Later in life I "got" Haydn as I was tempted to wallow and use music to drown emotionally when younger. Not healthy and not sane😂
Thankyou,I'm listening to Dvorak's 8th Symphony now😁
Yep, Saint Saens and Haydn here.
I'd add Henry Purcell! He's super-sane. Please give Purcell some love, Dave.
I have and I will, but I find him to be a big fish in a small pond for the most part.
💔😢
That was fun.
Have you noticed that Nielsen's sixth symphony and Shostakovich's fifteenth symphony both begin with soft glockensnotes?Or are they campanelli?
Same thing. And yes, I noticed.
What a tonic!
Thanks again, Dave!
Everyone loves a timpanist!
Have to say, Dave, seems you could have/should have included England's greatest composer, Sir Arthur Sullivan. Doesn't get more sane than a late Victorian gentleman like him..
Great list - interesting list- but not Mozart? And almost automatic, pick me upper for me.
Wonder why Mozart is missing.
Stay tuned.
Didn't expect Mozart -- somehow
Can't warm to Handel, but Purcell seems a fount of happiness
But why? Irrespective of judgement of musical value, Mozart was one of the sanest important composers we know about
Very interesting you didn’t include Mozart there, who is my paradigm of a “sane composer”. More than Haydn actually as Mozart had a steadier love life.
Being fair, you rightly didn’t include Schumann.
But Martinu? No that was not sane, however marvellous the results.
Some modern scholars speculate that Mozart might have been bipolar, by definition unstable (though often a spur for genius).
Well ok but I doubt that has just been “modern scholars”.
Respectfully disagree here, see very little evidence of bipolar disorder here (and the degree to which scholars try to pathologise almost all the well known composers is really troubling, I think). At least Mozart wasn’t throwing himself off of balconies or into the Rhine and stuff. Not even syphilis or affairs as far as consensus says
But suppose they all have to have additional drama to make them interesting 🤷♂️
@@murraylow4523 In fairness to Mozart, this is something that I've read in a generalized sense, with no citations given of specific scholars submitting precise analyses. I do however think that creative people who are bipolar have an edge over creative people who are not in the drive to create and promote their art.
@@barrymoore4470 hiya. Yes I get you and I can see how that theory might work in explaining some creative people. But I’ve read a lot of biography of Mozart and if there is any evidence at all it’s that he was in a bad mood in his letters one week and excited elsewhere because he had a success.
I mean, that’d apply to anyone but it’s not remotely enough evidence to diagnose “bipolarity”, good lord!
But there are some very dark, disquieting corners in a lot of Mozart.
Nice selections. Maybe add Saint Saens’ pupil Fauré.
My three not on this list are Reich, Debussy, and Takemitsu.
Debussy may have been sane, but he was not a nice person. And not humble either, as well as being quite cutting about composers he didn't like.
@@barrymoore4470 not arguing...but the MUSIC makes me focus and get sane.
there are some that wrote their neuroses into their works, and some that were neurotic in everything BUT their works. Debussy fits that, just like Mozart. (on the whole, always itemized exceptions to everything artistic)
Takemitsu and Reich - true professionals and clearly not in that category at all. both have a humility that is pretty refreshing as you learn about them.
@@catfdljws Thank you for the insights on Reich and Takemitsu, two composers largely unknown to me.
I do like a word in favour of Rimsky ... tired of hearing him put down as a non-serious composer.
He's always been regarded highly in Russia. And serious music scholars in the West recognize Stravinsky's debt to his elder compatriot.
I'm guessing that the 15 most mentally ill composers are coming, I suppose that Schumann, Beethoven, Chopin, Wagner and Tchaikovsky are probably going to head the lineup. I think it is true that mentally ill great composers often transcend their circumstances quite effectively. The folks who suffer from poor mental health often still project a wonderful sense of humanity (it is tough to be a great musician without doing this) it can be reassuring to listen to the music in spite of the mental condition of the poor soul who wrote it. I think the opposite is less likely, it is tough to think of or even imagine perverse or tortured pieces of music by composers like Bach, Handel or Dvorak. (Although we do have Vaughan Williams's 4th Symphony).
What, no Shostakovich on the list?? Just kidding!! I do think he was sane. Otherwise, errhhh.
A good example of how a sane man suffers under an insane regime.
Yes, absolutely - descriptions of the man, and a listen to his early music, suggests he'd have made the "healthy and sane" list under a more humane regime. By the later phase of his life, accounts suggest he was a neurotic, despairing mess, and who of sensitive temperament wouldn't be under the conditions he faced and the losses he suffered?
When I read your headline, my first thought was, "This doesn''t exist!" An old and very experienced composer once said of my own compositions, "Saint-Saens already did the same thing better!" Your appreciation of Saint-Saens reconciles me with this remark. Some of Dvorák's music leads me to doubt in your "diagnosis": the Seventh Symphony and "Rusalka" are deeply tragic.
Tragic does no mean crazy or unhealthy. Bad things happen to nice people.
Surprised that Ravel is not here. Sure he died of dementia… but that’s not the point is it?
Good to remember that Luther suffered from long term constipation.
Who was the only major composer who died a virgin?
Anton Bruckner.
His involuntary chastity and devotion to Cancrizans drove him nuts.
to say only is a great leap of faith