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JACKIE FUCHS DECEMBER 27, 2013
Many of us listen to works by the best composers and wonder why we cant be as brilliant.
But would you want their genius if it meant obsessing about numbers or spending time in
the company of demons?
The men on this list have created some of the most beautiful and complex music the world
has ever known. Yet they were troubled souls, whose eccentricities and obsessions led to
some decidedly odd behavior.
10
Erik Satie
Ate Only Food That Was White
MUSIC
10 Classical Composers With Extreme
Eccentricities
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The 19th-century French composer Erik Satie is best known for his piano suite, Trois
Gymnopedies. But he also wrote works with bizarre, comic titles, such as Authentic Flabby
Preludes (For a Dog) and Desiccated Embryos.
Satie owned 12 identical gray, velvet suits, wearing just one repeatedly until it wore out, at
which time he would begin wearing another. At the time of his death he still had six. He
detested the Sun, carried a hammer in his pocket for protection, and established his own
churchthe Metropolitan Church of Art of Jesus the Conductor.
Satie died in 1925 of cirrhosis of the liver. After his death, his followers discovered in his
home over 100 umbrellas, 84 handkerchiefs, and numerous letters, most of which hed
written to himself. One of these outlined his diet, which consisted of nothing but foods that
were white: eggs, sugar, shredded bones, animal fat, veal, salt, coconuts, rice, pasta, turnips,
chicken cooked in white water, white cheese, cotton salad, and certain kinds of fish.
Photo credit: Florence Homolka
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9
Carlo Gesualdo
Witchcraft, Murder, and Masochism
The 17th-century Neopolitan composer Carlo Gesualdo was a royal prince acclaimed for his
chromatic vocal music. But his compositions are not the reason he has been the subject of
11 operatic works and a 1995 Wernor Herzog pseudo-documentary called Death for Five
Voices.
Gesualdo is best known for the violent murder of his first wife, whod committed adultery
with a cross-dressing duke. After his second wife accused his own two lovers of witchcraft,
they were tried for murder. One of the women confessed (under torture) that she had made
Gesualdo drink her menstrual blood. She further admitted that the other had advised her to
take a slice of bread, place it within her womb to saturate it with her seed, and give it to
Gesualdo to eat with sauce.
Gesualdo ended his days afflicted by an imaginary horde of demons, whose torments only
ceased if a dozen young men beat him violently three times a day. While the cause of
Gesualdos death is uncertain, it is believed he was beaten to death during one of these
masochistic frenzies.
8
Alexander Scriabin
Theosophy And Mysticism
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The early 20th-century Russian composer Alexander Scriabin was gifted with synesthesia, a
rare neurological condition in which two or more senses intertwine. Scriabin heard music as
colors, and invented an instrument that could be played like a piano to project colored light
into the concert hall.
Scriabins life was a continual search for an experience of God. He engaged in flying
experiments and once tried to walk on water. After discovering the theosophical teachings of
New Age spiritualist Madame Blavatsky, Scriabin came to believe his music was a bridge to
mystical ecstasy.
In later years, Scriabins work grew increasingly dark. His Seventh Sonata (the White Mass)
purported to exorcise demons, while his Ninth (the Black Mass) was about summoning
them back into living Hell. His final work was to be the Mysterium, which would be
performed in the foothills of the Himalayas over a period of seven days. Bells suspended
from clouds would summon the spectators, and perfumes appropriate to the music would
pervade the air. At the end of the piece, the world would dissolve in bliss, and humanity
would be replaced by better, nobler beings.
Alas, before this final apocalypse could take place, Scriabin died of septicemia from an
infected pimple.
7
Harry Partch
Hoboism And Corporeality
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Partch, born in 1901, had a highly unusual childhood. His parents, former missionaries, would
occasionally bring home prostitutes and hobos to spend the night. When he was eight, his
mother had him circumcised, an event that reportedly left Partch traumatized.
Life changed when Partch discovered a book on alternative tonal structures, which led him to
become a self-described philosophic music man seduced into carpentry. During the
Depression, he wandered as a hobo. Hed collect objects such as artillery shell casings and old
fuel tanks, which he fashioned into musical instruments, such as the Chromelodeon, which
had 43 tones in a single octave.
Partch intended his works to be corporealritual theater in which the orchestra also sang
and acted. His work The Bewitched, for instance, called for musicians to portray a losing
womens basketball team in the shower room, where they were to perform a wild dance for
the nude god Hermes (or his clothed TV equivalent).
6
Richard Wagner
Cross-Dressing And Enemas
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The great 19th-century German opera composer Richard Wagner suffered from erysipelas, or
cellulitis, an infection that includes painful rashes and lesions. Wagner tried unsuccessfully
to treat the condition with twice-daily enemas, and that may have been the reason for his
love of satin robes and cushions.
Wagners letters to his milliner, however, suggest that the composer was most likely a cross-
dresser. They contain requests for graceful costumes trimmed with lacy flourishes and
other feminine touches, usually in pink. These were ostensibly for his third wife, Cosima
(Franz Liszts illegitimate daughter). But Cosima, a meticulous diarist, never mentioned them
in her accounts. She even ordered Wagner a pink carpet made from flamingo feathers for his
66th birthday.
To inspire himself for his final opera, Parsifal, Wagner surrounded himself with rose-scented
pink cushions and a bath filled with perfume. He died of a heart attack in Venice at age 69,
clad, according to rumor, in a pink dressing gown.
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5
Anton Bruckner
Numeromania And A Love Of Skulls
Austrian composer Anton Bruckner suffered from numeromania, an obsession with counting
objects. He kept careful lists of how many Hail Marys and Our Fathers he recited each
night, and composed his symphonies so that every bar satisfied his own hidden numerical
pattern.
Bruckner was a hopeless romantic, whose infatuation with teenage girls led to an accusation
of impropriety at the school where he taught music. He made unsuccessful proposals of
marriage to young girls all the way into his seventies, but he never married.
Bruckner also had a thing for dead composers skulls. When Franz Schuberts coffin was
opened in 1888, Bruckner was overcome with awe. He reached in and grasped Schuberts
skull with both hands, letting go only when he was physically pulled away. This might not
have been so odd, had he not done the same thing a few months earlier to Beethovens
corpse.
4
Peter Warlock
Black Magic And Sadism
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Peter Warlock was the pseudonym of handsome, hard-partying British music critic Philip
Heseltine, whose life inspired for numerous films and books, including D.H. Lawrences
Women in Love. When he wasnt too busy smoking dope or writing crude limericks about
other musicians, Warlock found time to write songsover 200 by the time of his suicide at
age 36.
According to Warlocks illegitimate son, art critic Brian Sewell, Warlock was a sexually
voracious bisexual sadist with multiple mistresses. When one of his girlfriends became
pregnant, Warlock told her to have an abortion, an instruction Sewells Roman Catholic
mother refused. The two fought about it, and a few days later Warlock turned on the gas and
lay down, after first putting his cat outside his house, presumably to save it.
However, Warlock had made a fellow composer, Bernard van Dieren, his heir. Warlocks
legitimate son Nigel Heseltinethe product of Warlocks short-term marriage to an artists
model nicknamed Pumaclaimed that van Dieren had killed his father. But Warlock had
suffered from depression, and so the claims were ignored, though even the coroner couldnt
conclusively rule out murder.
3
Frantisek Kotzwara
Auto-Erotic Asphyxiation
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He only composed one notable pieceThe Battle of Prague, which merited a mention in
Mark Twains The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. But the 18th-century Bohemian composer
Frantisek Kotzwara achieved notoriety, nonetheless, by having one of the earliest recorded
deaths by auto-asphyxiation.
It happened in 1792 at a London brothel, where Kotzwara had engaged the services of a
prostitute named Susanna Hill. After dining with Hill and drinking a great deal of brandy,
Kotzwara asked Hill to cut off his penis. When she refused, he asked her to hang him from a
rope while they had sex in order to raise his passions. Not wishing to lose a paying
customer, Hill did as Kotzwara requested, but apparently left him hanging too long.
Hill was charged with murder and tried at the Old Bailey. A sympathetic jury found the death
accidental and acquitted Hill of the crime. A shrewd Hill cashed in on her ordeal by publishing
her memoirs. Along with a copy of the trial transcript, they were reprinted in a 1797
pamphlet, titled Modern Propensities; or, an Essay on the Art of Strangling.
2
Arnold Schoenberg
Triskaidekaphobia
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Arnold Schoenberg, the creator of 12-tone (atonal) music, suffered from triskaidekaphobia,
the irrational fear of the number 13. Born in Austria on September 13, 1874, he considered
the date of his birth an evil portent. When he noticed that the title of his work Moses and
Aaron contained 13 letters, he crossed out the second a in Aaron to make it 12.
In 1951, when Schoenberg was 76, a friend jokingly pointed out that the digits 7 and 6 add
up to 13. The thought greatly upset the composer, who became convinced he would not
survive his next birthday.
That July 13tha Friday, as it happenedSchoenberg stayed in bed, anxious and ill enough
to call a doctor. At 11:45 P.M., his wife looked at the clock and said to herself, another
quarter of an hour and the worst is over. A few minutes later, the doctor called her in.
Schoenbergs throat rattled twice, his heart gave a powerful beat, and he died, just as he had
feared.
1
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Scatology And Cat Sounds
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Much has been made of Mozarts apparent obsession with defecation and farting, formally
known as scatology. In one of his funnier letters, Mozart writes that a stink has entered the
room. When his mother suggests that hes farted, Mozart puts a finger up his rear and then
sniffs it to confirm shes right.
Less well known, however, is that Mozart liked to imitate a cat. Hed be rehearsing an opera
with his singers, when hed suddenly grow bored and leap over tables and chairs, meowing
and turning somersaults. He even wrote a comic song in which a woman responds to her
husbands questions with nothing but meows, until the poor man has no choice but to break
down and meow, too. In English, the song is known as The Cat Duet.
Mozart loved wordplay and created nicknames for his friendsDuchess Smackbottom,
Countess Makewater, Princess Dunghill, and Prince Potbelly von Pigtail, just to name a few.
Some experts have concluded that Mozart suffered from Attention Deficit Hyperactivity
Disorder (ADHD). Others think he had Tourettes Syndrome, a condition sometimes marked by
copolalia (the obsessive or uncontrollable use of obscene language).
But whatever the cause of Mozarts strange behavior, on one thing everyone agreesMozart
was a genius, whose music still rocks our world.
Jackie Fuchs is a writer and attorney with a B.A. in linguistics from UCLA and a J.D. from
Harvard. She played bass (as Jackie Fox) for the 70s all-girl rock band, The Runaways, with
Joan Jett and Lita Ford. Jackie is a former journalist and Huffington Post blogger, with an
interest in word origins and medieval history. Check out her blog Nothing Too Trivial
(Interesting Things for Interested People).
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84 comments
Best

Hadeskabir
There's lots of geniuses with crazy obscure sides, that makes us wonder how they were
capable of such amazing work.
Leonardo da Vinci enjoyed spending the afternoon with his, around 8 years old, cousin while
she played with his testicles. Ernest Hemingway wrote numerous letters to his lover,
explaining how much he wanted for her to defecate in his chest. Benjamin Franklin loved to
fornicate with elderly women, having lots of elderly mistresses. Lord Byron had two passions
in his life: fornicating his sister and collecting pubic hair from everyone he met. F. Scott
Fitzgerald had an extreme foot fetish, getting completely aroused only with the sighting of a
bare foot. Charlie Chaplin loved orgies and got off by throwing pies at naked women.
Now you are never going to think of them the same way.

Arjan Hut
Everybody loves throwing pies at naked women. Come on already.

Hadeskabir
If someone has a naked woman in front of him, who he can do whatever he
wants to, and the best thing that comes to his mind is to throw pies at her,
there's clearly something wrong with him.

Neva
God, i think every wife would kill her husband if he did that. It's not just
the humiliation, but the mess, too :P

Arjan Hut
Hmmm ... so we're not going to throw pies. But everybody loves
defecating on someone's chest, come on now.
Hadeskabir
You...you have problems...

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