I'm trying to prove that classical music isn't boring. Can you give me facts that show how hardcore classical music, musicians, and composers are (like the 1812 overture canons or the riot of spring)?
I’d love to have a more in-depth discussion of this sometime, but here’s a few facts off the top of my head
Mozart used to stay out all night partying and getting laid and then he’d sleep until noon and his long-suffering jerk of a father had to drag him out of bed to practice
He also wrote the overture for the opera Don Giovanni the morning it premiered, while extremely hungover
The interval between a perfect 4th and a perfect 5th (a tritone) was called “the devil’s interval”, and for centuries composers avoided it at all costs because it was believed to cause madness, violence, and sexual desire
Franz Liszt played so intensely that he physically destroyed pianos and they had to invent a stronger one (which is the model still used today)
Another thing about Liszt: women used to throw their underwear at him while he was performing. He was the first one-man boy band.
At the premiere of The Rite of Spring the audience was so alarmed by the dissonance and non-traditional style that they left their seats to storm out or beat each other up in the aisles
Many symphonies use non-traditional percussion like canons or massive wooden mallets, modern classical composers like John Cage like to stick things in piano strings
Shostakovich was the most hardcore composer (though I’m biased because he’s my fave). He barely escaped being exiled or killed by Stalin while continuing to write music containing forbidden folk melodies or thunderous movements depicting the dictator himself.
Paganini had no teeth and apparently looked like the devil
If folks have other facts I’d love to hear them!
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