What’s Wrong with Composer Biographies?

What do you expect in a Music History course? Perhaps you don’t have any particular expectation, but it’s something that I think about a lot.

When I meet people who say they are studying music history, I ask what they mean by that. Usually, they are reading about the lives of composers. This approach to music history suggests a fundamental misunderstanding of music. Let me tell you why.

People tend to think of a composition as primarily about the artist who created it. So, the thinking goes, if you learn about the composer’s life—his joys and frustrations—you will understand the music.

This is a modern view that came out of the 19th-century and it’s wrong. Throughout most of history, composers wrote to please an employer or patron, not to express personal emotions. Even now, personal expression is just one factor dictating musical style. And the music often contradicts the substance of a composer’s biography.

Look, I like biographies. I grew up reading virtually every biography in our branch public library. A biography of Winston Churchill may yield an increased understanding of World War II. A biography of Chopin, on the other hand, won’t explain his musical style and won’t help a bit if you want to hear the difference between a mazurka and a polonaise.

To understand music, you have to hear it repeatedly with ever-increasing concentration. That’s the first thing. Then, listening needs to be accompanied by a growing set of questions about the broader context that shaped the music, everything from social forces to politics to technology. All of this weaves into a tapestry of cultural history.

So, yes, Beethoven’s frequently stormy music reflects the individual anguish of an irascible guy struggling with deafness. But far more, it reflects the devastating effects of the chaotic Napoleonic era. It reflects Beethoven’s frustration with the mechanical limits of the piano in his day and his struggle against the simplistic popular tastes that he found uninspiring. It reflects economic realities, namely his need to sell sheet music and tickets to the new venture called the public concert, increasingly the venue for composer success. It even reflects architecture, as the issue of where should music be played began to pulsate throughout the society.

Of course, a good biography can tell you some of this. But good composer biographies tend to be scholarly. They are not the ones aimed at students and aficionados. And in the end, it’s not Beethoven’s biography that I treasure: it’s his music. That’s precisely how he’d want it.

So, enjoy biographies, or not, as you wish! But please rethink them as the primary tool to understanding the Western tradition of Classical music. If you take music out of isolation and see the many connections and context from which it was born, you will be on a much more exciting journey.