I always liked the story of when Wagner met Schumann. Wagner said "Schumann was very quiet. Didn't say much." Schumann said "Wagner talked so much, I couldn't get a word in edgeways."

"Schumann had the advantage of actually going insane." Great stuff

It’s a good list, but I would definitely have put Don Carlo Gesualdo up there at the head of the class. I mean… how many of the others can claim actual murder and mutilation as musical inspiration?

For me its Berlioz. As my wife said while listening to Berlioz " Thats written by a madman. "

One of my favorite Strauss stories is when he was actually dying he couldn't help himself and had to say, "Its exactly like I composed it in Tod und Verklarung." To the very end he couldn't help but promote his music. He was a good businessman.
Let's not forget Hugo Wolf who literally wound up in an insane asylum.
But all of these composers were inflicted by a fine madness.

Mostly not the crowd I expected (no Satie?), but thank goodness you didn't leave out Scriabin. I just saw the San Francisco Symphony do Prometheus, Poem of Fire on Friday night. Not only did they present it with highly elaborate color/light effects, they had FRAGRANCE effects for extra synesthesia. Seeing smoke rings shoot out of the perfume cannons was a trip in itself. Definitely the most bizarre symphony performance I've ever experienced. And as long as they were doing colored lights anyway, the other work on the program was Duke Bluebeard's Castle.

Out of that lot Scriabin would be the looney I would want to have a conversation with.

From a biography about pianist John Ogden (was institionalized at least once), when he was teaching at Bloomington, and word got around from the students that he was nuts to Menachem Pressler, who replied “Look, this man can play all 10 of the Scriabin piano sonatas from memory, so of course he’s crazy!” 18:52

Leif Segerstam: while his greatness as composer is debatable, he craziness was never in question.

For part 2 I nominate Silvestre Revueltas, who reportedly was actually admitted to a mental institution.  When I first heard his music, without knowing anything about the man, I thought to myself "This guy is crazy (but in a good way)...or maybe a genius".

I expected to find Percy Grainger here on top of the list... A composer which translated all italian musical terms in 'blue-eyed' English, invented the 'elastic scoring' allowing the same work to be performed by a chamber ensemble or a giant orchestra of hundreds of players, that gave concerts in the 5 continents, sometimes jogging from one concertplace to the next, that married his 2nd wife during the intermission of a concert of his own works at the Hollywood Bowl before a public of ten thousand people, that tried to build automatom able to produce 'free music', that build his own museum in his native Australia and expressed the wish of having his skeleton exposed there... and dozen of other eccentricities to numerous to listen here... Poor Grainger who complained not to be recognize as a serious composer during his lifetime, he is not even recognize as an insane one!

Alkan, Liszt, Scriabin and Godowsky are the top of my list.  The Godowsky chopin etudes are crazy.  Liszt and Alkan are beyond.  No sure either were insane, but to create the kind of music they did is incomprehensible genius.

Poor Bruckner gets no respect on his Birthday year. lol

One of my faves of all your Talks

Beethoven?  There is something about a guy who moves more than once a year that seems a little...unstable?  And to me his most magnificent music--the late quartets and sonatas--is pretty darn dark.

Maybe a category 'Weird and Crazy'?  I am thinking of Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji, whose piano work Sequentia Cyclica, available on YouTube lasts over 8 hours. Maybe that is why he is a neglected composer?

Genius is a fine line from madness

Satie is perhaps too obvious because he was famously eccentric, but it did impact his work: his lifelong obsession with the number 3, his avoidance or skewering of traditional forms, the idea of repetition taken to absurd degrees, and of course "Furniture Music", designed to not be listened to. And that's just the technical side of his nuttiness. There's a theory Satie may have had Asperger's.

I was about to fall sleep and happened to pick this video. I violently came back to my awaken being mode, it's so good!! hilariously funny and insightful into one side of composers that's always bypassed. Excellent 😄😁👍

I love how measured you are in this talk.