Composers almost equally good in other arts (or professions)

[springrite]

I am listening to some Nystroem. He is a very good composer, but probably a bit better at another art form, namely, painting. All of the BIS CDs of his music has his own painting as cover, which is very neat indeed.

There are many multi-talented composers in history, and I don't want to exhaust the topic by naming too many. What are some of the others you'd like to share. Also, do you think the composer's talent in the other field(s) helped or showed in the music? In the case of Gosta Nystroem, it clearly did. You can almost see and hear that he is a painter first and foremost and a composer second.

[BobsterLobster]

Borodin jumps to mind, who had a great career as a respected chemist.

[Geo Dude]

I don't know about Jan Swafford's skill as a composer, but his biography of Brahms is magnificently written.  The man has a gift for prose.

[Bogey]

Berstein (composer) was a decent conductor....especially live at the Hollywood Bowl, Paul.

[Brian]

[Cato]

As a composer, Nietzsche was an interesting philosopher.   0:)

[Mirror Image]

One of the ugliest damn covers I've ever seen.

[Josquin des Prez]

Guillaume de Machaut was as admired for his poetry as for his music compositions;

The only one that qualifies so far. Machaut thought of himself as a poet first, but as history would have it, it is as a musician that he made his legacy.

[mc ukrneal]

William Herschel springs to mind - the astromer. He discovered Uranus, contributed in many ways to our understanding of astromomy, and discovered infared radiation. Oh, and he composed 24 symphonies and a number of other works! Interesting life - he started with music, which led him to math and science. He built a number of telescopes. Seems to have done well with languages too.

[Florestan]

Enescu: accomplished violinist and conductor.

[Josquin des Prez]

Enescu: accomplished violinist and conductor.

I was under the impression the OP meant other arts as in, other besides music making. Too many great composers who were also great at playing a given instrument or conducting music, eh.

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

Xenakis was an architect who worked under Le Corbusier and designed some significant structures, such as the Philips pavilion for the 1958 World Fair.

In Lithuania, Mikolajus Ciurlionis is about equally famous as both a composer and a painter.

[The new erato]

Paderewski?

[North Star]

Borodin did some composing, too.

From Wikipedia:
In his profession Borodin gained great respect, being particularly noted for his work on aldehydes. Between 1859 and 1862 Borodin held a postdoctorate in Heidelberg. He worked in the laboratory of Emil Erlenmeyer working on benzene derivatives. He also spent time in Pisa, working on organic halogens. One experiment published in 1862 described the first nucleophilic displacement of chlorine by fluorine in benzoyl chloride. He published papers in 1864 and 1869, and in this field he found himself competing with August Kekulé.

Borodin is co-credited with the discovery of the Aldol reaction, with Charles-Adolphe Wurtz. In 1872 he announced to the Russian Chemical Society the discovery of a new by-product in aldehyde reactions with alcohol-like properties, and he noted similarities with compounds already discussed in publications by Wurtz from the same year.

He published his last full article in 1875 on reactions of amides and his last publication concerned a method for the identification of urea in animal urine.


I'm not really a fan, but Wagner's librettos are surely worthy of the music he composed. And he wrote other stuff, too.

Mendelssohn made some paintings and drawings http://www.themendelssohnproject.org/about_tmp/activities/artworks_2.htm


Composer-instrumentalists (or conductors) are surely too common to list (Biber, Vivaldi, Bach, Handel, Boccherini, Mozart, Beethoven, Paganini, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Liszt, Alkan, Clara Schumann, Saint-Saëns, Brahms, Joseph Joachim, Sarasate, Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev, Ysaÿe, Mahler etc)

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

Schoenberg was also a painter. Check out his works here:

http://www.usc.edu/libraries/archives/schoenberg/painting/painting.htm

[The new erato]

Alf Hurum and Arne Dørumsgaard were both highly competent Norwegian composers with perhaps an even more highly regarded ouput in other areas, Hurum in painting and Dørumsgaard in poetry.

[Karl Henning]

Henry VIII enjoyed signal success as a marriage counselor.

[Florestan]

Karl Henning: an accomplished master of ironic one-liners.

[springrite]

Paderewski?

Surely the highest ranking politician among composers!

(I am not counting royalty, of course)

[The new erato]

Why is there no mention of Wagner here?

Don't you recognize extortion, swindling, seduction and revolution as legitimate trades?