Composers doing normal shit

December 6, 2015 2:56 AM

Composers doing normal shit (tumblr).

For example:
Pyotr Tchaikovsky having a miserable time with his brothers or having a miserable time with his brother, a lady friend and a little kid. Krzysztof Penderecki having a miserable time with some lady friends. Richard Strauss having a miserable time with some lady friends. Sergei Rachmaninoff having a miserable time with some lady friends. Alexander Scriabin having a sad picnic with his wife. Claude Debussy having a sad picnic with his daughter. Edgard Varèse having a sad picnic by himself.
Igor Stravinsky chillin in the garden. Igor Stravinsky’s creepy breakfast. Igor Stravinsky TICKLING A KOALA BEAR.
Aaron Copland looking at his cat in the backyard. Leonard Bernstein yelling in a speedo. Camille Saint-Saëns rocking some jammies. John Cage having a thought about mushrooms. John Corigliano having a beer with an eland.

posted by misteraitch (22 comments total)

This rocks times ten!
posted by newdaddy at 4:16 AM on December 6, 2015

These are highly entertaining.
posted by Segundus at 4:46 AM on December 6, 2015 [1 favorite]

To be fair "Having a thought about mushrooms" comes damn close to composing.
posted by rongorongo at 4:49 AM on December 6, 2015 [4 favorites]

Sergei Rachmaninoff having a miserable time with some lady friends
great suffering -> great art
posted by fredludd at 4:57 AM on December 6, 2015

Good post. Except... where did these pictures come from?
posted by Wolfdog at 5:07 AM on December 6, 2015 [2 favorites]

Stravinsky looks kinda miserable on that horse.
posted by valkane at 5:25 AM on December 6, 2015

He does, but the shot of him hangin' out by the water makes up for it.
posted by kinnakeet at 7:03 AM on December 6, 2015 [1 favorite]

Another fantastic example of something I didn't even know I needed in my life.
posted by chimaera at 8:11 AM on December 6, 2015 [1 favorite]

If this were the least bit sexual it would be called a fetish, but it's not the least bit sexual so I'm at a loss for what the right term for it is.
posted by benito.strauss at 8:18 AM on December 6, 2015

A fetish would be "composers taking a normal shit."
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 8:59 AM on December 6, 2015

Elgar with a chicken on his head is the kind of situation a little Pomp and Circumstance would definitely improve.
posted by wanderingmind at 9:26 AM on December 6, 2015 [3 favorites]

If this were the least bit sexual it would be called a fetish, but it's not the least bit sexual so I'm at a loss for what the right term for it is.

A hobby.
posted by rifflesby at 9:42 AM on December 6, 2015 [1 favorite]

To be fair, all this proves is that great composers are *not* like us. I wpuld not look the slightest bit dapper woth a chicken on my shoulder.
posted by janey47 at 9:53 AM on December 6, 2015

This is the tumblr I never knew I needed to follow. It's like they've read my mind - I've collected biographies of composers for a long time and I mentally captioned most of the pictures like that.
posted by Rissa at 10:05 AM on December 6, 2015

15 of 15 are men. Congrats, you have an all male panel. Probably not a good message when only a bit more than 20% of PhDs in composition and music theory are awarded to women each year.
posted by Jonathan Livengood at 10:07 AM on December 6, 2015 [1 favorite]

Wow, those auto-captioning neural networks are getting really good...
posted by tss at 10:32 AM on December 6, 2015 [1 favorite]

> Congrats, you have an all male panel.

That’s the fault of my selection, I should stress, and not of the tumblr itself, which includes, among other pictures of female composers doing normal shit: Nadia Boulanger holding a cat; Clara Schumann reading a letter; Pauline Oliveros and Du Yun playing pool (a great shot, and one I considered mentioning in the post); Ethel Smyth writing something down in the garden; Germaine Tailleferre and her dog; Meredith Monk holding a turtle (another great shot I overlooked earlier) and Amy Beach having tea with a friend. Should there be photographic evidence of Rebecca Clarke, say, having a sad picnic with a relative, or of Galina Ustvolskaya having a miserable time with some gentleman friends, I would love to see that too.
posted by misteraitch at 11:55 AM on December 6, 2015 [5 favorites]

I also want to know where these photos came from!
posted by chainsofreedom at 11:56 AM on December 6, 2015

Elgar with a chicken on his head

For some reason, this is pretty much exactly how I figured Elgar should look based on knowledge of some of his hits but never having seen him.

John Cage having a thought about mushrooms.

This is highly apopropriate.
posted by zachlipton at 12:00 PM on December 6, 2015

All in all, I had not expected to see Philip Glass in a Cutty Sark advertisement.
posted by bouvin at 1:28 PM on December 6, 2015

>> A fetish would be "composers taking a normal shit."

You can still find the Phi Zappa Krappa poster on eBay!
posted by cleroy at 8:28 PM on December 6, 2015 [1 favorite]

I read this as 'composters doing normal shit' and all I could think was 'wow, that's a truly niche tumblr'.
posted by The Juche Idea at 7:49 AM on December 7, 2015 [1 favorite]