Hammer, Sickle & Christian Scientist

UNTIL RECENTLY, outstanding composer-diarists have been countable on the fingers of one foot. A possible exception is Tchaikovsky, but no one would value the latter’s diarizing for its own sake. It warrants attention purely for the limited light that it sheds on his musical masterpieces and his—predominantly hostile—views of other musicians (he regarded Brahms, for example, as “a giftless bastard”). Composer-critics have been fairly numerous (Schumann, Berlioz, Debussy, Fauré), and composer-aestheticians still more numerous (Monteverdi, Gluck, Wagner, Rimsky-Korsakov, Vaughan Williams, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Hindemith, Copland). Several composers have attempted, with substantial artistic success, travel reportage (Haydn, Mendelssohn, Saint-Saëns). Nonetheless the compositional equivalent of a Pepys, a Boswell, a John Evelyn, a James Agate, a Harold Nicolson, or an André Gide simply failed to appear. Perhaps the very act of composing—which, even at its most disciplined, theory-laden, and self-conscious, comes closer to automatic writing than to most nonfiction—usually militates against that impassive discernment, that surgical enthusiasm for contemplating others’ lives, which a worthwhile diarist must demonstrate for years on end.