To which one should perhaps hastily add that some nice people have also been fine artists and some nasty people have also been inept ones, lest one assume an inverse correlation...

It is good point, Baziron.
 think that in order to be a good composer one has to be a good person. If one is a murderer and a nasty person one can not create music that will move people or tell important things for humanity.
We have to agree that sometimes people can appear bad (Wagner) and friends tell about unattractive features in them.
However, composers are often on a mission. People like Wagner felt his destiny inside and he was prepared to fight for the chance to express himself. We all are selfish people. If one is human one has to be selfish. So Wagner pushed some people. It doesnot excuse him behaving bad to some people. But when one's wife leaves or a husband goes with another women it is part of human life, to go through this is absolute hell.

People like Shostakovich (or Wagner) were not evil men, they were just ordinary in this way people with sins or something. Shostakovich had something important to say and leave to humanity. He was protected and used by the system at the same time.
Wagner leaved in different times and he had to find sponsors (as they call them now). Shostakovich had no problem of this kind.

Some Members appear to be thinking that the eight points we list in message 228:
http://r3ok.myforum365.com/index.php?topic=698.msg20865#msg20865
relate to S. the man and not to the music of S. Not so!

Let us at once correct their error. Each of the eight points (except the first) relates primarily to the man's music. Members will quickly see that if they look again at the detailed quotations provided under each of the heads numbered 2 to 8. They will find the word "music" there again and again!

In this matter we ourselves are little more than a messenger. We have simply attempted to convey or transmit a fair overview of what all kinds of people have been saying about this music over a period of more than thirty years.

Their views are remarkably consistent; they speak almost with one voice do they not?

It will be apparent to most Members that the matter of the trousers comes by way of introduction to the main point under heading 8, which is that "His quick method of working allowed his self-criticism to weaken."

This does relate to his music, and we simply relay it for Members' consideration.

But the queer old chap appears to have had a quick method of working with his trousers as well as a quick method of working with his compositions.

Because an explanation of those truly prodigious creases has occurred to us. We think it must have been his custom during the summer months to potter around with his trousers rolled up well above his knees. He liked to have cool legs - that will be it. Perhaps he had a condition. Anyway, when the guests arrived, what could be easier than to roll down his trousers for the duration! Members will see that there is an explanation for everything if one thinks about it logically.

Nor indeed should we be tempted into making any assumption about stochastic distribution. There are, by my reckoning, at least nine composers who honour us with their company here. All are known to be without moral blot. And, although the regularity of intimacy betwixt trouser and steam iron in one or two instances does not perhaps speak eloquently of the assiduousness of their valets, such minor blemish, while possibly causing comment among the denizens of the withdrawing room, has never been an impediment on the slopes of Mount Parnassus.

http://r3ok.myforum365.com/index.php?topic=939.0 I found it.

His boots, I didn't know about them!

You realise another 4 messages here need to go.....