Pain in the Creation of Music: the Story of the Adult Idiot
’My music is the only thing that allows me to bear my hellish fate. But if I can serve as an example for someone who shares in the same fate, then that is very good’
Creativity seems to flourish in despair. Schumann, Tchaikovsky and Berlioz, some of the greatest composers to ever live, were enveloped by their depression to the extent that they attempted suicide. On the other hand, Mahler, who possessed a neurotic fear of death, suffered from heart disease, and eventually died from inflammation of the heart lining. And the trend extends beyond music - Van Gogh and Silvia Plath both suffered from mood disorders. Is this pattern merely the chance result of attempting to connect pain to creativity? Perhaps the two bear no relation. Or perhaps they come as a package, merely as a result of the poverty faced by many artists. Or perhaps, pain serves to illuminate truths in life that spark revelatory creations.
On the 19th of September, 1911, a boy named Allan Pettersson was born in Sweden. He grew up in a one-room apartment in a lower-working class area of Stockholm with his three siblings and parents. In this room, he was quickly exposed to the harsh realities of life through his violent alcoholic father and sanctimonious mother, which led him to escape regularly to the park, to get away from the ‘adult idiots’ (as he recounted in an interview in 1974). Thus, the background of isolation, poverty and bitterness was established in the young Pettersson. He found his passion in the violin, which he taught himself until he was accepted into the Royal Conservatory of Stockholm, where he was looked down upon by his wealthier classmates and teachers. However, even during a brief period where the young musician stopped attending classes and played on the streets and in bars, he continued to dedicate himself to his instrument, and soon the viola as well, at the suggestion of a professor at the Conservatory. He also gradually developed a new interest - in composing, which he used to do using a piano in a church near his house. In an interview in 1974 for Swedish television, Pettersson claimed that even in the early days of composing, in the church, he ‘could have rivalled Schubert’. He also used his viola to imitate an orchestra in his mind, with the different strings representing different instruments, a feat he was able to accomplish through his dexterity in the instrument. He described himself as having two talents: composing and performing. Whilst composing allowed him to ‘create’ sketches which were ‘really advanced, radical’ (in his words), ‘(his) own faith in (his) other talent had been methodically broken down’. However, his artistic endeavours were not to be crushed, and he moved to Paris, where he studied twelve-tone technique with Rene Leibowitz, and played in orchestras in both France and Stockholm. From his interview, it was clear that, whilst highly accomplished and in love with performing, he never felt fully at home in an orchestra, where he was always subject to disdain and mockery. Therefore, he poured his heart and soul into composition: a quiet, solitary, musical pursuit where he did not have to rely on others (he hated ‘amateurism and dilettantes’), and could express his emotional turmoil.
The bleakness of mood which persisted throughout Pettersson’s life was not his only source of pain. In the early 1950s, he was diagnosed with rheumatic arthritis, and so began his relationship with debilitating, constant, physical pain. In 1968, he was forced to be confined in his apartment, which was on the fourth floor of the building - a building which had no lift. He spent the rest of his life in this apartment, where he nonetheless persisted in composing no less than 9 (and a bit) symphonies, 2 concertos, a ‘Symphonic Movement’, and a choral work, ‘Vox Humana’. Whilst his enthusiasm for composing persisted, the physical pain certainly manifested itself in his mind, which is evident in the title of his 12th Symphony - ‘De döda på torget’ (‘The Dead of the Square’). The confinement was also a factor which gradually became more and more unbearable, reminding him of his childhood, growing up in the one-room apartment with bars on the windows. As a child, he left the apartment to escape from the 'adult idiots’; stuck in apartment in 1974, he realised that 'now i’m one too. An adult idiot'.
The following resource contains a couple of studies which might be of interest in the neuroscience surrounding music and emotional / physical pain.
Bibliography:
https://www.allmusic.com/blog/post/classical-composers-and-their-maladies
https://www.scribd.com/doc/70553769/Allan-Pettersson-A-Composer-Forgotten