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Over the years, we have enjoyed exploring the various skills and enthusiasms that composers have shown away from their day job: Mendelssohn<\/a>\u2019s ability with a paintbrush, for instance, Elgar<\/a>\u2019s love of golf, or Prokofiev<\/a>\u2019s chessboard brilliance. But what about the other way round? How many famous names from other walks of life have dabbled in composing as a hobby? Digging around the archives, there do appear to have been a few, and we\u2019ve picked 15 of the more interesting unlikely composers below.<\/strong><\/p> We’ve added a verdict on each would-be composer’s performance, too, to add to the fun.<\/p> Keen though he was, Nietzsche appears to have had as much difficulty in composing a masterpiece as some of us do in fathoming his philosophies (or, indeed, spelling his name). The raw ingredients were certainly not lacking. Brought up in a musical family, he could play the piano well and found himself as a young man befriended and supported by Wagner<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p> And, of course, he possessed one of the most agile minds of the 19th century. Sadly, though, the brilliance which brought about groundbreaking texts such as Thus Spoke Zarathustra<\/em> and Beyond Good and Evil <\/em>never translated into mastery of the musical score. When Cosima Wagner and Hans Richter played his The New Year\u2019s Echoes<\/em> for piano duet in 1871, Wagner himself apparently had to leave the room, doubled up in hysterics.<\/p> The following year, Nietzsche\u2019s Manfred Meditation<\/em> for solo piano met an even worse reception from Hans von B\u00fclow. \u2018Have you no better way to kill time?\u2019 wrote the conductor on receiving the score, adding that Nietzsche had \u2018raped the muse of music\u2019.<\/p> Verdict:<\/strong> Stick with the day job, Friedrich<\/p> Music’s most unlikely composers<\/h2>
1. Friedrich Nietzsche, philosopher (1844-1900)<\/strong><\/h3>