ABSTRACT
The context of real biography should probably not include fiction. But when we consider that one of the most interesting questions, one of the reasons we are so fascinated by artistic lives, is creativity, we should be allowed to include novels. Milhand’s autobiography and Francis Poulenc’s published interviews make quite clear that both were financially independent. Instead of feeling free to be radically avant-garde composers, however, both were quite concerned with the reception of their work, even if in the negative sense of taking pleasure in shocking their audiences. General readers are naturally more interested in the autobiographies of great composers than they are in Kleinmeister even if scholars regard biography primarily as the documentation of an era and its musical life. That Schoenberg should have succumbed to the prevailing notion that art is inspired self-expression and thus became defensive tells us a great deal about our musical culture.
