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Do musicians live longer?
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Ramon Amira
Posts: 1025
Joined: Oct. 14 2009
From: New York City
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 Do musicians live longer?
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Think about these famous musicians – Vladimir Horowitz was performing in his nineties; Arthur Rubinstein in his nineties; Jascha Heifetz died at eighty-six: Yehudi Menuhin in his eighties; there are others, not to mention Segovia himself performing in his nineties.
What got me thinking about it was I was recalling an incident a couple of years ago. I was at Luthier Music, the biggest guitar store in New York, chatting with the owner, Tony Acosta, when he got a phone call. When he finished he said to me, “That was Juan de la Mata. Do you know him?”
I was astounded. Did I know him? Juan was my first teacher, of both flamenco and classical guitar. But that was in the seventies, and Juan was clearly already a middle-aged man at the time. I naturally assumed he was long dead. But no – Tony told me Juan was alive and well and ninety-two years old.
By strange chance, not much afterward I was talking to Beverly Maher, the owner of The Guitar Salon, and I mentioned that Juan was still alive. She told me she had recently spoken to Juan, and he had told her that he had stopped playing the guitar. When she asked him why he said, “I’ve been playing the guitar for eighty-five years!”
As far as I know Juan is still alive, and would be ninety-five.
So stay in practice and live to a hundred.
Ramon
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Classical and flamenco guitars from Spain Ramon Amira Guitars
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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date May 24 2013 22:54:14
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runner
Posts: 357
Joined: Dec. 5 2008
From: New Jersey USA
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RE: Do musicians live longer? (in reply to Ramon Amira)
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I've often marveled at the same phenomenon, the longevity of many, many musicians. Part of it, probably most of it, must be due to a profoundly satisfying, rewarding way of communicating with other people. Yet, when one contrasts those whose role is almost entirely performance with those who are/were the great composers, the contrast is striking. When one considers that, with few exceptions, the great composers were also prodigious instrumentalists--Bach, Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Prokofiev, Rachmaninoff, Scriabin, Bartok--very few lived to be even 70, with many dying in their early 60s, and others even earlier. Liszt stands out, as does Saint-Saens and a few others, but between the stress of composing and our old friend syphilis, many of the rest were harvested early.
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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date May 26 2013 23:37:08
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