Bob Chen wrote:

>Ian Kershaw mentiones this in his new biography, "Hitler: 1889-1936:
>Hubris," part of a larger discussion of Hitler's impulsiveness,
>shiftlessness and general inability to finish what he started.
>........Here's what he writes:
>
> "Systematic preparation and hard work were as foreign to the young
> Hitler as they would be to the later dictator. ... (H)is time was
> largely spent in the dilettante fashion, as it had been in Linz,
> devising grandiose schemes shared only with the willing (August
> 'Gustl') Kubizek (a music student friend of Hitler's in Vienna) --
> fantasy plans that usually arose from sudden whims and bright ideas
> and were dropped almost as soon as they had begun.

This leaves unresolved the mystery of how he later came to 'achieve' so
much.  (Statements like 'the times were ripe' will not do, because at the
time there were many more able, more accomplished people who -alas- did not
reach the level of social influence as did Hitler.) The issue is a more
general one, with special relevance to artistic creation.  The novelist
Somerset Maugham once replied to a young man who aspired to become a
writer and had sent him samples of his writing, as follows.  (I paraphrase
from memory.) 'From what I read, I think you have talent.  But that is
unimportant --talent is cheap.  Success demands character.  By character I
mean discipline, the ability to apply oneself consistently, and devotedly.'
True, of course, also of music.  Many a talented person is wasted because
of lack of discipline.  And one must, of course, in the first place
meticulously apply oneself to learn the craft -the skills- on which
art is built.

Does anyone know of any successful composer or performer who was
undisciplined and shiftless?

Peter Harzem