There might be something to all this vanity stuff.  I read in a book
about Romanticism that the disappearance of God from culture, (because
of the rise of the philosophy of materialism, Newtonian physics, etc.),
created a need for "supermen," seemingly super human people who could
do the impossible and the miraculous, to replace God.  Super virtuosos
fit the bill, and of course one has to be a little vain to be god-like,
not to mention the music some wrote for themselves.  Are not cadenzas
complete vanity?

John Smyth
Sac, CA