Peter Harzem asks:

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

It's hard to find one, I admit.  Writing music, according to every
composer I've asked the question, requires large blocks of devoted time.
I suppose you look for people with small catalogues or many incomplete
works, although that's not a sure indication.  A lot of composers produce
few works because they work many years polishing each piece - Ruggles,
Webern, Poulenc, Barber, and Varese spring to mind.  Lili Boulanger died
very young, with a very short career.  Ruth Crawford Seeger gave up
composing altogether because she didn't like what she was writing.
Others (eg, Mussorgsky, Sessions, Schoenberg, Liadov) seemed to encounter
"hitches" in inspiration, perhaps indicators of psychic unease.  Still
others have felt the inadequacy of technique to their material and try
to acquire it during the process of writing.

Rossini essentially had to be locked up in a room, unable to get out,
in order to start working.  It's one of the reasons he gave up composing
full-time.  His later career is filled with miniatures.  Menotti apparently
also procrastinates, waiting until the last minute (in some cases, past the
last minute) to finish up in a feverish whirl of activity.  He even wrote
a short choral piece ("Sighs, Moans, and Groans" - not sure of the title)
that kidded his own working habits.

[log in to unmask] (Steven Schwartz)