I've started reading Jan Swafford's biography of Beethoven, written by a composer, with the insights of a composer. I'm only up to the point when Beethoven has gone to Vienna and started studying with Haydn. One of Swafford's points so far has been that Beethoven learned the techniques of composition - how to develop a musical idea, for example.
I am not much interested in pop,, but I do listen to a lot of jazz, much of which is based on show tunes and the melodic popular and theatrical music of the 1920s-1950s: what is sometimes called the Great American Songbook, mainly songs by Gershwin, Kern, Rodgers, Carmichael, Arlen, and Porter. Of those, Gershwin also made himself into a composer, and Rodgers also composed impressive instrumental works. However, very few classical composers proper wrote songs as good as those (an exception is Vladimir Dukelsky, aka Vernon Duke), and not many song-writers, as far as I know, were also serious classical composers.
Diversity of talent is one of its most fascinating aspects.
Recently I read a Hebrew article in Haaretz about recent scientific challenges to the belief in individual identity. The boundaries between us and our fellow beings, human and others, are much more permeable and blurred than we like to think. It's seductive to think of and admire great geniuses in whatever field we're interested in, like Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and the rest. But without the ordinary good musicians who played their works and the non-professional musical lovers who appreciated them, there would have been no context for their genius. And if talents were not diverse, creative people would not stimulate one another.
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