We don’t talk a lot about classical musicians but I stumbled on this diagram from studies done by Slater & Meyer and especially Weisberg, about the musician Robert Schumann who suffered from a bipolar condition. They compiled the volume of works by year and the figure clearly demonstrates that, as a manic depressive, he was much more productive during hypomanic phases than during normal and depressed periods.
How do we know this? Schumann left an extensive correspondence and diaries which reflected his mood swings, and by compiling the great composer’s work, the figure shows periods of intense activity such as 1840 and 1849-51 which correspond with mania (defined as an exceptionally elevated, irritable, or energetic mood) in his life, whereas the years with poor work production correspond to depressive periods.
Of course, people have criticized the graph, by reminding us that composers do not publish all the work they produce, but only the work they judge valuable and the criteria used by the composer may have greatly varied during these manic-depressive periods. There is no measure of the quality of the music released and if we can’t conclude that musicians release their best music during manic phases, we can conclude they release much more music during these periods. Still it is interesting to think that artistic productivity is linked to manic depressive illness, and that the old idea that you need to be a depressed artist to be creative is totally wrong… during these depressive periods nothing or almost is created, but it is during the next manic phase than creativity blossoms.
Kurt Cobain, Sinead O’Connor, Brian Wilson, Syd Barrett, Ray Davies and probably many others have been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and it would be interesting to get this type of diagrams.
