Quote:
Originally Posted by Nimrod
Edward Elgar incorporated a line from a nursery rhyme in the first six bars of his Enigma Variations (Variations on an Original Theme, Opus 36). Elgar enjoyed jokes, puzzles, puns, and nursery rhymes and he incorporated all of these in this work. Talk about eccentric! Read on to see how he did it. You can view the first six bars of the score at wikipedia.org/wiki/Enigma_Variations
He was eccentric and very clever.
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Yes, Edward Elgar certainly sounds very playful and clever with his method of incorporating Pi and other math/poetic ideas into his works. Here's a youtube of the Enigma Variations, which I'd never heard before you mentioned this composer. Rather pleasantly beautiful!
YouTube - A complete version of Edward Elgar's "Enigma Variations" (No. 1-8)
Quote:
Originally Posted by davey75
Wagner: Didn't he wear gloves to conduct the "Jewish" music of Mendelssohn?
Bruckner: Didn't he count things over and over, making sure he'd counted correctly? This suggests some sort of Asperger's or autism trait.
Brahms didn't he write lots of slickly put together contrapuntal music, totally lacking in spontaneity? 
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According to this source, Wagner *did* wear white gloves because of his anti-semitic feelings, and threw them down on the ground after conducting:
Trivia on The Guiness Book of Music Facts and Feats | Trivia Library
Unfortunately, those anti-semitic views weren't very eccentric, I'd say, but rather all too commonplace.
Brahms lacked spontaneity? That doesn't sound too eccentric, either, davey!
I haven't heard enough of Brahms' contrapuntal music to appreciate this criticism. All I know is he wrote one of the most beautiful pieces for clarinet, which I used to love to play in high school:
Brahms Clarinet Sonata No. 2, mov. 1