Musicians DIAGNOSED with Asperger's or Autism

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Just list them here if they are DIAGNOSED! No speculation or we'll have every god damned artist on this thread like other ones.

G. Graffin......just kidding I really like your avatar!

Gary Numan.

Craig Nicholls from the Vines is diagnosed.
And Ladyhawke.

David Byrne, although he claims he was cured.

Glenn Gould. Or my friend told me that.

And Mozart...wasn't diagnosed (for obvious reasons) but by anyone's account, he was on the spectrum.

This guy
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JptQhhEgvUQ[/youtube]

that guy is awesome I'd love to hear him play a Rachmaninoff concerto

The Bicycling Guitarist
.

I'm not sure about Mozart. Mozart was a very outgoing social person. He had no problems making friends, wasn't really socially awkward. Now, he did tend to act inappropriately, but I think that's just because he was an attention hog. He probably had ADHD or Tourrette's or something like that, but I doubt Asperger's.

Sure, he was a child prodigy, but his talent for composition happened to be the music of the time. He wasn't particularly innovative (I consider Vivaldi, Bach, Beethoven, and Weber to be some of the more brilliant composers from the Baroque to Romantic periods). But because he was such a prolific composer, well-liked, and good at writing the kind of music trending at that time, he's considered an exemplary classical composer.

Mozart enjoyed hanging out in pubs, went to Freemason meetings, and was also a gamer (ok, billiards, but the Wii hadn't been invented yet). I'm sure he had SOMETHING, but I don't see a lot of the kinds of behaviors closely associated with AS in Mozart.

There's very little to indicate Mozart was on the spectrum, He was musically gifted a genius and a child prodigy, but no really solid indicator he was autistic in anyway. Mozart displayed teh expressive verbal and auditory/musical intelligence that would be most assoicated with dyslexia, not autism, and it is possible he was dyslexic.

I could make quite a case that Beethoven had AS: lots of social deficits--his reputation for being "difficult" and "uncouth" is well documented, high verbal and spatial intelligence, low tolerance for social conventions that he felt were dishonest or conflicting, very driven to prove his proficiency and obsessive about his composing to the point he neglected friendships, family, his hygiene, etc, dismissed by a teacher as lacking talent or promise due to his awkwardness and rigidity under formal instruction.

Glenn Gould is speculated to have had Asperger's. I think that is quite possible. He died in 1982, and was never officially dx'd with it.

.

What about Erik Satie?

Yeah, you have a better case with Beethoven than Mozart.

Beethoven was brilliant, but there's better reason to believe that he was in reality less prodigious than Mozart and probably only skilled due to familial pressures to be the next Mozart. He was certainly a humanist, though, which during his lifetime was something that could balance with the aristocratic elite. All romantic composers had that struggle in one way or another, not just Beethoven.

As I understand it, Beethoven was heavily influenced by Albrechtsberger, which is who he would have gotten his strong work ethic from. One of my own composition teachers was David Heinich who taught me that composition is not something you just do when you "feel like it" or are "inspired," and he was an especially demanding teacher probably much like Albrechtsberger. It's an ongoing art or craft, so I would cite the time with that teacher more as responsible for Beethoven's dedication than any mental condition.

There is strong evidence that Beethoven was a heavy drinker and that he suffered from progressive lead poisoning, not to mention improper medical treatment (which, for all we know, really was the best available at the time). I'm guessing that the lead poisoning, which can lead to severe depression, nerve deafness, and related cognitive and behavioral problems was more likely to have been responsible for Beethoven's "quirks."

Glenn Gould? No doubt!

Moi.

Me. GIVE ME MONEY.

Did you read the OP? He said musicians who are diagnosed, not speculation about musicians who might have had it.