Profession: musician

Monk, with his angular dissonant lyricism, was one of jazz’s great idiosyncratic talents. He knew Johnson — an early influence — as a teenager. Hawkins gave him his first recording work. Gillespie and Parker were important colleagues. At Minton’s Playhouse (one of bebop’s nurseries), Clarke, Christian and Eldridge were among his fellow-players (Williams, who first met him aged eighteen, said he was never properly credited for his influence on his colleagues). Parker and Davis proved wary bosses. Smith taped and photographed Monk, who took the rap for his close friend Powell’s narcotics bust, and told the young Dylan “We all play folk music.”

Bach is widely acknowledged as one of the world’s greatest composers. Aged nine, he met his brother’s teacher Pachelbel (probably just once). As a teenager he journeyed to visit and hear Reincken and Buxtehude, influences both (he was not tempted by Buxtehude’s daughter). Hasse was a friend and admirer, and helped maintain links with Dresden. Telemann, another friend, was godfather to one of his sons. Weiss (for whom Bach may have composed) and Zelenka were, like Hasse, visitors to his house, and similarly are taken to have been friends as much as professional colleagues. Bach tried twice to meet Handel, but unsuccessfully.

Siloti (Rachmaninoff’s cousin) advised him to study with the disciplinarian Zverev, where he met his fellow-student Scriabin, and Tchaikovsky, a keen supporter and influential mentor (Zverev broke off relations when Rachmaninoff confessed that he wanted to compose). The première of Rachmaninoff’s first symphony suffered from Glazunov’s drunken conducting, leading to a bout of depression, not helped by Tolstoy’s adverse reaction to Rachmaninoff’s own playing. Stravinsky, a Californian neighbour, described his famous scowl. He became the aviator Sikorsky’s benefactor and vice-president, paid Nabokov’s passage from France, and gave him some unlikely clothes.