Profession: theorist

Schoenberg was substantially self-taught, though Zemlinsky, met at age 20, was an important mentor, and Mahler considered him his protégé. He was backed by Strauss for a teaching post, while Kandinsky enthusiastically included his paintings and writings in Blaue Reiter ventures. Milhaud (who visited with Poulenc) and Varèse were strong and admiring friends. Berg, Webern, Eisler, Cage and Harrison were among his students. Mann, a Los Angeles friend, modelled a fictional composer partly on Schoenberg, leading to a famous spat. He told Brecht how a donkey taught him, and played tennis with Gershwin.

Beethoven and Reicha became lifelong friends when they met as 15-year-old musicians in Reicha’s uncle’s orchestra. Neefe was also in the orchestra, and it is thought may have taught them both. Reicha took lessons in Vienna from Salieri, Albrechtsberger and Michael Haydn, and was a devoted friend to the aged Joseph Haydn, whom he’d met in Bonn and Hamburg before Vienna, and to whom he introduced Cherubini. Liszt (in his teens), Berlioz, Gounod, Onslow and Franck were among his students at the Paris Conservatoire. Mendelssohn also encountered him in Paris, disparaging him as ‘the wild huntsman.’