Musical Medical AI Quiz – Music And Medicine

As more of medical science relies on data, understanding biases that exists in different data sets becomes of importance.

Consider following data set containing most famous composers of classical and later period:

Baroque			Classical/Romantic			Russian
Name	Born	Lived Years	Name	Born	Lived Years	Name	Born	Lived Years
C Monteverdi	1567	76	W.A Mozart	1756	35	P Tchaikovsky	1840	53
A. Corelli	1653	60	L Beethoven	1770	57	M. Mussorgsky	1839	42
H. Purcell	1659	36	F Schubert	1797	31	A Borodin	1833	54
T Albinoni	1671	80	F. Chopin	1810	39	C. Cui	1835	83
A Vivaldi	1678	63	F Liszt	1811	75	S Prokofiev	1891	62
G. Telemann	1681	86	R. Schumann	1810	46	I Stravinsky	1881	90
J.P. Rameau	1683	81	F. Mendelssohn	1805	42	N Rimsky-K	1844	64
J.S. Bach	1685	65	R Wagner	1813	70	Scriabin	1872	43
D. Scarlatti	1685	72	J Brahms	1833	64	S Rachmaninov	1873	70
G.F. Handel	1685	74	H Berlioz	1803	66	Igor Stravinsky	1882	89
Average		69.30 years	Average		52.5	Average		65
Standard Dev					4.89	Standard Dev		5.9

What can be noticed that Baroque and Russians composers lived on average decade longer longer than Romantic era composers. Here are some graphical representations.

Very Hard Question: How would you explain that difference in a simplest way?

In the graph above we show the same thing with more composers. Are you ready to guess why this seems to be the case?

Lifespan of Musicians: Perils of Generalizations

1 / 5

Music History Quiz: The above data about lifespan of composers is slightly doctored by the quiz creator in favor of Russian composer longevity because (choose all that apply)

Bach is missing on the list

It would be more honest to swap Cesar Cui with Modest Mussorgsky

List is missing Liszt

List is missing Verdi

Chopin should be listed as a Russian composer

2 / 5

How did Chopin support himself financially?

By performing concerts

By teaching at music schools

By composing for private patrons and giving private lessons

By playing at dance parties

3 / 5

Chopin by selling his composition of twenty four Preludes earned approximately value of?

to years of rent of his apartment in Paris

six month of rent

grand piano

house

4 / 5

The life expectancy in mid-nineteen century was most dependent on

Social class

Country of Life

Organic food

Access to Alcohol

5 / 5

Why do we observe that Russian composers lived on average 20 years longer than popular Western European composers?

Choose all that apply.

There could be some bias in the data

Because people in Russia lived longer than in Europe

Because Russian society was centered around music

For the same reasons that baroque era composers seem to have lived longer than those from the Classical and Romantic period

All of Russian musicians were members of aristocracy, while European musicians were more economically impoverished

Because their music is more soothing

Because they ate more organic food

Because they were born slightly later

Your score is

It is hard to generalize about quality of life and even life expectancy given somewhat limited and spurious data. However, one is tempted to make a following observations:

Role of music evolved with society.
Originally music and arts were supported by nobility and the courts.
Life of nobility was very different than life of a commoner. Life expectancy was close to double.
During industrial revolution the overall life expectancy increased, but the difference between the life expectancy of the classes (at birth) was reduced. Also many people moved to the cities where living conditions were poor.
The above factor caused the lifespan of composers of the Classical and Romantic era to be generally shorter than those of the Baroque era, especially in Germany and France where the class based society gradually vanished (over next two centuries)
Given that Russia and Italy were behind Western Europe in terms of social changes and equilibration of industrial era this could be a common factor in explaining differences in lifespan of the composers.
Another simple factor is that famous Russian composers were born later than famous European composers and life expectancy between 1750 and 1880 has increased.
When looking at old data one has to worry about representation and survivorship bias- generally musicians who are known today are known by the quantity of their work (somewhat proportional to their lifespan)- not necessarily by the quality.

Read More About Life Expectancy

More Data

Nearly two thousands data points from Wikipedia show that it is hard to reach a conclusion on average life span of musicians in different periods. One of the observation is that most famous musicians of given period may not not be representative of all musician’s life span. Probably there is historical survival bias for those who lived longer be known more, except perhaps starting in Romantic period where compositions were able to live on their own without their creators.

Another feature is that composers of the late Baroque period lived longer than those of the late classical (Mozart) and Romantic (Schubert, Chopin) period.

One possible explanation is that court life was generally more comfortable than the city life. Not only financially, but perhaps the from health perspective: both food, quality of water and air and hygiene was better than in dense cities century later. Most of famous Baroque composers were well respected and their lives could be longer than that of the average musician of the period, another possible bias in the data.

Bias in our data: In table above we omitted great baroque musician Giovanni Battista Pergolesi who only lived to be twenty six year old. Listen Here.