How Are You, My Dearest Mozart? Well-being and Creativity of Three Famous Composers Based on their Letters

Karol Borowiecki

No 20/2013, Discussion Papers on Economics from University of Southern Denmark, Department of Economics

Abstract: The well-being of a person is reflected in the language used. Building on 1,400 letters written by three famous music composers, I obtain well-being indices that span their lifetime. The validity of this methodology is shown by linking the indices with biographical information and through estimation of the determinants of well-being. I find, consistent with the literature, that work-related engagements and accomplishments are positively related with well-being, while poor health or death of a relative is detrimental. I then exploit the data and provide quantitative evidence on the existence of a causal impact of negative emotions on outstanding creativity, an association hypothesized across several disciplines since the Antiquity; however, not yet convincingly established for the case of extraordinary achievers.

Keywords: Well-being; happiness; positive emotions; negative emotions; creativity; health; labor; composer; letters; methodology; music history (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D60 I31 J24 N33 Z11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 52 pages
Date: 2013-12-17, Revised 2016-04-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cul and nep-hap
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sdu.dk/-/media/files/om_sdu/institutter ... 013revised.pdf?la=da (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 500 Can't connect to www.sdu.dk:80 (A connection attempt failed because the connected party did not properly respond after a period of time, or established connection failed because connected host has failed to respond.)

Related works:
Journal Article: How Are You, My Dearest Mozart? Well-Being and Creativity of Three Famous Composers Based on Their Letters (2017)
Working Paper: How Are You, My Dearest Mozart? Well-being and Creativity of Three Famous Composers Based on their Letters (2016)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:sdueko:2013_020

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion Papers on Economics from University of Southern Denmark, Department of Economics Department of Economics, University of Southern Denmark, Campusvej 55, DK-5230 Odense M, Denmark. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Astrid Holm Nielsen ().