Compulsively driven

From the brick-counting Bruckner to Dvořák the avid trainspotter, Steve Wright introduces some of history's most obsessive composers

'It consists of many parts created by many different components. Everything has a purpose and role, and the result is amazing. This is composer Antonín Dvořák discussing not an orchestra nor a symphony, but something equally dear to his heart: the steam engine.

'I The Czech composer was a big fan of locomotives, which burst forth into the same mid-19th-century world as his music. Indeed, he once famously declared, 'I would give all my symphonies for inventing the locomotive.

Dvořák is just one of a handful of composers who harboured extra-musical obsessions throughout their lifetimes. Let's meet some of these compulsive composers, starting with the rail-obsessed Romantic himself...

Antonín Dvořák: Trains

Dvořák's life story and that of the locomotive ran, for a while, along similar tracks. The railway reached his hometown of Nelahozeves during his childhood, bringing workers from across the Austro-Hungarian Empire for the construction project. From the family home, across the street from the train station, he would watch the new iron dragons pull past, laden with soldiers and civilians. This love of trains persisted throughout his life, and on moving to Prague, he designed a morning walk that took him above the tunnel through which trains would pull out from the city's imposing main station.

Dvořák once asked his student and future son-in-law Josef Suk to make an early-morning trip to note down the engine number of the Vienna express train. Suk duly set his alarm clock and headed off, opera glasses in hand, to get the crucial information. After the train had whistled through, he dashed to Dvořák's flat to show him the number. However, his precious information was greeted with a snort of laughter: instead of the engine number, Suk had noted the tender number at the rear of the train. Rookie error.