Thursday last brought the addition of a list of words to the Collins online dictionary. And that evening’s NCH concert by the Swedish Chamber Orchestra had me thinking of one of those words, dadbod, “an untoned and slightly plump male physique, esp one considered attractive”. The connection came through the music of a composer who, as far as we know, was never a dad. He did have a major passion, which, again as far as we know, remained unrequited. But he is known to have been sexually active. As one of his biographers, Jan Swafford, put it, “His craving for prostitutes, the only major peccadillo we know of in his adulthood, was nothing remarkable for a bachelor in his day in Germany and...
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