Hogarth: The Enraged Musician

We often hear stories of composers isolating themselves to compose: Stravinsky in a tiny room in a village in Switzerland, Mahler in a tiny shack on the shores of a lake in Austria, Elliott Carter in the Sonoran desert, Sibelius in a house in the country and so on. Why is that? William Hogarth provides the answer:

We can certainly pick up some of the reasons just by looking at the engraving. But for the full picture William Hazlitt has provided an exegesis. The engraving shows

every conceivable variety of disagreeable and discordant sound--the razor-grinder turning his wheel; the boy with his drum, and the girl with her rattle momentarily suspended; the pursuivant blowing his horn; the shrill milkman; the inexorable ballad.singer, with her squalling infant; the pewterer's shop close by; the fish-women; the chimney-sweepers at the top of a chimney, and the two cats in melodious concert on the ridge of the tiles; with the bells ringing in the distance as we see by the flags flying... [William Hazlitt, Selected Writings, p. 300]

Even after looking at the image carefully I missed both the chimney-sweepers and the cats.