I’ve had my attention drawn to this page on the Political Compass website. It is, as they say, ‘largely for amusement’. I’m not sure they really have Elgar right – I think his position is derived from judgements based on his music rather than from his expressed views. And I don’t think we can be very sure Haydn was an authoritarian; since he earned his living largely as a courtier he had to be careful what he said.
We are having a look at the Independent‘s current series of booklet biographies of composers, but could think of quite a few people we’d be more interested in reading about than Puccini.