During the late 19th century, nationalism became a force in music, and a leader in the cause of

Russian music was composer Mily Balakirev. He was one of the five nationalistic composers known as The Mighty Handful. He thought that fellow Russian composer Anton Rubinstein had turned his back on Russian music in favor of German influences. He said that Rubinstein’s music was mere accompaniment, building toward a resolution but never providing it, and without melody. When a patron approached Balakirev with an offer, the Russian nationalist turned it into a joke at Rubinstein’s expense.

Balakirev’s servant Adrian brought him the calling card of a famous member of a Guards’ regiment. Balakirev was perplexed.

“This isn’t for me,” he told Adrian, “Tell him the midwife lives on the next floor up.” But the officer was insistent and so Balakirev agreed to see him. The dapper guardsman came in carrying an expensive green leather portfolio. An important friend had sent him to Balakirev for advice. He apologized for disturbing the composer.

Balakirev was still puzzled. “I’m quite incompetent in military matters,” he said.

“It’s purely a musical matter,” the guardsman assured him. “You see, I’ve written an opera.”

Balakirev became wary. “An opera? Then you must have studied. But where?”

“Oh, yes,” the officer said. “I’ve done a lot of studying abroad.”

“Well, that’s interesting,” Balakirev conceded, “but I still can’t help you. I have very little influence in theatrical circles.”

The guardsman cut him off. “This isn’t about staging. I’ve come to ask your advice as to whom I could commission to write an accompaniment for my opera.”

Balakirev looked his visitor in the eye and, with a straight face, suggested, “I think you should ask Rubinstein and nobody else. That’s his specialty.”

Mily Balakirev’s student A.A. Olenin tells the story in his memoir My Recollections of Balakirev.

of his staunchest supporters was a composer of outgoing, often dissonant pieces--the Spaniard

Isaac Albeniz.

Faure was born on May 12th, 1845. He was fifteen years Albeniz' senior, but Albeniz had

been a dazzling child prodigy and a freewheeling world traveler by the age of twelve. At age sixty-three, Faure was still having trouble getting recognition.

In 1908 Albeniz introduced Faure into musical circles in Barcelona. The next year Faure was invited to conduct his Requiem, Shylock, and Caligula as well as his Ballade for Piano and Orchestra. According to the pianist, Marguerite Long, during one rehearsal of the Ballade Faure

was conducting badly. He was eagerly awaiting a telegram telling him whether or not he had been elected to membership in an important musical organization--the Instutut.

"All through the rehearsal Faure kept looking at me," Marguite Long recalled, "not because of anything in the Ballade but out of desperation to know the result of the election. [In that huge auditorium holding seven thousand people I kept my eyes glued to the door. The rehearsal

finished at midnight and still there was no word, so Faure went off to find out what he could. At

the post office we discovered there was a postal strike and nothing was getting through. Then,

around dawn, just as we were all getting some much-needed sleep, Faure banged on the door,

waving the telegram. He'd been elected!"

There had been some resistance to Faure's election to the Instutut, and it's likely that Albeniz

used some of his powers of persuasion to Faure's advantage. By the time of the election, though, Albeniz was seriously ill. He was staying in Paris, and Faure and Paul Dukas went to see him

often. On one occasion he paid Faure the ultimate compliment when he asked Marguerite Long,

as a last favor, to play one of his favorite piano pieces, the Second Valse-Caprice by Gabriel Faure.

Malcolm Arnold’s music for David Lean’s 1957 film The Bridge on the River Kwai earned him an Oscar, but he described composing it as one of the worst jobs he’d ever had.

He had only ten days to write 35 minutes of music for an enormous orchestra that included three marimbas, a large section of untuned percussion, and a military band. He wrote through the night as couriers waited to carry the score to the copyists. “It gave all the people working on it a very great headache,” Arnold recalled, “ adding that he was “lucky to be alive the way I had to work on the film, but I did it because I liked the picture.”

David Lean left the musical decisions up to Arnold, and the result pleased the director immensely. In a letter to Arnold he wrote that Arnold’s score brought him the only moment when he looked at his own work and thought, “that is really good.”

The triumph was bittersweet for Arnold, though, largely because of three minutes of music that he did not write. Arnold set jaunty Colonel Bogey March written by Kenneth Alford in 1914 against his own River Kwai March, leading to some confusion as to what was Arnold’s and what was not.

Another annoyance for Arnold came when the marching and whistling on the screen failed to match the studio recording Arnold entrusted to the film editors.

When David Lean suggested another collaboration that would include Arnold, William Walton, and composer Aram Khachaturian, Arnold and Walton sat down to view the film after a liquor-laden lunch and found it laughable and overloaded with camels. They turned it down, and Maurice Jarre won an Oscar for writing the score for what proved a blockbuster, Lawrence of Arabia.

Arnold never saw David Lean again and went on to turn down two Stanley Kubrick films, Dr. Strangelove and 2001, A Space Odyssey.

During the course of a long career, Malcolm Arnold developed a reputation as a composer of classical music and film scores with a strong current of humor, but during the dark days of World War II, he struggled with tragedy.

In 1941, as war raged in Europe, Arnold’s brother Philip, a pilot in the Royal Air Force, was reported missing, and, after several months, confirmed dead. Arnold continued to work as a musician until 1944, when a second blow made him alter his course.

In the summer of 1943 Arnold’s wife Shiela became pregnant, and in January a girl, Kate, was born, but she lived for only a short time after the delivery. Something in the confluence of sad events made Arnold decide to join the military, a decision that put him at odds with his parents, who had lost one son to the war and had another risking his life among Arctic convoys.

After being turned down by the navy, Arnold tried to join a parachute regiment, which turned him down because he was too small. The infantry accepted him and, after putting him through basic training, placed him in the army band. He sat down and cried.

“I could not believe that I had given up a reserve occupation, and they put me in the band,” Arnold said later.” He went to the latrine, took off his boots, placed a biscuit barrel under his foot, aimed his rifle at his big toe, and fired. The self-inflicted wound could’ve gotten him shot as a deserter, but a sympathetic and insightful psychiatrist got him a discharge from the military, and the next unit he joined was the BBC Orchestra.

Within a few years, Malcolm Arnold would be one of the most sought-after composers in England, and would go on to compose music for 80 films, including the monumental tribute to British military endurance, The Bridge on the River Kwai.

I have looked at a least a hundred libretti or more, but I have barely found a single one that’s satisfactory, by which I mean that so many changes would have to be made here and there that even if a poet would try to make them it would be easier for him to start from scratch with a new text–which indeed is always the best thing to do.

Our poet here is now a certain Abbot Da Ponte. He has a tremendous amount to do with revising pieces for the theater and he’s committed to writing an entirely new libretto for Salieri, which will take two months. He has promised to follow that with a new libretto for me. But who knows whether he’ll be able to keep his word–or will want to? [For, as you know, these Italian gentlemen are very courteous to your face. Enough! We know them!]

If he’s in cahoots with Salieri I’ll never get anything out of him. But I really want to show what I can do in Italian opera! So I’ve been thinking that unless Varesco is still quite put out with us regarding the Munich opera, perhaps he would write me a new libretto for seven characters. Basta! You will know best if it can be worked out. In the meantime he could make some notes , and when I come to Salzburg, we could work through them together.

in his journal:

Today it was beautiful on the thoroughfare. Crowds of people but I had nothing to do with

them. I admired the foliage. The spring aromas and that innocence of nature brought back the feelings of my childhood. A storm was looming so I went in, but no storm developed--except for melancholy.

Why? I don't even care about music today. It's late but I'm not sleepy. I don't know what's

wrong with me. And I've begun my third decade! The papers and posters have announced my concert. It's in two days, and it's as if there were no such thing. It just doesn't seem to matter to

me. I don't even listen to the compliments. They seem more and more stupid. I'd wish I were

dead, except that I would like to see my parents.

Her image stands before my eyes. I think I don't love her anymore, and yet I can't get her out

of my head. Everything I have seen abroad so far seems old and hateful to me and just makes me

sigh for home, for those blessed moments that I undervalued. What used to seem magnificent

today seems common. What I used to think common is now incomparable, too great, too lofty.

The people here are not my people. They're kind, but kind from habit. They do everything too formally, flatly, moderately. I have no desire whatsoever to think about moderation.

I'm confused. I'm melancholy. I don't know what to do with myself. I wish I weren't alone!

At age 21 Chopin was soon to meet the great musicians of the day--Rossini, Liszt, Cherubini,

and many others. He would never return to Poland.