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Although his disabilities made William Billings of Boston unsuited for service as a soldier during the American Revolution, he made a lasting contribution to the cause in the form of song. By 1770, when he wrote his collection New England Psalm Singer, tensions were already high between American colonists and...

Taking It in Stride

July 3, 2013 - 11:14am

How did Hector Berlioz cope with the pressures of life as a composer and conductor, with a lively sense of humor. It comes out in a letter he wrote from London to Theodore Ritter on July 3, 1855. A ghastly rehearsal at Exeter Hall yesterday. Glover’s cantata in a piquant...

The Outsider

July 2, 2013 - 11:50am

George Gershwin had come to write an opera about the inhabitants of Folly Island, South Carolina, but in June 1934, when he arrived for a five-week stay, he wasn’t ready for what he found. Folly Island was not the kind of vacation spot he was used to. "It looks like...

Villa-Lobos Plays the Guitar for Segovia

June 29, 2013 - 3:35pm

It was only natural that Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos would write for the guitar. And maybe it was inevitable that he would meet the world's greatest guitarist, Andres Segovia. But exactly what happened at that first meeting is not so certain because Villa-Lobos and Segovia gave sharply contrasting accounts of...

Always the Critic

June 28, 2013 - 3:29pm

"Who could not win the mistress wooed the maid." So said Alexander Pope, suggesting that critics are failed, envious artists. Henri Blanchard may well have been one of them. In the spring of 1841, writing for the influential Paris Gazette, Blanchard had this to say about a concert that included...

The Gamble

June 27, 2013 - 3:25pm

In June 1907 Franz Lehar had a good reason to be nervous about the London debut of his operetta The Merry Widow. Too late, he had found out that the male lead couldn't sing. The casting for the performance had been a gamble by London producer George Edwards, who had...

Upstaged at the White House

June 26, 2013 - 3:20pm

The playing was some of the finest in the world. But on this particular occasion in 1986, Vladimir Horowitz was to be upstaged by the President and first lady of the United States. The East Room of the White House was packed with musicians and political figures. Horowitz was being...

At Odds with Interlochen

June 25, 2013 - 3:14pm

An inspired composer and performer does not necessarily make an inspired teacher even at a great teaching facility. Percy Grainger was a square peg in a round hole during his years at the National Music Camp at Interlochen, Michigan. Grainger had traveled far from his native Australia, gathering folk tunes...

Scottish Novel, Italian Opera

June 24, 2013 - 3:11pm

The 38-year-old composer was gambling that his new opera would succeed where others were failing. Gaetano Donizetti was pinning his hopes on a hastily written opera based not on an Italian subject but on a Scottish novel. By 1835 Donizetti believed that the state of opera in Naples was in...

Bull of the Frontier

June 23, 2013 - 3:07pm

What he lacked in musical training the Norwegian violinist Ole Bull made up for in power and enthusiasm. In the mid-nineteenth century Bull spent a good deal of time in the United States. One day he was traveling down the Mississippi on a steamboat. As he sat reading a newspaper,...