Grace Notes

Norman Gilliland gives the stories behind the struggle to create great music.

In the fall of 1913, when Robert Nichols was in his first term at Oxford, a friend said, "there's a chap in the house you ought to know. An extraordinary chap -- plays the pianola, the piano and all that. In fact, I think he's a what-d'you call it -- a musician."

Nichols was eager to meet someone his own age that shared his interest in music. He wanted to see the student at once, but his friend warned, "He might not be in the right mood." Nichols was not to be put off though, so even though his friend...

Robert & Clara

Tuesday, September 18, 2018, 11:30am

Twenty-seven-year-old Robert Schumann was a gifted composer. But the father of his 18-year-old fiancée, Clara Wieck, was unimpressed. Clara’s father steadfastly refused permission for his daughter to marry. Schumann tried everything he could think of to make the marriage take place -- including a meeting with Clara's father. On September 18^th, 1837. He wrote to Clara:

My meeting with your father was awful. Such coldness. Such ill will. Such spite. He has a new way of destroying a person. He sticks the knife into your heart up to the hilt.

You’ll have to be very strong, stronger than you
...

Berlioz vs. Cherubini

Monday, September 17, 2018, 11:30am

It was the meeting of two great composers -- Hector Berlioz and Luigi Cherubini -- and it's a wonder no one was hurt.

In his memoirs Berlioz relates that Cherubini issued an order that men and women were to enter the Paris Conservatory from opposite ends of the building. Unaware of the order, Berlioz went to the library one morning and entered the courtyard through the newly designated female door. Suddenly he found himself face to face with a servant who commanded him to turn back and enter through the other door. Berlioz dismissed the idea as absurd and...

Desperate Measures

Friday, September 14, 2018, 11:30am

San Francisco, 1865. Louis Moreau Gottschalk had an unusual problem. He had promised a concert featuring fourteen pianists playing Wagner's march from Tannhauser. One of them had gotten sick and Gottschalk was hard-pressed to find a replacement. For his unusual problem he resorted to desperate measures.

The proprietor of the concert hall was sympathetic. He offered the services of his son. Gottschalk suggested a rehearsal, but the young man said it would he unnecessary since the march was so easy, He sat down at the piano, executed a noisy flourish, and launched into a horrific rendition of the piece. Gottschalk...

Old Borax

Friday, September 14, 2018, 11:30am

Bringing the great composer Antonin Dvorak to New York in the 1890s was one thing. Keeping him entertained once he was there was something else again as critic James Huneker found out.

Mrs. Jeanette Thurber, the wife of a prominent New York greengrocer, brought Dvorak to America to direct her newly founded National Conservatory of Music. For after-hours amusements she turned Dvorak over to Huneker, who invited Dvorak to experience the American drink called the whiskey cocktail. Huneker observed that in reply Dvorak "nodded his head, that of an angry-looking bulldog with a beard. He scared me with his fierce...

Admiration and Disdain

Wednesday, September 12, 2018, 11:30am

They were the three greatest Czech composers, and the relationship between two of them was less than friendly.

Leos Janacek, the youngest of the three, admired one of the other two. He was drawn to the earthy, sensual, popular qualities of the music written by Antonin Dvoraik. He also liked the classical basis of Dvorak's compositions and the purely musical, rather than literary, basis of his music.

As a young man Janacek remarked that he had such an affinity for Dvorak that the older composer seemed to be taking the words from his mouth. Janacek's Suite for String Orchestra and...

The Captive Composer

Tuesday, September 11, 2018, 11:30am

The trail goes from Cairo, Egypt to Winston-Salem, North Carolina to Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. It leads to one of America's most intriguing composers. His name, John Antes.

Antes spent his early years--the 1740's--near Philadelphia and received his education in a Moravian boys' school in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. In 1759 he built a violin--possibly the first made in America. He also crafted a viola and cello that may be the earliest of their kind made in America. In 1764 Antes went to Europe to serve the Moravian Church, which sent him to Egypt as a missionary.

His existence in Egypt might best...

Anton Rubinstein's Reward

Monday, September 10, 2018, 11:30am

The virtuoso pianist Anton Rubinstein had heard plenty about the extremes of performing in America. In 1872 he decided to find out for himself. He knew the Americans liked showmanship, but Rubinstein vowed to avoid spectacle. He would give the Americans serious, straightforward music without gimmicks. He almost succeeded.

He came with violinist Henri Wieniawski, arriving on a hot, hazy September day. Their host was piano mqanufacturer William Steinway, and Rubinstein was pleased with both the new Steinway Hall and the piano he was to use. On the night of Rubinstein's American debut the hall was packed. People had come...

Bizet, Citizen Soldier

Friday, September 7, 2018, 11:30am

Composer Georges Bizet was a patriot. But the Franco-Prussian War and the occupation of Paris by Prussian troops put his patriotism to the test. It was 1871, and France was on the brink of civil war. In a letter to his uncle, Bizet summarized the situation:

“Thirty thousand men in Montmartre, Belleville, et cetera. Twenty-five thousand of who gave up at the first gunfire. In Paris, three hundred thousand men, a disgrace never to be forgotten, three hundred thousand cowards. I should say two hundred and ninety-five thousand because about five thousand men--I was among them--went to offer their services...

The Apprentice Murderer

Thursday, September 6, 2018, 11:30am

Even a masterpiece isn't finished until the "customer" is satisfied--as a poet named Goldoni relates in an account from 1735:

"Antonio Vivaldi was desperate for a poet to revise—murder actually--a drama so that he could include the arias that his pupil had sung on other occasions and, being assigned the task by a noble patron, I introduced myself to him.

Vivaldi received me rather coldly. He took me for a novice, which I was, and judging me incapable of wrecking dramas, made it clear that he wanted me to get lost. When I all but begged him...

Royal Concert

Wednesday, September 5, 2018, 11:30am

It was music making for the most luxurious circumstances France had to offer and Francois Couperin entered the circle by means of a simple deception.

Couperin came from a respected musical family and he attained the highest possible musical positions in the French court in the time of King Louis the Fourteenth. Couperin gave harpsichord lessons to noble patrons, and performed every Sunday for the king, either as a soloist or as a member of the most prestigious ensembles France had to offer.

Music was such a part of King Louis’ court that concerts by the same group of performers...

Granados' Food Fight

Tuesday, September 4, 2018, 11:30am

They were the most distinguished composers in Spain -- Enrique Granados, Isaac Albeniz, Pablo de Sarasate, and Enrique Arbos. During summers in the 1890's they met occasionally at a music shop in San Sebatian where they engaged in small talk and put on informal concerts. One of the concerts turned out to be so informal that it degenerated into a food fight.

The trouble began with a suggestion by Granados. His idea was that he and his colleagues would form an orchestra in which each of them would play an instrument about which he knew nothing. The result...

The Casualty

Monday, September 3, 2018, 11:30am

On September 3, 1914, a German cavalry unit approached a French country estate. The owner of the estate, who had been working in his upstairs study, was not one to accept the encroachment without a struggle. He was a composer named Alberic Magnard and he was about to cross the line from civilian to combatant.

Magnard had never been on to bend easily. He grew up in wealth, comfort, and success-disdainful, aloof and humorless. At his father's expense, he traveled widely before settling down to attend law school. By the time he got his degree in 1887, though, Magnard had...

Bartok's Medal

Friday, August 31, 2018, 11:30am

He became known for his turbulent modernism and became one of the most honored composers of the twentieth century. But Bela Bartok was a modest, retiring man who was inclined to view honors with a sense of humor.

In the 1930's, as a member of the Congress of Humanistic Sciences Bartok attended a meeting in Geneva. Included was a glittering dinner at the Hungarian ambassador's residence. Bartok took it in stride. He wrote:

There was only X-the Hungarian charge d’affairs, myself, and his wife -- a detestable female. The ambassador's wife is American, speaks only American but makes a show...

Victim of History

Thursday, August 30, 2018, 11:30am

Composers are often involved in major historical events. In the case of Claude Goudimel the historical event was fatal.

Goudimel was a well-known composer and music theorist of the 1550s and '60s. He was born in Besancon about 1510 and studied at the University of Paris, where he published a book of songs in 1551. During the next seven years he published songs, psalms, motets, and masses.

In 1557 Goudimel's life took a turn. He moved to the city of Metz, which had a large population of Protestants--or Hugenots as they were known in France. During his ten years there...

A Glorious Secret

Wednesday, August 29, 2018, 11:30am

A composer's best-known work is not necessarily his personal favorite. Consider the case of Maurice Ravel and the celebrated Bolero.

Bolero owes its existence to a disappointment. In the summer of 1928 Ravel was planning to orchestrate some of Isaac Albeniz' piano pieces from the suite Iberia. His idea was to turn them into ballet music for the famous dancer Ida Rubinstein. A friend informed Ravel that Albeniz' pieces had already been orchestrated for a ballet. "My whole summer's ruined," Ravel declared. "Orchestrating Iberia was going to be so much fun. What am I going to tell Ida? She'll be furious."...

The Infamous Bolero

Tuesday, August 28, 2018, 11:30am

A composer's best-known work is not necessarily his personal favorite. Consider the case of Maurice Ravel and the celebrated Bolero.

Gustav Holst & Thomas Hardy

Monday, August 27, 2018, 11:30am

Although he is best remembered for his orchestral suite The Planets, the English composer Gustav Holst liked nothing better than the down-to-earth pleasure of a long walking tour. In the summer of 1927 he took a train from London to Bristol then set out on foot for Dorchester to visit the celebrated author Thomas Hardy.

Holst had admired Hardy for years. Twenty-five years earlier Hoist had written settings of three poems by Hardy. In 1922 he had finally met Hardy for the first time, though not without comic effect. Holst had been on a two-day walking tour and wore an...

The Traffic Victim

Friday, August 24, 2018, 11:30am

The six-year old had been hit by a car on a Manhattan street and dragged for a block. She was in a coma for twelve days. During her 23 days in the hospital she wasn't expected to live. But she survived, determined to overcome any obstacle between her and what she wanted.

What she wanted was to become a singer--a great singer--and there were major obstacles in her way. The Depression had kept her Greek-born family unsettled. In eight years they had moved nine times in the Hell's Kitchen section of Manhattan. The girl’s mother was ambitious, neurotic, and eager...

Chabrier the Dazzling Pianist

Thursday, August 23, 2018, 11:30am

Emmanuel Chabrier wrote some of the 19th century's most colorful music. Intentionally or not, he was also one of the century's most colorful performers.

The composer’s friend, Alfred Bruneau described him this way:

He played the piano as nobody had ever played it before or ever will play it. The sight of Chabrier in a drawing-room full of elegantly-dressed women, approaching the delicate instrument and then playing his “Espana” in a flash of broken strings, hammers reduced to pulp and shattered keys, was indescribably amusing, and a spectacle of genuinely epic splendor.

Another friend of Chabrier's was painter Auguste Renoir....

Both Sides

Wednesday, August 22, 2018, 11:30am

Was it just the review or did something bigger break up a major musical friendship? One way or the other, in 1952 a music critic for the New York Tribune helped to widen the gap between the American composer John Cage and the French conductor and composer Pierre Boulez.

The reviewer, Peggy Glanville-Hicks, was a conservative composer, but after a Greenwich Village concert, she made a distinction between the avant-garde writing of Cage and the style of Boulez. She referred to "the real impression of the real poetry that Cage's scores create."

On the other hand, Glanville-Hicks described a sonata...

Keen Hearing

Tuesday, August 21, 2018, 11:30am

The farmer tramping over his grounds in Medfield, Massachusetts, had a keen ear for nature that served him well in his other job as one of America’s leading composers.

Charles Martin Loeffler had come to America from Alsace in 1881 at the age of twenty. For twenty years he played in the first violin section of the Boston Symphony, then devoted himself to composing and farming.

One friend recounts that Loeffler’s sense of nature was as keen as his ear for music. Walking through his woods immersed in conversation, the composer would break off in mid-sentence and whisper, “see that...

Donizetti vs. the Dilettantes

Monday, August 20, 2018, 11:30am

Writing an opera may be the simplest step in its production--when the staging is left to a committee.

In 1834 Gaetano Donizetti signed a contract with the management of the Royal Theaters of Naples to write three operas. The theaters in Naples were under new management—a committee of aristocratic dilettantes who called themselves the Society of Industry and Fine Arts. According to the contract, the Society would choose the plots and librettists for the operas with Donizetti’s agreement. The Society would turn the completed librettos over to the censors for approval, and finally pass them on to Donizetti at...

Wagner's Undignified Entrance

Friday, August 17, 2018, 11:30am

They got off to a bad start. It’s 1877 and Richard Wagner was in England as guest conductor for a series of ten concerts. A large orchestra—nearly two hundred Englishmen and Germans--was to begin rehearsing. The music for this first rehearsal was to be Das Rheingold. The English members of the orchestra waited for their first glimpse of the great Wagner, even though their long-time leader, the highly respected Hans Richter, wa expected to do most of the conducting.

Then an unfortunate accident occured. As he entered the hall, Wagner walked past some kind of overhang that crushed his hat. Apparently unaware of the mishap, he...

Seeing Through The Quirks

Thursday, August 16, 2018, 11:30am

Sometimes takes a great student to recognize a great teacher. One such teacher was Alexander Glazunov. It took some doing, but Dmitri Shostakovich discovered that Glazunov had something special to offer.

Shostakovich was a student at the Moscow Conservatory when he encountered Glazunov -- a bulky man who sat far away at his desk while his students played the piano and waited for his critiques. Glazunov never interrupted and never left his desk. Once the student had finished playing, Glazunov would mutter something incoherent.

The students were reluctant to ask him to repeat what he had said and uncomfortable about moving...

The Frenchman

Wednesday, August 15, 2018, 11:30am

It was a well-to-do Russian household, but one inclined toward pessimism and boredom, and the young French visitor was just what the doctor ordered. But it took awhile for the lady of the house to warm to Claude Debussy.

In 1880 Debussy's teacher wrote him a letter of recommendation for employment in the household of a widow named Madame Nadezhda von Meck, who was already the patroness of Tchaikovsky, whom she had never met.

In the summer of 1880 the eighteen-year-old Debussy joined the von Meck family for a European tour, and in May of the following year, von Meck...

An Appeal From the Destitute

Tuesday, August 14, 2018, 11:30am

War had depleted treasury of Saxony and the finest musicians in the land were living from hand to mouth. On August 14th, 1651, Heinrich Schutz wrote a letter to Prince Christian on behalf of his suffering ensemble:

Most gracious lord, even though I am reluctant to bother a celebrated Prince with my repeated letters and reminders, I am forced to by constant restlessness hour after hour, by loud cries of despair, by the misery and complaints of the entire company of poor, neglected musicians of the Chapel, who are living in misery such as would make a stone...

How Veracini Broke His Leg

Monday, August 13, 2018, 11:30am

Music making was highly competitive in the Baroque era. We have two accounts of Francesco Maria Veracini's last days at the court in Dresden. Both of them spell disaster.

Veracini was a world-famous violinist. He had come from Florence hoping to get a high-paying position at the Dresden court. According to one story written 63 years after the fact, King August wanted to hear Veracini play a violin concerto. The court concertmaster, Johann Georg Pisandel, suggested that Veracini give his audition concerto to the accompanist for rehearsing. But the self-assured Italian supposedly had no confidence in any...

Christ Suffered More Than You

Friday, August 10, 2018, 11:30am

On August 10th, 1842 Mikhail Glinka and a few friends passed a pleasant evening playing a first run-through of his opera Russlan and Ludmilla. When the full-scale debut took place, the experience was not so congenial--as Glinka reports in his memoirs.

During rehearsals it became clear that cuts would have to be made--plenty of them--to keep the action from bogging down. The sets left something to be desired. A castle looked more like a barracks. Flowers painted at the sides of the stage were ugly and dull and smeared over with gold leaf. A banquet table was represented...

A Simple & Private Wedding

Thursday, August 9, 2018, 11:30am

The pianist and composer Percy Grainger liked to do things in a big way. He was a showman, an eccentric, maybe even a madman when it came to music--and his own wedding.

The Australian-born Grainger had been in the United States for some time when the Swedish poet and painter Ella Viola Strom agreed to marry him. Perhaps not knowing just how flamboyant Grainger could be, Ella left the wedding arrangements to the groom. She was expecting a simple wedding attended by a small group of friends and, knowing nothing of America, she readily agreed when Grainger suggested the wedding...

First Meeting

Wednesday, September 19, 2018, 11:30am

Robert & Clara

Tuesday, September 18, 2018, 11:30am

Berlioz vs. Cherubini

Monday, September 17, 2018, 11:30am

It was the meeting of two great composers -- Hector Berlioz and Luigi Cherubini -- and it's a wonder no one was hurt. In his memoirs Berlioz relates that Cherubini issued an order that men and women were to enter the Paris Conservatory from opposite ends of the building. Unaware of the order,...

Old Borax

Friday, September 14, 2018, 11:30am

Bringing the great composer Antonin Dvorak to New York in the 1890s was one thing. Keeping him entertained once he was there was something else again as critic James Huneker found out. Mrs. Jeanette Thurber, the wife of a prominent New York greengrocer, brought Dvorak to America to direct her newly...

Desperate Measures

Friday, September 14, 2018, 11:30am

San Francisco, 1865. Louis Moreau Gottschalk had an unusual problem. He had promised a concert featuring fourteen pianists playing Wagner's march from Tannhauser. One of them had gotten sick and Gottschalk was hard-pressed to find a replacement. For his unusual problem he resorted to desperate...

Admiration and Disdain

Wednesday, September 12, 2018, 11:30am

They were the three greatest Czech composers, and the relationship between two of them was less than friendly. Leos Janacek, the youngest of the three, admired one of the other two. He was drawn to the earthy, sensual, popular qualities of the music written by Antonin Dvoraik. He also liked the...

The Captive Composer

Tuesday, September 11, 2018, 11:30am

The trail goes from Cairo, Egypt to Winston-Salem, North Carolina to Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. It leads to one of America's most intriguing composers. His name, John Antes. Antes spent his early years--the 1740's--near Philadelphia and received his education in a Moravian boys' school in...

Anton Rubinstein's Reward

Monday, September 10, 2018, 11:30am

Bizet, Citizen Soldier

Friday, September 7, 2018, 11:30am

The Apprentice Murderer

Thursday, September 6, 2018, 11:30am

Even a masterpiece isn't finished until the "customer" is satisfied--as a poet named Goldoni relates in an account from 1735: "Antonio Vivaldi was desperate for a poet to revise—murder actually--a drama so that he could include the arias that his pupil had sung on other occasions and, being...

Royal Concert

Wednesday, September 5, 2018, 11:30am

It was music making for the most luxurious circumstances France had to offer and Francois Couperin entered the circle by means of a simple deception. Couperin came from a respected musical family and he attained the highest possible musical positions in the French court in the time of King Louis...

Granados' Food Fight

Tuesday, September 4, 2018, 11:30am

The Casualty

Monday, September 3, 2018, 11:30am

Bartok's Medal

Friday, August 31, 2018, 11:30am

Victim of History

Thursday, August 30, 2018, 11:30am

Composers are often involved in major historical events. In the case of Claude Goudimel the historical event was fatal. Goudimel was a well-known composer and music theorist of the 1550s and '60s. He was born in Besancon about 1510 and studied at the University of Paris, where he published a book...

A Glorious Secret

Wednesday, August 29, 2018, 11:30am

A composer's best-known work is not necessarily his personal favorite. Consider the case of Maurice Ravel and the celebrated Bolero. Bolero owes its existence to a disappointment. In the summer of 1928 Ravel was planning to orchestrate some of Isaac Albeniz' piano pieces from the suite Iberia. His...

The Infamous Bolero

Tuesday, August 28, 2018, 11:30am

Gustav Holst & Thomas Hardy

Monday, August 27, 2018, 11:30am

The Traffic Victim

Friday, August 24, 2018, 11:30am

Chabrier the Dazzling Pianist

Thursday, August 23, 2018, 11:30am

Emmanuel Chabrier wrote some of the 19th century's most colorful music. Intentionally or not, he was also one of the century's most colorful performers. The composer’s friend, Alfred Bruneau described him this way: He played the piano as nobody had ever played it before or ever will play it. The...

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