Grace Notes

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

This Other World

Friday, December 6, 2019, 11:30am

Twenty-one-year old Frédéric Chopin was discovering a galaxy of famous musicians of the day when he wrote to a friend back in Poland in December 1831:

Paris is whatever you want it to be. You can entertain yourself, be bored, laugh, cry, do whatever you want and nobody notices you because thousands of others are doing the same thing you are, and everyone follows his own inclinations. I don’t know where else you can find so many pianists-- so many dolts and so many virtuosi.

I came here with very few introductions...but in Stuttgart, when I received the news...

The Pianist

Thursday, December 5, 2019, 11:30am

In December 1815 composer Giacomo Meyerbeer was in London visiting celebrated composers and performers. When it came to pianists, he was most impressed by a fellow German who had settled in London, Johann Baptiste Cramer. In his journal Meyerbeer wrote:

Cramer is in his forties, a big, sturdy man with an impressive face. His fingers are long and slender but powerful. He left Germany when he was so young that he can barely understand German anymore. We spoke in French, in which he's fluent. We talked for about a half-hour, mostly about the Philharmonic Society, of which he's a member--a...

Out of the Body

Wednesday, December 4, 2019, 11:30am

Some people are said to have the ability to see themselves as if from a distance. Richard Wagner was one of them. He delivered an address at a ceremony marking the relocation of the remains of composer Carl Maria von Weber from London to Dresden in December 1844. In his autobiography, he wrote of a strange sensation that overcame him.

On the occasion I had a strange experience when for the first time in my life I had to deliver a solemn public speech. Since then I have always spoken extemporaneously, but since this was my first appearance as an...

Uh-oh!

Tuesday, December 3, 2019, 11:30am

In his 1952 memoir My Life, Russian émigré composer Alexander Gretchaninoff tells how simple carelessness nearly resulted in disaster.

In 1925 the composer and his wife were living in Paris. He went to Rome to conduct two concerts, the second of which was to include his Third Symphony and excerpts from his opera Dobrinya Nikititch. During the night before the first rehearsal, Gretchaninoff began to feel nervous. He slipped away from a reception to go back to his hotel for a last-minute look at the wind instrument parts. He was shocked to find that he had brought the wrong music....

Offended

Monday, December 2, 2019, 11:30am

In 1943, at Lindy’s Restaurant in Manhattan, Marc Blitzstein introduced twenty-five-year-old Leonard Bernstein to twenty-nine-year-old Morton Gould. The two composers had plenty in common. For a time, their careers ran parallel courses and then they collided.

Gould was well known in musical circles. His music was being played on the radio. He was well connected in New York musical life, but lacking self-confidence and not one to mix easily. He thought that if he worked hard his talent would be discovered. His big dream was to conduct the New York Philharmonic in Carnegie Hall.

Bernstein’s fame hadn’t spread so far...

What Else Did He Know?

Friday, November 29, 2019, 11:30am

Arthur Rubinstein was one of the twentieth century’s greatest pianists He didn’t begin speaking until he was three, but began playing the piano at age two, and so it’s reasonable to assume that the piano was his whole life.

But an appearance on radio’s popular quiz show Information Please on November 29, 1943, demonstrated that Rubinstein’s knowledge was by no means limited to the piano.

Former Simon and Schuster editor Clifton Fadiman was the knowledgeable emcee of the show. The panelists were the urbane New York columnist Franklin P. Adams, John Kiernan, a sports columnist who could quote Shakespeare and...

The Elusive Tune

Thursday, November 28, 2019, 11:30am

Composer Jacques Offenbach had eight bars of a tune running through his head--a waltz that his mother had sung to him as a lullaby.

Offenbach’s father overheard him humming it and told him that it was by a once-promising young composer named Zimmer, who had suddenly dropped out of sight.

Sometime later, Offenbach’s publisher mentioned a poor old composer named Zimmer who had brought by a score that the publisher intended to reject because the composer was an unknown.

Zimmer was due to return the next day to hear the publisher’s decision.

Offenbach became excited. “Do me a big favor,...

A Visitor Incognito

Wednesday, November 27, 2019, 11:30am

In 1822 the most famous touring pianist in Europe was Johann Nepomuk Hummel, who had been a child prodigy so impressive that at the age of seven he became a live-in student of Mozart’s.

Hummel’s closest rival was Irish-born pianist John Field, who had been living in Russia for nearly twenty years by the time he and Hummel came face to face.

According to a story popular at the time, Hummel arrived in St. Petersburg, eager to see Field perform, but was disappointed to find that Field had no concert scheduled. Apparently someone had told him that the Irishman didn’t...

Passed By

Tuesday, November 26, 2019, 11:30am

With the help of publisher John Stark, Scott Joplin made his name with a succession of genteel, lilting ragtime piano pieces, beginning with the million-seller Maple Leaf Rag in 1899.

By 1911 he felt that he was in a position to create an entirely new kind of music, an American opera dealing with an American subject–free from outside influences.

He sent his first opera, A Guest of Honor, to the copyright office. It disappeared in the mail, never to be seen again.

He pinned all of his hopes on his second effort, Treemonisha, which was set on a plantation and told of a young woman...

Tug of War

Monday, November 25, 2019, 11:30am

The celebrated Austrian cellist Emanuel Feuermann didn’t care for recording, so he probably came into the Columbia session with a bad attitude, and the effort to make a record of Haydn’s Concerto in D went awry from the start.

It was November 1935. The conductor was Malcolm Sargent who was businesslike and accustomed to being in control. There would be a rehearsal, a break, and then the recording session.

At the end of the introduction Sargent cued Feuermann, but the cellist just sat there. Sargent gave him an inquiring look, went back several phrases, and took another pass at the...

Caught in the Muddle

Friday, November 22, 2019, 11:30am

He would later become known as one of the twentieth century’s great pianists and composers, but in 1897, at the age of twenty-four, Sergei Rachmaninoff jumped at the chance to be the assistant conductor to one Eugene Esposito in a new private opera company opened in Moscow by a tycoon named Mamontov. He soon found that he had jumped into a maelstrom, as he wrote to a friend on November 22:

In our theater chaos reigns supreme. Nobody knows what’s supposed to happen the day after tomorrow, tomorrow, or today for that matter. There’s nobody to sing, not because we have no singers,...

Lavish in the Extreme

Thursday, November 21, 2019, 11:30am

At the court of Spain’s King Ferdinand V and Queen Maria Barbara, the famed Italian castrato Farinelli was such a royal favorite that he could have influenced Spain’s politics, but he preferred to make his mark on the country’s musical life–and that he did with a vengeance.

As the director of court operas, Farinelli brought in Europe’s best singers and commissioned new music and new librettos. But when it came to the scenery and special effects, he went all out.

In 1750 he outdid himself.

For an opera by Giovanni Battista Mele two hundred chandeliers illuminated a 41-piece orchestra tricked...

Incognito!

Wednesday, November 20, 2019, 11:30am

Back in 1910 Darius Milhaud had written an opera called La Brebis égarée, and although he was aware of its youthful flaws, he did not object in November 1923 when the Paris Opéra-Comique decided to produce it. The experience would give him some of his most sincere audience response.

The opera was put on with great planning and care, including clever set changes for the twenty scenes. Milhaud saw to it that the opera’s narrators–there were three of them–were dressed in 1910-vintage costumes in keeping with the period in which he had written the opera, even though he thought that the...

A Voice From The Crowd

Tuesday, November 19, 2019, 11:30am

On November 19, 1916, celebrated conductor Arturo Toscanini was at the Augusteo Theater in Rome to conduct the first of three concerts. The program included two pieces by Wagner—Forest Murmurs from Siegfried and the funeral music fromGötterdämmerung. On previous occasions, the orchestra had performed music by major German and Austrian composers without incident, but this night would be different.

Three months earlier, Italy had declared war on Germany, and, just a few days previously, a German air raid had killed more than a hundred Italians, most of them old people, women, and children. To Italians, Wagner represented imperial Germany. When Toscanini arrived at the...

Too Lonely!

Monday, November 18, 2019, 11:30am

In the fall of 1886 Gustav Mahler was the director of the Leipzig Opera house. In a letter that he wrote to his friend Friedrich Löhr, he spoke of positive experiences with composer Karl Reinecke and pianist Anton Rubinstein. He spoke in less positive terms of his relationship with Leipzig Opera principal conductor Arthur Nikisch:

My dear Fritz, First of all, thanks for what you have done for my father. You can imagine how painful all of this has been for me. I’m not in a position to have a relationship with my own people and have to watch them...

Festival or Funeral?

Friday, November 15, 2019, 11:30am

Charles Villiers Stanford was described by a contemporary as “vibrant, untiring, and humorous,” traits that put him at odds with the organizers of the Leeds Festivals in the first years of the twentieth century.

Stanford became the conductor of the Leeds Philharmonic in 1898, but had his conflicts with the secretary of the Leeds Festival, conflicts that spilled over into the music played during the Festival. Stanford’s main beef was that he was not consulted when the programs were put together. He wrote to a friend about the situation in a letter of November 15, 1903:

The whole situation is...

A Natural Solution

Thursday, November 14, 2019, 11:30am

Although American pianist and composer Edward MacDowell would soon come to grief in his dealings with administrators at Columbia University, he had a strong rapport with his students, in part because he broke down the barriers of formality.

Perhaps the same shyness that made MacDowell a reluctant performer was behind the informal approach to lecturing that caused many at Columbia to view him with suspicion. At the close of the nineteenth century, one of his students was John Erskine, who went on to become an influential educator and author. He recalled that MacDowell was likely to start an hour’s lecture...

The Assistant

Wednesday, November 13, 2019, 11:30am

As assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic twenty-five-year-old Leonard Bernstein was to sit in on all rehearsals and learn the scores well enough to be able to conduct them in place of Artur Rodzinski or any guest conductor.

On November 13, 1943, as he attended the Town Hall recital of a friend, Bernstein had a secret. Philharmonic business manager Bruno Zirato had called him to say that the eminent Bruno Walter had come down with the flu and might not be able to conduct the next afternoon’s Carnegie Hall performance.

The concert would be broadcast on CBS radio, making...

Keep Your Day Job

Tuesday, November 12, 2019, 11:30am

Thomas Gainsborough was one of England’s great painters. He thought that he could become a fine musician too. One friend had grave doubts.

In the 1770s Henry Angelo and his wife hosted gatherings that brought together various kinds of artists. In memoirs he wrote in 1830, he recalled that Gainsborough tried to buy Felice de Giardini’s violin and composer Karl Friedrich Abel’s viola, thinking that some of their skill would rub off on him. When he attempted to play Johann Christian Fischer’s bassoon, Johann Christian Bach had to break the bad news to him.

Bach stopped by Gainsborough’s lodgings one...

A Simple Twist of Fate

Monday, November 11, 2019, 11:30am

In 1916 Spanish composer Enrique Granados was in New York for the world premiere of his opera Goyescas. The opera ends with a tragic duel in which the protagonist dies in the arms of his beloved. By a simple twist of fate, Granados would soon experience a real-life tragedy every bit as poignant.

The piano suite Goyescas consisted of two books of three pieces each, representing eighteenth- century Madrid as evoked in the paintings of Francisco Goya. When Granados played it in Barcelona in 1911 it caused a sensation, and three years later, after a Paris performance, Granados was encouraged...

More Than They Bargained For

Friday, November 8, 2019, 11:30am

As a child pianist, Erich Wolfgang Korngold had impressed Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss. By 1934, when the composer came to Hollywood, he wasn’t about to let a movie producer tell him how to do his job.

Hal Wallis had brought Korngold to town for Warner Brothers, to tailor the music of Felix Mendelssohn for a film version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. When Korngold arrived, he saw to it that the Warner Brothers orchestra was transformed from a savvy dance band into a full-fledged symphony orchestra capable of playing classical music.

On his first visit to the studio, Korngold...

The Congressman and the Conductor

Thursday, November 7, 2019, 11:30am

In 1938 twenty-six-year-old Erich Leinsdorf was in New York building a career as a conductor for the Metropolitan Opera when his visa expired, requiring him to return to Austria.

For professional and personal reasons, it was a bad time to go home. Young Leinsdorf had risen quickly in the ranks of the musical establishment, and to leave the Met as opportunities were opening up would be to lose important momentum. At the same time, Austria had just been annexed by Germany, and since Hitler’s rise to power in 1933, Leinsdorf had seen enough of the dark side of his German...

Saved!

Wednesday, November 6, 2019, 11:30am

On November 6, 1891, Peter Tchaikovsky had just conducted his new symphonic poem Voyevode in a Moscow concert arranged by his young editor Alexander Siloti. The applause seemed restrained, and when Tchaikovsky came back into the artists’ greenroom, he destroyed the manuscript and told the attendant to gather all of the orchestral parts and bring them to him.

Siloti intervened, saying, “Excuse me, Pyotr Ilyich, but I am the master here, and I alone can give orders.” He ordered that all of the orchestral parts be taken to his house.

Tchaikovsky, who was already depressed, protested, “How dare you talk...

Viva L'America!

Tuesday, November 5, 2019, 11:30am

Ruggiero Leoncavallo was hoping to revive his career with a conducting contract or a commission for an opera when he agreed to undertake an American tour in the fall of 1906. He traveled with plenty of company–seven singers and the 75-piece La Scala orchestra–and all of them were in for a tough time.

The indignities began while Leoncavallo was still aboard the Kaiser Wilhelm on his way from Bremen to New York. The Minneapolis Tribune printed the remark of a shipboard acquaintance who reported that Leoncavallo was “short, fat, and round-about.”

Leoncavallo had written a short piano piece called “Viva...

American Enlightenment

Monday, November 4, 2019, 11:30am

Pianist Henri Herz was dismissed by Robert Schumann as a mere “stenographer,” but in the 1830s he was the most fashionable and sensational keyboard player in Paris. In 1845, when he wanted big money to bankroll his new piano manufacturing firm, Herz headed for America.

In his book My Trips to America, Herz describes the eccentricities of concertizing in the New World. P. T. Barnum, who was Jenny Lind’s manager at the time, approached Herz in New York and suggested that he play in a concert during which the famed Swedish soprano would appear as an angel descending from heaven....

The Latest from Paris

Friday, November 1, 2019, 11:30am

At the beginning of November 1853, Franz Liszt wrote from Weimar to violinist Joseph Joachim in Hanover about musical discoveries he had made during a recent visit to Paris:

As for news from Paris, I have none except for the vigorous rehearsing of Meyerbeer’s new opera L’Étoile du Nord at the Opéra Comique, for which he tells me he has re-used only four or five pieces from his Feldlager in Schliesen, all the rest of the three acts being entirely new.

Then there’s the complete success of the instrument that I’ve often mentioned to you, which they insist upon naming...

The Séance

Thursday, October 31, 2019, 11:30am

One night in 1887 William James, the celebrated psychologist, and George Henschel, the English composer and conductor, arrived at a rundown house on Rutland Street in Boston. With them was singer Nettie Huxley, whose mischievous expression was at odds with the somber purpose of the visit--to communicate with the dead.

An elderly man in a black frock coat led them into a dim, musty, gas-lit room where a few others waited. An emaciated, humpbacked girl of about sixteen wrung hymn tunes out of a wheezing parlor organ.

The man in black lectured the group on the necessity of seriousness, saying...

Surprise!

Wednesday, October 30, 2019, 11:30am

October 31 was Mozart’s name-day–the feast day of Saint Wolfgang, for whom Mozart was named--and when the day came around in 1781, the twenty-five-year-old composer was in for a surprise. A few days afterward he wrote from Vienna to his father Leopold in Salzburg:

Just as I was going to write to you, a mob of celebrating friends overwhelmed me. At twelve o’clock I drove out to Baroness Waldstadten at Leopoldstadt, where I spent my name day. At eleven o’clock at night I was treated to a performance of my serenade for two clarinets, two horns, and two bassoons that...

The Offensive

Tuesday, October 29, 2019, 11:30am

Joseph Haydn had suffered long enough while employed by Prince Nikolaus II of Esterháza a musical poseur said to have the disposition of “an Asian despot.” He put up with lack of respect and low pay, but in 1796, when the Prince’s administrator sent Haydn a letter expecting him to pay the debts of his niece’s wasteful husband, Haydn went on the offensive:

By the letter sent to me and the enclosure of the worthy Economic Administrator of his Serene Highness Prince Esterházy, I discern that because Luegmayer is unable to pay his debt, I am condemned to pay it...

The Status Symbol

Monday, October 28, 2019, 11:30am

Over the course of more than thirty years, Joseph Haydn had worked for three princes of the Esterházy family. The fourth one was a force to be reckoned with–and so was Haydn.

Prince Nikolaus II said that he liked music, but many musicians claimed that he didn’t know much about it. By 1794, when Nikolaus became the head of the powerful Esterházy family, Haydn had become one of the most famous and respected composers in Europe.

The prince was not impressed though.

It wasn’t that Nikolaus didn’t care for the arts; far from it. He commissioned famous painters and sculptors...

This Other World

Friday, December 6, 2019, 11:30am

Twenty-one-year old Frédéric Chopin was discovering a galaxy of famous musicians of the day when he wrote to a friend back in Poland in December 1831: Paris is whatever you want it to be. You can entertain yourself, be bored, laugh, cry, do whatever you want and nobody notices you because thousands...

The Pianist

Thursday, December 5, 2019, 11:30am

Out of the Body

Wednesday, December 4, 2019, 11:30am

Uh-oh!

Tuesday, December 3, 2019, 11:30am

In his 1952 memoir My Life, Russian émigré composer Alexander Gretchaninoff tells how simple carelessness nearly resulted in disaster. In 1925 the composer and his wife were living in Paris. He went to Rome to conduct two concerts, the second of which was to include his Third Symphony and excerpts...

Offended

Monday, December 2, 2019, 11:30am

What Else Did He Know?

Friday, November 29, 2019, 11:30am

The Elusive Tune

Thursday, November 28, 2019, 11:30am

Composer Jacques Offenbach had eight bars of a tune running through his head--a waltz that his mother had sung to him as a lullaby. Offenbach’s father overheard him humming it and told him that it was by a once-promising young composer named Zimmer, who had suddenly dropped out of sight. Sometime...

A Visitor Incognito

Wednesday, November 27, 2019, 11:30am

In 1822 the most famous touring pianist in Europe was Johann Nepomuk Hummel, who had been a child prodigy so impressive that at the age of seven he became a live-in student of Mozart’s. Hummel’s closest rival was Irish-born pianist John Field, who had been living in Russia for nearly twenty years...

Passed By

Tuesday, November 26, 2019, 11:30am

With the help of publisher John Stark, Scott Joplin made his name with a succession of genteel, lilting ragtime piano pieces, beginning with the million-seller Maple Leaf Rag in 1899. By 1911 he felt that he was in a position to create an entirely new kind of music, an American opera dealing with...

Tug of War

Monday, November 25, 2019, 11:30am

Caught in the Muddle

Friday, November 22, 2019, 11:30am

Lavish in the Extreme

Thursday, November 21, 2019, 11:30am

Incognito!

Wednesday, November 20, 2019, 11:30am

Back in 1910 Darius Milhaud had written an opera called La Brebis égarée , and although he was aware of its youthful flaws, he did not object in November 1923 when the Paris Opéra-Comique decided to produce it. The experience would give him some of his most sincere audience response. The opera was...

A Voice From The Crowd

Tuesday, November 19, 2019, 11:30am

On November 19, 1916, celebrated conductor Arturo Toscanini was at the Augusteo Theater in Rome to conduct the first of three concerts. The program included two pieces by Wagner— Forest Murmurs from Siegfried and the funeral music from Götterdämmerung . On previous occasions, the orchestra had...

Too Lonely!

Monday, November 18, 2019, 11:30am

Festival or Funeral?

Friday, November 15, 2019, 11:30am

A Natural Solution

Thursday, November 14, 2019, 11:30am

The Assistant

Wednesday, November 13, 2019, 11:30am

Keep Your Day Job

Tuesday, November 12, 2019, 11:30am

Thomas Gainsborough was one of England’s great painters. He thought that he could become a fine musician too. One friend had grave doubts. In the 1770s Henry Angelo and his wife hosted gatherings that brought together various kinds of artists. In memoirs he wrote in 1830, he recalled that...

A Simple Twist of Fate

Monday, November 11, 2019, 11:30am

In 1916 Spanish composer Enrique Granados was in New York for the world premiere of his opera Goyescas . The opera ends with a tragic duel in which the protagonist dies in the arms of his beloved. By a simple twist of fate, Granados would soon experience a real-life tragedy every bit as poignant...

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