Bruckner's Clutter
Friday, May 22, 2020, 11:30am
He wrote vast dramatic symphonies but Anton Bruckner led a life that tended to be prosaic and more than a little cluttered. He didn’t look like other musicians of the 1880's. He kept his hair cut so short that many people remembered him as being bald. He wore a short jacket and voluminous trousers...
The Man I Was Looking For
Thursday, May 21, 2020, 3:05pm
He ‘s generally thought of as a singularly English composer, but early in his career, Ralph Vaughan Williams had trouble developing his style in England. He needed the right teacher and he found him in an unexpected place. One of Vaughan Williams' first teachers was Charles Villiers Stanford, who...
The Plow That Broke the Plains
Wednesday, May 20, 2020, 11:30am
The Great Depression was a difficult time for most Americans, including musicians. In 1936 Virgil Thomson was a forty-year-old composer struggling for recognition and cash. His friend John Houseman recommended Thomson to a documentary filmmaker named Pare Lorenz. Lorenz had already interviewed...
Telemann's Runaway Wife
Tuesday, May 19, 2020, 11:30am
Composer George Philip Telemann had lived a long, productive life, but on the home front events had taken some unhappy turns. Telemann consoled himself with two loves--poetry and plants. Telemann's unfortunate home life was publicized by a theater scandal that broke in Hamburg. A play was being...
Liszt in the Lap of Luxury
Monday, May 18, 2020, 11:30am
In 1876 Franz Liszt was on his way from Hanover to Weimar, but he was making the trip in a leisurely, glamorous way. He stopped over at Loo Castle near Utrecht in Holland. On May 18th he wrote to a friend in Weimar: “I already asked you from Hanover to keep your quartet together on Friday, May 26th...
Dangerous Disobediance
Friday, May 15, 2020, 11:30am
Vienna in 1787. It could be a risky place and time for a composer to make a living. And Antonio Salieri took a big risk. He disobeyed the Emperor. Salieri had recently returned from Paris where his opera Tarare had been produced. Emperor Joseph the Second ordered Salieri and his librettist Lorenzo...
Toscanini and the Fascists
Thursday, May 14, 2020, 11:30am
You might think that conducting an orchestra would be a safe profession, but at times a conductor can fall into a life-threatening situation. So it was with Arturo Toscanini in Bologna,Italy on May 14th, 1931. Toscanini had accepted an invitation to conduct two concerts in Bologna. The purpose was...
Faces to Make One Miss Notes
Wednesday, May 13, 2020, 11:30am
New Orleans-born pianist and composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk toured the northern states during the Civil War. As he traveled through New York State he was occasionally able to forget about the war and concentrate on the two great loves of his life--music and women. In May 1864 he wrote in his...
The Unlikely Ally
Tuesday, May 12, 2020, 11:30am
The Frenchman Gabriel Fauré was inclined to write refined, soft-spoken music. In 1908 one of his staunchest supporters was a composer of outgoing, often dissonant pieces--the Spaniard Isaac Albéniz. Fauré was born on May 12th, 1845. He was fifteen years Albéniz' senior, but Albéniz had been a...
William Grant Still
Monday, May 11, 2020, 11:30am
It was the place for an artist to grow--Paris in the 1920's. The American melodist William Grant Still took an unlikely route to get there, and chose an unlikely teacher--the champion of electronic music, Edgar Varèse. Still was born on a plantation near Woodville, Mississippi on May 11th, 1895...
Richard Strauss and the Yanks
Friday, May 8, 2020, 11:30am
May 8th, 1945 -- V.E. Day. Germany surrendered to the Allies, ending World War II in Europe. Composer Richard Strauss was among the many who were glad that the war was over regardless of who had won. He and his family had been suffering under the Nazi regime while living near the village of...
The Money Back Guarantee
Thursday, May 7, 2020, 11:30am
The following letter to Giuseppe Verdi in 1872 shows that to be a composer is to expose oneself to criticism from anyone and everyone: Much Honored Signor Verdi, “On the second of this month I went to Padua, lured by the sensation caused by your opera Aida. I was so intrigued that I was in my seat—...
Chopin in Vienna
Wednesday, May 6, 2020, 11:30am
In 1831 a young pianist and composer named Frederick Chopin left his native land, Poland, in order to establish himself in European musical circles. He was a popular success as a concert performer, but at times was lonely in a crowd. In Vienna in the spring of 1831 Chopin wrote in his journal: “...
Winning Over the Master
Tuesday, May 5, 2020, 11:30am
The young American composer Daniel Gregory Mason had come to Boston to interview the great pianist and composer Ignace Jan Paderweski for Century Magazine. There was trouble from the start. Mason made the appointment through Paderewski's secretary and arrived at Paderweski's hotel on time for the...
The Judas Biographer
Monday, May 4, 2020, 11:30am
On May 4th 1908, sixty-four-year-old Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov was telling a friend about a music treatise he had begun and laid aside. They spoke about the details of composing but, as the evening progressed, the composer and his friend became increasingly reflective. As a rule, Rimsky-Korsakov said...
Liszt Plays Grieg
Thursday, April 30, 2020, 11:30am
Edvard Grieg was 25 years old when he wrote his masterpiece, the Piano Concerto in A minor. One of the first to see it was Franz Liszt, who not only played it and critiqued it, but afterward offered Grieg advice to last a lifetime. The occasion came during a gathering of friends one evening in 1865...
Scandal!
Wednesday, April 29, 2020, 11:30am
His career and his family relationships were bumpy; how could his love life be any different? During his courtship of Constanze Weber, Mozart hit plenty of rough spots. He reacted to one of them in a fervent letter he wrote to Constanze on April 29, 1781: In spite of all my pleas, you’ve dumped me...
The Power Struggle
Tuesday, April 28, 2020, 11:30am
They were some of the greatest composers France had ever heard—Camille Saint-Saens, Vincent d'Indy, and Cesar Franck--and they were locked in a power struggle over fame and love. Needless to say, music also played a part in their conflict. The setting was the Société Nationale that Saint-Saens had...
The Composing Machine
Tuesday, April 28, 2020, 11:30am
Today he is best known for his technical studies such as The School of Velocity- -methodical, mechanical approaches to piano mastery. Carl Czerny was actually an extraordinarily prolific composer whose curiously mechanical way of working made his vast output possible. The English writer John Elia...
Dangerous Peace
Monday, April 27, 2020, 11:30am
George Frederick Handel wrote some of his most successful music for a peace celebration that erupted into a battle. In 1749, late in his long career, Handel wrote his Royal Fireworks Music to celebrate the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle which ended the eight-year War of Austrian Succession. England had...
