Grace Notes

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

By 1750, Francesco Geminiani had been in England off and on for more than 35 years. He had become known as one of Europe's finest composers and violinists. Running short of money, he decided to conduct a benefit concert at Covent Garden. Unfortunately, conducting was not his strong suit, but his reputation and sheer musicianship carried him through a looming disaster, as becomes apparent in an eyewitness account of the concert:

The singers not being perfect in the parts, the performance miscarried. The advertisements had drawn together a number of persons, sufficient to make what is called a very
...

The Concert from Hell

Friday, July 20, 2018, 11:30am

Call it the concert from hell. In his autobiography, Louis Spohr tells of a performance that got off to a bad start and hit the skids to disaster.

It happened during a German tour in 1811. Before the concert a wealthy amateur treated the musicians to a lavish evening of dinner and champagne. The musicians grew so merry that they forgot all about the concert and rushed to the hall at the last minute.

The concert began with an overture by a composer named Romberg, who overreacted to criticism that he conducted too slowly. He conducted so fast that the...

The Innovator

Thursday, July 19, 2018, 11:30am

He was a major innovator in the insurance industry. He created the concept of estate planning and introduced the idea of training schools for insurance agents. When it came to composing music Charles Ives was also a mover and shaker, but followers were few.

In 1910, a business acquaintance talked the celebrated conductor Walter Damrosch into having the New York Symphony Orchestra play through parts of Ives' First Symphony during a rehearsal. Although he had misgivings, Ives needed to hear his music performed so he offered the second movement of his symphony for the exercise.

At first the playing went...

The Masterpiece

Wednesday, July 18, 2018, 11:30am

Peter Tchaikovsky had reservations about his fellow Russian composers, but great respect for a contemporary from France—George Bizet, composer of Carmen. In a letter to his brother Modeste he wrote on July 18", 1880:

“To refresh myself last night I played Carmen from start to finish and all my admiration and love for that wonderful opera came rushing back. [I even conceived an article in which Carmen, in spite of its modest claim to be only an opera comique, and not grand opera, is really one of the most prominent lyric-dramatic creations of our time.

“In my...

The Theft

Tuesday, July 17, 2018, 11:30am

Musicians are never far from the possibility of a professional catastrophe. But when it became known that composer Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst suffered from an incurable illness, his friend, violinist Joseph Joachim, participated in a benefit concert for Ernst. Then came a second blow, which Ernst described in a letter to Joachim on July 17, 1862:

I've been somewhat better for the last few days. I'm in less pain and the weather is so splendid that I can go for an unbroken swim in the sea. I hope I'll get some relief, and build up enough strength to get me
...

Grieg's Rambunctious Move

Monday, July 16, 2018, 11:30am

Occasionally an artist becomes too popular for his own good. In his autobiography, Edvard Grieg tells about trying to find a place to put up a hut where he could work undisturbed by his public.

He built on a secluded hill overlooking a fjord, to which there was no visible path, hoping to be free from intruders. But unbeknownst to him an old right-of-way path led right to it. So all winter long, if the weather wasn't too bad, Grieg heard people tiptoeing around the hut as he worked.

It also turned out that the hut was exposed to powerful...

A Tune for Revolution & Revelry

Friday, July 13, 2018, 11:30am

The young captain of engineers in the French army was popular as a poet, violinist, and singer among his fellow officers in Strasbourg. He wrote a hymn to liberty and several plays but, above all, Claude-Joseph Rouget de Lisle is remembered for his war song for the army of the Rhine-better known as the Marseillaise.

France declared war on Austria in 1792, and on the night of April 25, Rouget de Lisle wrote hastily a rousing song vowing death to the enemy. The song was quickly arranged for a military review, and was snapped up by volunteers from Marseilles, who...

Haydn Takes London

Thursday, July 12, 2018, 11:30am

Joseph Haydn had been in London for three months and was succeeding mightily with English audiences. On March 14th, 1791 he wrote to a friend in Vienna:

“I have plenty to do because of all the concerts and opera, and I am hounded all the time by the subscription concerts. Our opera hasn't opened yet, and since the king won't grant the license, the director of the opera plans to open it as if it were a subscription concert because if he doesn't he just may lose twenty thousand pounds sterling. I won't lose anything because my bankers in
...

The Sunday Pianist

Wednesday, July 11, 2018, 11:30am

Franz Liszt was not only a masterful pianist and a world-class composer. He also fostered the talent of other composers. Alexander Borodin wrote of a formative encounter with Liszt in July 1877.

When I told him that I was only a Sunday pianist, he quipped, "but Sunday is always a feast day, and you are just the right person to preside."

After tea our hostess led us to the piano in the drawing room and handed Liszt one of his own rhapsodies, asking him to show us how certain passages ought to be played. Liszt laughed. "You want me
...

The Ruins of Babylon

Tuesday, July 10, 2018, 11:30am

Greatness in ruins-it was a popular theme for poets and composers in the early 19th century. A little too popular as far as Beethoven was concerned. In July 1811, he found himself being upstaged, and he wrote to a Viennese theater director to do something about it.

Your Excellency-I hear that the actor Scholz will shortly be giving as a benefit for the Theater An der Wien the melodrama The Ruins of Babylon. I wished to write an opera on the subject, as I have already announced to you. I cannot comprehend this complication! I dare say you know
...

The Starving Artist

Monday, July 9, 2018, 11:30am

The starving artist. The phrase is a cliche, but it is also a literal description of composer Karl Goldmark as a young theater musician.

In 1851, at age 21, Goldmark was scraping out a living as a theater musician in Budapest. He and a friend rented a single room with a kitchen. They slept in the kitchen on a bag stuffed with straw. Their only other furniture was a chair and a piano. Goldmark practiced diligently, h oping to become a capable self-taught pianist so that he could supplement his income as an accompanist for singers. He also played for...

Too Much of a Good Thing

Friday, July 6, 2018, 11:30am

Was it too much of a good thing? He was born with the best musical heritage imaginable and his talent was considerable, but Wilhelm Friedemann Bach fell short of everyone's expectations. He was the first-born son of Johann Sebastian Bach, and that in itself may have proved a handicap. Friedemann was his father's favorite among his four composer sons, and among the four it was Friedemann who wrote music most like his father's.

By the 1730's,though, Friedemann found himself defending his and his father's harmony-rich music against those favoring a newer style that Fridemann disdained as mere "ear-tickling" and "bouncing...

The Summer Job

Thursday, July 5, 2018, 11:30am

In the 1920s the most reliable way for a young composer to make money was to teach--without being too picky about the quality of the students. When twenty-five-year-old Aaron Copland had a chance to make money by performing in a trio at a Pennsylvania summer resort, he took it.

Copland was working on a Symphony for Organ and Orchestra. He imagined a perfect summer with leisurely mornings in which to compose, free meals, and playing easy pieces for afternoon teas and genteel dinners.

It was not to be.

The Milford Inn was running in the red and had so few...

A Versatile Tune

Wednesday, July 4, 2018, 11:30am

The song began humbly and rose to great heights over the course of 150 years. Our story begins in London in 1780 with a social club named after a fun-loving Roman poet said to have died at 86 from choking on a grape seed.

Most of the members of the Anacreontic Society were amateur musicians, though a few of them were professionals. [They met every two weeks at the Crown and Anchor Tavern in the Strand. The evening's entertainment consisted of a concert, dinner, and drinking songs.] The society began each evening with a song tailor-made by two...

Sad Thoughts from Paris

Tuesday, July 3, 2018, 11:30am

In 1778, 22 year-old Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart had gone with his mother to Paris, hoping to enhance his international reputation. He had gone reluctantly, and once he got there, he found one obstacle after another. On July 3, he wrote to his father in Salzburg:

"I have very painful and sad news to give you, which in fact accounts for my n ot having replied sooner to your letter. My dearest mother is very ill. They have bled her according to custom, which was indeed quite necessary and did her a lot of good. But a few days later
...

Stravinsky's Star-Spangled Banner

Monday, July 2, 2018, 11:30am

Igor Stravinsky had been living the in the United States for two years and he wanted to make a patriotic gesture. But America didn't exactly appreciate Stravinsky's gift-an arrangement of "The Star-Spangled Banner."

Two Things gave Stravinsky the idea of writing the arrangement. A composer who visited him twice a week "to have his works re-composed" suggested it. And since Stravinsky was obliged to begin all of his concerts with the National Anthem anyway, and didn't care for any of the existing arrangements, he set to work. He finished it in Los Angeles on July 4, 1941. Shortly afterward an...

Villa-Lobos Plays the Guitar for Segovia

Friday, June 29, 2018, 11:30am

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 it.

It happened in Paris in 1924. They were at a party given by a mutual friend. According to Villa-Lobos, Segovia didn't recognize him at first and remarked that the composer wrote music that was at odds with the guitar since it required impossible techniques. Then, according to Villa-Lobos, the...

Always the Critic

Thursday, June 28, 2018, 11:30am

"Who could not win the mistress wooed the maid." So said Alexander Pope, suggesting that critics are failed, envious artists.

The Gamble

Wednesday, June 27, 2018, 11:30am

In June 1907 Franz Lehár 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 chosen a popular comic actor named Joe Coyne for the part of Danilo. During the rehearsals Edwards had kept Coyne's inability to sing a secret from Lehár by saying that the actor had a bad cold and needed to preserve his voice for the performances. And so a skeptical Lehár...

Upstaged at the White House

Tuesday, June 26, 2018, 11:30pm

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 honored for his role in bridging the gap between the United States and the Soviet Union. The crowd included America's ambassador to the Soviet Union, Arthur Harmann, who had arranged for Horowitz' triumphal return to Russia for the first time in sixty years. Secretary of State George Schultz was in...

Scottish Novel, Italian Opera

Monday, June 25, 2018, 11:30am

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 a shambles. Rossini had retired. Bellini was dead. "Our theaters go from bad to worse," he said. "The operas fail, the public hisses, the attendance is poor. The crisis is at hand. The public has indigestion, the theater society is about to be dissolved, Vesuvius is smoking, and the eruption...

Mahler's Appointment with Freud

Friday, June 22, 2018, 11:30am

It was to be a meeting of minds. The great symphonist Gustav Mahler had an appointment with the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud.

Although he initiated it, Mahler was clearly uneasy about the meeting. He canceled three times before finally coming face to face with Freud in 1910. By the time the session was finally arranged Freud was vacationing on the Baltic coast. Only Mahler's stature made him agree to interrupt his relaxation for professional work.

After a fitful exchange of telegrams, they met at a hotel in Leyden and spent four hours ambling through town as Freud delved into...

Saved By a Button

Thursday, June 21, 2018, 11:30am

The Water Music, the Royal Fireworks Music, Messiah. It's possible that none of them would have been written if it hadn't been for a lucky encounter with a button.

In 1704 George Frederick Handel was a 19-year-old hothead who took his music making very seriously. He was serving as harpsichordist in a Hamburg production of the opera Cleopatra by another young composer, Johann Mattheson. Mattheson was one of the stars of the production, playing the part of Antonius. After falling on his sword and going through his death scene, Mattheson was free to slip into the orchestra pit and pick...

Too Political

Wednesday, June 20, 2018, 11:30am

In June 1866 the Russian composer Mily Balakirev was in Prague, attempting to arrange a performance of Mikhail Glinka's opera A Life for the Czar. Things had gone badly. His efforts had been interrupted by a war between Austria and Prussia. Six months later the war was over and Balakirev was in Prague again. But his struggle was by no means over.

The opera had been produced in his absence, and when he arrived in Prague, Balakirev saw a performance of it. He wrote to a friend in Russia, "What a horror it was! I haven't quite returned to my...

A Dangerous Homecoming

Tuesday, June 19, 2018, 11:30pm

In 1866 Mily Balakirev was asked to go to Prague to arrange a production of Mikhail Glinka's opera A Life for the Czar. He was to have the greatest adventure of his life--getting home.

Balakirev set out in June and had just arrived in Prague when war broke out between Austria and Prussia. Balakirev wrote to a friend, "I had to stay whether I wanted to or not. All the next day I was on edge. Every hour they posted on street corners new bulletins from which you could determine nothing except that the Austrians were fighting doggedly against the...

Engrave This in Your Head

Monday, June 18, 2018, 11:30pm

Vincenzo Bellini had strong ideas about what an opera should do. And he could be very forceful in trying to get his ideas across to others. For example, he wrote to a librettist in June 1834:

"Don't forget to bring with you the piece you've roughed out so far so that we can resolve the business of the first act. If you'll fortify yourself with plenty of patience, the act will emerge as an interesting, magnificent, worthwhile poem in music. That's in spite of you and all your absurd rules, which are useless except for generating unending palaver that will
...

An Improviser Par Excellence

Friday, June 15, 2018, 11:30am

By 1740, when Carl Philip Emanuel Bach went to Pottsdam to work for King Frederick the Great, his father, Johann Sebastian Bach, was famous throughout Europe, and King Frederick grew increasingly eager to meet the man known as "the Old Bach."

In 1747 Johann Sebastian Bach, age 62, finally left Leipzig and made the journey to Pottsdam with his eldest son, Wilhelm Friedemann. The king was in the habit of holding private concerts every night, during which he would solo in the performance of flute concertos. One evening as the king and his musicians were all ready to play, an...

Musical Diversions for the President

Thursday, June 14, 2018, 11:30am

Eighteen-fifty nine. America was on the brink of Civil War and the weary president of the United States needed music to divert him from the big troubles. The music in the White House of James Buchanan varied considerably.

One of the year’s biggest hits was Ullman’s Opera Troupe and its prima donna, Marietta Picccolomini. The twenty-year-old singer had just performed in Donizetti’s Don Pasquale in Washington. She attended a White House reception at which she shared the spotlight with a delegation of Potawatomie Indians. Through an interpreter, the 67-year-old bachelor president engaged in small talk with the singer. One guest...

They Barely Understand Me

Wednesday, June 13, 2018, 11:30am

June 13th, 1865. New Orleans-born pianist Louis Moreau Gottschalk was making a concert tour of the American West. Traveling through Nevada he wrote in his journal:

“The first rays of day light up our faces--dirty, dust-covered, our eyes swollen from lack of sleep, etc. We arrive at Dutch Flat, a pretty little town hidden at the bottom of a wooded gorge like a nest in a bush. The neat white houses are covered with splendid rosebushes whose flowers cover the trellises all the way up to the roofs. They are small frame houses, very neat, very small, etc.

“Concert...

The Rhapsody that Wouldn't Let Go

Tuesday, June 12, 2018, 11:30am

Composers have various reasons for writing--inspiration, pleasure, and money. In the case of Claude Debussy's Saxophone Rhapsody the motivation was provided by money and a persistent music-lover named Mrs. Elise Hall.

Mrs. Hall was a wealthy Boston matron who had taken up the saxophone. In 1895 she commissioned Debussy to compose a work for her instrument. As far as Debussy was concerned, Mrs. Hall's commission had a good side and a bad side. On the bad side was his lack of familiarity with the saxophone. On the good side was the payment enclosed. He accepted the...

Respect for a Master

Monday, July 23, 2018, 11:30am

The Concert from Hell

Friday, July 20, 2018, 11:30am

Call it the concert from hell. In his autobiography, Louis Spohr tells of a performance that got off to a bad start and hit the skids to disaster. It happened during a German tour in 1811. Before the concert a wealthy amateur treated the musicians to a lavish evening of dinner and champagne. The...

The Innovator

Thursday, July 19, 2018, 11:30am

The Masterpiece

Wednesday, July 18, 2018, 11:30am

The Theft

Tuesday, July 17, 2018, 11:30am

Grieg's Rambunctious Move

Monday, July 16, 2018, 11:30am

Occasionally an artist becomes too popular for his own good. In his autobiography, Edvard Grieg tells about trying to find a place to put up a hut where he could work undisturbed by his public. He built on a secluded hill overlooking a fjord, to which there was no visible path, hoping to be free...

A Tune for Revolution & Revelry

Friday, July 13, 2018, 11:30am

Haydn Takes London

Thursday, July 12, 2018, 11:30am

Joseph Haydn had been in London for three months and was succeeding mightily with English audiences. On March 14th, 1791 he wrote to a friend in Vienna: “I have plenty to do because of all the concerts and opera, and I am hounded all the time by the subscription concerts. Our opera hasn't opened...

The Sunday Pianist

Wednesday, July 11, 2018, 11:30am

Franz Liszt was not only a masterful pianist and a world-class composer. He also fostered the talent of other composers. Alexander Borodin wrote of a formative encounter with Liszt in July 1877. When I told him that I was only a Sunday pianist, he quipped, "but Sunday is always a feast day, and you...

The Ruins of Babylon

Tuesday, July 10, 2018, 11:30am

The Starving Artist

Monday, July 9, 2018, 11:30am

The starving artist. The phrase is a cliche, but it is also a literal description of composer Karl Goldmark as a young theater musician. In 1851, at age 21, Goldmark was scraping out a living as a theater musician in Budapest. He and a friend rented a single room with a kitchen. They slept in the...

Too Much of a Good Thing

Friday, July 6, 2018, 11:30am

The Summer Job

Thursday, July 5, 2018, 11:30am

A Versatile Tune

Wednesday, July 4, 2018, 11:30am

Sad Thoughts from Paris

Tuesday, July 3, 2018, 11:30am

Stravinsky's Star-Spangled Banner

Monday, July 2, 2018, 11:30am

Villa-Lobos Plays the Guitar for Segovia

Friday, June 29, 2018, 11:30am

Always the Critic

Thursday, June 28, 2018, 11:30am

"Who could not win the mistress wooed the maid." So said Alexander Pope, suggesting that critics are failed, envious artists.

The Gamble

Wednesday, June 27, 2018, 11:30am

In June 1907 Franz Lehár 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 chosen a popular comic actor...

Upstaged at the White House

Tuesday, June 26, 2018, 11:30pm

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 honored for his...

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