Grace Notes

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

One of the greatest conducting careers in history began by accident. It came about when a 19-year-old cellist was called upon to lead a performance of Aida. The cellist was no ordinary musicisan though. He performed every opera by memory. His name-- Arturo Toscanini.

In 1886 Toscanini was performing with an Italian orchestra touring South America and things were going badly. The conductor, a Brazilian, did not impress the Italians. He thought the Italians were out to get him. He quit and the assistant conductor, an Italian, replaced him.

On opening night, June 30th, the audience stubbornly refused to hear...

Villa-Lobos Plays the Guitar for Segovia

Monday, June 29, 2020, 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...

Upstaged at the White House

Friday, June 26, 2020, 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

Thursday, June 25, 2020, 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.

At Odds with Interlochen

Wednesday, June 24, 2020, 11:30am

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 and concertizing, by 1931 when he first visited Interlochen. By 1937 when he began teaching there, he was attracted to the quiet, and to the idea of not traveling, and he also found the salary appealing.

Grainger and his wife Ella lived in a cabin within earshot of...

Bull of the Frontier

Tuesday, June 23, 2020, 11:30am

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, a frontiersman approached him and offered him a drink of whiskey from a flask. Politely, the violinist declined. “Whiskey is like poison to me,” he said.

The man’s friends gathered around, saying, “if you can’t drink, then you’ve got to fight. You look damned strong! Show us what you’re...

Mahler's Appointment with Freud

Monday, June 22, 2020, 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...

A Dangerous Homecoming

Friday, June 19, 2020, 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

Thursday, June 18, 2020, 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:

Satie the Ardent Suitor

Wednesday, June 17, 2020, 11:30am

Eric Satie is known for the eccentricity of his music. That eccentricity was only a reflection of the odd way in which the composer conducted his life--including his love life.

Satie is known to have had an affair with only one woman--and it's possible that he could not have survived--or had time for--more than one such affair. Satie was in his twenties when he was introduced to Suzanne Valadon. She was one year older than Satie, was a painter educated in the street of Montmartre. She had been the mistress of Renoir, and of Degas, who had helped to arrange...

The Dynamic Hugo Wolf

Tuesday, June 16, 2020, 11:30am

The Austrian composer Hugo Wolf was brilliant if erratic. A letter he wrote to a friend on June 16th, 1890 shows that he was dynamic, whether he was talking about music or the weather:

“The publisher skips over the proposal to share profits as if it were unimportant. He enlarges his first suggestion to say that after the sale of 300 copies of the twelve Selected Songs, he could see his way clear to print the rest. I'll write to him today to say that I insist on sharing the profits and that a complete volume must be issued if...

An Improviser Par Excellence

Monday, June 15, 2020, 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...

The Rhapsody that Wouldn't Let Go

Friday, June 12, 2020, 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...

More Than You Deserve

Thursday, June 11, 2020, 11:30am

Portrait of Ludwig van Beethoven by Joseph Karl Stieler

Ludwig van Beethoven was very dependent upon the good will of his publishers, but he was blunt by nature, and in a letter to Breitkopf and Hertel in June 1810, Beethoven minced no words...

Chemistry versus Opera

Wednesday, June 10, 2020, 11:30am

Composer Alexander Borodin was a chemistry professor by profession and so he had a slightly detached view of making music. He had to do justice to two careers--one for his students, the other for the public. He wrote to a friend on June 10th, 1876:

“As a composer trying to remain anonymous I am wary of discussing my musical activity. That makes sense enough. For others music is the mainstay of their life. For me it's a diversion, a hobby that distracts me from my primary occupation--my professorship. I love my profession and my science. I love the Academy and...

Favors

Monday, June 8, 2020, 11:30am

Pianist and composer Stephen Heller had gotten to know violinist Joseph Joachim during a concert tour in England. When a friend needed a favor, Heller wrote to the influential Joachim from Paris on June 8th, 1862:

“Besides the quiet sincerity and simple manners of the good men of the country I miss all that lush green which you get in the parks and squares and gardens of London. The heat is intense and I dread July and August. My new rooms are pretty and cool and comfortable. The only problem is a piano teacher who lives on the fourth floor...

That Useless Company

Friday, June 5, 2020, 11:30am

Sometimes even the greatest composers have to distinguish between just and unjust criticisms of their work. After a bad performance of his opera Un Ballo in Maschera, Giuseppe Verdi wrote to the producer on June 5, 1859:

You were wrong to defend Un Ballo in Maschera against the attacks in the newspapers. You should do what I always do-don't read them, or let them sing whatever tune they want. Fact-an opera is either bad or good. If it's bad, the journalists are right to pan it. If it's good and they refuse to acknowledge it because of some prejudice,...

Paganini's Gratitude

Thursday, June 4, 2020, 11:30am

Hector Berlioz and Niccolo Paganini. The passion, the extravagance, and the eccentricity of their music was a reflection of the way they lived. Berlioz wrote one of his greatest works, Harold in Italy, for Paganini, and it brought the two composers together in an extraordinary way.

Paganini was away when Berlioz completed Harold in Italy, so he heard it for the first time as a member of the audience. At the end of the concert, as Berlioz stood trembling and perspiring with exhaustion, in through the orchestra door came Paganini followed by his son Achilles. Because of a throat infection...

Weber & the Wrong Bottle

Wednesday, June 3, 2020, 11:30am

In 1804 Carl Maria von Weber was a 17-year-old composer and singer with little conducting experience. He was invited to lead the theater orchestra in Breslau, and accepted the position in part because he hoped that its modest salary would enable him to support his father, an unsuccessful engraver. He tried to bring in new musicians and new repertory, but at every turn he met resistance. Then, in the midst of this series of temporary professional setbacks, Weber suffered a personal calamity that would last a lifetime.

One evening early in 1806 Weber asked a friend, Friedrich Wilhelm Berner, to...

Weber's Conducting Ordeal

Tuesday, June 2, 2020, 11:30am

In the spring of 1804 Carl Maria von Weber was not yet 18 years old. But he already had some distinguished compositions to his credit, and though he had little conducting experience, he was invited to lead the theater orchestra in Breslau. The salary was small and the position modest, but it would help Weber to support his unproductive father. He accepted the invitation. Within two years that decision would cost him dearly.

Weber started off badly in Breslau although he didn't know it. An influential violinist had wanted Weber's conducting job, and before Weber even arrived in town, the...

Surviving a Russian Tour

Monday, June 1, 2020, 11:30am

Clara Schumann was one of the best-known pianists in the world. After a concert tour, she shared some of her impressions of Russia and Russian performers in a letter she wrote to Johannes Brahms from Dusseldorf on June 1st, 1854:

“We attended a grand festival in the Kremlin on Easter night and I'll remember it for the rest of my life. As far as my success in Russia is concerned I have to say that I'm perfectly satisfied given the current acute financial crisis there. I couldn't have done that well in Germany. It's true though that the stress was...

The Riot

Friday, May 29, 2020, 11:30am

The Champs-Elysees Theater. May 29th, 1913. One of the most notorious premieres in classical music is about to occur. Pierre Monteux is about to conduct the first performance of Igor Stravinsky's ballet The Rite of Spring.

The wife of dancer and choreographer Vaslev Nijinksy has heard bits of the music during rehearsals, and she suspects that the audience will get restless, but at the opening notes of the overture her worse fears are surpassed.

Part of the audience decides that Stravinksy's ballet is as attempt to destroy music as art. They make catcalls and snide suggestions as to how the...

The Ambulance Driver

Thursday, May 28, 2020, 11:30am

When World War I swept across France, Maurice Ravel set aside composing and became an ambulance driver. He was an ambitious volunteer. But at the age of 41 he discovered a problem that threatened to take him out of the service entirely. He wrote to a friend at the end of May 1916:

“You know—because you tried to talk me out of it—that ever since the war began, I had intended to join the Air Force. As soon as I joined this unit three months ago, I wrote to inform Captain L. that I was at the front and to...

The Catastrophic Conductor

Wednesday, May 27, 2020, 11:30am

Louis Spohr was one of the first conductors to use a small stick--a baton--instead of a staff. The baton enabled Spohr to direct the orchestra in subtle ways, the staff was good for little more than beating time. But the conductor whom Spohr found dramatic and expressive--to a fault--was Beethoven.

Spohr had heard plenty about Beethoven's conducting before actually witnessing it, and still was shocked. Beethoven used all sorts of body motion to communicate with the orchestra. For emphasis he would throw his arms wide apart, for a quiet passage he would bend down. The quieter the passage, the farther down...

Wagner vs. the Londoners

Tuesday, May 26, 2020, 11:30am

It wasn't the best offer Richard Wagner had received--an invitation to conduct eight concerts for the London Philharmonic Society for a fee of 200 pounds. But Wagner was attracted to the chance of conducting a large and excellent orchestra, and so in 1855 he came to London--and the center of a musical controversy.

Once he got to London, Wagner found out that the conductor of the orchestra, a Mr. Costa, had argued with the Philharmonic Society and refused to conduct their concerts. Apparently Costa had been bluffing, though, and he was thoroughly disgusted when the society not only took him...

The Gruff Giant

Monday, May 25, 2020, 11:30am

At the age of twenty-one Felix Mendelssohn was already known as one of Europe’s finest composers, and he came from a family that moved in high social circles. But young Mendelssohn was in awe and unsure of himself when he visited the 81-year-old literary giant, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. On May 25th, 1830, he wrote from Weimar to his family in Berlin:

“Goethe is so friendly and congenial with me that I don’t know how to thank him or how to be worthy of it. This morning he made me play the piano for him for about an hour,
...

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 that made some people think he was a peasant. A colored handkerchief hung from his pocket. Holding his hat in his hand, he walked so fast through the streets of Vienna that even his young pupils had trouble keeping up with him.

Bruckner’s two-room apartment was...

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 favored a neo-classical style with a clear outline. That kind of structure did not square with Vaughan Williams' more imaginative approach.

"Stanford was a great teacher," Vaughan Williams later recalled. "But I believe I was unteachable. I made the great mistake of trying to fight my teacher. The way to get...

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 other composers, including Aaron Copland, by the time he talked to Thomson. Thomson's first concern was not aesthetics.

Lorenz explained that the film was a documentary about cattle raising, wheat growing, and dust storms on the Western plains. Its sponsor was the United States Resettlement Administration, which wanted to justify its program of assisting refugees from devastated...

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 planned that would satirize three Hamburg celebrities, including Telemann. The satire was aimed particularly at Telemann because his wife had been unfaithful to him and loved a Swedish officer. When news of the planned production leaked out, Hamburg authorities put a stop to it. But worse damage was to follow. Telemann's wife took...

Pages

The Unexpected Debut

Tuesday, June 30, 2020, 11:30am

Villa-Lobos Plays the Guitar for Segovia

Monday, June 29, 2020, 11:30am

Upstaged at the White House

Friday, June 26, 2020, 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...

Scottish Novel, Italian Opera

Thursday, June 25, 2020, 11:30am

At Odds with Interlochen

Wednesday, June 24, 2020, 11:30am

Bull of the Frontier

Tuesday, June 23, 2020, 11:30am

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, a frontiersman...

Mahler's Appointment with Freud

Monday, June 22, 2020, 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...

A Dangerous Homecoming

Friday, June 19, 2020, 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...

Engrave This in Your Head

Thursday, June 18, 2020, 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:

Satie the Ardent Suitor

Wednesday, June 17, 2020, 11:30am

Eric Satie is known for the eccentricity of his music. That eccentricity was only a reflection of the odd way in which the composer conducted his life--including his love life. Satie is known to have had an affair with only one woman--and it's possible that he could not have survived--or had time...

The Dynamic Hugo Wolf

Tuesday, June 16, 2020, 11:30am

The Austrian composer Hugo Wolf was brilliant if erratic. A letter he wrote to a friend on June 16th, 1890 shows that he was dynamic, whether he was talking about music or the weather: “The publisher skips over the proposal to share profits as if it were unimportant. He enlarges his first...

An Improviser Par Excellence

Monday, June 15, 2020, 11:30am

The Rhapsody that Wouldn't Let Go

Friday, June 12, 2020, 11:30am

More Than You Deserve

Thursday, June 11, 2020, 11:30am

Ludwig van Beethoven was very dependent upon the good will of his publishers, but he was blunt by nature, and in a letter to Breitkopf and Hertel in June 1810, Beethoven minced no words...

Chemistry versus Opera

Wednesday, June 10, 2020, 11:30am

Favors

Monday, June 8, 2020, 11:30am

That Useless Company

Friday, June 5, 2020, 11:30am

Sometimes even the greatest composers have to distinguish between just and unjust criticisms of their work. After a bad performance of his opera Un Ballo in Maschera , Giuseppe Verdi wrote to the producer on June 5, 1859: You were wrong to defend Un Ballo in Maschera against the attacks in the...

Paganini's Gratitude

Thursday, June 4, 2020, 11:30am

Hector Berlioz and Niccolo Paganini. The passion, the extravagance, and the eccentricity of their music was a reflection of the way they lived. Berlioz wrote one of his greatest works, Harold in Italy , for Paganini, and it brought the two composers together in an extraordinary way. Paganini was...

Weber & the Wrong Bottle

Wednesday, June 3, 2020, 11:30am

Weber's Conducting Ordeal

Tuesday, June 2, 2020, 11:30am

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Grace Notes

The Unexpected Debut

Villa-Lobos Plays the Guitar for Segovia

Upstaged at the White House

Scottish Novel, Italian Opera

At Odds with Interlochen

Bull of the Frontier

Mahler's Appointment with Freud

A Dangerous Homecoming

Engrave This in Your Head

Satie the Ardent Suitor

The Dynamic Hugo Wolf

An Improviser Par Excellence

The Rhapsody that Wouldn't Let Go

More Than You Deserve

Chemistry versus Opera

Favors

That Useless Company

Paganini's Gratitude

Weber & the Wrong Bottle

Weber's Conducting Ordeal

Surviving a Russian Tour

The Riot

The Ambulance Driver

The Catastrophic Conductor

Wagner vs. the Londoners

The Gruff Giant

Bruckner's Clutter

The Man I Was Looking For

The Plow That Broke the Plains

Telemann's Runaway Wife

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