Grace Notes

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

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...

The Request

Wednesday, August 8, 2018, 11:30am

It began as a congenial summer evening, but it didn't end that way. Franz Schubert and some fellow musicians had walked over to a suburb of Vienna to taste a new wine that Schubert liked. They moved on to a tavern and afterwards to a coffeehouse where they whiled away the hours with hot punch and a lively discussion about music.

At about one o'clock in the morning, two well-known musicians from the Vienna Opera orchestra came into the coffee house and, seeing Schubert, hurried over to him. The composer broke off his musical discussion as the musicians shook hands...

The Opera War

Tuesday, August 7, 2018, 11:30am

For the 1883 American season music agent James Mapelson wanted to beat out a new competing opera company so he dared to bring together two of the most tempermental singers in the world. He would soon find out that his biggest problem was not his competitor, but his two divas.

Mapelson already had a big star, Adelina Patti. He kept her with his company by paying her more than $5,000 per performance and providing her with a private railway car that cost $60,000 and included a solid silver bathtub and key of 18-carat gold. For the new season...

The Mangled Serenade

Monday, August 6, 2018, 11:30am

It was no ordinary singing club. Its members paraded through the streets accompanied by fifty to a hundred bodyguards. The extra muscle was necessary. When rival clubs clashed, they did more than sing--they fought.

America was being pulled apart by sectionalism, and the 1856 presidential contest was a hot one. Like the rest of America, Pittsburgh was swept up in politics, and its musicians were in the thick of the dispute between presidential contenders. On August 6th, 1856, Stephen Foster jumped into the free-for-all by helping to form the Allegheny Buchanan Glee Club. Foster was to select...

The Concert Storm

Friday, August 3, 2018, 11:30am

In 1852 the American educator Lowell Mason was traveling through Europe observing and reporting on musical life there. On the third of August he attended a concert of orchestral and choral music in Düsseldorf. He reported that music had to wait for a more powerful force:

The rehearsal being closed, the dinner hour and the hours devoted to smoking, drinking and the like -- in the garden -- having passed away, the company began to flock in at about four o'clock to attend the concert. At a little before five, when the buillding was filled, one of the most severe showers...

Fundamental Differences

Thursday, August 2, 2018, 11:30am

The 1930s composer best knew Erich Wolfgang Korngold for his popular Hollywood film scores. His friend Arnold Schoenberg was known--or notorious--for his avante garde musical experiments. Korngold's son George recalled one lively argument between the two.

Despite their differences, Krongold was always glad to see Scheonberg because he liked the challenge of a good debate. On one occasion Schoenberg, Korngold and conductor Otto Klemperer were talking about serial music. Korngold disagreed with Schoenberg's contention that a series of notes played in reverse had the same theme as the original series.

Growing impatient with Korngold's resistance, Schoenberg picked up a...

The Most Musical

Wednesday, August 1, 2018, 11:30am

He's been described as the most musical of all U.S. presidents, but Harry S. Truman was as outspoken about his musical tastes and abilities as he was about everything else. Truman had always taken to music [With the encouragement of his mother, he took piano lessons from the time he was eight until 16 or so. He enjoyed practicing, saying that it was pleasure, not work.] Truman quipped that he hadn't pursued a musical career only "because I was not good enough."

Truman was particularly fond of the music of Mozart, Chopin, Liszt, Mendelssohn, and Debussy, but he also liked...

The Inconsiderate Duke

Tuesday, July 31, 2018, 11:30am

The year 1778 was a difficult one for Mozart. At age 22 he had gone to Paris to bolster his international reputation. During his stay in the French capital his mother died, and when he finally was able to turn back to business he found that his reputation as a child prodigy was getting in the way. On July 31, he wrote to his father in Salzburg:

Now two of my students are in the country, and the third-the Duke de Guines' daughter- is betrothed, and is not planning to continue her lessons, which so far as my finances
...

The Crystal Palace

Monday, July 30, 2018, 11:30am

Violinist Joseph Joachim was one of the best, and he performed all over Europe. He learned where to play and where not to play, as he wrote in a letter to Clara Schumann from London at the end of July 1858:

I don't think ti's very kind or trustful of you to suspect me of going on a tour for money which, no reputable artist would otherwise make. As rebuttal I inform you that Hallé, Piatti and your humble servant had planned to test the English people's solid and apparently growing taste for chamber music and to see how
...

Words You Can Understand

Friday, July 27, 2018, 11:30am

In the spring of 1561 the Santa Maria Maggiore church in Rome hired a new choirmaster. His name was Giovanni Perluigi da Palestrina, and his abilities as a composer of church music would become legendary.

Santa Maria Maggiore had a down-to-earth problem that persists in many church choirs today. It was summarized in a complaint by a bishop who informed church officials that after listening very closely to the choir, he had been unable to distinguish a single word they had sung.

There were other difficulties that the new choirmaster faced. Church composers had fallen into the habit of appropriating...

Dvorak Goes to the Fair

Thursday, July 26, 2018, 11:30am

In the summer of 1893 the great Bohemian composer Antonin Dvorak paid a celebrated visit to the Bohemian community of Spillville, Iowa. It was a peaceful sojourn during which Dvorak made a side trip to a vortex of chaos known as the World's Columbian Exposition Quadricentennial in Chicago.

The "white city," as it was known, rose up in Jackson Park on Lake Michigan, at the edge of the second biggest metropolis in the country. It had a Venetian theme of canals and gilded gondolas and palaces. Packed into its midway was a dizzying multitude of ethnic encampments--including miniature villages from...

The Literary Critic

Wednesday, July 25, 2018, 11:30am

Peter Tchaikovsky had nothing but praise for the French music of his time. He valued George Bizet's opera Carmen above anything produced by the Russian national school, and he was so taken with Jules Massenet's opera Maria Madeleine that he wrote a duet based on words by Tolstoi to a tune inspired by it. But when it came to French literature Tchaikovsky's opinions ran strongly counter to the trends of the day. In July 1880 he wrote to his brother Modeste:

“When it comes to your advice to read The Laughing Man, I thank you, but facetiously. Don't you know...

The Boy Who Dared

Tuesday, July 24, 2018, 11:30am

The young soloist had made up his mind. He was going to play Beethoven's Violin Concerto with the New York Symphony-even though the conductor and the New York music critics scoffed at the idea. When push came to shove, they all gave way for Yehudi Menuhin.

The year was 1927. Walter Damrosch was America's best-known conductor. He tried to reason with the boy. "Now, Yehudi, you probably realize that Beethoven is to music what Shakespeare is to the stage. What is it, then, that makes you think you can play his concerto?"

"I don't know," Menuhin said. "I never thought...

Respect for a Master

Monday, July 23, 2018, 11:30am

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...

Schubert's Vision of War

Friday, September 21, 2018, 11:30am

Franz Schubert wrote many songs celebrating the beauty of nature, but his letters reveal that his response to nature went far beyond mere sightseeing. In September 1825, Schubert was traveling through the Tyrolese Alps with his friend, the singer Michael Vogel. It was a time when much of Europe was...

Too Much Partying

Thursday, September 20, 2018, 11:30am

John Dowland probably thought that he had it made. He was at the height of his reputation as one of England's greatest lutenists and he had just been appointed as lutenist to the Court of Christian the Fourth of Denmark. But coming from service to the reserved Queen Elizabeth, Dowland was shocked...

First Meeting

Wednesday, September 19, 2018, 11:30am

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...

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...

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

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...

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,...

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

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...

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...

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...

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

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...

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