Grace Notes

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

The Irresistible Bandleader

Thursday, March 5, 2020, 11:30am

At the sight of the grim-looking procession peasants ran for their lives. In that part of Romania and Hungary robbers were everywhere and these appeared to be some of the worst.

They were actually a band 0f 34 young musicians who had fallen on hard times, had nearly had their instruments confiscated in the middle of a performance because of unpaid debts, and had sold a couple of violins to buy a few rusty pistols, though ammunition had been beyond their means.

They had come east from Vienna full of high hopes that fell quickly in empty concert halls that...

The Joke That Became Famous

Wednesday, March 4, 2020, 11:30am

Some musical works are written from inspiration, some for money. Ignaz Jan Paderweski wrote his famous Minuet as a practical joke.

An elderly doctor named Chalubinski had befriended the 26-year-old Paderewski. and often invited the young pianist to his house in Warsaw. The doctor and a writer friend invariably asked Paderewski to play something by Mozart. [Paderewski knew only three or four pieces by Mozart and he wound up playing them over and over while the doctor and a writer friend raved on and on about the Mozartean genius. It got to the point that the two old men would...

The Violinist Revolutionary

Tuesday, March 3, 2020, 11:30am

He was a composer and one of the finest violinists of the 18th century, but the times he lived in forced Joseph Boulogne to set aside music and embrace revolution.

He was the son of a French government official and an African woman from the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe. For a time the family lived in Haiti then, when Joseph was about 10, his life took a sudden turn when they moved to Paris.

Young Joseph became skilled in all the pursuits of a gentleman--riding, dancing, swimming, and skating. He developed into one of the most adroit swordsmen in Europe. ...

Truth or Legend?

Monday, March 2, 2020, 11:30am

Truth or legend? Either way, one story about Archangelo Corelli has come down from generation to generation, from Corelli’s time to our own. The story takes place about 1709, when Corelli was at the height of his reputation as a composer and a violinist. It goes like this.

The King of Naples invited Corelli to come and perform for him. Supposedly Corelli was fearful and reluctant but finally was convinced to come from Rome to Naples to perform for the king. Although he was nervous because there wasn’t time to rehearse the members of the king’s orchestra, Corelli agreed...

The Charge

Friday, February 28, 2020, 11:30am

Ludwig van Beethoven spent a good deal of his time concerned with music and money. A letter that he wrote to composer Ferdinand Ries on February 28, 1816, dismisses both matters quickly in order to take up a new preoccupation:

Quite some time ago I wrote to let you know that the trio and the sonata had been sent out. In my last letter, I asked you, since I still had so many expenses to cover, to make sure that Herr Birchall reimburses me for the cost, which comes to at least ten gold ducats. In any event, he got...

The Shaky Collaborators

Thursday, February 27, 2020, 11:30am

Composer Mily Balakirev had scraped up enough money for his Free Music School to put on a series of four concerts in St. Petersburg during the winter of 1879. Colleague Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov was to direct them, and before they were over, he was a nervous wreck.

One of the concerts was to include the Polovtsian Dances and other selections from Alexander Borodin’s opera Prince Igor, the catch being that Borodin hadn’t finished the opera yet, and Rimsky-Korsakov spent no end of time pleading with him to orchestrate the excerpts to be performed in the concert. Borodin taught chemistry and medical...

Fantasia

Wednesday, February 26, 2020, 11:30am

Paul Hindemith was a distinguished composer and music theorist whose works were banned in Germany by Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels in 1936. Like many of his colleagues, Hindemith went to the United States looking for a way to earn a living. By the end of February 1939 he was in Hollywood, where he visited the Twentieth Century Fox and Paramount studios hoping to find a lucrative film contract.

He pinned his highest hopes on a third visit, to Walt Disney Studios.

Disenchantment came quickly. He watched animators work on a Mickey Mouse production. “Naturally a director oversees all this to make...

For the Record

Tuesday, February 25, 2020, 11:30am

The new decade called for a new technology. So in 1920 Adrian Boult agreed for the first time to conduct a performance for a gramophone record. Boult had been signed by the American manager of His Master’s Voice, who had liked Boult’s performance at the Russian Ballet and asked him to repeat some of the program “for the record.”

Boult was to conduct the British Symphony Orchestra in recordings of A Shropshire Lad by George Butterworth and two ballet suites–The Good Humoured Ladies, based on music by Domenico Scarlatti, and Ottorino Respighi’s reworking of Rossini pieces called La Boutique Fantasque.

When Boult and...

Circumstances Beyond My Control

Monday, February 24, 2020, 11:30am

February 24, 1876, brought the debut of a collaboration between Norway’s greatest playwright and Norway’s greatest composer. Henrik Ibsen’s play Peer Gynt, with more than an hour of music by Edvard Grieg, became a classic, but in a letter he wrote almost thirty years after the premiere in Christiania, Grieg reflected on the limitations of the first performance and the obstacles to the play’s subsequent success.

Unfortunately I didn’t get to decide at what points the music would come in and how long each piece would be. That was in the hands of the Swedish theatrical director Josephson, who was...

Round Two

Friday, February 21, 2020, 11:30am

As a student at the Paris Conservatory, Hector Berlioz had experienced at least one run-in with its feisty director, Luigi Cherubini. In his autobiography, Berlioz tells of a second encounter.

He had applied for a professorship of harmony at the Conservatory and received word that Cherubini wanted to see him.

Cherubini explained that Berlioz would surely get the position, but that he had someone else in mind for it.

Berlioz offered to withdraw his application.

“No, no, that is not good,” Cherubini said, “because, you see, people would say that I was the cause of your withdrawing.”

“Then I’ll remain...

The Portent

Thursday, February 20, 2020, 11:30am

Because it was politically sensitive, Giuseppe Verdi’s new opera Un ballo in maschera made the Italian censors nervous. They forced Verdi to change the action to someplace farther from home.

He chose seventeenth-century Boston. The King of Sweden became the Governor of Boston.

When Un ballo in maschera came to the United States in 1861, it was quite the rage despite some absurdities, such as Puritans holding a masked ball.

When the opera played at the Academy of Music in New York on February 20, 1861, its audience included President-elect Abraham Lincoln, who was en route from Springfield, Illinois, via...

Frederick the Great

Thursday, February 20, 2020, 11:30am

Whether in battle or art, Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, loved all kinds of deception. In 1743 or so, during a lull between wars, Frederick got back to importing talent for his various musical ensembles. One of his potential recruits, something of a quack, was Jaques de Vaucanson, who had given a remarkable demonstration before the Royal Academy of Sciences in Paris.

In 1738 Vancanson presented to the Academy a 78-inch tall wooden shepherd, a replica of a statue called The Marble Faun of Coyfevaux. The main difference between the original and the replica being that the replica could play...

Broken Windows

Wednesday, February 19, 2020, 11:30am

On February 20, 1816, a combination of miscalculations and mishaps had brought about a disastrous debut for Rossini’s operaThe Barber of Seville. At the end of the contentious first act, Rossini sat at the piano and applauded the singers, but some in the audience thought he was praising his own opera, which made them all the more volatile.

Then there was the matter of the next night’s performance.

On the day after the debut, Rossini and alto Geltrude Righetti-Giorgi sat down and went over the score, and he took out some of the things that he thought the audience had good reason to...

A Close Shave for the Barber

Tuesday, February 18, 2020, 11:30am

Giovanni Paisiello had crafted a popular opera from a play by Beaumarchais in 1782, but in 1816 Gioachino Rossini went ahead and wrote his own version of The Barber of Seville. Some Roman opera-goers were partial to the Paisiello and considered young Rossini an upstart for thinking he could improve upon it. The name change to Almaviva fooled none of the Paisiello followers, who saw at once that this was a reworking of their old favorite.

But on the night of February 20, 1816, when the curtain rose for the first performance, no one could have predicted all that would go wrong with Rossini’s opera.

Tenor Manuel Garcia as...

Sticking With It

Monday, February 17, 2020, 11:30am

At the age of twelve, Daniel Barenboim was a poised, accomplished pianist with three years of major concerts to his credit. In the summer of 1955, he was taking a conducting class at the Salzburg Mozarteum. The school had brought in a series of guest teachers, conductors who were working at the Salzburg Festival, each of whom would instruct the class for a day.

Among the guest teachers was the formidable George Szell, longtime conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra, who had been given credit for building it into what one critic called “the world’s keenest symphonic instrument.”

Young Barenboim had...

Lover or Priest?

Friday, February 14, 2020, 11:30am

The lover or the priest? An incident from early in the life of Franz Liszt suggests that even as a teenager he had the impulses of both.

By the age of sixteen Liszt had long since made a name for himself as one of Europe’s great pianists. In Paris he gave lessons to members of aristocratic families, among them Caroline de Saint-Cricq the seventeen-year-old daughter of a count who was finance minister for King Charles X.

The lessons were chaperoned by Caroline’s mother, who, in her way, was apparently as charmed by Liszt as Caroline was. The Countess seems to...

I Have No Time!

Thursday, February 13, 2020, 11:30am

When Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s sister Nannerl chided him for not writing more often, he sent her a reply that explained where all his time had gone. He wrote on February 13, 1782:

Our father, when he has finished his duties in church, and you, when you’re through with your students, can do whatever you want for the rest of the day and write letters containing complete litanies. But not so with me. I described my routine to my father the other day and I’ll repeat it to you.

My hair is always done by six o’clock in the morning, and...

There Is Just One King!

Wednesday, February 12, 2020, 11:30am

On a bitingly cold morning on February 12, 1877, an orchestra of professional and amateur players waited in the dining room of the royal palace in Christiania. They were less than enthusiastic about the invitation to perform for Norway’s King Oscar II.

The king had recently heard about the success of the Symphony No. 2 in B-flat of Johan Svendsen, and had invited the composer to give a concert of his works for a few invited guests at the palace.

Dressed in white ties and tails, the shivering musicians gathered in the empty dining room where they were to perform. There was no orchestra...

Bad Omens

Tuesday, February 11, 2020, 12:45pm

In June of 1840 the director of the Apollo Theater in Rome invited Gaetano Donizetti to compose an opera for the coming season. Apparently the project was doomed from the start.

For his story Donizetti chose an old libretto, Adelia, or the Archer’s Daughter, which had been used by several other composers without much success. To suit Roman tastes a new librettist was brought in to provide a happy ending. Donizetti didn’t care for the composite result, but he set aside his doubts and put it to music.

The omens were not favorable. First there was the false rumor that...

The Fragrant Faust

Monday, February 10, 2020, 11:30am

The producers of Charles Gounod’s opera Faust had their work cut out for them. The opera had not done so well at its Paris debut in 1859, and now a Hanover premiere was in the works. Although many in the city and the surrounding countryside were excited about the upcoming performance, several newspaper editors expressed suspicion about a French composer daring to set Goethe’s German masterpiece to music, especially since several German composers had failed.

The cast included excellent singers, but the stage manager came up with one special effect that would make this production of Faust memorable for everyone...

The Vocal Critic

Friday, February 7, 2020, 11:30am

Casting an opera for the stage and casting it for the movies can be quite different, as was proved by a notable blunder at RCA.

In his 1976 autobiography Cadenza: A Musical Career longtime Boston Symphony conductor Erich Leinsdorf tells of recording sessions in Rome in the late 1950s. For a production of Puccini’s Tosca RCA executive George Marek had cast three of the great singers of the day–Zinka Milanov, Jussi Björling, and Leonard Warren. But for Madama Butterfly Marek decided to cast Anna Moffo and Cesare Valletti in the roles of the lovers Cio-Cio San and Lieutenant Pinkerton--two genuinely...

The Rift

Thursday, February 6, 2020, 11:30am

The great philosopher was a champion of the great composer until one of them tried to enter the field of the other.

That’s the way conductor Hans Richter told the young pianist Ernst von Dohnányi about the rift between Richard Wagner and Friedrich Nietzsche. According to Richter, who was a close friend of the Wagner family, the relationship came to grief with bad music and hurt feelings.

Nietzsche had long been an outspoken admirer of Wagner, and was a frequent visitor to the Wagner home. One day he arrived with a manuscript–a composition of his own, a work for piano...

Lost in Translation

Wednesday, February 5, 2020, 11:30am

As an established concert pianist, Cyril Smith was accustomed to overcoming the routine obstacles that inevitably arose during performances in England. In 1937 he was invited by the British Consul to undertake a six-week swing through Denmark, Sweden, Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and Romania. With the honor of his first tour of the Continent came the responsibility of representing all British musicians, which became a challenge when he encountered a remarkable piano.

By the time he arrived in the Romanian city of Cernauti, winter cold had set in with a vengeance. The piano he was to play was kept in...

Charisma

Tuesday, February 4, 2020, 11:30am

James William Davison, music critic for The Times of London, was known for his caustic dismissals of celebrated composers and performers.

But when the charismatic young pianist Arabella Goddard came to his attention, Davison changed his tune. At the age of four-and-a-half, the French-born daughter of English parents had played a fantasia at a charity concert. It was said that at seven she played for Chopin in Paris, and, at age eight, for Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.

Arabella was fourteen when she was playing a piece by Mendelssohn and had a memory lapse. She signaled the concert manager to...

Pay it Forward

Monday, February 3, 2020, 11:30am

One day in 1962 world renowned violinist Isaac Stern was at the Paris workshop of celebrated lute maker Etienne Vatelot, a good friend who had written him a letter about a Chinese family of his acquaintance. Vatelot said to Stern, “They have this young boy, about six, seven years old. You should hear him. He’s unbelievable.”

Arrangements were made for Stern to hear the Paris-born boy perform. His name was Yo-Yo Ma and his cello looked bigger than he was. Stern recalled that hearing the boy play left him “astonished, truly astonished.”

When Ma and his family emigrated to the...

The Next Generation

Friday, January 31, 2020, 11:30am

After a grueling concert tour of Great Britain, Johann Strauss had faced a rebellious orchestra and suffered a physical breakdown. After his return to Vienna to recuperate in the winter of 1839, his shattered health and tattered finances gave him no alternative but to lie in his sickbed and hope to recuperate.

One afternoon he heard violin music coming from another room in the apartment. He left his bed and quietly made his way to the sound, a waltz. He eased the door open and watched silently as his fourteen-year-old son Johann fiddled in front of a mirror, giving his...

An Irresistible Force

Thursday, January 30, 2020, 11:30am

Johann Strauss the Elder and his orchestra had come to London to perform for the coronation of Queen Victoria, but before playing a note, he had been hauled into court over a dispute with an unprincipled hotel proprietor. He won the case, but Strauss was compelled to pay the court costs, which was no easy feat since his valet had meanwhile absconded with all of Strauss' cash.

Strauss had no alternative but to sell some of his new pieces to a London publisher.

Even as his prospects improved, his experiences were mixed. At the Russian embassy, he and his musicians...

Insult to Injury

Wednesday, January 29, 2020, 11:30am

Was it the crowning of the new king, George II, or something in the air that made London audiences tire of Italian music, operas in particular, in 1727? Whatever it was, George Frederick Handel pressed on in spite of it and continued to produce operas until he and his backers ran out of money. As receipts dwindled, the quality of the audiences fell, too. After competing sopranos got into a fistfight during a performance of Handel’sAstinatte, genteel theater-goers retreated at the first sign of trouble, leaving the theater to those whose pleasure in music was second to their enjoyment of a...

Rebound

Tuesday, January 28, 2020, 11:30am

Six days after the Hamburg debut of his First Piano Concerto, on January 28, 1859, Johannes Brahms wrote an assessment to violinist Joseph Joachim in Leipzig:

Dearest Friend–Even though I’m still quite stunned by the sublime delights that have assaulted my eyes and ears for the last few days via the sight and sound of the wise men of our musical town, I will force this hard and pointed steel pen to tell you how it happened that my concerto has been here a brilliant and decisive–failure.

First off I have to say that it was really done very well. I...

Crocodile Teeth

Monday, January 27, 2020, 11:30am

A sojourn in Paris was necessary for an aspiring composer, but the cost of living was high, and, toward the end of 1927, Heitor Villa-Lobos was beginning to run out of money. He needed to attract more people to the concerts of his music, and he concluded that the fastest way to do it would be with some powerful publicity.

The Brazilian decided to play up his exotic origins. To critic Lucie Mardrus he gave a long interview in which he told a remarkable story.

The resulting article appeared soon after a concert of his music. It was called “The...

Pages

Fed-Up in Rome

Thursday, April 2, 2020, 11:30am

Love, politics, and music. In April 1831 Hector Berlioz was in Florence, Italy, and he was disgusted with all three. He wrote to a friend: “You speak to me of music and of love! What do you have in mind? I don't get it. Is there something on earth called music and love? I thought I'd heard those...

The Tricksters

Wednesday, April 1, 2020, 11:30am

Niccoló Paganini was the most famous violinist in Europe. He was also more versatile than anyone would have guessed--at work and play. And he loved a practical joke.

Schubert Down on His Luck

Tuesday, March 31, 2020, 11:30am

Franz Schubert writing from Vienna to a friend in Rome, March 31st, 1824.

Cherubini Takes on Napoleon

Monday, March 30, 2020, 11:30am

He was a strange man, a macabre man, the composer of the "Funeral March for a Papagallo." Everything about Charles-Valentin Alkan seemed eccentric—even his death on March 29th, 1888.

The Modest Virtuoso

Friday, March 27, 2020, 11:30am

On March 27 th , 1830 a twenty-year-old Polish pianist, Frederic Chopin, was concertizing in Warsaw and he wrote to a friend in a nearby town: “About the first concert: The hall was full, and all the boxes and stage seats were sold out three days in advance, but most of the audience didn't get the...

The Presidential Performer

Thursday, March 26, 2020, 11:30am

It was a time when a president of the United States was in sore need of soothing music, and Woodrow Wilson brought some of the best performers into the White House. He had the added advantage of being a pretty fair musician himself. As a young man Wilson had played the violin. He sang tenor in the...

A Royal Pain

Wednesday, March 25, 2020, 11:30am

An invitation to perform for a king. Most musicians would see it as a grand opportunity. Louis Spohr found it a royal pain.

Waldstein

Tuesday, March 24, 2020, 11:30am

Waldstein. The name is best remembered because Beethoven wrote one of his best piano sonatas for his friend and patron.

Good and Bad Advice

Monday, March 23, 2020, 11:30am

John Ireland became one of England’s great twentieth-century composers. As a young man he received advice from another major composer--Edward Elgar. Fortunately for English music, Ireland ignored some of it.

The Dazzling Liszt

Friday, March 20, 2020, 11:30am

At the age of 30 Robert Schumann was one of many pianist composers who was dazzled by the virtuosity and personality of the 29-year-old Franz Liszt. He reported to his fiancée Clara Wieck, from Leipzig in March 1840: “I wish you could have been with me this morning to see Liszt. He is quite...

The Italian Marine Band

Thursday, March 19, 2020, 11:30am

. The group of sixteen Italian musicians didn’t know what to think. Their leader, Gaetano Carusi, had brought them to America, the land of promise. But when they arrived in Washington their first thought must have been to go back home. The year was 1805 and Carusi himself described the capital city...

Brutally Frank Advice

Wednesday, March 18, 2020, 11:30am

How direct should an established composer be when appraising the work of an up-and-comer? Vincent d'Indy would've had two answers to the question -- one before and one after getting advice from Cesar Franck. D'Indy recalled: "Once I had played a movement of my string quartet for him -- which I...

The Cold Irish Pianist

Tuesday, March 17, 2020, 11:30am

He was traveling with one of the most famous and successful composers of the day, but the young Irish pianist was not having a good time. His name was John Field and he was touring Europe demonstrating Muzio Clementi's new pianos. Soon he would become known as one of the great teachers and...

Gershwin's Early Setbacks

Monday, March 16, 2020, 11:30am

Recognition came early to George Gershwin, but first came some humbling moments. At 21, Gershwin wrote a piano piece called “Swanee.” It debuted in a band arrangement at the Capitol Theater in New York where sixty chorus girls with electric lights on their slippers danced to it. Gershwin hung...

Offenbach's Short Comeback

Friday, March 13, 2020, 11:30am

Eighteen-seventy-one. It was the end of an epic in France. Years of opulence and gaiety had been blasted by the grim, disastrous Franco-Prussian War. One of the less obvious casualties was a musician huddled in an oversized coat. He was Jacques Offenbach, composer of buoyant operettas that must've...

An Honest Opinion

Thursday, March 12, 2020, 11:30am

Johannes Brahms disliked insincere flattery. But he sometimes went to great lengths to get an honest opinion of his composing and his playing. In his autobiography, composer Karl Goldmark mentions receiving an invitation to a house where two new Brahms compositions were to be performed for the...

Concert at Gunpoint

Wednesday, March 11, 2020, 11:30am

Pianist George Antheil got used to his concerts turning into riots. After all, he made a habit of ending each evening with a set of ultra-modern pieces. But he wanted his music to be heard, and he started taking dangerous measures to see that it was. Like many young American artists in the 1920's,...

Weber's Hopes & Fears

Tuesday, March 10, 2020, 11:30am

Carl Maria von Weber was 31 years old and beginning to settle down professionally and socially. On March 10th, 1817 he wrote from Dresden to a friend: “I should have written to you long ago to tell you about my appointment as Kapellmeister to the King of Saxony and Director of the German Opera here...

The Rabble Rouser

Monday, March 9, 2020, 11:30am

"With this opera it is fair to say my artistic career began." So wrote Giuseppi Verdi of Nabucco , a masterpiece that also did much to launch his reputation as a political rabble-rouser. The opera is based on the story of Nebuchadnezzar--given the more musical name Nabucco--who defeats the Jews at...

A Dubious Honor

Friday, March 6, 2020, 11:30am

Jean Sibelius must've had mixed feelings. He had been commissioned to compose a cantata for a solemn state occasion--the Finnish celebration of the coronation of Czar Nicholas the Second. It was a major opportunity for the young composer, but as a Finnish nationalist he had no desire to glorify the...

Menu

Listen Live

Program Schedule

Program Notes

Program Schedule

Music Playlists

Program Schedule

Music Playlists

Grace Notes

The Irresistible Bandleader

The Joke That Became Famous

The Violinist Revolutionary

Truth or Legend?

The Charge

The Shaky Collaborators

Fantasia

For the Record

Circumstances Beyond My Control

Round Two

The Portent

Frederick the Great

Broken Windows

A Close Shave for the Barber

Sticking With It

Lover or Priest?

I Have No Time!

There Is Just One King!

Bad Omens

The Fragrant Faust

The Vocal Critic

The Rift

Lost in Translation

Charisma

Pay it Forward

The Next Generation

An Irresistible Force

Insult to Injury

Rebound

Crocodile Teeth

Search form

The Ideas Network

Program Schedule

Program Notes

NPR News & Classical Network

Program Schedule

Music Playlists

All Classical Network

Program Schedule

Music Playlists

Special Events Stream

Grace Notes

Subscribe To WPR Newsletters