Grace Notes

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

Concert at Gunpoint

Monday, March 11, 2019, 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, Antheil went to Europe to further his career. His tour included cities in the former Austo-Hungarian Empire and Antheil carefully deleted from his publicity any reference to his World War I status as an aviator. But between the controversy of his music and the instability of...

The Clairvoyant Composer

Friday, March 8, 2019, 11:30am

Although she had no formal education, she composed seventy-seven songs, blending words and music so well that they are still being sung eight centuries later. Hildegard of Bingen's inspiration came from a remarkable source -- her visions.

Hildegard was born in the German duchy of Franconia in 1098. Before she was three years old, she had begun to have visions accompanied by a great light. When she was eight, her parents entrusted her to a prioress named Jutta at a Benedictine monastery. Although she had no teacher, Hildegard did benefit from a lifelong relationship with a monk named Volmar who...

The Case of the Disappearing Operas

Thursday, March 7, 2019, 11:30am

Writing an opera requires a great deal of time and energy for the composer and the librettist. The payoff, of course, comes when the opera proves a success or at least gets performed. But in the case of some operas planned by Giacomo Puccini, the work of composer and librettist simply evaporated.

Just after the success of his opera Manon, Puccini was working with a librettist named Giovanni Verga on an opera called Lupu. It was a Sicilian story, and both the publisher and the young Puccini thought it would make a wonderful opera. Puccini sailed to Sicily and met...

A Dubious Honor

Wednesday, March 6, 2019, 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 ruler of a state that had long oppressed Finland.

The Finnish observance of the event took place in a courtyard at the University of Helsinki. The students assembled and removed their hats. Like Sibelius, the students were no friends of Czar Nicholas. But by tradition the Czar was chancellor of...

The Irresistible Bandleader

Tuesday, March 5, 2019, 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

Monday, March 4, 2019, 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...

Gluck Takes It from the Top

Friday, March 1, 2019, 11:30am

Christoph Willibald van Gluck was so intent on the music that he was unaware of anything else. His friend, painter Johann Christian Mannlich described a rehearsal in Paris in the 1770s:

“Every day from nine until noon Gluck attended the rehearsals of his opera. When he returned from them, always in the company of Madame Gluck, he was awash in sweat from his exertions. Without saying a word to him Madame Gluck would take off his wig, rub his head with a towel, and change his clothes. He was flat on his back and didn't say a word again
...

Like Son, Like Father

Thursday, February 28, 2019, 11:30am

Johann Strauss the Younger is known as the waltz-king, but his father was worthy of the title before him, according to an eyewitness account from Vienna in 1833:

“Under illuminated trees and in open arcades people sit at countless tables eating and drinking, chatting, laughing and listening. In their midst the orchestra plays new waltzes that stir the blood like the bite of a tarantula. In the middle of the garden, on the orchestra platform stands the modern hero of Austria, the Austrian Napoleon, the conductor Johann Strauss.

“The power wielded by the black-haired musician may be very dangerous. He's...

Paderewski's Revenge

Wednesday, February 27, 2019, 11:30am

The great Polish pianist Ignace Jan Paderweski took the opportunity to get even with an agent named Wolff who mistreated him on his way to the top. And he wondered ever after what it had cost him to even the score.

It happened in Berlin in 1890. Paderweski was an international sensation, and he was to perform his piano concerto in Berlin with the eminent conductor Hans Von Bulow.

Wolff's agency was the most powerful in Europe. In 1889 Paderewski had asked Wolff to manage his German concert tour and Wolff had flatly refused. An ears before,...

Sir Thomas Quells a Neighbor

Tuesday, February 26, 2019, 11:30am

Music making is a congenial form of art, but Sir Thomas Beecham discovered that sometimes the congeniality needs a little lubrication.

During a tour of Australia the English conductor was relaxing in his hotel room, playing the piano and applying his less-than-sonorous voice to some of Wagner's forging songs. At about midnight there was a rapping on the wall. [Sir Thomas got up, opened the door to his sitting room and peered into the darkness. Seeing no one there, he went to the room next door and knocked.]

"Shut that bloody row at this time of night," his Australian...

Handel's Blunder, Part 2

Monday, February 25, 2019, 11:30am

Handel had never written more brilliantly, but when his oratorio Deborah opened in London in 1733, once-loyal audiences boycotted it, in part because of exorbitant ticket prices and in part because of a notorious misadventure with a case of Burgundy.

Handel had invited a scene-painter named Goupy to dinner at his house on Brook Street. The artist had created the scenery for several of Handel's latest operas and was the drawing-master to the Prince of Wales. He was also a cartoonist with a bent for withering satire.

During the walk to dinner, Handel carefully explained that he was losing most...

Music-Making at Mount Vernon

Friday, February 22, 2019, 11:30am

During the quiet years between his wartime experiences, George Washington enjoyed relaxing at home with music.

When he married the widow Martha Custis in 1759 Washington encouraged her to take keyboard lessons, though she seems not to have pursued them for long. In 1761 Washington bought a London-made harpsichord for his stepdaughter, Patcy, who was four years old at the time. For her less inspired older brother Jack, Washington bought a violin and a boxwood flute trimmed with silver. During the 1760's Mount Vernon was usually full of guests and Washington liked to coax young Patcy into giving recitals. In...

Weber Pans "Der Freischutz"

Wednesday, February 20, 2019, 11:30am

Reviewers have long been vilified for being rough on performers. But this letter from Carl Maria von Weber shows that sometimes the harshest critics are composers. Weber wrote to his wife from Vienna on February 20th, 1822:

“Finally, in the evening, was the performance of my Freischutz. What can I say about it? Where can I begin? There were not two passages in the opera that were played at the correct tempo.

“Everything was either rushed or dragged out. The conductor had rehearsed it without the slightest artistic insight or expression. I sat there in a fever. The...

Amadeus Fires Back

Tuesday, February 19, 2019, 11:30am

Haven been taken to task by his father, Mozart fired off a defensive letter:

I always thought that you would disapprove of my trip with the Webers, but I never had any such intention. When people lose confidence in me I'm likely to lose confidence in myself. The days when I stood on a stool and sang some nonsense Italian and kissed the tip of your nose are long gone. But have you ever lost my reverence, love, and obedience?

The bitter way you write about my innocent relationship with your brother's daughter makes me justifiably indignant. But since it's
...

Father Mozart's Command

Monday, February 18, 2019, 11:30am

In February 1778, Mozart was long past his days as a child prodigy and trying to make a name for himself as a mature composer and performer. His long-suffering manager was his father Leopold, and letters between the two show that they often failed to see eye-to-eye.

Leopold was eager for his son to build his reputation by going to Paris, but after a few letters crossed in the mail, the elder Mozart was dismayed to discover that Wolfgang was not in Paris but in Mannheim, where he was keeping company with his attractive young cousin, Aloysia Weber. When Wolfgang...

Nothing But You

Thursday, February 14, 2019, 11:30am

Robert Schumann on his way to Zwickau, wrote to Clara Wieck on the eve of Valentine's Day 1836:

“It's all I can do to keep my eyes open. For the last two hours I've been waiting for the express mail coach. The roads are so bad that it may be two in the morning before we get underway. How clearly I can see you, my own beloved Clara. You seem so near that I can almost touch you. Once upon a time I could express my feelings in pretty phrases, but no more….

“I may as well tell you that...

Carnaval!

Wednesday, February 13, 2019, 11:30am

Early in February 1917 composer Darius Milhaud left war-tom France for Rio de Janeiro as the secretary to the newly appointed French Minister to Brazil. His experiences there would not affect French politics, but they would influence French music.

Milhaud arrived in Rio in the middle of Carnaval -- [a major event in the Brazilian year, and the holiday was his introduction to Brazilian folklore.] In his autobiography My Happy Life, Milhaud described the excitement in the streets as the time for Carnaval approached.

"One of the dancers' favorite amusements is to improvise words to a melody that's repeated...

Tchaikovsky on the Road

Tuesday, February 12, 2019, 11:30am

On February 12th, 1888 Peter Tchaikovsky was traveling from Leipzig to Prague. He wrote to his brother Modeste:

“On Sunday the 12th we left for Prague. At the frontier I already felt the coming celebrations. The chief of guards asked if I was Tchaikovsky, and when I said that I was he became most deferential. In the last station before Prague a delegation and an entire crowd were waiting for us and accompanied us to Prague.

“At the station in Prague--another delegation, children with flowers, two speeches--one in Russian, another long one in Czech. I replied and walked to
...

Verdi Doesn't Exist

Friday, February 8, 2019, 11:30am

Giuseppe Verdi is remembered as a composer who fought for political causes. But his official role in politics came against his will. On February 8^th, 1865 he wrote to librettist Francesco Maria Piave:

"I received a letter from Count Cavour urging me to accept the nomination to parliament that several citizens were offering me. I went to see him in Turin and he laughed at my speech about how unsuited I was for Parliament. Then he proposed some convincing arguments of his own.

‘All right,’ I said at last. ‘I accept on the condition that I'm allowed to resign after a
...

A Virtuoso Visitor

Thursday, February 7, 2019, 11:30am

Wherever he performed, Franz Liszt caused a stir. We get a vivid close-up of the dazzling pianist from the celebrated Russian composer Mikhail Glinka, who describes a visit by the 31-year-old Liszt to St. Petersburg in February 1842.

"He played Chopin's mazurkas, nocturnes, and etudes and in a word, all brilliant and fashionable music very nicely but with awfully affected ‘elegant’ touches. In my opinion, the way he played Bach--whose Well-Tempered Clavier I know practically by heart--was less satisfying, and so was his playing of a Beethoven symphony that he had transcribed for piano.

“In Beethoven's sonatas and in classical...

Berlioz' Headlong Love

Wednesday, February 6, 2019, 11:30am

Hector Berlioz expressed himself in a grand way, both musically and romantically. In 1828 he was smitten with Harriet Smithson, an Irish actress who was playing Juliet and Ophelia with an English theater company in Paris. Full of unrequited love, Berlioz wrote to his friend Humbert Ferand in February 1830:

“Again, without warning and without reason my ill-fated passion awakens. She is still in London, yet I feel her presence all around me. I listen to my heartbeat. It’s like a sledgehammer. If only she could dream of the poetry, the infinite extent of a love like mine, she would...

Victor Herbert's Revenge

Tuesday, February 5, 2019, 11:30am

Victor Herbert was America's foremost composer of operettas. He was also involved in one of the most notorious lawsuits in the history of music.

Herbert was born in Dublin in 1859. He came to New York as a cellist in 1886 and soon began a career as a conductor and composer. In 1898 he became conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony.

He had long since become accustomed to good reviews and bad. But nothing prepared him for what he read in the New York Musical Courier one day in 1901. It was a review, not of an individual work of...

Kreisler's Other Hoax

Monday, February 4, 2019, 11:30am

Fritz Kreisler is known for perpetrating one of the great hoaxes in music history--passing off his own compositions as the works of great masters. But long before that scandal broke in 1935, Kreisler involved two major composers in a clever hoax.

Born on February 4th, 1875, Kreisler was only seven when he entered the Vienna Academy in 1882. He and his young fellow students may have been able to perform like adults, but they still had the sense of humor of boys. Kreisler's teacher for harmony and music theory was the great Anton Bruckner. Bruckner was a strong supporter of the...

The Stingy Virtuoso

Friday, February 1, 2019, 11:30am

The two had been an inseparable duo. Their music had taken the concert halls of Europe by storm. Now one of them was about to go under the knife and the other insisted on being present during the entire operation. It would be enough to rattle the nerves of any surgeon—the responsibility of saving the violin of the great virtuoso, Niccolo Paganini.

The “surgeon,” the restorer of fine violins, was the Parisian J.B. Vuillaume. As his chisel began opening the instrument there was a slight cracking noise and in a heartbeat, Paganini was out of his chair, bending nervously over...

Busoni Arrives in New York

Thursday, January 31, 2019, 11:30am

On January 31^st, 1915, one of Italy's great composers, a homesick Feruccio Busoni had just arrived in New York, and in a letter to pianist Egon Petri he turned his thoughts to the latest musical events.

“I sent you two long letters from on board ship. The morning was made magical by a light fog and the haze I describe as sun-particles. For each of us this arrival is confusing yet stimulating. I was moved by the spectacle. But by the time we had gotten to the center of town, my heart had sunk. And that's where it has stayed...

The Feast

Wednesday, January 30, 2019, 11:30am

The winter of 1937 was a tough one for the Spanish composer Joaquin Rodrigo and his wife Victoria. Having grown up blind, Rodrigo was accustomed to difficulties, but as an exile in France during the Spanish Civil War, he was struggling just to get enough to eat. The couple was staying in an inexpensive hotel in Paris.

A friend referred them to someone who might be interested in buying some of their antiques. Weak with cold and hunger Rodrigo and Victoria went to see the prospective buyer. She apologized for having a dinner guest. "You'll have to wait a little...

Compromises

Tuesday, January 29, 2019, 11:30am

For a long time the Spanish composer Manuel de Falla had wanted to compose a work based on the novel The Three-Cornered Hat. His original idea was to make an opera of it, but the author's will did not permit it, so Falla opted to write it as a ballet. Early on, he learned important lessons about the compromises that come with performance.

Choreographer Serge Diaghilev had suggested Falla's Nights in the Gardens of Spain for the ballet, but Falla doubted that the music -- with its intricate orchestral detail and abstract feeling -- could be applied to ballet, so...

Orange Plantation Composer

Monday, January 28, 2019, 11:30am

“That man has music in his mind, but when he sets it down it’s almost impossible to play it.” So said an American friend of a young English composer named Frederick Delius. It’s not surprising that Delius’ music was unusual. He had found his calling in a very unusual way—managing an orange plantation in Florida.

At 22 Delius longed to be a musician, but he was stuck with a desk job that he found increasingly boring—a job in his father’s wool business. When he came across an article about Florida, he pleaded with his father to let him go there. ...

The Wedding March

Friday, January 25, 2019, 11:30am

One 19th century masterpiece brilliantly expresses the English character even though it was written before the composer had ever been to England.

As a boy, Felix Mendelssohn experienced the English personality through the plays of Shakespeare. Using the latest German translations, his family often acted them out for their own entertainment. So it was natural for Mendelssohn, at seventeen, to write his overture A Midsummer Night's Dream. Sixteen years later--in 1842--after he had traveled in England--Mendelssohn encountered another fervent admirer of Shakespeare--the King of Prussia. With an enthusiasm not to be denied, the King demanded that Mendelssohn write incidental music to...

Liszt's Wild Party

Thursday, January 24, 2019, 11:30am

Eighteen forty-eight. Piano virtuoso Franz Liszt was dazzling Europe in one concert after another. The slender, dark-haired virtuoso was the heartthrob of many a lady. But one day the arch-romantic became a little too flamboyant.

The occasion was a farewell party for a friend leaving Weimar. The partygoers toasted the guest of honor by passing around a boot of champagne, and before long the gathering became very merry. As the proceedings progressed, Liszt took off his jacket and tie. It occurred to him that the doctor sitting next to him had promised to sound his chest when the opportunity occurred. ...

Search form

The Ideas Network

Program Schedule

Program Notes

NPR News & Classical Network

Program Schedule

Music Playlists

All Classical Network

Program Schedule

Music Playlists

Grace Notes

The great Polish pianist Ignace Jan Paderweski took the opportunity to get even with an agent named Wolff who mistreated him on his way to the top. And he wondered ever after what it had cost him to even the score.

It happened in Berlin in 1890. Paderweski was an international sensation, and he was to perform his piano concerto in Berlin with the eminent conductor Hans Von Bulow.

Wolff's agency was the most powerful in Europe. In 1889 Paderewski had asked Wolff to manage his German concert tour and Wolff had flatly refused. An ears before,...

Wherever he performed, Franz Liszt caused a stir. We get a vivid close-up of the dazzling pianist from the celebrated Russian composer Mikhail Glinka, who describes a visit by the 31-year-old Liszt to St. Petersburg in February 1842.

“In Beethoven's sonatas and in classical...

Subscribe To WPR Newsletters