Grace Notes

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

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

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

Stravinsky's Star-Spangled Banner

Monday, July 2, 2018, 11:30am

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

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

Villa-Lobos Plays the Guitar for Segovia

Friday, June 29, 2018, 11:30am

It was only natural that Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos would write for the guitar. And maybe it was inevitable that he would meet the world's greatest guitarist, Andres Segovia. But exactly what happened at that first meeting is not so certain because Villa-Lobos and Segovia gave sharply contrasting accounts of it.

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

Always the Critic

Thursday, June 28, 2018, 11:30am

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

The Gamble

Wednesday, June 27, 2018, 11:30am

In June 1907 Franz Lehár had a good reason to be nervous about the London debut of his operetta The Merry Widow. Too late, he had found out that the male lead couldn't sing.

The casting for the performance had been a gamble by London producer George Edwards, who had chosen a popular comic actor named Joe Coyne for the part of Danilo. During the rehearsals Edwards had kept Coyne's inability to sing a secret from Lehár by saying that the actor had a bad cold and needed to preserve his voice for the performances. And so a skeptical Lehár...

Upstaged at the White House

Tuesday, June 26, 2018, 11:30pm

The playing was some of the finest in the world. But on this particular occasion in 1986, Vladimir Horowitz was to be upstaged by the President and first lady of the United States.

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

Scottish Novel, Italian Opera

Monday, June 25, 2018, 11:30am

The 38-year-old composer was gambling that his new opera would succeed where others were failing. Gaetano Donizetti was pinning his hopes on a hastily written opera based not on an Italian subject but on a Scottish novel.

By 1835 Donizetti believed that the state of opera in Naples was in a shambles. Rossini had retired. Bellini was dead. "Our theaters go from bad to worse," he said. "The operas fail, the public hisses, the attendance is poor. The crisis is at hand. The public has indigestion, the theater society is about to be dissolved, Vesuvius is smoking, and the eruption...

Mahler's Appointment with Freud

Friday, June 22, 2018, 11:30am

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

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

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

Saved By a Button

Thursday, June 21, 2018, 11:30am

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

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

Too Political

Wednesday, June 20, 2018, 11:30am

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

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

A Dangerous Homecoming

Tuesday, June 19, 2018, 11:30pm

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

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

Engrave This in Your Head

Monday, June 18, 2018, 11:30pm

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

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

An Improviser Par Excellence

Friday, June 15, 2018, 11:30am

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

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

Musical Diversions for the President

Thursday, June 14, 2018, 11:30am

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

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

They Barely Understand Me

Wednesday, June 13, 2018, 11:30am

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

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

“Concert...

The Rhapsody that Wouldn't Let Go

Tuesday, June 12, 2018, 11:30am

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

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

More Than You Deserve

Monday, June 11, 2018, 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...

Favors

Friday, June 8, 2018, 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...

A Friend and a Liability

Thursday, June 7, 2018, 11:30am

Composer Charles Gounod was handsome, talented, and charming. He needed to make some connections in opera circles. When he met Pauline Viardot he made connections quickly, but he paid for them.

In 1850 Madame Viardot was the talk of Paris music circles. Some thought she was ugly, some found her strangely attractive. All agreed that she was a fine singer, though not in the usual way. According to composer Camille Saint-Saens Madame Viardot's voice was neither velvet nor crystal, but harsh and powerful, with the "pungent flavor of a bitter orange."

She lived in an unusual household. It consisted of...

The Shaky Accompanist

Wednesday, June 6, 2018, 11:30am

Modeste Mussorgsky's physician had good reason to fear that the composer was in no state to participate in a concert he had arranged for the benefit of medical students.

Mussorgsky was to accompany the distinguished Italian tenor Ravelli, and when on the day of the performance, the singer asked to meet Mussorgsky, the physician found the composer reeling under the influence of alcohol. Mussorgsky told his friend that he wasn't up to meeting Ravelli at that particular moment, but assured the doctor that he would be just fine for the evening performance.

With that, Mussorgsky saw the doctor to the...

That Useless Company

Tuesday, June 5, 2018, 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

Monday, June 4, 2018, 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...

Surviving a Russian Tour

Friday, June 1, 2018, 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 Special Effect

Thursday, May 31, 2018, 11:30am

The crossing from Europe to New York left Igor Stravinsky with hours to fill and so he prevailed upon cellist Gregor Piatigorsky to work with him on a cello and piano transcription of his ballet Suite Italienne. Violinist Nathan Milstein also had some time on his hands and so he came along and watched as Piatigorsky made daring suggestions and defended them as Stravinsky listened.

One of Piatigorsky’s most brilliant effects came about by accident.

Tea was served aboard the SS Rex at 4:45, and Milstein and Piatigorsky attended regularly, enjoying the company of various attractive young women who were...

The Million Dollar Trio

Wednesday, May 30, 2018, 11:30am

They were three of the world’s most formidable musicians, and in 1949 they were invited to perform together during a series of four concerts in Chicago’s Ravinia Park. Their togetherness would be short-lived.

Pianist Arthur Rubinstein, cellist Gregor Piatigorsky, and violinist Jascha Heifetz drew huge admiring crowds at Ravinia, and the newly-formed threesome was so successful that one critic referred to them as “The Million Dollar Trio.”

Rubinstein disliked the nickname so much that he couldn’t wait to drop out of the ensemble, but when RCA invited the trio to make a recording of their concert repertory, he agreed to...

The Shortcut

Tuesday, May 29, 2018, 11:30am

In the spring of 1592 John Bull left London for Bristol, leaving his work as organist at the prestigious Chapel Royal to a subordinate. In a curious way, his leave of absence would provide a great opportunity to an undistinguished musician named William Phelps.

For reasons unknown, Bull took his time getting back to London, riding north through Gloucestershire, perhaps stealing a bit of a vacation from his employer, Queen Elizabeth, who was known to keep a short leash on her favorite musicians. He seems to have been on his way to visit friends in Worcester when he took the...

The Magician, the Musician, & the President

Monday, May 28, 2018, 11:30am

Would the composer and the president catch on to the trick? In 1914, at an evening’s entertainment for the German Sailors Home and the Magicians Club of London, after the Ritz Carlton orchestra’s performances of excerpts of Puccini operas, the agenda moved on to the great magician Houdini.

Houdini began with some simple close-up illusions–changing the colors of silk handkerchiefs and turning water into wine, and he noticed that sitting next to composer Victor Herbert was a very intent Theodore Roosevelt. He was sure that the former president had been able to see through every trick–so far.

The magician proposed...

A Team Effort

Friday, May 25, 2018, 11:30am

In the spring of 1782, Mozart was a busy twenty-six-year-old composer with music and matrimony on his mind. On May 25 he wrote from Vienna to his father Leopold in Salzburg, and the letter was a team effort between Mozart and his intended. Mozart wrote:

This time I really do need to steal a moment, so that you don’t have to wait too long for a letter. Tomorrow our first concert takes place in the Augarten, and at half past eight, Martin will be bringing me in a carriage and we still have to make six visits, which I
...

The Wayward Bach

Thursday, May 24, 2018, 11:30am

Johann Sebastian Bach fathered four sons who became prominent composers, but he had other musical children, including a black sheep named Johann Gottfried Bernhard.

In 1736, when a position opened for an organist at St. Mary’s in Mülhausen, Bach put in a good word for the twenty-year-old Bernhard, who was impressive enough at his audition to get the job.

Much like his father thirty years earlier, young Bernhard had a way of annoying church officials. One of them complained that his overlong preludes cut short the time available for the services, and another warned, “If Bach continues to play this...

A Pleasant Interlude

Wednesday, May 23, 2018, 11:30am

As one of Europe’s leading composers and performers, Felix Mendelssohn was also an astute judge of the talents of others, including his best friends. On May 23, 1834, he wrote to his mother of an encounter at a Music Festival in Aix-la-Chapelle after a rehearsal of Handel’s oratorio Deborah:

Who should trip right into my arms but Ferdinand Hiller, who was so glad to see me that he almost hugged me to death. He had come from Paris to hear the oratorio, and Chopin had skipped out on his students to come with him, and so we met again.

Now I had everything...

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...

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...

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...

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 "...

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...

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...

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...

The Concert from Hell

Friday, July 20, 2018, 11:30am

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

The Innovator

Thursday, July 19, 2018, 11:30am

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 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...

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...

Grieg's Rambunctious Move

Monday, July 16, 2018, 11:30am

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

A Tune for Revolution & Revelry

Friday, July 13, 2018, 11:30am

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

Haydn Takes London

Thursday, July 12, 2018, 11:30am

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

The Sunday Pianist

Wednesday, July 11, 2018, 11:30am

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

The Ruins of Babylon

Tuesday, July 10, 2018, 11:30am

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

The Starving Artist

Monday, July 9, 2018, 11:30am

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

Too Much of a Good Thing

Friday, July 6, 2018, 11:30am

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

The Summer Job

Thursday, July 5, 2018, 11:30am

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

A Versatile Tune

Wednesday, July 4, 2018, 11:30am

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

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