Grace Notes

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

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...

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...

Occupational Hazards

Friday, January 24, 2020, 11:30am

Clara Schumann was one of Europe’s great pianists. The widow of Robert Schumann was also the closest friend of Johannes Brahms, and she wrote to him from Vienna on January 24, 1866:

The financial situation here seems to be pretty bad and yet all of the concerts are well attended. I hope mine will be too! My first one is on Saturday the 27th, the second on February 1st. I would be most grateful if you’d send me your Horn Trio, which I want to play on February 4th at Hellmesberger’s. He seemed to pounce on it right away and...

The Salesman

Thursday, January 23, 2020, 11:30am

Antonio Vivaldi taught at Venice’s Ospedale della Pietà, an institution for orphaned or abandoned girls, but he had further ambitions, and so he also began managing the San Angelo Theater as a producer of operas.

At the same time, he was also a good salesman, and, on one occasion, he sold some music to a visitor and then made a pitch for a way to make some extra money out of it.

Johann Friedrich Armand von Uffenbach had made a big hit with Vivaldi’s Opus 3 concertos in 1713 when he had introduced them to some fellow amateur musicians in...

The Guide

Wednesday, January 22, 2020, 11:30am

As organist and choirmaster at St. Luke’s Church in the Chelsea section of London, John Ireland was known for nurturing the talent of singers and instrumentalists who came up through the ranks. He was also known for being a fierce disciplinarian who was not above shouting expletives at erring choristers during practices.

No wonder a boy in one of Ireland’s choirs was a bundle of nerves when the unthinkable happened. Sometime around 1912, Charles Markes was to sing a solo in a work by Mendelssohn, the fervent boy soprano plea “Oh God, hear my cry!”

When the big moment came,...

Soloists, Choirs, and Ghosts

Tuesday, January 21, 2020, 11:30am

As the March 14 Florence debut of his opera Macbeth approached, Giuseppe Verdi was becoming more and more concerned about the details of its production. Impresario Antonio Lanari had written to him about some of the finer points of hiring soloists and chorus members, which began to get into personalities. On January 21, 1847, Verdi wrote back:

When you receive the music you will see that there are two choruses of paramount importance, so don’t be frugal about the number of singers and you’ll be happy with the result. In particular, notice that the witches are always to be divided...

The Experimenter

Monday, January 20, 2020, 11:30am

The work that made Edgar Varèse known internationally was Amériques. He finished it in 1921, by which time he was thirty-eight years old. What happened to all the music he wrote before it?

In 1913 Varèse and his wife were living in Berlin, and, after six years of marriage, decided to separate. She left for a theater career in Paris, leaving him to tie up some loose ends before heading to Paris and on to Prague to conduct a concert before returning to Berlin in the autumn. He put his furniture and all but two of his scores and part...

Blunt

Friday, January 17, 2020, 11:30am

Florent Schmitt was an innovative French composer whose 1907 ballet La tragédie de Salomé in some ways anticipated Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, and the Russian composer expressed admiration for his works.

His music had what someone called “an aggressive masculinity,” and when it came to judging the music of others, Schmitt could be just as blunt.

American composer Daniel Gregory Mason had great respect for Schmitt and thought his music better than that of Claude Debussy. He met Schmitt just once but came away with an impression of an outspoken and unabashed critic.

They attended a Sunday afternoon concert in a stuffy...

First Hearing

Thursday, January 16, 2020, 11:30am

The composer was all caught up in conducting the debut of his first really big work. For several days, Ralph Vaughan Williams had been too nervous to sleep or eat right. He was unaware of friends and musical personages in the audience–Charles Villiers Stanford and the promising composer George Butterworth among them–all of them in Leeds for the performance of A Sea Symphony.

The timpanist offered helpful advice to calm Vaughan Williams’ nerves. “Give us a square four to the bar and we’ll do the rest.” The baritone, waiting with the composer before the performance and equally nervous, was less encouraging when...

The Façade

Wednesday, January 15, 2020, 11:30am

Poetry had prompted William Walton to write the music for Façade, but the provocative melodrama propelled the young composer into some very prosaic situations.

The poet, Edith Sitwell, had goaded the reluctant Walton into the project. Her brother Osbert came up with the idea of reciting the words through a kind of megaphone inserted through a curtain.

The first rehearsal took place on a January night in 1922 in a brightly-lit drawing room made all the more cheerful by light reflected from deep snow. But the performers were in no mood to appreciate the setting. They were “puzzled and rather angry with...

I Feel Sorry for All of Them

Tuesday, January 14, 2020, 11:30am

In his 1928 autobiography John Philip Sousa describes a concert in which he felt that he had to make a statement.

On January 14, 1792, Joseph Haydn wrote from London to Luigia Polzelli in Italy a letter that gives some insight into the rough-and-tumble music business:

My dearest Polzelli! I received your letter just now and I’m answering it right away. I’m relieved to hear that you’re in good health and that you’ve found a position in a little theater, not so much because of the money as for the experience. I wish you the greatest success; above all, a...

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Grace Notes

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

Occupational Hazards

The Salesman

The Guide

Soloists, Choirs, and Ghosts

The Experimenter

Blunt

First Hearing

The Façade

I Feel Sorry for All of Them

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