Grace Notes

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

In the fall of 1886 Gustav Mahler was the director of the Leipzig Opera house. In a letter that he wrote to his friend Friedrich Löhr, he spoke of positive experiences with composer Karl Reinecke and pianist Anton Rubinstein. He spoke in less positive terms of his relationship with Leipzig Opera principal conductor Arthur Nikisch:

My dear Fritz, First of all, thanks for what you have done for my father. You can imagine how painful all of this has been for me. I’m not in a position to have a relationship with my own people and have to watch them...

The Ampersand Goes

Monday, November 17, 2014, 11:30am

Librettist William S. Gilbert and composer Arthur Sullivan had collaborated off and on since 1871, but, after twenty-five years, the magic had begun to wear off, and they went their separate ways.

The separation had been in the making for a long time. Changes to Gilbert’s words had begun to unravel the partnership, but a quarrel over a carpet split it apart.

In April 1890 Gilbert refused to pay a share of expenses for new carpet in the lobby of the Savoy Theatre. He and theater manager Richard D’Oyly Carte got into a red-faced argument that ended when Gilbert stormed...

The Black Eye

Sunday, November 16, 2014, 11:30am

During the early years of the twentieth century, Charles Villiers Stanford had his hands full as the conductor of the Leeds Festival. He was not consulted about the music to be played, and so had to put up with a dreary procession of pieces by composers known as “funeralists.” He was also unsuccessful in getting more than one work by personal favorite Edward Elgar into the program. On top of that, the 1904 Festival nearly began with a disaster because of a black eye. But a tenor came to the rescue without singing a single note.

The opening work of...

Festival or Funeral?

Saturday, November 15, 2014, 11:30am

Charles Villiers Stanford was described by a contemporary as “vibrant, untiring, and humorous,” traits that put him at odds with the organizers of the Leeds Festivals in the first years of the twentieth century.

Stanford became the conductor of the Leeds Philharmonic in 1898, but had his conflicts with the secretary of the Leeds Festival, conflicts that spilled over into the music played during the Festival. Stanford’s main beef was that he was not consulted when the programs were put together. He wrote to a friend about the situation in a letter of November 15, 1903:

The whole situation is...

A Natural Solution

Friday, November 14, 2014, 11:30am

Although American pianist and composer Edward MacDowell would soon come to grief in his dealings with administrators at Columbia University, he had a strong rapport with his students, in part because he broke down the barriers of formality.

Perhaps the same shyness that made MacDowell a reluctant performer was behind the informal approach to lecturing that caused many at Columbia to view him with suspicion. At the close of the nineteenth century, one of his students was John Erskine, who went on to become an influential educator and author. He recalled that MacDowell was likely to start an hour’s lecture...

The Assistant

Thursday, November 13, 2014, 11:30am

As assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic twenty-five-year-old Leonard Bernstein was to sit in on all rehearsals and learn the scores well enough to be able to conduct them in place of Artur Rodzinski or any guest conductor.

On November 13, 1943, as he attended the Town Hall recital of a friend, Bernstein had a secret. Philharmonic business manager Bruno Zirato had called him to say that the eminent Bruno Walter had come down with the flu and might not be able to conduct the next afternoon’s Carnegie Hall performance.

The concert would be broadcast on CBS radio, making...

Keep Your Day Job

Wednesday, November 12, 2014, 11:30am

Thomas Gainsborough was one of England’s great painters. He thought that he could become a fine musician too. One friend had grave doubts.

In the 1770s Henry Angelo and his wife hosted gatherings that brought together various kinds of artists. In memoirs he wrote in 1830, he recalled that Gainsborough tried to buy Felice de Giardini’s violin and composer Karl Friedrich Abel’s viola, thinking that some of their skill would rub off on him. When he attempted to play Johann Christian Fischer’s bassoon, Johann Christian Bach had to break the bad news to him.

Bach stopped by Gainsborough’s lodgings one...

A Simple Twist of Fate

Tuesday, November 11, 2014, 11:30am

In 1916 Spanish composer Enrique Granados was in New York for the world premiere of his opera Goyescas. The opera ends with a tragic duel in which the protagonist dies in the arms of his beloved. By a simple twist of fate, Granados would soon experience a real-life tragedy every bit as poignant.

The piano suite Goyescas consisted of two books of three pieces each, representing eighteenth- century Madrid as evoked in the paintings of Francisco Goya. When Granados played it in Barcelona in 1911 it caused a sensation, and three years later, after a Paris performance, Granados was encouraged...

Making Do

Monday, November 10, 2014, 11:30am

By the late 1940s Georges Enesco had long since established a world reputation as a composer and conductor. As he entered his mid-sixties, he would have to fall back on a third ability, and the going would not be easy.

World War II had taken its toll on Enesco’s sizeable nest egg. As a patriotic Romanian, he had put his earnings in Romanian banks, but at war’s end, the Communist regime denied him access to the money, and his best hope for making a living was in the concert halls of Europe and the United States.

A plan to make...

Jubilee

Sunday, November 9, 2014, 11:30am

Fifty years after the publication of Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Oberto, an Italian newspaper proposed a Verdi Jubilee. The seventy-five-year-old composer responded to the idea in a letter to publisher Giulio Ricordi on November 9, 1888, thinking for a moment that the superstar of the age, soprano Adelina Patti, might participate. Then he settled back into his doubts and closed with a self-deprecating quotation from Hamlet:

I see that the papers are talking about a jubilee! Take pity on me! Of all the useless things in the world, that is the worst, and I, who have done so many useless things,...

More Than They Bargained For

Saturday, November 8, 2014, 11:30am

As a child pianist, Erich Wolfgang Korngold had impressed Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss. By 1934, when the composer came to Hollywood, he wasn’t about to let a movie producer tell him how to do his job.

Hal Wallis had brought Korngold to town for Warner Brothers, to tailor the music of Felix Mendelssohn for a film version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. When Korngold arrived, he saw to it that the Warner Brothers orchestra was transformed from a savvy dance band into a full-fledged symphony orchestra capable of playing classical music.

On his first visit to the studio, Korngold...

The Congressman and the Conductor

Friday, November 7, 2014, 11:30am

In 1938 twenty-six-year-old Erich Leinsdorf was in New York building a career as a conductor for the Metropolitan Opera when his visa expired, requiring him to return to Austria.

For professional and personal reasons, it was a bad time to go home. Young Leinsdorf had risen quickly in the ranks of the musical establishment, and to leave the Met as opportunities were opening up would be to lose important momentum. At the same time, Austria had just been annexed by Germany, and since Hitler’s rise to power in 1933, Leinsdorf had seen enough of the dark side of his German...

Saved!

Thursday, November 6, 2014, 11:30am

On November 6, 1891, Peter Tchaikovsky had just conducted his new symphonic poem Voyevode in a Moscow concert arranged by his young editor Alexander Siloti. The applause seemed restrained, and when Tchaikovsky came back into the artists’ greenroom, he destroyed the manuscript and told the attendant to gather all of the orchestral parts and bring them to him.

Siloti intervened, saying, “Excuse me, Pyotr Ilyich, but I am the master here, and I alone can give orders.” He ordered that all of the orchestral parts be taken to his house.

Tchaikovsky, who was already depressed, protested, “How dare you talk...

Viva L'America!

Wednesday, November 5, 2014, 11:30am

Ruggiero Leoncavallo was hoping to revive his career with a conducting contract or a commission for an opera when he agreed to undertake an American tour in the fall of 1906. He traveled with plenty of company–seven singers and the 75-piece La Scala orchestra–and all of them were in for a tough time.

The indignities began while Leoncavallo was still aboard the Kaiser Wilhelm on his way from Bremen to New York. The Minneapolis Tribune printed the remark of a shipboard acquaintance who reported that Leoncavallo was “short, fat, and round-about.”

Leoncavallo had written a short piano piece called “Viva...

American Enlightenment

Tuesday, November 4, 2014, 11:30am

Pianist Henri Herz was dismissed by Robert Schumann as a mere “stenographer,” but in the 1830s he was the most fashionable and sensational keyboard player in Paris. In 1845, when he wanted big money to bankroll his new piano manufacturing firm, Herz headed for America.

In his book My Trips to America, Herz describes the eccentricities of concertizing in the New World. P. T. Barnum, who was Jenny Lind’s manager at the time, approached Herz in New York and suggested that he play in a concert during which the famed Swedish soprano would appear as an angel descending from heaven....

Picaresque

Monday, November 3, 2014, 11:30am

Soldier, gambler, churchman, author, womanizer—Giacomo Casanova was all of them, and a musician whose misadventures matched his headlong lifestyle.

At twenty-one he was a mediocre violinist in Venice’s San Samuele theater, later describing himself as “a menial journeyman of a sublime art in which, if he who excels is admired, the mediocrity is rightly despised,” adding, “I soon acquired all the habits of my degraded fellow musicians.”

The next twenty years of his life consisted of various hare-brained schemes and hair-breadth escapes, amorous intrigues, and banishment from one city after another.

He became so notorious in most of Europe that...

The Latest From Paris

Saturday, November 1, 2014, 11:30am

At the beginning of November 1853, Franz Liszt wrote from Weimar to violinist Joseph Joachim in Hanover about musical discoveries he had made during a recent visit to Paris:

As for news from Paris, I have none except for the vigorous rehearsing of Meyerbeer’s new opera L’Étoile du Nord at the Opéra Comique, for which he tells me he has re-used only four or five pieces from his Feldlager in Schliesen, all the rest of the three acts being entirely new.

Then there’s the complete success of the instrument that I’ve often mentioned to you, which they insist upon naming...

The Séance

Friday, October 31, 2014, 11:30am

One night in 1887 William James, the celebrated psychologist, and George Henschel, the English composer and conductor, arrived at a rundown house on Rutland Street in Boston. With them was singer Nettie Huxley, whose mischievous expression was at odds with the somber purpose of the visit--to communicate with the dead.

An elderly man in a black frock coat led them into a dim, musty, gas-lit room where a few others waited. An emaciated, humpbacked girl of about sixteen wrung hymn tunes out of a wheezing parlor organ.

The man in black lectured the group on the necessity of seriousness, saying...

Surprise!

Thursday, October 30, 2014, 11:30am

October 31 was Mozart’s name-day–the feast day of Saint Wolfgang, for whom Mozart was named--and when the day came around in 1781, the twenty-five-year-old composer was in for a surprise. A few days afterward he wrote from Vienna to his father Leopold in Salzburg:

Just as I was going to write to you, a mob of celebrating friends overwhelmed me. At twelve o’clock I drove out to Baroness Waldstadten at Leopoldstadt, where I spent my name day. At eleven o’clock at night I was treated to a performance of my serenade for two clarinets, two horns, and two bassoons that...

The Reluctant Conductor

Monday, October 27, 2014, 11:30am

Aram Khachaturian was nervous. In the 1930s and ’40s he had made a name for himself as one of the Soviet Union’s foremost composers. He had long wanted to conduct, but in 1950, when he was invited to conduct a performance of some of his music, he hesitated.

“At least come to the rehearsals,” he was urged. “The orchestra has already rehearsed and everything is ready. The orchestra will play correctly even if you conduct backwards.”

Khachaturian consented to conduct the rehearsal. Everything went well and he agreed to conduct the actual performance, scheduled for that evening. Then he got...

Why the Music Stopped

Sunday, October 26, 2014, 11:30am

John Ireland wrote plenty of music before and after, but in the chronology of his works, the year 1928 was fallow, and with good reason. He was recovering from his marriage.

For some time, one of Ireland’s more talented piano students was not up to her usual standard. Her name was Dorothy Phillips. Ireland asked her what was wrong.

She burst into tears and vented an overwrought complaint against her overbearing father. She asked if Ireland could do something to help her.

He told her that he wouldn’t want to interfere in a family matter. After all, I’m only your...

We Are Barbarians Up Here

Saturday, October 25, 2014, 11:30am

At the end of October 1897 English composer Frederick Delius was nervous. He was in Norway to conduct music he had written for Gunnar Heiberg’s play, The Council of the People. The play satirized the Norwegian parliament and Norwegian pomp in general, and Delius had made his music suitably caustic, but he was jittery about conducting. He spent several days practicing in front of the mirror in his hotel room.

On opening night, he peeked through the heavy velvet curtains and was startled to discover that most in the audience were apparently university students, known for their fervent patriotism.

With...

Used

Friday, October 24, 2014, 11:30am

While he was in Paris for performances of his opera Il Trovatore, Giuseppe Verdi took time to attend to some urgent business. On October 21, 1855, he wrote a fervent letter about the need to get international copyright protection for his works, which were being pirated in England because there was no treaty between the country of his citizenship–the Duchy of Parma–and England.

He had been advised to change his citizenship to English, French, or Piedmontese in order to gain copyright protection, but instead he appealed to the government of Parma to enter into a copyright treaty with the English....

Robbed

Thursday, October 23, 2014, 11:30am

In his memoirs Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov gives us a close and colorful look at his fellow composer, Alexander Borodin:

I always thought it strange that certain ladies...who apparently were admirers of Borodin’s talent as a composer, relentlessly hauled him to all kinds of charitable committees, harnessed him to the office of treasurer and so on, and in so doing, robbed him of the time which he could have used for creating wonderful, artistic musical works. Thanks to the charitable folderol, his time was frittered away on minutiae that could have been taken care of by those who were not a Borodin....

Very Original Instruments

Tuesday, October 21, 2014, 11:30am

After performing a concert together in the 1990s, violinist Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg and guitarists Sérgio and Odair Assad were eager to collaborate again, and when Sérgio expressed an interest in recording a CD of Gypsy music, Salerno-Sonnenberg jumped at the chance.

Little did she know that playing two of the instruments would be so painful.

The recording session in Aspen in July 1998 covered demanding works by familiar composers--Brahms, Liszt, Saint-Saëns, and Ravel--and Salerno-Sonnenberg skillfully integrated her violin, a much louder instrument than the guitar, in a way that achieved the right balance.

But Sérgio Assad’s setting of the Spanish folk...

A Marvel of Modern Technology

Monday, October 20, 2014, 11:30am

The grand new theater was one of New York’s proudest buildings. The Hippodrome was the work of Frederick Thompson and Elmer Dundy, who had created the Luna Park amusement area at Coney Island. It stood on Sixth Avenue between Forty-Third and Forty-Fourth streets. Its auditorium had 5,300 seats, and it was fitted out with state of the art theatrical technology, including a stage that was twelve times larger than that of any venue on Broadway and could hold a thousand performers or a full-sized circus, including elephants and horses. It also boasted an 8,000-gallon glass water tank that could be...

Win a Prize, Lose a Treasure

Sunday, October 19, 2014, 11:30am

Itzhak Perlman had just won a spot in the finals of the 1964 Leaventritt Contest, and his teachers at Juilliard wanted him to go into the final round of the competition with the best violin available. He couldn’t afford to buy a first-rate instrument, so they arranged for him to borrow a valuable 200-year-old Guarnerius from Juilliard’s rare instrument collection. With it Perlman nearly turned a monumental win into a crushing loss.

After a brilliant performance in Carnegie Hall, Perlman left the stage and joined his mother Shoshana in a large area called the Orchestra Room to wait for the...

Stars That Entertain Unseen Audiences

Saturday, October 18, 2014, 11:30am

“Some people grow; others just swell.” It was a popular saying in the 1920s when radio was becoming all the rage, making stars overnight. Some of them, already established on stage, brought their egos with them to the airwaves. In 1923 Thomas Cowan, an announcer at New York radio station WJZ, described an encounter with Madame Margaret Namara of the Chicago Grand Opera Company.

After her success as Thais at the Manhattan Opera House in New York, Namara offered to broadcast a repeat performance on WJZ. She came over to the studio three days bforehand because she wanted her “movie...

Starting Over

Friday, October 17, 2014, 11:30am

By 1770 Charles Burney had come a long way from his exploitive apprenticeship working for composer Thomas Arne. He had become a distinguished and discriminating music critic and historian. During his travels on the Continent, he collected stories from the lives of celebrated composers and performers. Among them was the account of a gifted young singer named František Benda whose voice changed, requiring him to strike out in search of a new musical career:

Being now deprived of all hope of gaining a livelihood by singing, and unable to bear the thought of becoming a burden to his relations, he...

The Cherokee and the Bantu

Thursday, October 16, 2014, 11:30am

At the age of twenty-six, Felix Mendelssohn was already well known throughout Europe. In 1835, during a visit to Leipzig, he became acquainted with a young Polish émigré who was rapidly making a name for himself. Mendelssohn wrote to his sister in Berlin on October 16, full of enthusiasm after a day spent with Frédéric Chopin:

He intended to stay for just one day so we spent it together in music. I cannot deny that lately I have found that you by no means do him justice in your judgment of his talents. Maybe he wasn’t in the mood to...

Lully's Last Maneuver

Tuesday, March 22, 2016, 11:30am

Jean-Baptiste Lully was extremely devoted to his music. In fact, he died for it.

The Hardest Thing in the World

Monday, March 21, 2016, 11:30am

On March 21st, 1864--in the thick of the Civil War--New Orleans-born composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk was in the middle of a concert tour of the northern and western states.

Brutally Frank Advice

Friday, March 18, 2016, 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...

The Cold Irish Pianist

Thursday, March 17, 2016, 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

Wednesday, March 16, 2016, 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...

The Ill-Fated Symphony

Tuesday, March 15, 2016, 11:30am

That first symphony can be intimidating for a composer. Sergei Rachmaninoff was a long time recovering from his. He was pleased with his symphony, confident to the point of arrogance. He played a piano version for composer Sergei Taneyev, who expressed his displeasure with it. Undaunted,...

Haydn Takes London

Monday, March 14, 2016, 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...

Concert at Gunpoint

Friday, March 11, 2016, 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...

Weber's Hopes & Fears

Thursday, March 10, 2016, 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...

An American Escape

Wednesday, March 9, 2016, 11:30am

In 1906 European immigrants flocked to America looking for new opportunities. The Russian pianist and composer Alexander Scriabin came looking for new possibilities and to escape old problems. His most recent difficulties included a desperate need for money and a break with fellow composer Anatol...

The Color Bar

Monday, March 7, 2016, 11:30am

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, the son of a West African and an Englishwoman, became a world-famous composer and conductor by the age of 30. In the fall of 1904 he was touring the United States by train, conducting performances that drew thousands. But one thing about America troubled him. When he...

The Case of the Disappearing Operas

Monday, March 7, 2016, 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...

The Joke That Became Famous

Friday, March 4, 2016, 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...

The Violinist Revolutionary

Thursday, March 3, 2016, 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...

Truth or Legend?

Wednesday, March 2, 2016, 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...

Gluck Takes It from the Top

Tuesday, March 1, 2016, 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,...

He Wasn't That Precocious

Monday, February 29, 2016, 11:30am

One of the most successful opera composers of all time retired from writing operas at the age of 37. By then he already had a long career behind him. In fact, Gioachino Rossini began composing enduring works just after his second birthday. In the summer of 1804 Rossini and two cousins named Morini...

Sir Thomas Quells a Neighbor

Friday, February 26, 2016, 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...

Handel's Blunder, Part 2

Thursday, February 25, 2016, 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...

Handel's Blunder, Part 1

Wednesday, February 24, 2016, 11:30am

When George Frederick Handel's oratorio Deborah premiered in London in March, 1733, it could have made the composer a lot of money if he hadn't made several blunders having little to do with music. King George and the Royal Family were present, and all of them liked it except for Frederick...

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