Surviving the Queen of Sheba
Monday, August 22, 2016, 11:30am
Karl Goldmark had poured his best efforts into his opera The Queen of Sheba and had high hopes for it. He was in for some shocks. He submitted it to the Vienna Court Opera for the 1873 season. The Queen of Sheba went to the directors of the Court Opera, who took a dim view of it. They were already...
How To Listen
Friday, August 19, 2016, 11:30am
As a critic, Michel Calvocoressi appreciated an analytical mind, so he particularly admired composer Vincent d’Indy, the author of Treatise of Composition. One of the things he liked most about d’Indy was the apparent contradictions in his thinking. Calvocoressi found it intriguing that within the...
Wrestling With The Medium
Thursday, August 18, 2016, 11:30am
In 1950 Gian Carlo Menotti directed the film version of his opera The Medium in Rome–his first film directing assignment. The crew also included a conductor who had never recorded a note of music and a cast of singers who had never seen a film studio. “It would be highly inaccurate to say that I...
The Music Seeker
Wednesday, August 17, 2016, 11:30am
English music critic Edward Holmes set out for the Continent in 1827, eager to experience the cultural excitement in cities where great composers had lived. When he reached Vienna, he was in for some surprises. He wrote in his travelogue: At the smaller theaters in the Leopold Stadt and the Joseph...
The Breakthrough
Tuesday, August 16, 2016, 11:30am
In 1841 Anglo-Irish composer Michael Balfe was down on his luck. He was in Paris, about to finish an opera tailor-made for soprano Giulia Grisi, when arrangements fell through, leaving him with little but his music and his optimism to sustain him. Pierre Erard of the piano manufacturing firm...
Excellence or Precedence
Monday, August 15, 2016, 11:30am
During his sojourn in Paris in the 1920s, composer George Antheil decided to investigate a claim made by his teacher back in Philadelphia. It alleged that Debussy, Ravel, and Satie had stolen their impressionistic technique from a largely forgotten Italian composer named Ernest Fanelli. Antheil...
Independent
Thursday, August 11, 2016, 11:30am
He was a master organist and player of the early keyboard known as the virginal. John Bull was one of Queen Elizabeth’s favorite musicians. Like her, he knew what he wanted and persisted in pursuing it, but he paid a heavy price. According to the account of a contemporary, Bull would have gotten a...
The Earthquake
Wednesday, August 10, 2016, 11:30am
Louis Spohr had heard unflattering things about the famous Sistine Chapel choir performances of the Miserere by the seventeenth-century composer Gregorio Allegri, but he was eager to judge for himself. After a visit to Rome, he wrote in his journal for August 10, 1817: These simple sequences of...
Pulling It Together
Tuesday, August 9, 2016, 11:30am
Having left Germany with his family in 1933, Otto Klemperer had landed a job as musical director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, only to have his eccentricities wreck his reputation in the city and force his resignation. An invitation to conduct a series of Bach concerts at the New School for...
Doctor's Orders
Monday, August 8, 2016, 11:30am
In August 1889, as the great Hungarian violinist Leopold Auer was on his way from St. Petersburg to Bayreuth to hear two Wagner operas for the first time, he came down with what was diagnosed as malaria. Not one to let illness get in his way, he continued on to Bayreuth. He and a friend began with...
The Unappreciative Guest
Friday, August 5, 2016, 11:30am
Theirs was one of the great friendships in musical history. In July 1859 Clara Schumann wrote to Johannes Brahms about people she had encountered in her musical adventures: "At last I can find a quiet moment for you, dear Johannes. Two days ago, I spent all day with Hiller. He played a large...
Mendelssohn’s Summer Cooler
Thursday, August 4, 2016, 11:30am
On August 4th, 1834 Felix Mendelssohn was affected by the summer weather. He wrote to his parents from Dusseldorf: “For the past week, during which we’ve had heavy storms and muggy air, I felt so drained that I was unable to do anything all day long. Worst of all, I can’t compose, which irks me no...
Grieg's Rambunctious Move
Wednesday, August 3, 2016, 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...
Amazing Speed
Friday, July 29, 2016, 11:30am
Although he was one of America's finest composers of piano music, Edward MacDowell was a reluctant performer. A long-time friend described MacDowell's playing: "As he never felt quite sure that what he was composing was worthwhile, so in the matter of playing in public he was so self-distrustful...
The Biggest Challenge
Thursday, July 28, 2016, 11:30am
In the spring of 1565 composer Giovanni da Palestrina was nervous. He was facing the biggest challenge of his career--one that put his reputation and his livelihood at risk. Cardinals at an ecumenical council had recommended a new approach to church music. Two of them had commissioned Palestrina to...
Sibyl
Friday, July 22, 2016, 11:30am
On a summer evening in 1887 Jules Massenet was about to escape from a tedious party when a young American woman approached him. She would soon make her mark on his personal life and his career. Her name was Sibyl Sanderson. She was a 22-year-old heiress from Sacramento, California and extremely...
Sibelius' Prank
Thursday, July 21, 2016, 11:30am
Jean Sibelius enjoyed proving his musicianship but he wasn't always receptive when others tried to prove theirs. One day when Sibelius was a young musician living in Berlin, he was running short of cash and he made a bet with some fellow Finns that they could pass as popular musicians. Sibelius and...
The Innovator
Tuesday, July 19, 2016, 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
Monday, July 18, 2016, 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 Stradella Scandel
Friday, July 15, 2016, 11:30am
Alessandro Stradella was one of the 17th century's finest composers --and one of its most threatened. An incident from the year 1677 is typical of Stradella's dangerous life. The composer was living in Venice, having fled Rome because of a scandal that had arisen over his attempt to embezzle money...