Grace Notes

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

Some people are said to have the ability to see themselves as if from a distance. Richard Wagner was one of them. He delivered an address at a ceremony marking the relocation of the remains of composer Carl Maria von Weber from London to Dresden in December 1844. In his autobiography, he wrote of a strange sensation that overcame him.

On the occasion I had a strange experience when for the first time in my life I had to deliver a solemn public speech. Since then I have always spoken extemporaneously, but since this was my first appearance as an...

The Unlikely Soldier

Friday, December 1, 2017, 11:30am

Anton Webern had chafed against the restraints of the conducting jobs he’d had, and yet, at the outbreak of World War I, the Austrian composer decided to work under even greater constraints--in the army. Yielding to family concerns about his poor eyesight, he trained to be a male nurse, and then, in February 1915, he volunteered for non-combatant infantry service, was accepted, and stationed near Trieste.

He took to life in the army, was transferred to various places in southeastern Europe, quickly promoted to a rank equivalent to sergeant, and put in charge of training a group of older recruits....

Parting Gift

Thursday, November 30, 2017, 11:30am

Ástor Piazzolla had gone a long way toward bringing the tango into the classical repertory and had written innovative classical music for the bandoneón, the concertina-like instrument popular in Argentine dance bands.

It was 1959. Piazzolla was in San Juan, Puerto Rico, playing at the Club Flamboyan when he received a telegram from back home in Mar del Plata, Argentina, informing him that his father had been injured in a bicycle accident. Between the night’s two shows, his fellow performers–dancers Juan Carlos Copes and Maria Nieves-- urged him to phone home for an update. He called and talked to his...

What Else Did He Know?

Wednesday, November 29, 2017, 11:30am

Arthur Rubinstein was one of the twentieth century’s greatest pianists He didn’t begin speaking until he was three, but began playing the piano at age two, and so it’s reasonable to assume that the piano was his whole life.

But an appearance on radio’s popular quiz show Information Please on November 29, 1943, demonstrated that Rubinstein’s knowledge was by no means limited to the piano.

Former Simon and Schuster editor Clifton Fadiman was the knowledgeable emcee of the show. The panelists were the urbane New York columnist Franklin P. Adams, John Kiernan, a sports columnist who could quote Shakespeare and...

The Elusive Tune

Tuesday, November 28, 2017, 11:30am

Composer Jacques Offenbach had eight bars of a tune running through his head--a waltz that his mother had sung to him as a lullaby.

Offenbach’s father overheard him humming it and told him that it was by a once-promising young composer named Zimmer, who had suddenly dropped out of sight.

Sometime later, Offenbach’s publisher mentioned a poor old composer named Zimmer who had brought by a score that the publisher intended to reject because the composer was an unknown.

Zimmer was due to return the next day to hear the publisher’s decision.

Offenbach became excited. “Do me a big favor,...

A Visitor Incognito

Monday, November 27, 2017, 11:30am

In 1822 the most famous touring pianist in Europe was Johann Nepomuk Hummel, who had been a child prodigy so impressive that at the age of seven he became a live-in student of Mozart’s.

Hummel’s closest rival was Irish-born pianist John Field, who had been living in Russia for nearly twenty years by the time he and Hummel came face to face.

According to a story popular at the time, Hummel arrived in St. Petersburg, eager to see Field perform, but was disappointed to find that Field had no concert scheduled. Apparently someone had told him that the Irishman didn’t...

Home in Rome

Friday, November 24, 2017, 11:30am

As a winner of the prestigious Prix de Rome, young Claude Debussy earned the opportunity to further his musical development at the Villa Medici, but the honor was in some ways a setback.

Before he even got to Rome, Debussy was homesick for Paris, and the villa’s vast view of the city did little to lighten his spirits. His assigned room was so austere that it was known as “the Etruscan Tomb,” and the work also left him cold because he was expected to compose in a style not his own.

Debussy’s prime objective was to get back to Paris...

Caught in the Muddle

Wednesday, November 22, 2017, 11:30am

He would later become known as one of the twentieth century’s great pianists and composers, but in 1897, at the age of twenty-four, Sergei Rachmaninoff jumped at the chance to be the assistant conductor to one Eugene Esposito in a new private opera company opened in Moscow by a tycoon named Mamontov. He soon found that he had jumped into a maelstrom, as he wrote to a friend on November 22:

In our theater chaos reigns supreme. Nobody knows what’s supposed to happen the day after tomorrow, tomorrow, or today for that matter. There’s nobody to sing, not because we have no singers,...

Lavish in the Extreme

Tuesday, November 21, 2017, 11:30am

At the court of Spain’s King Ferdinand V and Queen Maria Barbara, the famed Italian castrato Farinelli was such a royal favorite that he could have influenced Spain’s politics, but he preferred to make his mark on the country’s musical life–and that he did with a vengeance.

As the director of court operas, Farinelli brought in Europe’s best singers and commissioned new music and new librettos. But when it came to the scenery and special effects, he went all out.

In 1750 he outdid himself.

For an opera by Giovanni Battista Mele two hundred chandeliers illuminated a 41-piece orchestra tricked...

Incognito!

Monday, November 20, 2017, 11:30am

Back in 1910 Darius Milhaud had written an opera called La Brebis égarée, and although he was aware of its youthful flaws, he did not object in November 1923 when the Paris Opéra-Comique decided to produce it. The experience would give him some of his most sincere audience response.

The opera was put on with great planning and care, including clever set changes for the twenty scenes. Milhaud saw to it that the opera’s narrators–there were three of them–were dressed in 1910-vintage costumes in keeping with the period in which he had written the opera, even though he thought that the...

The Ampersand Goes

Friday, November 17, 2017, 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

Thursday, November 16, 2017, 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?

Wednesday, November 15, 2017, 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

Tuesday, November 14, 2017, 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

Monday, November 13, 2017, 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...

Making Do

Friday, November 10, 2017, 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

Thursday, November 9, 2017, 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

Wednesday, November 8, 2017, 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

Tuesday, November 7, 2017, 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!

Monday, November 6, 2017, 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...

Picaresque

Friday, November 3, 2017, 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

Wednesday, November 1, 2017, 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

Tuesday, October 31, 2017, 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!

Monday, October 30, 2017, 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

Friday, October 27, 2017, 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

Thursday, October 26, 2017, 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...

We Are Barbarians Up Here

Wednesday, October 25, 2017, 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!

Tuesday, October 24, 2017, 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

Monday, October 23, 2017, 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....

A Marvel of Modern Technology

Friday, October 20, 2017, 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...

First Concert

Monday, March 12, 2018, 11:30am

At the age of twenty-seven, Karl Goldmark decided that it was time for him to make his mark as a composer, and so he arranged a concert devoted entirely to his own works. His colleagues in the Carl Theater in Vienna promised in writing to donate their services. Goldmark recruited an ensemble of...

The Indian Life

Friday, March 9, 2018, 11:30am

By the beginning of 1911 Italian composer and pianist Ferruccio Busoni had been traveling and performing in America for more than a year, and he was still adjusting to life in the New World. He was often uninspired, but he wrote to his wife about occasional flashes of enthusiasm. On March 9, 1911,...

Like Bolts of Lightning

Thursday, March 8, 2018, 11:30am

He was one of the most famous men in Europe, and even though he was feeling unwell, Niccolò Paganini had come to Berlin to perform. The audience of nine hundred or so included Friedrich Wilhelm III, King of Prussia, and all the royal family. Writing four days later, on March 8, 1829, Adolph...

Radio Won't Wait

Wednesday, March 7, 2018, 11:30am

According to its producer, The Ford Sunday Evening Hour was a way for radio audiences “to feel cultured without really being so.” Beginning in 1934 it provided classical music, popular opera arias, familiar ballads, and hymns. Henry Ford hired most of the Detroit Symphony as the house orchestra...

The Challenge

Tuesday, March 6, 2018, 11:30am

By 1754 Francesco Geminiani was known throughout Europe as a composer of concertos. When he was approached by the director of a Paris theater to write theater music, Geminiani took up the challenge. The Enchanted Forest was a pantomime based on episodes from Torquato Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered– a...

The Pauper

Monday, March 5, 2018, 11:30am

Young André Gretry led the life of a character from Dickens. He was the son of a poor church musician in the city of Liège, Belgium. About 1750, at the age of nine, he became a choir boy, a position that required him to walk a mile each way to attend six services a day. One morning, when he arrived...

The Downside

Friday, March 2, 2018, 11:30am

Wealth, fame, and acclaim – Joseph Haydn enjoyed them all during a sojourn in London arranged by Johann Peter Salomon. But there was a downside according to a letter he wrote to Maria von Genzinger in Vienna on March 2, 1792: I must confess to Your Grace that this is very embarrassing and that on...

Everything is in Order

Thursday, March 1, 2018, 11:30am

Could it happen today? In the early years of the twentieth century, pianist Harold Bauer was touring in Spain, traveling with a tuner, who was responsible for having Bauer’s Erard pianos sent from one venue to the next. Toward the end of the tour, illness forced the tuner to remain behind, and...

The Charge

Wednesday, February 28, 2018, 11:30am

Ludwig van Beethoven spent a good deal of his time concerned with music and money. A letter that he wrote to composer Ferdinand Ries on February 28, 1816, dismisses both matters quickly in order to take up a new preoccupation: Quite some time ago I wrote to let you know that the trio and the sonata...

The Shaky Collaborators

Tuesday, February 27, 2018, 11:30am

Composer Mily Balakirev had scraped up enough money for his Free Music School to put on a series of four concerts in St. Petersburg during the winter of 1879. Colleague Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov was to direct them, and before they were over, he was a nervous wreck. One of the concerts was to include...

Fantasia

Monday, February 26, 2018, 11:30am

Paul Hindemith was a distinguished composer and music theorist whose works were banned in Germany by Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels in 1936. Like many of his colleagues, Hindemith went to the United States looking for a way to earn a living. By the end of February 1939 he was in Hollywood...

The Peril You Overlooked

Friday, February 23, 2018, 11:30am

Albert Spalding was sixteen years old at the time of his Paris debut. He played the Violin Concerto in B minor by Saint-Saëns, the Bach Chaconne, the Romance in F by Beethoven, and the flashy Zigeunerweisen by Pablo de Sarasate. The audience, mostly invited, had nothing but compliments for the...

A Revolutionary Wedding

Thursday, February 22, 2018, 11:30am

In the politically charged year of 1848 César Franck was a twenty-five-year-old pianist and composer living in Paris. When his father took him to task for wasting his time dedicating a song to one of his female students, he and his father exchanged harsh words and his father retaliated by tearing...

Round Two

Wednesday, February 21, 2018, 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...

The Money Back Guarantee

Tuesday, February 20, 2018, 11:30am

The following letter to Giuseppe Verdi in 1872 shows that to be a composer is to expose oneself to criticism from anyone and everyone: Much Honored Signor Verdi, “On the second of this month I went to Padua, lured by the sensation caused by your opera Aida. I was so intrigued that I was in my seat—...

Broken Windows

Monday, February 19, 2018, 11:30am

On February 20, 1816, a combination of miscalculations and mishaps had brought about a disastrous debut for Rossini’s opera The 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...

Top Notes

Friday, February 16, 2018, 11:30am

In his memoirs Ignacy Jan Paderewski tells of a concert during which he learned a hard lesson about showmanship. In 1890 Paderewski was making a name for himself as one of Europe’s leading pianists, but he discovered that when it came to exciting audiences, a performer needed more than musicianship...

Oops!

Thursday, February 15, 2018, 11:30am

Many a performer has been forced to cancel a concert when the rigors of an intensive schedule led to a physical or emotional breakdown. Occasionally a concert goes awry because of a smaller problem–simple confusion. Consider a news item in The Philadelphia Inquirer regarding the case of Thomas...

Lover or Priest?

Wednesday, February 14, 2018, 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...

I Have No Time!

Tuesday, February 13, 2018, 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...

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