Grace Notes

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

The Apprentice Murderer

Thursday, September 6, 2018, 11:30am

Even a masterpiece isn't finished until the "customer" is satisfied--as a poet named Goldoni relates in an account from 1735:

"Antonio Vivaldi was desperate for a poet to revise—murder actually--a drama so that he could include the arias that his pupil had sung on other occasions and, being assigned the task by a noble patron, I introduced myself to him.

Vivaldi received me rather coldly. He took me for a novice, which I was, and judging me incapable of wrecking dramas, made it clear that he wanted me to get lost. When I all but begged him...

Royal Concert

Wednesday, September 5, 2018, 11:30am

It was music making for the most luxurious circumstances France had to offer and Francois Couperin entered the circle by means of a simple deception.

Couperin came from a respected musical family and he attained the highest possible musical positions in the French court in the time of King Louis the Fourteenth. Couperin gave harpsichord lessons to noble patrons, and performed every Sunday for the king, either as a soloist or as a member of the most prestigious ensembles France had to offer.

Music was such a part of King Louis’ court that concerts by the same group of performers...

Granados' Food Fight

Tuesday, September 4, 2018, 11:30am

They were the most distinguished composers in Spain -- Enrique Granados, Isaac Albeniz, Pablo de Sarasate, and Enrique Arbos. During summers in the 1890's they met occasionally at a music shop in San Sebatian where they engaged in small talk and put on informal concerts. One of the concerts turned out to be so informal that it degenerated into a food fight.

The trouble began with a suggestion by Granados. His idea was that he and his colleagues would form an orchestra in which each of them would play an instrument about which he knew nothing. The result...

The Casualty

Monday, September 3, 2018, 11:30am

On September 3, 1914, a German cavalry unit approached a French country estate. The owner of the estate, who had been working in his upstairs study, was not one to accept the encroachment without a struggle. He was a composer named Alberic Magnard and he was about to cross the line from civilian to combatant.

Magnard had never been on to bend easily. He grew up in wealth, comfort, and success-disdainful, aloof and humorless. At his father's expense, he traveled widely before settling down to attend law school. By the time he got his degree in 1887, though, Magnard had...

Bartok's Medal

Friday, August 31, 2018, 11:30am

He became known for his turbulent modernism and became one of the most honored composers of the twentieth century. But Bela Bartok was a modest, retiring man who was inclined to view honors with a sense of humor.

In the 1930's, as a member of the Congress of Humanistic Sciences Bartok attended a meeting in Geneva. Included was a glittering dinner at the Hungarian ambassador's residence. Bartok took it in stride. He wrote:

There was only X-the Hungarian charge d’affairs, myself, and his wife -- a detestable female. The ambassador's wife is American, speaks only American but makes a show...

Victim of History

Thursday, August 30, 2018, 11:30am

Composers are often involved in major historical events. In the case of Claude Goudimel the historical event was fatal.

Goudimel was a well-known composer and music theorist of the 1550s and '60s. He was born in Besancon about 1510 and studied at the University of Paris, where he published a book of songs in 1551. During the next seven years he published songs, psalms, motets, and masses.

In 1557 Goudimel's life took a turn. He moved to the city of Metz, which had a large population of Protestants--or Hugenots as they were known in France. During his ten years there...

A Glorious Secret

Wednesday, August 29, 2018, 11:30am

A composer's best-known work is not necessarily his personal favorite. Consider the case of Maurice Ravel and the celebrated Bolero.

Bolero owes its existence to a disappointment. In the summer of 1928 Ravel was planning to orchestrate some of Isaac Albeniz' piano pieces from the suite Iberia. His idea was to turn them into ballet music for the famous dancer Ida Rubinstein. A friend informed Ravel that Albeniz' pieces had already been orchestrated for a ballet. "My whole summer's ruined," Ravel declared. "Orchestrating Iberia was going to be so much fun. What am I going to tell Ida? She'll be furious."...

The Infamous Bolero

Tuesday, August 28, 2018, 11:30am

A composer's best-known work is not necessarily his personal favorite. Consider the case of Maurice Ravel and the celebrated Bolero.

Gustav Holst & Thomas Hardy

Monday, August 27, 2018, 11:30am

Although he is best remembered for his orchestral suite The Planets, the English composer Gustav Holst liked nothing better than the down-to-earth pleasure of a long walking tour. In the summer of 1927 he took a train from London to Bristol then set out on foot for Dorchester to visit the celebrated author Thomas Hardy.

Holst had admired Hardy for years. Twenty-five years earlier Hoist had written settings of three poems by Hardy. In 1922 he had finally met Hardy for the first time, though not without comic effect. Holst had been on a two-day walking tour and wore an...

The Traffic Victim

Friday, August 24, 2018, 11:30am

The six-year old had been hit by a car on a Manhattan street and dragged for a block. She was in a coma for twelve days. During her 23 days in the hospital she wasn't expected to live. But she survived, determined to overcome any obstacle between her and what she wanted.

What she wanted was to become a singer--a great singer--and there were major obstacles in her way. The Depression had kept her Greek-born family unsettled. In eight years they had moved nine times in the Hell's Kitchen section of Manhattan. The girl’s mother was ambitious, neurotic, and eager...

Chabrier the Dazzling Pianist

Thursday, August 23, 2018, 11:30am

Emmanuel Chabrier wrote some of the 19th century's most colorful music. Intentionally or not, he was also one of the century's most colorful performers.

The composer’s friend, Alfred Bruneau described him this way:

He played the piano as nobody had ever played it before or ever will play it. The sight of Chabrier in a drawing-room full of elegantly-dressed women, approaching the delicate instrument and then playing his “Espana” in a flash of broken strings, hammers reduced to pulp and shattered keys, was indescribably amusing, and a spectacle of genuinely epic splendor.

Another friend of Chabrier's was painter Auguste Renoir....

Both Sides

Wednesday, August 22, 2018, 11:30am

Was it just the review or did something bigger break up a major musical friendship? One way or the other, in 1952 a music critic for the New York Tribune helped to widen the gap between the American composer John Cage and the French conductor and composer Pierre Boulez.

The reviewer, Peggy Glanville-Hicks, was a conservative composer, but after a Greenwich Village concert, she made a distinction between the avant-garde writing of Cage and the style of Boulez. She referred to "the real impression of the real poetry that Cage's scores create."

On the other hand, Glanville-Hicks described a sonata...

Keen Hearing

Tuesday, August 21, 2018, 11:30am

The farmer tramping over his grounds in Medfield, Massachusetts, had a keen ear for nature that served him well in his other job as one of America’s leading composers.

Charles Martin Loeffler had come to America from Alsace in 1881 at the age of twenty. For twenty years he played in the first violin section of the Boston Symphony, then devoted himself to composing and farming.

One friend recounts that Loeffler’s sense of nature was as keen as his ear for music. Walking through his woods immersed in conversation, the composer would break off in mid-sentence and whisper, “see that...

Donizetti vs. the Dilettantes

Monday, August 20, 2018, 11:30am

Writing an opera may be the simplest step in its production--when the staging is left to a committee.

In 1834 Gaetano Donizetti signed a contract with the management of the Royal Theaters of Naples to write three operas. The theaters in Naples were under new management—a committee of aristocratic dilettantes who called themselves the Society of Industry and Fine Arts. According to the contract, the Society would choose the plots and librettists for the operas with Donizetti’s agreement. The Society would turn the completed librettos over to the censors for approval, and finally pass them on to Donizetti at...

Wagner's Undignified Entrance

Friday, August 17, 2018, 11:30am

They got off to a bad start. It’s 1877 and Richard Wagner was in England as guest conductor for a series of ten concerts. A large orchestra—nearly two hundred Englishmen and Germans--was to begin rehearsing. The music for this first rehearsal was to be Das Rheingold. The English members of the orchestra waited for their first glimpse of the great Wagner, even though their long-time leader, the highly respected Hans Richter, wa expected to do most of the conducting.

Then an unfortunate accident occured. As he entered the hall, Wagner walked past some kind of overhang that crushed his hat. Apparently unaware of the mishap, he...

Seeing Through The Quirks

Thursday, August 16, 2018, 11:30am

Sometimes takes a great student to recognize a great teacher. One such teacher was Alexander Glazunov. It took some doing, but Dmitri Shostakovich discovered that Glazunov had something special to offer.

Shostakovich was a student at the Moscow Conservatory when he encountered Glazunov -- a bulky man who sat far away at his desk while his students played the piano and waited for his critiques. Glazunov never interrupted and never left his desk. Once the student had finished playing, Glazunov would mutter something incoherent.

The students were reluctant to ask him to repeat what he had said and uncomfortable about moving...

The Frenchman

Wednesday, August 15, 2018, 11:30am

It was a well-to-do Russian household, but one inclined toward pessimism and boredom, and the young French visitor was just what the doctor ordered. But it took awhile for the lady of the house to warm to Claude Debussy.

In 1880 Debussy's teacher wrote him a letter of recommendation for employment in the household of a widow named Madame Nadezhda von Meck, who was already the patroness of Tchaikovsky, whom she had never met.

In the summer of 1880 the eighteen-year-old Debussy joined the von Meck family for a European tour, and in May of the following year, von Meck...

An Appeal From the Destitute

Tuesday, August 14, 2018, 11:30am

War had depleted treasury of Saxony and the finest musicians in the land were living from hand to mouth. On August 14th, 1651, Heinrich Schutz wrote a letter to Prince Christian on behalf of his suffering ensemble:

Most gracious lord, even though I am reluctant to bother a celebrated Prince with my repeated letters and reminders, I am forced to by constant restlessness hour after hour, by loud cries of despair, by the misery and complaints of the entire company of poor, neglected musicians of the Chapel, who are living in misery such as would make a stone...

How Veracini Broke His Leg

Monday, August 13, 2018, 11:30am

Music making was highly competitive in the Baroque era. We have two accounts of Francesco Maria Veracini's last days at the court in Dresden. Both of them spell disaster.

Veracini was a world-famous violinist. He had come from Florence hoping to get a high-paying position at the Dresden court. According to one story written 63 years after the fact, King August wanted to hear Veracini play a violin concerto. The court concertmaster, Johann Georg Pisandel, suggested that Veracini give his audition concerto to the accompanist for rehearsing. But the self-assured Italian supposedly had no confidence in any...

Christ Suffered More Than You

Friday, August 10, 2018, 11:30am

On August 10th, 1842 Mikhail Glinka and a few friends passed a pleasant evening playing a first run-through of his opera Russlan and Ludmilla. When the full-scale debut took place, the experience was not so congenial--as Glinka reports in his memoirs.

During rehearsals it became clear that cuts would have to be made--plenty of them--to keep the action from bogging down. The sets left something to be desired. A castle looked more like a barracks. Flowers painted at the sides of the stage were ugly and dull and smeared over with gold leaf. A banquet table was represented...

A Simple & Private Wedding

Thursday, August 9, 2018, 11:30am

The pianist and composer Percy Grainger liked to do things in a big way. He was a showman, an eccentric, maybe even a madman when it came to music--and his own wedding.

The Australian-born Grainger had been in the United States for some time when the Swedish poet and painter Ella Viola Strom agreed to marry him. Perhaps not knowing just how flamboyant Grainger could be, Ella left the wedding arrangements to the groom. She was expecting a simple wedding attended by a small group of friends and, knowing nothing of America, she readily agreed when Grainger suggested the wedding...

The Request

Wednesday, August 8, 2018, 11:30am

It began as a congenial summer evening, but it didn't end that way. Franz Schubert and some fellow musicians had walked over to a suburb of Vienna to taste a new wine that Schubert liked. They moved on to a tavern and afterwards to a coffeehouse where they whiled away the hours with hot punch and a lively discussion about music.

At about one o'clock in the morning, two well-known musicians from the Vienna Opera orchestra came into the coffee house and, seeing Schubert, hurried over to him. The composer broke off his musical discussion as the musicians shook hands...

The Opera War

Tuesday, August 7, 2018, 11:30am

For the 1883 American season music agent James Mapelson wanted to beat out a new competing opera company so he dared to bring together two of the most tempermental singers in the world. He would soon find out that his biggest problem was not his competitor, but his two divas.

Mapelson already had a big star, Adelina Patti. He kept her with his company by paying her more than $5,000 per performance and providing her with a private railway car that cost $60,000 and included a solid silver bathtub and key of 18-carat gold. For the new season...

The Mangled Serenade

Monday, August 6, 2018, 11:30am

It was no ordinary singing club. Its members paraded through the streets accompanied by fifty to a hundred bodyguards. The extra muscle was necessary. When rival clubs clashed, they did more than sing--they fought.

America was being pulled apart by sectionalism, and the 1856 presidential contest was a hot one. Like the rest of America, Pittsburgh was swept up in politics, and its musicians were in the thick of the dispute between presidential contenders. On August 6th, 1856, Stephen Foster jumped into the free-for-all by helping to form the Allegheny Buchanan Glee Club. Foster was to select...

The Concert Storm

Friday, August 3, 2018, 11:30am

In 1852 the American educator Lowell Mason was traveling through Europe observing and reporting on musical life there. On the third of August he attended a concert of orchestral and choral music in Düsseldorf. He reported that music had to wait for a more powerful force:

The rehearsal being closed, the dinner hour and the hours devoted to smoking, drinking and the like -- in the garden -- having passed away, the company began to flock in at about four o'clock to attend the concert. At a little before five, when the buillding was filled, one of the most severe showers...

Fundamental Differences

Thursday, August 2, 2018, 11:30am

The 1930s composer best knew Erich Wolfgang Korngold for his popular Hollywood film scores. His friend Arnold Schoenberg was known--or notorious--for his avante garde musical experiments. Korngold's son George recalled one lively argument between the two.

Despite their differences, Krongold was always glad to see Scheonberg because he liked the challenge of a good debate. On one occasion Schoenberg, Korngold and conductor Otto Klemperer were talking about serial music. Korngold disagreed with Schoenberg's contention that a series of notes played in reverse had the same theme as the original series.

Growing impatient with Korngold's resistance, Schoenberg picked up a...

The Most Musical

Wednesday, August 1, 2018, 11:30am

He's been described as the most musical of all U.S. presidents, but Harry S. Truman was as outspoken about his musical tastes and abilities as he was about everything else. Truman had always taken to music [With the encouragement of his mother, he took piano lessons from the time he was eight until 16 or so. He enjoyed practicing, saying that it was pleasure, not work.] Truman quipped that he hadn't pursued a musical career only "because I was not good enough."

Truman was particularly fond of the music of Mozart, Chopin, Liszt, Mendelssohn, and Debussy, but he also liked...

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. On July 31, he wrote to his father in Salzburg:

Now two of my students are in the country, and the third-the Duke de Guines' daughter- is betrothed, and is not planning to continue her lessons, which so far as my finances
...

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 which, no reputable artist would otherwise make. As rebuttal I inform you that Hallé, Piatti and your humble servant had planned to test the English people's solid and apparently growing taste for chamber music and to see how
...

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 was summarized in a complaint by a bishop who informed church officials that after listening very closely to the choir, he had been unable to distinguish a single word they had sung.

There were other difficulties that the new choirmaster faced. Church composers had fallen into the habit of appropriating...

Lully's Last Maneuver

Friday, March 22, 2019, 11:30am

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

The Hardest Thing in the World

Thursday, March 21, 2019, 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.

The Dazzling Liszt

Wednesday, March 20, 2019, 11:30am

At the age of 30 Robert Schumann was one of many pianist composers who was dazzled by the virtuosity and personality of the 29-year-old Franz Liszt. He reported to his fiancée Clara Wieck, from Leipzig in March 1840: “I wish you could have been with me this morning to see Liszt. He is quite...

The Italian Marine Band

Tuesday, March 19, 2019, 11:30am

. The group of sixteen Italian musicians didn’t know what to think. Their leader, Gaetano Carusi, had brought them to America, the land of promise. But when they arrived in Washington their first thought must have been to go back home. The year was 1805 and Carusi himself described the capital city...

Brutally Frank Advice

Monday, March 18, 2019, 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 him -- which I...

The Ill-Fated Symphony

Friday, March 15, 2019, 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

Thursday, March 14, 2019, 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...

From the Earth to the Moon

Wednesday, March 13, 2019, 11:30am

It was an extremely popular subject--science fiction. The music was by France's leading operetta composer, Jacques Offenbach, and the story by the father of science fiction, Jules Verne. The French stage had never seen anything like From the Earth to the Moon. The Franco-Prussian War of the 1870's...

An Honest Opinion

Tuesday, March 12, 2019, 11:30am

Johannes Brahms disliked insincere flattery. But he sometimes went to great lengths to get an honest opinion of his composing and his playing. In his autobiography, composer Karl Goldmark mentions receiving an invitation to a house where two new Brahms compositions were to be performed for the...

Concert at Gunpoint

Monday, March 11, 2019, 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's,...

The Clairvoyant Composer

Friday, March 8, 2019, 11:30am

Although she had no formal education, she composed seventy-seven songs, blending words and music so well that they are still being sung eight centuries later. Hildegard of Bingen's inspiration came from a remarkable source -- her visions. Hildegard was born in the German duchy of Franconia in 1098...

The Case of the Disappearing Operas

Thursday, March 7, 2019, 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...

A Dubious Honor

Wednesday, March 6, 2019, 11:30am

Jean Sibelius must've had mixed feelings. He had been commissioned to compose a cantata for a solemn state occasion--the Finnish celebration of the coronation of Czar Nicholas the Second. It was a major opportunity for the young composer, but as a Finnish nationalist he had no desire to glorify the...

The Irresistible Bandleader

Tuesday, March 5, 2019, 11:30am

At the sight of the grim-looking procession peasants ran for their lives. In that part of Romania and Hungary robbers were everywhere and these appeared to be some of the worst. They were actually a band 0f 34 young musicians who had fallen on hard times, had nearly had their instruments...

The Joke That Became Famous

Monday, March 4, 2019, 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...

Gluck Takes It from the Top

Friday, March 1, 2019, 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, always in...

Like Son, Like Father

Thursday, February 28, 2019, 11:30am

Johann Strauss the Younger is known as the waltz-king, but his father was worthy of the title before him, according to an eyewitness account from Vienna in 1833: “Under illuminated trees and in open arcades people sit at countless tables eating and drinking, chatting, laughing and listening. In...

Paderewski's Revenge

Wednesday, February 27, 2019, 11:30am

The great Polish pianist Ignace Jan Paderweski took the opportunity to get even with an agent named Wolff who mistreated him on his way to the top. And he wondered ever after what it had cost him to even the score. It happened in Berlin in 1890. Paderweski was an international sensation, and he was...

Sir Thomas Quells a Neighbor

Tuesday, February 26, 2019, 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

Monday, February 25, 2019, 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...

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