A Dangerous Homecoming
In 1866 Mily Balakirev was asked to go to Prague to arrange a production of Mikhail Glinka's opera A Life for the Czar. He was to have the greatest adventure of his life--getting home. Balakirev set out in June and had just arrived in Prague when war broke out between Austria and Prussia. Balakirev...
Engrave This in Your Head
Vincenzo Bellini had strong ideas about what an opera should do. And he could be very forceful in trying to get his ideas across to others. For example, he wrote to a librettist in June 1834: "Don't forget to bring with you the piece you've roughed out so far so that we can resolve the business of...
Fun While It Lasted
As World War I spread through Europe, the famous Australian-born pianist and composer Percy Grainger described himself variously as a conscientious objector or a coward. He had arrived in New York from London as the United States was entering the war. He bought a saxophone. Because of what friends...
Bruckner's Clutter
He wrote vast dramatic symphonies but Anton Bruckner led a life that tended to be prosaic and more than a little cluttered. He didn’t look like other musicians of the 1880's. He kept his hair cut so short that many people remembered him as being bald. He wore a short jacket and voluminous trousers...
The Man I Was Looking For
He ‘s generally thought of as a singularly English composer, but early in his career, Ralph Vaughan Williams had trouble developing his style in England. He needed the right teacher and he found him in an unexpected place. One of Vaughan Williams' first teachers was Charles Villiers Stanford, who...
The Plow that Broke the Plains
The Great Depression was a difficult time for most Americans, including musicians. In 1936 Virgil Thomson was a forty-year-old composer struggling for recognition and cash. His friend John Houseman recommended Thomson to a documentary film maker named Pare Lorenz. Lorenz had already interviewed...
Telemann's Runaway Wife
Composer George Philip Telemann had lived a long, productive life, but on the home frontevents had taken some unhappy turns and he consoled himself with two loves--poetry and plants. Telemann's unfortunate home life was publicized by a theater scandal that broke in Hamburg. A play was being planned...
Liszt in the Lap of Luxury
In 1876 Franz Liszt was on his way from Hanover to Weimar, but he was making the trip in a leisurely, glamorous way. He stopped over at Loo Castle near Utrecht in Holland. On May 18th he wrote to a friend in Weimar: I already asked you from Hanover to keep your quartet together on Friday, May 26th...
Chopin in Vienna
In 1831 a young pianist and composer named Frederic Chopin left his native land, Poland, in order to establish himself in European musical circles. He was a popular success as a concert performer, but at times he was lonely in a crowd. In Vienna in the spring of 1831 Chopin wrote in his journal:...
Winning Over the Master
When the young American composer Daniel Gregory Mason came to Boston to interview the great pianist and composer Ignacy Jan Paderewski -- there was trouble from the start. Because of a misunderstanding Mason was two and a half hours late for his meeting with the great pianist. Mason was waiting in...
The Judas Biographer
May 4th, 1908, 64-year-old Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov was telling a friend about a music treatise he had begun and laid aside. They spoke about the details of composing but, as the evening progressed, the composer and his friend became increasingly reflective. As a rule, Rimsky-Korsakov said it must...
How to Beat a Deadline
Sooner or later every composer has to deal with a deadline. Giacchino Rossini shared some of his trade secrets in a letter that shows his boisterous sense of humor: Wait until the evening before the performance. Nothing stirs up a person's enthusiasm so much as pure necessity, a copyist waiting for...
No Deal!
As World War II raged in Europe, English composer Arthur Bliss was director of music at the BBC. His family was in America and he was looking for a way to go over so that he could arrange to bring them back to England. An offer of assistance came from an unexpected source via a phone call from Lady...
The Russian Retreat
English soprano Clara Novello’s prime reason for her 1839 visit to Russia was to gain the favor of the Czarina, who could prove a powerful patron, but when she arrived in St. Petersburg, the Czarina was ill. In western Europe Novello could count on great composers--Rossini, Mendelssohn, and...
Mother in Law
The celebrated violinist and his admirer were forty years apart in age, but they had more than music to bring them together. They had Mrs. Angelina Chapman Thorp. The Norwegian virtuoso Ole Bull was world-famous by the time he arrived in Madison, Wisconsin, in 1868. Tickets for his Madison concert...
Why He Quit
Two weeks after the successful debut of his oratorio The Celestial Country, composer Charles Ives did something surprising. He swore off any more public performances of his works. The Yale graduate had benefited from the teaching of a major American composer of the day, Horatio Parker, who had done...
Szymanowski vs. America
Like many European visitors to the United States, the Polish composer Karel Szymanowski had mixed feelings about America and Americans. One of his three traveling companions, the pianist Arthur Rubinstein, was already a veteran of tours in America by January 1921 when Szymanowski sailed from...
Humble but Powerful
During a long concert career, English pianist Ivor Newton found that page-turners have more power than audiences realize. In a job that requires agility, quick thinking, and musicianship, they’re in a position to make or break a performance. Newton found that, on the one hand, a dispassionate page-...