“Anecdotes and maxims are rich treasures to the man of the world.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The universe of classical music is jam-packed with musical anecdotes. Frequently these short narratives delineate subtle stories that highlight specific traits of a classical composer or a performer. Often humorous, anecdotes of classical composers don’t simply provoke laughter but can reveal a more general and subtle truth. We find Sophia Corri escaping her inattentive husband in an empty harp case, Beethoven being thrown in jail for vagrancy, and Rossini and Pavarotti both cooking their favorite meals. Napoleon gave free reign to his infatuation with an opera singer, Bach was challenged to a duel, and Frederick the Great had not only a great passion for music but also for a handsome Lieutenant in the Royal Guard. A musical anecdote is part of the process of telling a story, but it means sharing an experience with someone and not simply supplying him or her with information. And don’t worry, embellishment, exaggeration or fictitious invention are all part of the process. Anecdotes of classical composers impart the sense of a lived experience, as they usually involve real people in recognizable places and locations. In fact, musical anecdotes exhibit a special kind of realism and an identifiable historical dimension. Check back with us for more insightful and delightful musical anecdotes.
It might not be a complete surprise, but Franz Liszt and Felix Mendelssohn really didn’t like each other! Mendelssohn first heard a Liszt performance at a concert in Paris in 1825. In his opinion “Liszt had many fingers but few
Georgian composer Sulkhan Tsintsadze (1925–1991) started his music studies in Tbilisi, the capital city of Georgia, studying the cello with a private tutor and then continued onto the Tbilisi State Conservatory. He completed his studies in Moscow at the Moscow
The horn has a long history, dating from the first time one of our ancestors took a cow horn and, holding it to his lips, found it could make a sound. Moving on from the simple cow horn to the
King Philip V ruled Spain from 1 November 1700 until his son Ferdinand VI eventually succeeded him in 1746. Historians have not been kind to his legacy, suggesting that he only marginally advanced the government of his predecessors and that
For every composer, the first work of a series is a serious undertaking. For the composers who followed Beethoven, the symphony was a particularly daunting mountain. Gone were the days of a composer writing hundreds of symphonies: Haydn wrote 106,
We primarily remember the Viennese theatrical impresario Emanuel Schikaneder as collaborator and librettist on Mozart’s Magic Flute. However, Schikaneder was also directly responsible for several compositions by Ludwig van Beethoven. You see, Schikaneder and his troupe of performers appeared in
Henriette Sontag (1806-1854) was an operatic soprano of international renown. No other than Hector Berlioz wrote the following glowing critique, “She unites all the qualities we like to find in an artist: sweetness never surpassed, agility almost fabulous, expression, and
One of the most groundbreaking musical happenings of the late 12th century was Pérotin Magnus (Master Pérotin) and his setting of the ‘Viderunt omnes’ text. This 6-line text speaks of God’s relation to the Earth and how all have seen
