“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.
Henry Cowell: Pulse The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation State Prison in San Quentin has numerously featured in fiction, literature, motion pictures, concerts, music videos and more recently, video games. It is the oldest prison in the state of
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We all remember that Johann Sebastian Bach was jailed for overstaying his holiday, and that Beethoven, mistaken for a homeless vagrant, spent a couple of days in the slammer as well. Michael Tippet was arrested for conscientiously objecting to WW2,
It’s graduation season and we start to hear music for ceremonies. At my high school graduation, the concert band played a bit of Wagner: ‘Elsa’s Procession to the Cathedral’ from Lohengrin. It was wonderful music, but when you’d repeated it
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Slowly, behind the heroine, the shadow rises….the audience shrinks back in their cinema seats, helped with a hearty push from the music, generally starting in the cellos, which signal the terror that awaits. Then the violins take over, strident in
In the fifteenth century, when manuscript book production really took off, the problem of blank space in the margins had some unique solutions. When these were music books, even the initial letters of songs were decorated.
