“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.
The last of Johann Sebastian Bach’s surviving children, Regina Susanna Bach, was born in 1742. At that time, Bach was 57 years of age, and he started to experience a number of health issues. Most serious was an affliction to
Johanna Carolina Bach was baptised on 30 October 1737 in the midst of a severe professional crisis for her father. It all started on 14 May 1737 when the German-Danish composer, theorist and critic of music Johann Adolf Scheibe published
Johann Christian Bach was born on 5 September 1735, the eighteenth child of Johann Sebastian Bach, and the youngest of his eleven sons. Johann Sebastian was nearly 50 at the time of his birth, and he supervised his son’s early
Vernon Duke (Vladimir Dukelsky) (1903-1969) arrived in New York in 1921. He, his mother, and his brother had been living in Kiev and fled Russia and the Russian Revolution, which began in 1917, first going to Constantinople before continuing to
Once Bach had arrived in Leipzig, he cultivated and maintained connections with the city’s political, commercial, and clerical establishment as well as its intellectual elite. He received support from high-ranking state dignitaries and conducted regular business with town, church, and
Johann Christoph Friedrich, known as the ”Bückeburg Bach”, was born in Leipzig on 21 June 1732 and baptised two days later. He was the 16th of Johann Sebastian Bach’s twenty children and the 9th child from his marriage to Anna
When Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) wrote his first quodlibet (a work that combines popular melodies of the day) at age 10, it was designed to show off both his keyboard skills and knowledge of music, a later quodlibet had a
Over the years, Anna Magdalena Bach fulfilled many different roles. Above all, she mothered a large and steadily increasing family. When she married the widower Bach, she took on four small children, and subsequently gave birth to thirteen children over
