“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.
Giacomo Puccini and the Automobile Giacomo Puccini had a penchant for fine cigars, quality spirits and every woman he could possibly get his hands on! And did I mention excessive gambling and hunting with country friends in the Florentine marshes
How do we really know what a composer looked like? Do we trust paintings and etchings? Do we believe people’s images as mediated through another’s hand? Before photography came into widespread use in the mid-19th century, the only way of
Why is chess such a popular game? For one, this ancient game of strategy is easy to learn but almost impossible to master. No matter how far you progress, chess reveals ever-new subtleties and intricacies of increasing complexity. It is
Welcome on board! Let’s continue our musical journey in the second largest metropolitan area in South America and the capital of Argentina – Buenos Aires. I talked of the “big four” in the Golden Age of tango music between the
Alex Cobbe’s piano collection at Hatchlands Park has one massive square piano that was immensely practical to its two composer owners. How do composers compose? We’re familiar with the images from movies, the composer with one hand on the keyboard
The Alex Cobbe Collection of composer’s pianos is a collection that can give us a feeling for how pianos developed, often in response to the demands of composers. The square piano, called that despite the fact that they’re actually rectangles,
The Alex Cobbe Collection at Hatchlands, near Guilford, Surry, holds an interesting variety of pianos, most with composer connections. When we look at a composer’s piano, for the most part, we can only imagine what works were created on it.
The Alex Cobbe collection in England is the largest collection of composers’ piano in the world. Three of the most important pieces of the collection are the pianos owned by Chopin, each of which was used during the final year
