“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.
Sometimes it is easy to hate Johann Sebastian Bach! Not because of his abrasive and authoritative personality and certainly not because of his glorious compositions, but for the way that our familiarity with his works gets in the way of
The year ends with a bang and a roar, and perhaps a clink of raised glasses, at New Year. Now that we’ve looked at the Classics for Christmas and more modern songs for Christmas what happens for other parts of
In the holiday season, there are distinctive holiday songs that seem to play incessantly in all the shopping malls. We hear them and they are expected to put us in a ‘holiday mood,’ but do we really listen to them?
When you think about time shifts in music, we think of Stravinsky, where in The Rite of Spring, there are sections where the time signature changes every measure. But what if there were a song, known to most people, where
Now that we’ve looked at the Classics for Christmas, let’s look at some of the new music for the holiday season. When we get to more modern music, the American songs written in the 1940s and 1950s capture our ear.
Many famous public figures have written books. Presidents, starlets, sports stars and others who are not generally known for their literary talents have entertained us with publications detailing their personal lives. Of course, very few have actually written a single
It’s getting chillier, the morning air is brisk, there might even be snow, and with that, our thoughts turn toward the holidays. But we find that the thing that helps us with that holiday feeling is the sound of the
Every music lover knows the Goldberg Variations by J. S. Bach! But who was this Goldberg, who so famously lent his name to one of the most remarkable compositions in the history of Western music? The story of how this
