“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.
Wait, what? This guy wrote film music as well as classical stuff? Pfft… Sound familiar? It’s interesting nowadays how film composers are often sneered at in relation to their more ‘serious’ counterparts. However, there was a whole generation of composers
Starting in the 16th century with small albums created by fellow classmates and continuing into the 20th century with the rise of musical groupies (actually, this started much earlier), the autograph book is an interesting view into the relationship between
Some of the most beautiful music in the world is an image, not a sound. And in these works of musical art, there is often another message to be read. In 1477, the Chansonnier Cordiforme (the heart-shaped songbook) was a
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 17, K. 453, “Allegretto” The Mozart household in Vienna was frequently described as a place of controlled chaos. Joachim Daniel Preiser, an actor from the Royal Theater of Copenhagen, described an afternoon with Mozart
The fact that the names of the pitches of the scales are both consonants and vowels opens up a great deal of possibility in terms of hiding words in music. The alphabet that can be hidden is larger than you
Eklipse, a German-based string quartet, is turning the traditional look of the string quartet upside down. No more conservative clothes and demure attitude, this group takes the string quartet into the realm of heavy metal styling: eye patches and leather
We were talking about tempo and how composers sought to transfer the sound in their ear to their performers’ brain. Starting in the Baroque, Italian words such as Allegro and Andante were used to show relative speed. But composers wanted
Wilhelm Friedrich Ernst Bach (1759-1845) was the eldest son of Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach and the singer Lucia Elizabeth Munchhausen. Wilhelm Friedrich Ernst, not to be confused with his uncle Wilhelm Friedeman Bach, was the only grandson of Johann Sebastian
