By David Amos
SAN DIEGO–The ones of us who live within the world of classical music, either as performers or as listeners, have a strong tendency to visualize the composers we cherish as one-dimensional statues – just figures in history who composed, and did little else. It is refreshing to hear stories and read books which humanize our heroes and give them a more balanced perspective and personality. After all, these famous men and women in music did a lot more than just compose. Many had a variety of interests and talents, were very eloquent in speaking and writing words, and more than a handful of them were witty and sharp-tongued.
A fine book which I read, The Book of Musical Anecdotes, written and compiled by Norman Lebrecht and published by the Free Press, a division of MacMillan Inc. is a collection of short stories about great people in music.
But, specifically for me, where I found the most interest was in the way composers related to each other. What did they think of their colleagues, both past and contemporary? Did they have respect for them, contempt, jealousy, admiration? Praises are easy to understand, but sometimes it is difficult to differentiate between sour-grapes and true critical convictions.
Here are a few short excerpts, showing how people in music, mainly composers, thought and spoke of each other.
–Once, when a new quartet of Haydn was being performed in a large gathering, a musician, standing beside Mozart, found fault, first with one thing, then, another, explaining at length with impudent assurance, “I would have never done it that way!”
“Nor should I”, answered Mozart. “But you know why? Because neither you nor I would have so good an idea”.
–The dying Chopin told his friends, “You will play music at my memorial, will you?” A.J. Franchomme, a French cellist, answered, “Of course. I will play your Cello Sonata”, to which Chopin replied, “On no, not mine; play really good music, Mozart, for instance”.
–Massenet was once asked the difference between Strauss Jr. and Brahms. He said, “Brahms is the spirit of Vienna, and Strauss is its perfume”.
–After Dvorak sent him a work which was not flawless in its workmanship, Brahms answered, “We can not any longer write as beautiful music as Mozart did; so let us try to write as clean”.
–Among the 20,000 mourners who followed Beethoven’s coffin on March 29, 1827, was Franz Schubert. After the ceremony at the Wahring Cemetery, Schubert and his friends went to an inn to have a drink. Schubert lifted his glass, and his first toast was “To him whom we have buried”. At the second glass, he said, “To him who will go next”. Twenty months later, on November 19, 1828, Schubert was dead, aged only thirty one.
–The composer Auber asked Rossini how he had liked the performance of Wagner’s Tannhauser, which they both just attended. Rossini answered, with a satirical smile, “It is music one must hear several times. I am not going again!” At another time, Rossini said, “Mr. Wagner has beautiful moments, but bad quarters of an hour”. (I have heard is as “Wagner has beautiful moments, but terrible half hours”)
–Hector Berlioz said, “Meyerbeer has not merely the luck to have talent, but in a very high degree, the talent to have luck”.
–Speaking of Meyerbeer (a musical rival of Wagner), soon after his death, his young nephew composed a funeral march and took it to Rossini. “Very good, very good”, said Rossini, when the young man had finished playing it at the piano. “But truthfully, wouldn’t it have been better if you had died, and your poor uncle had composed the march?”
–After composer Max Reger had played an inspired performance of the piano part to Schubert’s Trout Quintet, a lady admirer sent Reger a freshly caught trout. In his note of thanks, Reger enclosed the date of his next concert, and the program: Haydn’s Ox Minuet!
–Caruso was proud of his skills as a cartoonist, and was greatly disappointed when Mark Twain failed to invite him to a dinner he once gave in New York to eminent cartoonists. “Perhaps”, he said plaintively, “he only knows me as a tenor!”
–After Arnold Schoenberg’s death in 1951, his widow sent Mr. and Mrs. Charles Ives a note she found among his papers. It read, “There is a great man living in this country, a composer. He has solved the problem how to preserve one’s self and to learn. He responds to negligence by contempt. He is not forced to accept praise or blame. His name is Ives.”
–George Gershwin was forever seeking lessons from anyone he felt might improve his technical skills – from Ravel, Stravinsky, the violinist Joseph Achron, and many others. In Hollywood, he became a friend and tennis partner of Arnold Schoenberg, and once asked the older composer to accept him as a pupil. Schoenberg refused, and said, “I would only make you a bad Schoenberg, and you are such a good Gershwin already”.
(There are many variations of this story).
–When Benjamin Britten visited Russia, he and Shostakovich became good friends. “What do you think of Puccini”, Shostakovich asked one. “His operas are dreadful”, said Britten. “No, Ben”, replied Shostakovich. “He wrote marvelous operas, but dreadful music”.
–Leonard Bernstein once said to his colleague, composer Ned Rorem, “The trouble with you and me, Ned, is that we want everyone in the world to love us, and of course, this is impossible. You just don’t meet everyone in the world!”
–Someone once asked Sir Thomas Beecham, the quick-witted British conductor, “Have you heard any (of the music of composer Karlheinz) Stockhausen?” To which he replied, “No, but I believe I have trodden in some!”
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Amos is conductor of the Tifereth Israel Community Orchestra in San Diego, and has guest conducted professional orchestras around the world. He may be contacted at david.amos@sdjewishworld.com