Back to index of music pages by Donald Sauter.
I gave this book report a separate page instead of adding it to my book reports page because of the long index you'll find below. Check my music book reports page for a few other books about music.
"Little" is 3.25 x 5 inches (8.3 x 12.5 cm). There are 121 anecdotes, each given its own little chapter, in the 275 little pages. The value of the stories is that they are the sort of thing that generally aren't told in the music encyclopedias and reference books; they help us get to know the musicians and composers as people to some extent or another. I guess the stories are mostly true. Here are some of my favorites.
J. S. Bach took some complimentary words from the Margrave of Brandenburg as a commission, and whipped up the Brandenburg Concertos for him. Even though he was a patron of the arts and had his own orchestra, he never made use of Bach's gift. It wasn't until a hundred years after Bach's death that the Brandenburg Concertos were published and played.
There's the celebrated religious work called the Miserere by Allegri. The Pope did not allow it to be performed outside of the Sistine Chapel, and to copy it meant excommunication. But 14-year-old Mozart attended a performance, went home - and wrote it down from memory! This story is even corroborated by the 1936 Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians in the article on Allegri. A minor discrepancy is that Grove's has Mozart writing it down while the choir was singing. Still, I'm impressed.
On the other hand, an anecdote in Kaufmann's book about pianist De Pachmann gives an almost completely opposite impression from the entry in Grove's. Kaufmann shows him with an enormously swelled head, crying, "Gut, De Pachmann," aloud while performing. Grove's says he was "his own severest critic". He retired 8 years once from performance for hard study, and another time 2 years. This doesn't disprove the Kaufmann anecdote, of course.
There's a story about soprano Mary Garden's strapless evening gown:
An amorous old gentleman kept his eyes glued hopefully on Mary's white expanse of bosom. Finally he could bear it no longer. "What keeps your dress up, my dear?" he asked. "Only your age, sir," retorted Mary.
I don't quite get it, although I presume it's supposed to be slightly naughty. Still, I was quite proud of myself when I found the source of the anecdote in Rudolph Bing's autobiography, 5000 Nights At The Opera. At a performance of Carmen in Bing's second season at the Met (1951-52), Mary Garden came up to his box (page 180):
She came up to my box, an old lady in a remarkable strapless gown, and one of the even older men said to her, "What makes that dress stay up?" She said, "Your age, sir."
"Good catch, Donald, my man!" you say. But hold your horses. Kaufmann's book was copyrighted in 1948. And before you propose the simplest solution, that Bing's memory was off by a few years, consider that he arrived in the U.S. in 1949 to observe the Met's operation in preparation for taking over as manager in the 1950-51 season. If you figure Bing will just slap down any ol' story and pretend he was part of it, reading any handful of pages from his book will dispel you of that notion. It drips with names, places, dates, and times, and reproduced memos and letters - not a fuzzy memory in sight. Read the whole thing, by the way. It's great. It needs an index, too.
Still, anyone's memory will play tricks on him, and my best explanation is that when Mary visited Bing's box, she recounted the story to him, and as the years went by (his book is copyright 1972) his memory turned her story into an actual event in the box. That's a stretch, admittedly, but it seems more likely than the same incident - with almost identical quotes - occurring twice. Don't look at me.
UPDATE, Oct 2008: I've found the story again in Opera Anecdotes, by Ethan Mordden, page 174.
Chauncey Depew stares at Garden's decollete and says, "Tell me, Miss Garden, what's holding that dress up?"Garden looks him spang in the eye and answers, "Your age and my discretion."
There's a story of conductor Leopold Stokowski dropping in to visit Igor Stravinski in Berlin in 1920. Stravinski had never heard of him, or his orchestra, or even Philadelphia, and didn't want to be bothered. Stokowski went away fuming and brought back a batch of records with him conducting. He passed them through the door and Stravinsky actually played them before finally deciding the guy was for real. This brings to mind another anecdote involving Stravinsky, a visitor, and a record. The visitor was a young, unknown violinist named Arnold Steinhardt - not yet of the Guarneri Quartet - seeking tips on playing Stravinski's violin concerto. Stravinsky must have mellowed by that time. Read that story on my music book reports page.
Stephen Foster's "Old Folks At Home" was originally published with a song-writing credit to Christy of the Christy Minstrels. The reason given here is that Foster didn't want to get a reputation as just a composer of "Ethiopian melodies". Coincidentally, I got to this anecdote in the book the day after seeing the "Old Folks At Home" sheet music on display at the "Piano 300" exhibit at the Smithsonian (Jul 4 2000.) There was Ed Christy's name, as big as life.
There's a good one about Paderewski's famous Minuet. Paderewski often visited a Dr. Chalubinski who was a "passionate devotee of the music of Mozart." Thus, Paderewski was obliged to play the 3 or 4 Mozart pieces in his repertoire again and again for Chalubinski. Paderewski got a bit bugged by this Mozart worship and whipped up a little minuet in that style. According to Kaufmann:
The next time he visited the Doctor, in response to the usual request for "a little Mozart, please," he played his own Minuet. The response was even better than he had anticipated.
"Marvelous, indescribable!" cried the host. "Tell me, Paderewski, tell me honestly, is there anyone now alive who could write such music?"
"Yes, Doctor, there is."
"There is? Who?"
"It is I."
"Impossible. I am surprised at your effrontery. How dare you say such a thing?"
"But I wrote the Minuet you have just been hearing."
Nobody likes to be duped, so it's not surprising this put a strain on their friendship. But things were patched up soon enough, and the Minuet became so widely played that you can even find two guitar transcriptions of it listed on my page of guitar music I've gotten from the Library of Congress.
Kaufmann says Tchaikovsky's B flat Minor Piano Concerto was well known to "lovers of popular music, thanks to the syncopated arrangement played by dance bands." Anybody with ears in 1948 remember that?
Bizet was crushed by the initial response to Carmen, and died before it became a triumph a few months later.
The book claims that Dvorak's "Goin' Home" melody was a spiritual tune gotten from "one of his favorite students, a young Negro boy." I believe all the authorities agree the tune is a Dvorak original, even though some people may still think it's an old spiritual.
The main point of the story of army man Marc Blitzstein's unique commission for a symphony on the Air Force was all the interruptions he experienced from 1943 to 1945. One was a six-week period in which "he coached a chorus of Negro G.I.'s. Under his leadership, they gave a magnificent concert, which was one of the high spots of the London musical season." It'd be fun to track down a contemporary review of that one.
The story of "How Guam Became Music Minded" in World War II is a funny one. Here's the background: "When in 1904, the Americans received Guam from the Spaniards, it was a sorry acquisition. The island was poor, devoid of educational and health facilities... Moreover, it was practically bankrupt of music. The natives knew only one tune, a sing-song chant of indeterminate origin. This they produced on every occasion, grave or gay. It made for a certain monotony." (Hee hee hee.)
Most of the rest of the book is given over to infighting, back-biting, insults and feuds between musicians. That's when they're not going deaf or dying young or thrown into deep depression by first-night flops. Criminy, even Waltz King the First (Johann Strauss) resented Junior's success. I'm exaggerating here for effect, but musicians sure can come across as a right miserable lot.
In case you ever find the book (remember, little - and red), here's an index I've put together for it. Let me know if you ever make use of it, ok?
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Index to
"The Little Book Of Music Anecdotes"
by Helen L. Kaufmann
Alda, Frances 248
Allegri 43
Arne, Dr. Thomas 7
Auber 116
Bach, JS 10 28 30 98
Balakireff 137
Bartok 262
Beethoven 53 56 58 60 62 66 68 102 135 154 166 171 176 201 250
Benchley, Robert 108
Berg, Alban 217
Berlioz 65 70 92 131
Bernstein, Leonard 274
Betti, Adolfo 221
Beyer 174
Bizet 142 176
Blitzstein, Marc 271
Borodin 137 140
Boulanger, Nadia 268
Brahms 31 166 168 221
Breuning 56 62
Bru"ckner 166
Bu"low, Hans von 147 160 166 189 201
Cartier 193
Chaliapin 139
Chalubinski, Dr. 187
Charles II 3
Charpentier 248
Chasins, Abram 186
Chavez, Carlos 213
Cherubini 70 72
Chezy, Helmine von 107
Chopin 92 104
Christofori (singer) 44
Christy 150
Clementi 58
Copland 267
Couperin 193 194
Cui 137
Damrosch, Walter 268
Debussy 189 262 267
Degeyter, Pierre 227
Delsart, Jules 110
Devrient 99
Diaghilev 208
Dittersdorf 193
Downes, Olin 193 235
Dukas 262
Durand 267
Dvorak 158 166
Dvorsky 194
Dyer, Cpt. George 224
Ehrbar 170
Einstein, Albert 252
Elman, Mischa 190 195 197 200
Emmett, Daniel 129
Enesco, Georges 190 263 264
Esterhazy 37 39
Ferber, Edna 216
Flonzaley Quartet 221
Foster, Stephen 150
Francoeur 193
Fricken, Ernestine von 87
Garden, Mary 230
Gatti-Casazza 248
Gershwin, George 237
Gilbert, William 177
Gilmore, Pat 148
Glinka 135
Gluck 17
Godowsky, Leopold 200
Goethe 63
Goldberg 30
Gordon, Jacques 190
Gostling 3
Gottschalk 128
Grainger, Percy 178
Grieg 174 178
Gru"newald, Matthias 254
Guardasini 45
Guardia, Fiorello La 218
Guirard, Ernest 164
Hammerstein 216
Handel 7 32 33
Haslinger 116
Hayden 35 37 39 41
Heifetz 195 200 254
Hindemith 254
Hofmann, Josef 194 229
Howe, Julia Ward 149
Hubert 145
Ives 270
Jeritza, Maria 240
Kanin, Garson 273
Kern, Jerome 215
Kreisler, Fritz 190 196
Lanner, Joseph 191
Leoncavallo 176
Leopold, Prince 10
Leschetitzky 188
Liebling, (Leonard?) 252
Lisle, Rouget de 75
Liszt 89 104
Lomax, John 205
Lully 21
Maelzel 62
Martini, Padre 193
Mason, Dr. Lowell 119
Mason, William 128
Massenet 262
Mehul 78
Melchior, Lauritz 240
Mendelssohn 95 98 101
Merelli 122
Meyerbeer 83 104 184
Miaskovsky 235
Monteux, Pierre 208
Moszkowski 223 231
Moussorgsky 137 139
Mozart 43 45 49 50 187 252
Muck, Karl 239
Newman, Ernest 186
Nicolaev 257
Nijinsky 208
Nottebohm 166
Nourrit, Adolphe 104
Noyes Alfred, 219
Oeberg 232
Offenbach 164
Pachmann, De 231
Paderewski 67 187 201
Paganini 155
Paisiello 79
Pergolesi 24
Philip, Isidor 262
Piccini 18
Ponte, Da 45
Porpora 193
Prokofieff 235
Prokosch 153
Pugnani 193
Purcell, Henry 5
Rachmaninoff 186 235
Rameau 21
Ravel 242
Reiner, Fritz 256
Rimsky-Korsakoff 137 181
Rivera, Diego 214
Robeson, Paul 215
Rome, Harold 213
Roosevelt, F.D. 206
Rossini 78 81 83
Rubinstein, Anton 229
Rubinstein, Artur 210
Rubinstein, Nikolai 145
Ruzicka, Dr. 74
Saint-Saens 160 162 262
Scarlatti, Domenico 14 109
Schelling, Ernest 220
Schestakoff, Mme. 135
Schikaneder 50
Schluessel, Sanford 197
Schmehl (drummer) 243
Schnabel, Artur 252
Schoenberg 217 261
Schubert 73 108
Schumann, Clara 85 89
Schumann, Robert 85 89
Scriabin 235
Servais, Francois 109
Shostakovitch 138 257 266
Slezak, Leo 184
Smetana 152
Solera 123
Stamitz 193
Stokowski 232
Stradella, Allesandro 1
Strauss, Johann 113 115 166
Strauss, Richard 204 256
Stravinsky 207 232 235
Sullivan, Arthur 177
Tartini 23
Tchaikowsky 140 145
Toscanini 218 242 246 248 250
Verdi 121 126
Villa-Lobos 210
Vivaldi 193 194
Wagner 143 160 166 239 240
Weber 103 107
Whiteman, Paul 237
Widor, Charles Marie 262
Wilder, Alec 260
Wolf, Hugo 172
Woollcott, Alexander 215
Zager 172
Zelter 98