Secret lives of great composers : what your teachers never told you about the world's musical masters

311 Pages·2014·42.74 MB·English

by  Lunday

Copyright © 2009 by Quirk Productions, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Number: 2009922322
eBook ISBN: 978-1-59474746-5
Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-1-59474-402-0
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v3.1
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
INTRODUCTION
ANTONIO VIVALDI
March 4, 1678–July 28, 1741
GEORGE FRIDERIC HANDEL
February 23, 1685–April 14, 1759
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
March 21, 1685–July 28, 1750
FRANZ JOSEPH HAYDN
March 31, 1732–May 31, 1809
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART
January 27, 1756–December 5, 1791
CHILD PRODIGIES
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
December 16, 1770–March 26, 1827
GIOACHINO ROSSINI
February 29, 1792–November 13, 1868
HECTOR BERLIOZ
December 11, 1803–March 8, 1869
FELIX MENDELSSOHN
February 3, 1809–November 4, 1847
WOMEN COMPOSERS
FRÉDÉRIC CHOPIN
March 1, 1810–October 17, 1849
ROBERT SCHUMANN
June 8, 1810–July 29, 1856
FRANZ LISZT
October 22, 1811–July 31, 1886
RICHARD WAGNER
May 22, 1813–February 13, 1883
GIUSEPPE VERDI
October 9 or 10, 1813–January 27, 1901
JOHANNES BRAHMS
May 7, 1833–April 3, 1897
PYOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY
May 7, 1840–November 6, 1893
ANTONÍN LEOPOLD DVOŘÁK
September 8, 1841–May 1, 1904
EDWARD WILLIAM ELGAR
June 2, 1857–February 23, 1934
GIACOMO PUCCINI
December 22, 1858–November 29, 1924
OPERA LIBRETTI
GUSTAV MAHLER
July 7, 1860–May 18, 1911
CLAUDE DEBUSSY
August 22, 1862–March 25, 1918
RICHARD STRAUSS
June 11, 1864–September 8, 1949
SERGEY RACHMANINOFF
April 1, 1873–March 28, 1943
ARNOLD SCHOENBERG
September 13, 1874–July 13, 1951
CHARLES IVES
October 20, 1874–May 19, 1954
MAURICE RAVEL
March 7, 1875–December 28, 1937
IGOR STRAVINSKY
June 17, 1882–April 6, 1971
GEORGE GERSHWIN
September 26, 1898–July 11, 1937
AARON COPLAND
November 14, 1900–December 2, 1990
JAZZ
DMITRY SHOSTAKOVICH
September 25, 1906–August 9, 1975
SAMUEL BARBER
March 9, 1910–January 23, 1981
JOHN CAGE
September 5, 1912–August 12, 1992
LEONARD BERNSTEIN
August 25, 1918–October 14, 1990
PHILIP GLASS
January 31, 1937–
VIDEO GAME MUSIC
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
About the Author
Acknowledgments
Y ou’ve checked your coat, handed in your ticket, and settled into your seat for an
evening at the concert hall or opera house. You open the glossy printed program and
turn to the notes to get some sense of the cultural enlightenment the evening has in store.
Reading that erudite text, it is easy to come away with the idea that all composers pursued
lives of moral rectitude and personal honor, one worthy of the refined attention about to be
given their masterpieces.
Er, not so much. The idea of the “outrageous musician” is much older than rock and roll.
Trashing hotel rooms? Beethoven could wreck a suite like nobody’s business. Scandalizing
audiences with sexual shenanigans? Liszt had passionate “fans” from Brussels to
Budapest. Demanding concessions from concert promoters? They don’t get much weirder
than Wagner.
In fact, a lot of composers led truly outrageous lives. Mozart had a potty mouth,
Schumann had syphilis, and Bernstein had an ego bigger than New York City. Bach wrote
The Well-Tempered Clavier while locked up in the clink, Wagner cranked out Lohengrin
while on the run from creditors, and Puccini crafted Madama Butterfly while trying to keep
his wife from hunting down his (latest) mistress.
None of those details will turn up in that dull and well-intentioned concert program. So
you have this book instead.
For Secret Lives of Great Composers, I hunted down the most outrageous and
outlandish stories about some of the most remarkable composers of Western culture. This
book won’t tell you what to listen for in the fourth movement of some symphony or other,
but it will tell you who tried to murder his ex-fiancée while dressed drag, who became a
world authority on mushroom identification, and who shared compositional credits with his
pet rabbit.
Of course, I had room for only a limited number of composers, so don’t be hurt because
I left out Holst, Offenbach, or Rimsky-Korsakov. This book isn’t about musical significance,
and I’m not judging quality. And please don’t let the dirt on your favorite composer get in
the way of your enjoyment of the music. Beautiful melodies, haunting chords, and glorious
choruses can—and have—been composed by truly outrageous people, and the impact of
the music is in no way lessened by a composer’s oddities or aberrancies.
That said, the conductor has taken the stage, the lights have dimmed, and the
conductor has raised the baton. You might want hold on to your seat—it’s going to be a
bumpy ride.