Did you know that...
Facts About Classical Music
-
Several of Canada’s most famous composers lived past their ninetieth birthday. These include Murray Adaskin, Alexander Brott, Jean Coulthard, Oskar Morawetz and John Weinzweig. As of the launch of this web site, Otto Joachim, born in 1910, is still living in Montreal. Maybe it’s something about the clean air in this country!
-
On the other hand, some of the greatest and most famous composers didn’t even live to see their fortieth birthday. These include Gershwin and Mendelssohn, who died at 38, Georges Bizet at 36, Mozart at 35, Vincenzo Bellini at 33, Schubert at 31 and two of Canada’s most promising young talents, Pierre Mercure at 38 and Claude Vivier at 34.
-
The English horn is neither English nor a horn. It is the tenor member of the oboe family, hence, a woodwind instrument.
-
Vivaldi wrote over 200 violin concertos. But this is just a fraction of the total for all instruments: about 500, including for mandolin, viola d'amore, oboe, recorder, bassoon, cello, horn, flute and trumpet. There are solo concertos, double concertos, ensemble concertos (more than two soloists), concertos for double orchestra, and concertos for string orchestra without soloist. In addition to all this he wrote dozens of solo sonatas, motets, operas, sacred choral works … did the man ever sleep?
-
Haydn wrote over a hundred symphonies (106 to be exact), no two alike. But that’s not the record. Johann Melchior Molter (1696-1765), an obscure German composer, reportedly wrote something like 170 symphonies, many of them very much alike, we’re told.
-
Handel was born in Germany, studied music in Italy and spent most of his career in England. So does that make him a German composer, an Italian composer or an English composer?
-
A concert grand piano has 88 keys. Yes, you knew that, but how many strings does it have? Answer: 243.
-
Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto opens with the soloist playing completely alone, the first time in history this ever happened.
-
Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, unquestionably one of the most famous pieces in the Classical Hit Parade, languished in total obscurity for well over two hundred years before being rediscovered in the mid-twentieth century.
-
Stravinsky was invited to write music for some Hollywood films but he demanded so much money that the producers declined. “It’s not my music that’s so expensive,” he claimed, “it’s my name.”
-
All four of Brahms’s symphonies are so equal in stature and greatness that most people can’t pick a favorite. Usually, the one they’re listening to at the moment is their favorite!
-
Beethoven could be rude – really rude! He once told a prince to his face: “You are a prince by accident of birth. What I am, I achieved by myself.” (Whew!)
-
In Mozart’s day, it was considered too demanding for an audience to sit through an entire four-movement symphony without hearing some diversions (songs, arias, show-off pieces, dances) between movements to lighten things up.
-
Canada has produced an exceptionally large number of world-famous singers, especially considering its relatively small population. Among the greats of the past were Raoul Jobain, André Turp, Pierette Alarie, Richard Verreau, Jon Vickers, Maureen Forrester, Teresa Stratas, George London, Léopold Simoneau, Joseph Rouleau and Gary Rideout. Present-day stars include Gerald Finley, Dan Taylor, Karina Gauvin, Measha Brueggergosman, Paul Frey, Anna-Maria Popescu, Marie-Nicole Lemieux, Richard Margison and Ben Heppner.
-
Beethoven’s Fifth, the most famous symphony in the world, is not played as often as the Seventh.
-
Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 was the first concerto in history to feature the keyboard as a solo instrument.
-
Haydn’s Trumpet Concerto is not only his most famous concerto for any instrument; it is the most popular trumpet concerto by any composer right up to the present day.
-
Verdi wrote more operas that are often performed today than any other composer.
-
Bach was not the Leipzig Town Council’s first choice for the position he held in that city for the last 27 years of his life. He was actually the Council’s third choice. Councilor Platz noted that “since the best man could not be obtained, a mediocre one will have to be accepted.”
-
No plaque, statue or memorial has ever been erected in honor of a music critic.
-
Telemann composed about 3,000 works – quite possibly a record, at least among the famous composers.
-
Bach was sent to jail in Weimar for too forcibly demanding his dismissal from a post there he didn’t want anymore.
-
Bach gave new meaning to the word stubborn. In 1736, while in Leipzig, he objected to the appointment of a mediocre prefect to the St. Thomas School. When he could not get the matter resolved within the city, he took his case to the King of Poland, then to a succession of dukes in different countries, to the Archmarshal and Elector of the Holy Roman Empire, the Landgrave of Thuringia, the Margrave of Meissen, the Burgrave of Magdeburg, the Prince of Henneberg, the Count of Marck, and that wasn’t the end. We don’t know how things turned out, but obviously you wouldn’t want to be on Bach’s bad side.
-
Mozart wrote over 1,200 letters, which works out to an average of about a letter every four days for his entire adult life. There were many periods when he wrote a letter almost every single day, mostly to family members. (Remember – no telephones, email or text messaging in Mozart’s time!) (For more on this, see Mozart's Letters)
-
Vivaldi achieved such renown in his native Venice that for a while he was regarded as a tourist attraction from whom a visitor could commission a piece in memory of his visit.
-
No one knows where Vivaldi is buried, except that it’s somewhere in Vienna (not Venice, where he spent most of his life).
