Search Results for: brahms
Brahms and the “cremation cantata”
Mathilde Wesendonck (above) is known to music historians for her romantic entanglement with and artistic influence on Wagner in the 1850s. What is less commonly known is that once her relationship with Wagner had cooled she became an admirer and … Continue reading
Filed under Curiosities, Literature, Romantic era
Brahms was Chilean
To honor Brahms’s 180th birthday, let’s recall the article about his birthplace that ignited a musicological firestorm! In “Brahms era chileno” (Pauta: Cuadernos de teoría y crítica musical, no. 63 [July-Sept 1997] pp. 39–44), the Argentine composer Juan María Solare states … Continue reading
Filed under Curiosities, Humor, Romantic era
Johannes Brahms, railfan
Brahms’s correspondence reveals that he was very fond of railroad travel; nowadays he might be called a railfan. In an 1881 letter to George Henschel, Brahms noted that he was spending the summer in the Viennese suburb of Pressbaum, observing … Continue reading
Filed under Curiosities, Romantic era
Brahms and Breitkopf
Responding to enthusiastic recommendations from Robert and Clara Schumann, Breitkopf & Härtel published several of Brahms’s early works; but after the hostile public reaction to the 1859 premiere of his D-minor piano concerto the publisher became more cautious, accepting some … Continue reading
Filed under Curiosities, Romantic era
Brahms era chileno
In the article “Brahms era chileno” (Pauta: Cuadernos de teoría y crítica musical, no. 63 [July-Sept 1997] pp. 39–44), the Argentine composer Juan María Solare states that Johann Jakob Brahms (1806–72), accompanied by his wife, Johanna Henrika Christiane Nissen (1789–1865), took … Continue reading
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Filed under Curiosities, Humor, Romantic era
Elgar and the gramophone
For 20 years Edward Elgar worked for The Gramophone Company as both an advocate of his music and an advocate of the gramophone. During this period, recording technology changed from the cramped conditions of the acoustic studio of 1914 (above) … Continue reading
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Filed under Romantic era
The Hindenburg piano
The first piano ever to be carried on a passenger aircraft was created by the Julius Blüthner Pianofortefabrik for the ill-fated Hindenburg airship. The lightweight aluminum alloy grand piano weighed only 162 kg (356 lbs). The frame, rim, fallboard, and … Continue reading
Filed under Curiosities, Instruments
Antonín Dvořák, railfan
Dvořák had tremendous admiration for technical inventions, particularly locomotives—in the U.S. he might be called a railfan. “It consists of many parts, of so many different parts, and each has its own importance, each has its own place,” he wrote. … Continue reading
Filed under Curiosities, Resources, Romantic era, Science
Sophy and Mendelssohn
In 1833 Sophy Horsley, a well-heeled British teenager, wrote to her aunt “Mendelssohn took my album with him the night of our glee-party, but you have no idea how many names he has got me.” Over the following years Horsley … Continue reading
Filed under Curiosities, Romantic era, Visual art
One finger too many
The classical music world knows Alfred Brendel as one of the foremost pianists of his time. Far fewer people know him as a poet, with two books of poetry in German and one—One finger too many—in English translation (New York: … Continue reading
Filed under Humor, Literature, Performers
