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Terrence London is our local cultural historian and beat writer.


FUN FACTS & TRIVIA
TONITE’S EPISODE: BEETHOVEN, CHOPIN, TCHAIKOVSKY, J. STRAUSS & MAHLER

BEETHOVEN
• Born in 1770, Beethoven was a child prodigy and appeared in public at age seven, performing on piano.
• His father, an abusive alcoholic, hoped to cash in on his sons talent by making him another Mozart. He forced Beethoven to practice late into the night. 
• Haydn and Salieri were both teachers of Beethoven
• Like Mozart & Haydn, Beethoven also played the violin, but preferred to play viola when sitting in with a string quartet.
• Legend has it that right before Beethoven sat down to compose, he would dump a bucket of ice water over his head. 
• Beethoven liked coffee. Each cup had to be made with at least 60 beans. 
• Beethoven was only 5’ 4” tall.
• By 1816, Beethoven was totally deaf and had to communicate by the written word the last 10 years of his life.
• Still composing though totally deaf, Beethoven had a special metal rod attached to his piano that he could bite down on so he could feel the vibrations of the piano, helping him “hear” what he was playing.
• Beethoven died in 1827; composer Franz Schubert was a torch bearer at Beethoven’s funeral in Vienna, attended in the rain by 20,000 people.
• Later analysis showed Beethoven had lead poisoning – hair samples revealed he had 100 times then normal concentration amount.

CHOPIN
• His two favorite composers were Bach and Mozart. 
• His father, of French background, was teacher in the royal court of Countess Skarbak, while his mother was a housekeeper for the Countess. 
• From a family of musicians, Chopin’s father played flute and violin and his mother taught and played piano. 
• A natural, the piano came very easy to Chopin – he never had to practice long hours and was an excellent sight reader. 
• Chopin had blue eyes. 
• All of his works feature the piano either as solo or playing with other instruments. 
• Though he is buried Paris, Chopin asked that his heart be taken back to Poland. It is interred at Holy Cross Church in Warsaw.
• At his funeral, the Funeral March from his Sonata No. 2 in B flat minor, Op. 35, was played.

TCHAIKOVSKY
• Tchaikovsky was one of the first students at the new St. Petersburg Conservatory, where he studied composition with Anton Rubinstein, one of the finest pianists of his time. 
• Tchaikovsky studied law and took a job as civil servant, working in the Ministry of Justice, before becoming a full-time composer. 
• His first big success was the lyrical Fantasy Overture to Romeo and Juliet.
• To relax, Tchaikovsky liked to play solitaire. 
• Tchaikovsky’s favorite composer was Mozart. 
• Tsar Alexander III was an ardent supporter of Tchaikovsky’s music and conferred a lifelong pension for Tchaikovsky.
• A bit of a hypochondriac, Tchaikovsky fervently believed his head was going to fall from his shoulders while he conducted, forming a habit where he put his left hand under his chin to keep it attached. 
• Tchaikovsky conducted the first concert ever at Carnegie Hall in New York City.
• When visiting Manhattan in 1891, he was terrified by the skyscrapers saying he “could not see how anybody could live on such a dizzy height as the thirteenth floor of a building!”
• During his trip to America he visited Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington DC and Niagara Falls.

JOHANN STRAUSS, II
• Johan Strauss’ father was Johann Strauss, Sr. He was himself a composer and famous as part of the waltz orchestra team of Lanner & Strauss.
• Though his father was a working and well-known musician, he hoped is son would become a banker. 
• Strauss wrote his first waltz at the age of six.
• As a child Strauss had hoped to be good enough to be able to play his violin in a coffee house.
• Strauss conducted his famous waltz orchestra in front of Napoleon III, Emperor Franz Joseph and Queen Victoria. 
• Strauss was married three times.
• Strauss once received $100,000 just to conduct the Blue Danube Waltz while he was on tour in the United States
• Strauss and his famous orchestra came to America in 1872, performing in Boston, New York and Philadelphia.
• Strauss once conducted the Blue Danube Waltz with an orchestra of 1,087 musicians. He said it made a “an unholy racket such as I shall never forget”
• Strauss eventually became a millionaire from touring and publishing. 

GUSTAV MAHLER
• Mahler’s father was an innkeeper.
• As a student at the Vienna Conservatory, he attended music lectures given by composer Anton Bruckner 
• As a boy, Mahler grew up near a small Army barracks, he heard military music at a young age and many of his works contain marches and martial themes. 
• Mahler was a life-long friend of composer Hugo Wolf.
• Late in his life, Mahler was appointed principal conductor of the New York Philharmonic and he also conducted the Metropolitan Opera.
• His wife Alma was later married to renowned architect Walter Gropius, who headed the Bauhaus School of Design.
• After his student years, Mahler composed only songs or symphonies. 
• Mahler was once analyzed and diagnosed by Dr. Sigmund Freud.
• Mahler created a re-orchestration of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, which included a tuba part, four extra French horns and an extra set of timpani.
• Mahler died in 1911 in Vienna where his low-key funeral was attended by Arnold Schoenberg, conductor and friend Bruno Walter and painter Gustav Klimt.

December 2011

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