A party piece

Irish pianist and composer George Alexander Osburn (1806-93) was a professor at the Royal Academy of Music and a director of the Philharmonic Society. One of his most popular compositions was La Pluie de Perles (The Shower of Pearls).

At a fashionable party, at which he arrived very late, he was invited to play, and he accordingly sat down at the pianoforte and began to play “La Pluie de Perles”. To his great surprise and indignation, the assembled guests burst out laughing; but we was easily appeased when he learned that no fewer than four other pianists had already performed the same composition!

Scholes, Percy (1947) The Mirror of Music. London: Novello and Company, vol. 1, p.306.

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