Brahms’ pranks

Hannes was not always solemn – far from it!  He could be as full of fun and wild pranks as any boy.  With Christian he worked out a scheme which they both found hugely entertaining.  They would knock at the door of a house where, perhaps a century before, some illustrious citizen of Hamburg had once lived.

“Is  Herr Georg Friedrich Handel at home?” they would ask with great seriousness.

“Herr Handel?” The housewife would look puzzled .  “Why, no – I don’t know anyone by that name.”

“Are you quite sure now?” the young rascals would insist with feigned astonishment.  “We understood that this was his house.” Then they would hurry off, shaking with laughter.

Source: Goss, Madeleine & Schauffler, Robert (1943) Brahms The Master. New York: Henry Holt and Company, p.182-183.

ScribeFire

Posted

in

by

Greg

Tags:

Featured Content

Ravel’s fashion sense
Ravel was always particular about his sense of fashion.  As Léon-Paul Fargue recalled: Even when he was wasted by illness, Ravel never appeared unkept even among his closest friends.  All his life he kept the perfect, discriminating taste which led him to match his braces to his blue or pink silk shirts, much to the […]
Tchaikovsky at Cambridge
In 1893, Tchaikovsky was awarded an honorary doctorate at Cambridge University. Charles Villiers Stanford was involved organising the occasion. He recalled: “In the spring of 1892 we set on foot the organization of the movement to celebrate the Jubilee of the University Musical Society in 1893. The first step taken was the invitation of Verdi […]
Richter on Bach
“It does no harm to listen to Bach from time to time, even if only from a hygienic standpoint.” – Sviatoslav Richter, pianist Monsaingeon, Bruno (2001). Sviatoslav Richter: Notebooks and Conversations. Princeton University Press, p.196. Cited at: Wikipedia
Memories (The Boy and the Heron)
Composer: Joe HisaishiArranger: Greg SmithTitle: “Memories”, from The Boy and the HeronInstrumentation: Piano Solo This item is available from Sheet Music Direct and Sheet Music Plus.
A Tear Hangs There (Tchaikovsky)
Composer:  Pytor Il’yich Tchaikovsky (arr. Greg Smith) Title: A Tear Hangs There (Слеза дрожит), Op. 6. No. 4 Instrumentation: Cello and piano Product medium: PDF score and part Sample:
Wagner’s observations on the English and oratorios
Wagner attended a performance of Messiah at Exeter Hall in London with a chorus of 700 voices. He recorded in his autobiography: It is here that I came to understand the true spirit of English Protestantism. This accounts for the fact that an oratorio attracts the public far more than an opera. A further advantage […]
An artist can change his perspective
An artist groping his way forward can open a secret door and never understand that this door hid an entire world. So it is that, if a man who passes for the father of a school, because he determined it, one day shrugs his shoulders and renounces it, that by no means discredits the school. […]
Rachmaninoff on the culminating point in performance
This culmination may be at the end or in the middle, it may be loud or soft; but the performer must know how to approach it with absolute calculation, absolute precision, because, if it slips by, then the whole construction crumbles, and the piece becomes disjointed and scrappy and does not convey to the listener […]
Abstraction XII
Title: Abstraction XII Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: Piano Product medium: PDF score Sample:  
Musicians in Dresden in 1720s
”There was rivalry among the musicians in Dresden in the 1720s.  Daniel Heartz describes some incidents: Silvius Weiss, the famous lutenist, saw his livelihood threatened when he was attacked by a French violinist named Petit, who attempted to bite off the top joint of his right thumb.  On 13 August 1722 Veracini jumped to the […]