Piano teachers need to know their music, and it’s useful to
know about the composers themselves. Tomoko likes to read biographies – especially
those of composers. And she relates stories about them to her students, providing
context for the compositions as well as making those composers more human. Here
are some of the lesser known facts about some of them.
Vivaldi became a priest when he was 25, and served as a master
of violin at an orphanage. Vivaldi suffered from bronchial asthma throughout
his life, which kept him from playing wind instruments.
Liszt was very popular when young, and he was quite the
playboy. One of his illegitimate daughters become Richard Wagner’s wife. Nevertheless,
throughout his life he considered becoming a priest, and took four minor
religious orders when 54.
Schubert was famous for his musical parties, which sometimes
lasted until dawn. Yet he was very prolific; he wrote more than 20,000 bars of
music, including 600 songs. He wrote 8 songs in one day.
Rachmaninoff's fingers could span 12 keys. On the other hand 😉,
Schumann ruined his performing career by practicing with a homemade finger-stretching
device; then he would plunge his hands into slaughtered animals’ entrails to
heal himself.
Frederic Handel loved rich food and wine. He would order
enough food for three people – for himself. The food caused him gout, and the
wine may have caused him lead poisoning.
Johann Sebastian Bach frequented Leipzig’s Café Zimmermann
where he would drink several cups of coffee (which was a luxury beverage at the
time). He liked coffee so much he wrote the Coffee Cantata about a woman who
was trying to stop her coffee drinking habit. Bach was also an amateur mathematician, which
is evident in his compositions, especially his canons.
Speaking of coffee, Beethoven was so meticulous that he would
measure exactly 60 beans when making coffee.
Mozart’s life included many interesting facts. He could
write music before he could write words. He could listen to a piece of music
just once and be able to write it down from memory perfectly. He wrote half of
his symphonies between the age of 8 and 19. was a big cat fan. He would imitate
cats when bored during rehearsals. In fact, he liked cats so much that he wrote
a song called "The Cat Duet,” in which the husband asks his wife questions and she
answers back in meows.
