Useless Facts on Music And Classical Musicians
The oldest piano still in existence was built in 1720.
No one knows where Mozart is buried.
Mozart wrote the opera Don Giovanni at one sitting. It was played without rehearsal the day after it was written.
The song most frequently sung in the western world is “Happy Birthday To You.” The song was written in 1936 by Mildred and Patty Hill, and their estate still collects royalties on it.
Fifty-three operas have been written about Faust.
The oboe is considered the most difficult of all woodwind instruments to play correctly.
Wooden clarinets are always made of wood from the granadilla tree.
Felix Mendelssohn wrote his most famous overture, A Midsummer Night's Dream, when he was seventeen.
Lewis H. Dedner, composer of the music to “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” claimed that the hymn's melody came to him in a dream on Christmas Eve. Charles Wesley, author of “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing” (written in 1730), wrote a total of 6,000 hymns. He was inspired to write “Hark” while listening to the pealing bells as he walked to church on Christmas morning.
Beethoven was totally deaf when he composed his Ninth Symphony.
The cello's real name is the violoncello. The full name of the piano is the pianoforte.
The Greek national anthem has 158 verses.
Ignace Paderewski, one of the greatest concert pianists of all time, was also premier of Poland.
Verdi wrote the opera Aida at the request of the khedive of Egypt to commemorate the opening of the Suez Canal.
“The Washington Post March” by John Philip Susa was named after a newspaper, the Washington Post.
Franz Liszt was Richard Wagner's father-in-law. Arturo Toscanini was Vladimir Horowitz's father-in-law.
More than 100 descendants of Johann Sebastian Bach have been cathedral organists.
Dr. Friederich Mesmer, Austrian Physician and the inventor of mesmerism, a forerunner of hypnosis, introduced the harmonica to France.
Franz Schubert's masterpiece, his Sixth Symphony, was turned down by the Paris Symphony Orchestra. The London Philharmonic laughed at it, and its conductor withdrew it from rehearsal. The piece was not played publicly until thirty years after it was written.
Haydn could write music only on clean white paper. Mozart composed while playing billiards. Christoph Gluck would write only when seated in the middle of a field. Rossini composed most of his music when he was drunk. Wagner found it easiest to compose when he was dressed up in historical costumes. Haydn believed he could not compose well unless he was wearing a ring given to him by Frederick the Great.
The famous Russian composer Alexander Borodin was a professor of chemistry at the Academy of Medicine in St. Petersburg. Borodin always referred to himself as a “musical amateur.”