# Specious backstories



## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

False myths surround some works. An early example is CPE Bach’s note on the manuscript of the unfinished Contrapunctus XIV of his father’s Art of Fugue: “At the point where the composer introduces the name BACH in the countersubject to this fugue, the composer died." Of course, we know now that Bach put his AOF aside a year or two before his death, for unknown reasons.

There are plenty of other examples, some often cited here as truths. Are there any that you find especially irritating? (I've got a few.)


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

Not so much irritated as disappointed that the story that Alkan died being crushed to death by a bookcase isnt true.


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## Roger Knox (Jul 19, 2017)

The forged letter to "Baron von X" of 1815 where Mozart claims instantaneous inspiration for his composing including all details. The forgery was exposed in Otto Jahn's biography (1859) but persists to this day.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

The idiotic story that Tchaikovsky's Sixth is a suicide note and that it reflects personal depression (along with the idea that he committed suicide — but that isn't related to a particular work.)


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

The statement which used to be everywhere: "There was no music in Birmingham until Simon Rattle arrived in 1980". I think it annoyed a great deal of people in Birmingham, not least those in the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. People still repeat this in books and articles as though it is either true or has an element of truth to it.


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## lextune (Nov 25, 2016)

MarkW said:


> Not so much irritated as disappointed that the story that Alkan died being crushed to death by a bookcase isnt true.


He was found under a large coat/umbrella stand. The story got changed to a bookcase because of an old Jewish legend, the details of which escape me at the moment. Suffice to say it is still an old man dying in a household accident. Tragic either way.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Supposedly Alkan was trying to retrieve his Talmud from the top of a high bookcase, likely kept in that elevated place out of respect. But it's hard to ascribe details to something that never happened!


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

Penderecki's Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima was not envisioned as a tribute to post-atomic victims; it was originally to be titled 8'37". He didn't change the name until after he heard a recording of the piece. 

The same is true for Copland's Appalachian Spring. It was originally titled Ballet for Martha. The title Appalachian Spring is from a Hart Crane poem, and that poem is referring to a spring of water, not a season. So it's messed up all around.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Prokofiev’s Piano Sonatas Nos. 6 through 8 (opp. 82 through 84) are always called the “war sonatas”. But they were all started in 1939, about two years before Germany invaded the USSR and war began. No. 6 was premiered more than a year before the war, and the other two, though premiered after the war had begun, were likely complete or nearly so by the time of Operation Barbarossa in June, 1941.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

Manxfeeder said:


> Penderecki's Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima was not envisioned as a tribute to post-atomic victims; it was originally to be titled 8'37". He didn't change the name until after he heard a recording of the piece.
> 
> The same is true for Copland's Appalachian Spring. It was originally titled Ballet for Martha. The title Appalachian Spring is from a Hart Crane poem, and that poem is referring to a spring of water, not a season. So it's messed up all around.


Not titled that -- just the words he wrote at the top of the score, expecting that she'd title it when she developed a mise en scene.


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

eugeneonagain said:


> The statement which used to be everywhere: "There was no music in Birmingham until Simon Rattle arrived in 1980". I think it annoyed a great deal of people in Birmingham, not least those in the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. People still repeat this in books and articles as though it is either true or has an element of truth to it.


edit: I clearly misread the intent of the thread!


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## RICK RIEKERT (Oct 9, 2017)

This myth concerns not one work but many by the same composer. The persistent misconception that J.S. Bach's music was forgotten after his death only to be rediscovered and revived in the Romantic period. In fact, Bach had never been forgotten. Bach's music continued to circulate among two different groups: professional musicians (including Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven) and middle-class intellectuals. The keyboard works were studied and played and his music continued to be admired as a source of inspiration and the standard for measuring quality from the time of his death until the end of the century. As Charles Rosen has pointed out, the romantic revival of Bach was largely a campaign of publishing, coupled with performances of the choral works, which had been mostly ignored.


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## Triplets (Sep 4, 2014)

How about that Mahler was a forgotten Composer until Leonard Bernstein fortuitously discovered and put him on the map? That manages to ignore the legacy of Bruno Walter, Mengelberg, Mitropolus, Scherchen, Horenstein,Schuricht.....


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Triplets said:


> How about that Mahler was a forgotten Composer until Leonard Bernstein fortuitously discovered and put him on the map? That manages to ignore the legacy of Bruno Walter, Mengelberg, Mitropolus, Scherchen, Horenstein,Schuricht.....


I've read that Mahler was quite popular at concerts in the 1920s, and faded only with the widespread availability of 78s, which didn't support his ambitious expanses. Bernstein "brought him back" after the advent of LPs.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

And then there are all those ridiculous stories Schindler told about Beethoven...


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Here’s another Russian tale, and quite controversial. We all know Shostakovich’s “Leningrad” Symphony, dedicated to the heroic citizens of Leningrad fighting the Nazi forces, with its score smuggled to the West on microfilm to form part of the bedrock of anti-German propaganda.

However, Wiki has the symphony mostly written in 1939-1940, a year or two before the German invasion. In other words, a “peacetime” work. It was originally dedicated to the life and works of Vladimir Lenin. In fact, it was announced in 1941 as part of the upcoming season of the Leningrad Symphony Orchestra well before the invasion. His friends say that Shostakovich didn’t like to announce works that weren’t substantially complete.

So there is a chance (and a good one) that the heroic story of the Leningrad Symphony is a myth, that there is no “invasion theme” in the first movement, and that the symphony in fact has nothing to do with the invasion of Russia or any other war.


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## Dumbo (Sep 3, 2017)

Any story that starts with "Beethoven flew into a rage and..."

I did a google search for that phrase one time, and a slew of different Beethoven anecdotes, not all about the Eroica, popped up. Apparently he was always flying into a rage. He rarely just got pissed or ticked off. No, he became enraged, so enraged he even FLEW.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

Speaking broadly not to offend anyone here personally, Shostakovich didn’t finish the Leningrad Symphony until December of 1941, while the battle between the Nazis and the Soviets that started on September 8 was still raging. The symphony has become indelibly associated with that battle, and the first movement bolero has an obvious military feel of marching troops. 

While not a war symphony as such, the heroic efforts of the Soviet orchestra to perform it under freezing and catastrophic circumstances should not IMO be forgotten. I do not agree with those who try to minimize this symphony’s associations with this tremendous life & death battle. Otherwise, why would Shostakovich dedicate it to the people of Leningrad engaged in defending the city? 

Furthermore, the war in Europe had been going on since September of 1939 with Germany a threat to the entire continent, regardless of the temporary pack between Germany and the Soviet Union. In other words, the symphony was composed almost from beginning to end during wartime and Shostakovich was surely aware of the turbulence of war, though I do not believe it was designed to be a literal portrayal of war. There are too many ivory tower aethetic connoisseurs who have denigrated this symphony, though it could also be argued that it does have its shortcomings. I say — “So what!” and it’s still performed today.

Nor do I believe the symphony should be evaluated from some safe and ivory tower aesthetic perspective by those who would have conveniently preferred that the war had never happened like other symphonies written during a time of peace in the world. If this is the best the composer could write under such turbulent conditions in his country, then so be it.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

MarkW said:


> Not titled that -- just the words he wrote at the top of the score, expecting that she'd title it when she developed a mise en scene.


True. But he wasn't necessarily painting a picture of Appalachia or the spring.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

I've read that Copland sometimes joked about people who commented on how perfectly his music captured the atmosphere of Appalachia, when in fact he never had that in mind at all.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

KenOC said:


> So there is a chance (and a good one) that the heroic story of the Leningrad Symphony is a myth, that there is no "invasion theme" in the first movement, and that the symphony in fact has nothing to do with the invasion of Russia or any other war.


So it was actually about Lenin's heroic struggle against all human decency...


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

brianvds said:


> So it was actually about Lenin's heroic struggle against all human decency...


Shostakovich, being a lifelong believer in Communism, might have seen it a bit differently.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Something the young sprouts here might not remember. When I was growing up, LP liner notes delighted in pointing out how Beethoven was totally misunderstood in his time. Contemporary reviews were cherry-picked to show how viciously he was attacked in the musical press.

Today, with more complete information, we know that he was considered the leading composer of “serious” music in Vienna from about 1802 and for a quarter century after. Publishers paid top dollar for his works, knowing they could move a lot of copies of the sheet music -- even though some of his music was notoriously difficult to play or understand. In 1808, a group of noblemen agreed to pay him a generous annual stipend for life, with the only requirement being that he remain in Vienna and not move away.

Musical professionals, for the most part, acknowledged his genius though not all agreed with the direction he was taking music. His works, up to the last part of his third period, were certainly understood if not always approved of.


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## Triplets (Sep 4, 2014)

KenOC said:


> Shostakovich, being a lifelong believer in Communism, might have seen it a bit differently.


Ken, you might be interested in the book about the 7th by Brian Moynihan. First, it details how Leningrad had really been under siege since the beginning of the Great Purge in the 1930s. Stalin was more suspicious of Leningraders than other Russians because the city, which was built to be Russia's Portal the West, was more 'cosmopolitan' than the rest of the country in the view of the Paranoid dictator. The author details how most of the work as written after the the Germans had invaded, although some themes pre dating the actual invasion were adapted.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

KenOC said:


> Here's another Russian tale, and quite controversial. We all know Shostakovich's "Leningrad" Symphony, dedicated to the heroic citizens of Leningrad fighting the Nazi forces, with its score smuggled to the West on microfilm to form part of the bedrock of anti-German propaganda.
> 
> However, Wiki has the symphony mostly written in 1939-1940, a year or two before the German invasion. In other words, a "peacetime" work. It was originally dedicated to the life and works of Vladimir Lenin. In fact, it was announced in 1941 as part of the upcoming season of the Leningrad Symphony Orchestra well before the invasion. His friends say that Shostakovich didn't like to announce works that weren't substantially complete.
> 
> So there is a chance (and a good one) that the heroic story of the Leningrad Symphony is a myth, that there is no "invasion theme" in the first movement, and that the symphony in fact has nothing to do with the invasion of Russia or any other war.


The above information is incorrect. Noting that the invasion began on June 22, 1941, here is the timeline for the composition of the 7th according to his biographer Laurel Fay and confirmed in other sources:

July 19 - Shostakovich begins composing the first movement.
August 29 - Draft score of first movement completed.
September 3 - Fair copy of first movement completed

(Note that by this time the German blockade of Leningrad was in place - they were within 50 miles of the city and bombing it every day)

September 19 - Second movement completed
September 29 - Third movement completed
October 1 - Shostakovich evacuates to Moscow. 
December 27 - Symphony completed

From the above it is clear that all of the composition of the 7th occurred after the invasion had begun, and a significant portion of it was composed while the bombs were falling and Shostakovich was perfroming his duties as a fireman on the roof of the conservatory.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

As I wrote, that interpretation of the origin of the Leningrad Symphony is controversial - to say the least. You can read Elizabeth Wilson, Laurel Fay, or even Solomon Volkov, and you quickly discover that people's memories are by no means consistent where Shostakovich is concerned. This includes Shostakovich's own memory (IMO he and not Volkov is the great liar in _Testimony_).

In any event, you can choose which memories you like and build your own history. Here's one: "Officially, [Shostakovich] was said to have composed it in response to the German invasion. Others, such as Rostislav Dubinsky, say that he had already completed the first movement a year earlier." Here's Wiki's discussion of the composition history of the Leningrad, which may be largely the work of one person.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._7_(Shostakovich)#Composition

Triplets' comments are addressed there, primarily by Shostakovich's own statement (at least per Volkov) on the meaning of the 7th.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

KenOC said:


> Shostakovich, being a lifelong believer in Communism, might have seen it a bit differently.


I think that those who suffered under Lenin and the scum who followed him might think differently


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

How about the one that the 50 year old Constanze Mozart, though now married again, was the 42 year old Beethoven's immortal beloved.

(No, I just made that up. It sounded like a good story. )


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

KenOC said:


> As I wrote, that interpretation of the origin of the Leningrad Symphony is controversial - to say the least. *You can read Elizabeth Wilson, Laurel Fay, or even Solomon Volkov, and you quickly discover that people's memories are by no means consistent where Shostakovich is concerned. This includes Shostakovich's own memory *(IMO he and not Volkov is the great liar in _Testimony_).
> 
> In any event, you can choose which memories you like and build your own history. Here's one: "Officially, [Shostakovich] was said to have composed it in response to the German invasion. Others, such as Rostislav Dubinsky, say that he had already completed the first movement a year earlier." Here's Wiki's discussion of the composition history of the Leningrad, which may be largely the work of one person.
> 
> ...


Fortunately Fay does not rely on memories. She relies on documents. Shostakovich announced stages of his progress in letters to friends (like Glikman), inscribed dates on the autograph materials themselves, and even announced his progress in radio broadcasts!

Fay also states: "Allegations that Shostakovich composed or began the composition of his Seventh Symphony before the beginning of the war are not substantiated by the dating on surviving autograph materials." For a detailed discussion of these materials see M. Yakubov's preface to the Facsimile edition of the manuscript (Tokyo, 1992)

About the sources for the Wiki article: _Testimony_ is, of course, discounted. Since Lev Lebedinsky seems to be the source of so much of the gossip on which Testimony is based, I would be inclined to skepticism there too (Isn't he kind of Shostakovich's Schindler?). The invasion theme is so clearly marked by national origin (Lehar), it is silly to ascribe its "evil" to a Russian antagonist. I therefore reject those interpretations of the first movement. Shostakovich hinting that the symphony had more general significance than was publicly claimed for it is thoroughly plausible, but he wasn't very specific in that regard, was he? And as for the revisionists like MacDonald and their propensity to hear Stalin themes everywhere, those I dismiss because their analyses and interpretations of Shostakovich's works are so inept. See MacDonald on the Fifth in The New Shostakovich and Richard Taruskin's evisceration of it in "Public Lies and Unspeakable Truth: Interpreting Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony." In Shostakovich Studies. Ed. David Fanning. Cambridge University Press (1995): 17-56.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

DaveM said:


> How about the one that the 50 year old Constanze Mozart, though now married again, was the 42 year old Beethoven's immortal beloved.
> 
> (No, I just made that up. It sounded like a good story. )


Seeing as she was immortal, she is actually still alive. We're just waiting for her to come forward and solve the mystery once and for all.


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## aussiebushman (Apr 21, 2018)

Sorry Ken - I must agree with Larkenfield. Having done much reading on this subject, it seems to me the most accurate portrayal is Moynahan" "Leningrad - Siege and Symphony" and his references appear to be highly accurate. 

Edward Bast's reference to Fay also seems highly relevant ". . . Shostakovich composed or began the composition of his Seventh Symphony before the beginning of the war are not substantiated by the dating on surviving autograph materials."


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

Bruckner has often been perceived as having been a village idiot . But while he was a somewhat naive, timid, humble and self-effacing kind of guy, he was no village idiot . He was the son of a school teacher in a village in Austria and was actually quite well educated from childhood . 
His enormous musical erudition was universally acknowledged in Vienna and elsewhere and he was interested in science and medicine and quite knowledgable about these fields, and was a friend of some of Vienna's leading scientists and physicians .


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## aussiebushman (Apr 21, 2018)

No argument from me over Bruckner. Accurate reports provide insight into his clothing being deliberately loose to facilitate his organ playing. Yes he was socially inept and hopelessly romantic but this belies the genius of the man. Furtwangler was no fool so his championship of Bruckner helps to support that view of greatness.

On first acquaintance many of his compositions seem not only repetitive but also confronting due to the frequent changes from gentle lyricism to outright dissonance. Only as listening experience grows does appreciation of the subtleties. His adagio movements should be the starting point for anyone interested in acquiring a taste for Bruckner but no-one should stop there. The symphonies, in particular, build upon one another and provide a unique and deeply satisfying musical experience


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## manyene (Feb 7, 2015)

KenOC said:


> Shostakovich, being a lifelong believer in Communism, might have seen it a bit differently.


Hasn't it been presented as Stalin's purge of the Leningrad group starting with Kirov?


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## vmartell (Feb 9, 2017)

Not sure if this applies - England as "The Land With No Music" between Purcell and Elgar... it has always bothered me - negates the legacies of Stanford, Parry, Coleridge-Tayler, Ethel Smyth (I might be off, timeline wise on that one, but I add just because, well, great composer)...


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

vmartell said:


> Not sure if this applies - England as "The Land With No Music" between Purcell and Elgar... it has always bothered me - negates the legacies of Stanford, Parry, Coleridge-Tayler, Ethel Smyth (I might be off, timeline wise on that one, but I add just because, well, great composer)...


Agreed. I've recently listened again to some of Parry's symphonies and choral works. There's first-rate music there. Stanford's symphonies are not as distinctive, but some of his chamber music, though derivative of German models, is very fine. Earlier there had been lesser but still respectable composers such as Arne and Boyce in the 18th century and Field in the 19th. Britain did seem to slip off the map in the time of Haydn, who was enthusiastically adopted by Londoners.


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