# Great Musical Blunders



## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

What are the great musical blunders of history?
Near the top of the list must be when the people of Busseto were so entranced by the music the young Verdi was writing that they pooled together enough money to send him to Milan to study at the Conservatory. However, the Milan Conservatory rejected Verdi, finding that he lacked musical talent. Red faces at Milan?

Anyone know any others?


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

At some point, every other member of the Mighty Handful averred that Mussorgsky was an idiot.


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## Dim7 (Apr 24, 2009)

When the first chromatic/off-key note was played. It has been all downhill ever since.


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## Guest (Sep 9, 2015)

Dim7 said:


> When the first chromatic/off-key note was played. It has been all downhill ever since.


I think that is when it started getting interesting.


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## Guest (Sep 9, 2015)

Classical music discussion forums?


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## Marschallin Blair (Jan 23, 2014)

EdwardBast said:


> At some point, every other member of the Mighty Handful averred that Mussorgsky was an idiot.


"The crowd is untruth."

- Kierkegaard


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## Steatopygous (Jul 5, 2015)

There was a lovely line in The Spectator recently about Hans Werner Henze being the future for his whole life. In other words, the blunder is expectations.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Steatopygous said:


> There was a lovely line in The Spectator recently about Hans Werner Henze being the future for his whole life. In other words, the blunder is expectations.


When I used to work with teams in Alaska, in the pipeline days, we often said, "Alaska is the land of the future. And always will be." :lol:


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

Bach was the third choice for cantor of the Thomaskirche in Leipzig, after Telemann and Graupner - though I guess it worked out because they both turned down the job. Still....


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## Cosmos (Jun 28, 2013)

All of Hanslick's "reviews" of Bruckner's Symphonies


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

isorhythm said:


> Bach was the third choice for cantor of the Thomaskirche in Leipzig, after Telemann and Graupner - though I guess it worked out because they both turned down the job. Still....


I suspect the city council had little desire for a cantor who would write immortal music. The cantor's duties were many, and all had to be considered when evaluating candidates.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

Steatopygous said:


> There was a lovely line in The Spectator recently about Hans Werner Henze being the future for his whole life. In other words, the blunder is expectations.


Henze is a pretty awesome composer though.


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## Steatopygous (Jul 5, 2015)

violadude said:


> Henze is a pretty awesome composer though.


Plenty of awesome composers have been insulted with great wit and lack of fairness, though.


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## DonAlfonso (Oct 4, 2014)

Well the Athens Conservatoire turned down Maria Callas when she applied to study there.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

Helene Berg's 40+year embargo on the orchestration of the final act of the opera Lulu once Schoenberg decided he couldn't do it. Her prerogative of course, she may have thought this was the proper way to honour her husband's legacy, but also demanding that only the completed first two acts could be performed on stage seemed to artistically defeat the point of the object - I would have been more sympathetic with her decision had the final act been abruptly unfinished or in the barest of sketch form rather than lacking orchestration. She could have asked Krenek who, had he accepted, may well have done as fine a job as Cerha did once Frau Berg's death allowed it to happen.


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## Metairie Road (Apr 30, 2014)

> However, the Milan Conservatory rejected Verdi, finding that he lacked musical talent.


Ah, the consequences of rejection. If only the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts hadn't rejected that little man in 1907; the world would be a far different place today.

On the other hand, Verdi didn't sieze power and invade Poland after _his_ rejection.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

KenOC said:


> I suspect the city council had little desire for a cantor who would write immortal music. The cantor's duties were many, and all had to be considered when evaluating candidates.


No, Bach was considered not good enough.
"Since we cannot get the best, then we will have to settle for average", where the best was Telemann and the average was J.S. Bach.


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## Orfeo (Nov 14, 2013)

*Mykola Lysenko's* refusal to have his opera "Taras Bulba" staged in Russia and sang in the Russian tongue, despite Tchaikovsky's praise and recommendation, is one example of a blunder. Tchaikovsky so admired the work that he was prepared to have it staged there, but Lysenko's nationalism, ostensibly excessive, prevented that. It was completed in 1891, but not performed until 1924, twelve years after Lysenko's passing.

Who knows of the "might have been" had it had its run in Russia. Tchaikovsky's critiques and opinions carried a lot of weight back then.


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## Guest (Sep 10, 2015)

Metairie Road said:


> Ah, the consequences of rejection. *If only the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts hadn't rejected that little man in 1907; the world would be a far different place today*.
> On the other hand, Verdi didn't sieze power and invade Poland after _his_ rejection.


The problem clearly was that the VAFA required a more artistic-looking and immensely more hirsute mustache.


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## Dim7 (Apr 24, 2009)

Metairie Road said:


> On the other hand, Verdi didn't sieze power and invade Poland after _his_ rejection.


Well that's the exception that proves the rule.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

On Beethoven's late string quartets:

· A critic after the first performance in 1826: "as incomprehensible as Chinese" · Composer Louis Spohr: "an indecipherable, uncorrected horror" ·


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## Steatopygous (Jul 5, 2015)

Two reviews of Schoenberg's Chamber symphony
"a Chamber-of-Horrors Symphony"
''Schoenberg mingles with his music sharp daggers at white heat, with which he pares away away tiny slices of his victim's flesh.''


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