# Big breaks in music...



## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

There have been moments in the history of classical music when a composer or musician got a golden opportunity which led to more doors being opened to them.

So, here is a thread for all the *big breaks *in classical music.

A well-known example is Lenny replacing Bruno Walter. *Leonard Bernstein's* debut performance conducting the New York Philharmonic at the age of 25 got him noticed, and as they say the rest is history.

Another moment like this, which I only recently found out about, was when Russian composer Anatoly Lyadov failed to compose a ballet which the impresario Sergei Diaghilev had repeatedly requested him to do. Diaghilev asked Lyadov how his composing was progressing, and Lyadov replied that he had just purchased the music paper. Diaghilev was not one to wait forever, so he asked a young up and coming composer called *Igor Stravinsky*, and again _the rest is history_ cliche applies to this as well. The result was _The Firebird_, which remains one of Igor's most popular scores.

In other areas of music, similar things happened. After the Second World War, director Carol Reed was walking around Vienna and passed a busker playing the zither. The street musician called *Anton Karas* would provide the score for Reed's now classic film _The Third Man_, set in the city and essaying its political intruiges. Karas would go on to produce many albums, including the full score to the film, and becoming the most popular player of the instrument. Another one was the queen of French chanson, *Edith Piaf*, who was discovered in the same way by a Parisian nightclub owner.

I bet you've got your own stories, please do share. The understudy factor which gave Lenny his big break must be quite common, especially in terms of opera singers? What do you think about these big breaks? Are they pivotal moments, or do you think something similar would have come anyway, given the talent of these people?

Feel free to discuss these types of things here! The focus is classical but you can use your discretion to relate similar stories from other genres.


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## GGluek (Dec 11, 2011)

I think it was John Williams who was sitting at the counter in Schraft's Drugstore when Steven Spielberg discovered him, and the rest is history.


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## Kevin Pearson (Aug 14, 2009)

GGluek said:


> I think it was John Williams who was sitting at the counter in Schraft's Drugstore when Steven Spielberg discovered him, and the rest is history.


I don't know where you heard that story but Williams was already on his way and would have been a success with or without Spielberg. He won his first academy award two years before even working with Spielberg. He wrote music for many TV shows (Lost in Space, The Time Tunnel, Land of the Giants etc. ) and films even before their collaboration. It was Spielberg who approached Williams because he liked the score to the 1969 Steve McQueen film The Reivers. Granted Williams' style fits Spielberg's films very well and probably would not have been as emotionally impacting without them, but I'm convinced that Spielberg was more dependent on Williams for success than Williams was on Spielberg. Williams was destined for film scoring and would have had plenty of work with or without Spielberg.

Kevin


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

I think I read Johann Sebastian Bach only finally got offered the post at Leipzig after a few other applicants turned down the offer, including Telemann who was more respected than Bach was as far as the Leipzig job was concerned. Bach of course ended up working there for more than two decades and passed away there in Leipzig. And it was there he wrote all his later masterpieces with barely anyone other than local residents "listening".


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## GGluek (Dec 11, 2011)

I must have got it wrong. Maybe it was Dmitrii Mitropoulus discovering Arnold Schoenberg there. 


Kevin Pearson said:


> I don't know where you heard that story but Williams was already on his way and would have been a success with or without Spielberg. He won his first academy award two years before even working with Spielberg. He wrote music for many TV shows (Lost in Space, The Time Tunnel, Land of the Giants etc. ) and films even before their collaboration. It was Spielberg who approached Williams because he liked the score to the 1969 Steve McQueen film The Reivers. Granted Williams' style fits Spielberg's films very well and probably would not have been as emotionally impacting without them, but I'm convinced that Spielberg was more dependent on Williams for success than Williams was on Spielberg. Williams was destined for film scoring and would have had plenty of work with or without Spielberg.
> 
> Kevin


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## Sudonim (Feb 28, 2013)

Kevin Pearson said:


> I don't know where you heard that story but [...]


Kevin - I'm pretty sure GGluek's post was a joke ... it's an old Hollywood cliché about movie stars being discovered this way (true, in fact, of Lana Turner, I believe).


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

GGluek said:


> I think it was John Williams who was sitting at the counter in Schraft's Drugstore when Steven Spielberg discovered him, and the rest is history.


He was wearing shorts, had great legs, and a terrific smile, no doubt.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Thanks for the responses. The Bach one is a good example I think. Whether or not the one about John Williams is a joke (which I suspect it is), the fact is that the partnership he developed with Spielberg was to be one that produced many great scores. The Stravinsky-Diaghilev partnership was also very fruitful, his three early ballets where success then and have been firmly in the repertoire since. The Rite of Spring didn't succeed in its premiere as a ballet, but it did only a few months later as a purely concert hall work. I did a thread on http://www.talkclassical.com/21768-great-partnerships-classical-music.html and this continuation of a partnership, and this opening the doors for other fruitful partnerships, applies to others like Edith Piaf who I mentioned too.

Another one I could have included in my opening post was *Gyorgy Ligeti*. He had left Budapest after the 1956 uprising, and established himself in Western Europe. He wasn't known very much outside the inner circles of other composers and followers of new music until the director Stanley Kubrick used his choral works in 2001 A Space Odyessy. Kubrick had actually not meant to use Ligeti's music but had done what was common then, overlaid existing classical pieces on the finished film in the dubbing room, which where to be used as models for the composer who was to do the original score. The pieces by classical composers of the past such as Richard Strauss' famous opening sequence of Zarathustra, but also living composers like Ligeti, Khatchaturian and Penderecki, ended up working so well that Kubrick kept the dummy score of existing music. The stitched together score became a Kurbrick trademark, he used it in other films as well.

In terms of Ligeti, this film exposed him to a much wider audience than before. He became a household name amongst classical listeners overnight. I saw the film way after it was first shown in the late 1960's, but when I saw it decades after that it was in fact my own first exposure to Ligeti's music, even though I had been into classical for a considerable time until that point. Others have related this on this forum as well as people I have personally come across or known. In recent years, the film is now being played with an orchestra playing the score below on the stage, live in concert. So younger generations as well are able to do the same as I did and those before me. These concerts have included a full performance of the Ligeti pieces, not just excerpts as in the film, so in effect they have become repertoire pieces via their use in the film.

I think this all speaks to how composers sometimes have these forces nourishing them, sometimes an opportunity comes out of nowhere. I was reading how *Ernest Bloch *came to the USA without much in the way of money or connections, but once people knew he was there, they where willing to give him a hand and the much needed exposure. In the 1910's many of his works where premiered and made an impact, including the cello concerto Schelomo. His supporters included the likes of Leopold Stokowski, the conductor who was a big supporter of new music in his younger days. So Bloch, a guy from Switzerland who had doubts about whether he made the right choice in leaving his old banker job at home behind and taking risks to become a full time composer, well he had some luck and it all paid off. That's not to underestimate the sheer hard work that this involves for the composer or musician involved, but I suppose its like anything, the more you put in, the more you get out.


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## Couac Addict (Oct 16, 2013)

Joyce Di Donato?


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

The Who were only moderately successful in the USA by the time they played the Woodstock festival in 1969. When The Who took the stage an hour or so before sunrise on the second day, things got off to an inauspicious start when politico Abbie Hoffman interrupted their set to deliver a badly-timed rant, which resulted in Pete Townshend losing his rag and clouting him off the stage with his Gibson SG. 

The group ran through their set probably wishing they were somewhere else when, towards the end, a bit of magic happened - as soon as Roger Daltrey sang the intro to the messianic 'See Me Feel Me', the sun started to appear over the horizon behind the crowd and the mood immediately began to change - a real Aquarius moment. Daltrey said it was a 'gift from God...the best lightshow you could ask for...', and as the sun fully emerged in all of its splendour The Who ended their set with all guns blazing and with the massive crowd eating out of their hand. From that moment on, The Who's status as rock royalty in the USA was assured.


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