# A fly on the wall.



## SeanWolferl (May 19, 2012)

Are there any specific, classical-music related times you can think of where you would have wanted to be "a fly on the wall"? Perhaps a favourite composer composing a certain piece? Perhaps a certain performance? Share any that interest you!

I've read that Mozart and Haydn would occasionally play string quartets together, that really would have been a sight to see.


----------



## Norse (May 10, 2010)

When Handel was in Italy, he and Domenico Scarlatti faced each other in a sort of keyboardist's duel. Scarlatti was deemed the winner on the harpsichord while Handel was the best on the organ. It probably wouldn't be my first pick if I could choose anything, but it sounds like a fun thing to witness.


----------



## DeepR (Apr 13, 2012)

Mahler 8 premiere seems quite an event.

Horowitz and Rachmaninoff playing 2 pianos in some basement I think.

Liszt meeting Chopin

and numerous other meetings between famous composers and/or pianists


----------



## Hausmusik (May 13, 2012)

I'd love to know what Ignaz Schuppanzigh's quartet sounded like as they played (or muddled through?) the premieres of some of the best quartets of Beethoven and Schubert.


----------



## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

_Four Organs_ by Steve Reich at the Carnegie Hall 1972.


----------



## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

I would have loved to be a fly on the wall on a few days.

The night Glazunov's 1st symphony was premiered, in some hall in St. Petersburg.

The day Glazunov found out Tchaikovsky died, wherever he was.
The same time, when Rimsky-Korsakov found out Tchaikovsky died, wherever he was. Just to compare the 2 reactions:
"NOOOOOOO!"
"Heh...that's just too bad." 
Something like that I presume. :tiphat:

Last one, Prokofiev playing one of his piano sonatas, probably the 2nd, alone in some practice room.


----------



## Chi_townPhilly (Apr 21, 2007)

*Musician to non-musician encounters-*

Interaction between Beethoven and Goethe. 
[There was at least one famous time when they encountered one another.] 

Conversations between Mahler and Freud on the strand at Leiden, Netherlands.

Exchanges between Wagner and Nietzsche (particularly the one that led to the falling-out).

[Honorable mention (although it's sort of 'musician-to-musician'): Stokowski claimed that Elgar revealed the 'Enigma-secret' to him. I am 99+% sure that this was ß.$.- but if there *is* an 'Enigma-secret' and Elgar shared it with _anyone_, I would've liked to have been there for that...]


----------



## kylerosenbluth (May 27, 2012)

I've got a couple.

- Any Liszt performance. I imagine they were all good.
- Horowitz's last performance at Carnegie Hall.
- Mozart playing something when he was really young.


----------



## Toddlertoddy (Sep 17, 2011)

After the Rite of Spring premiere on Thursday, May 29, 1913, at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris


----------



## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

I'd like to be at those early conversations between Erik Satie and Claude Debussy in 1891 at Le Chat Noir, at the dawn of the new era of music.


----------



## Turangalîla (Jan 29, 2012)

When Beethoven scribbled out the dedication to Napoleon Bonaparte on the score of Symphony No. 3 so hard that he tore through the page!

Also, the circumstances under which Messiaen composed _Quatuor pour la fin du temps_, as well as the premiere of the work.


----------



## Stargazer (Nov 9, 2011)

I would have loved to have been present for pretty much any premiere of a major work. Nowadays most of the big classical works have been heard thousands of times and are very well-known...I think it would have been an amazing experience to be listening to them at the very first performance!


----------



## Lisztian (Oct 10, 2011)

Whenever Brahms and Clara Schumann were together, alone.


----------



## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

I would have loved to be at the opening of the Bayreuth festival in 1876 when the first complete performances of the Ring of the Nibelungen took place . Everybody who was anybody was there; 
Tchaikovsky, Grieg, Saint-Saens, Bruckner, heads of state from all over Europe and even the king of
Brazil, to name only some .
I would have loved to hear how the legendary conductor Hans Richter, who had served as Wagner's right hand man for so long conducted the cycle (Wagner had his doubts) , and what the Bayreuth festival orcestra sounded . In recent years, we have had recordings of Wagner on period instruments by Norrington an dothers, 
and Sir Simon Ratt;le gave a concert performance of Das Rheingold with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightnment on period instruments a few years ago. It would be great how close our modern attempts to recreate the sound of Wagner's music in the 19th century have actually come. I'm not sure that they sound exactly like the orchestras of Wagner's day at all . 
It would also be fascinating to hear the voices of the singers of the day , and see the sets and costumes , wich would probably look comically quaint to us today. Some photos of these have survived . I suppose the acting of the singers might seem enbarassingly stilted in gesture to us today .
Itr kmight be an interesting experiment at Bayreuth to recreate the sets, costumes and special effects of the 1876 [production and ot use period instruments . If we only had a time machine . . . .


----------



## Moira (Apr 1, 2012)

Stargazer said:


> I would have loved to have been present for pretty much any premiere of a major work. Nowadays most of the big classical works have been heard thousands of times and are very well-known..


Not so. Major works are still being composed and played. I have been at the premiere of several smaller works and a full scale oratorio, actually two full scale oratorios, as well as a full scale opera (the latter only the premiere season, not the premiere itself) over the years. South Africa is not at the forefront of the classical scene either.


----------



## Moira (Apr 1, 2012)

Some of those premieres where people rioted may have been interesting for a fly on the wall.


----------



## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

Moira said:


> Some of those premieres where people rioted may have been interesting for a fly on the wall.


Not always premieres though. _Four Organs_ only started a riot two years after it was first performed.


----------



## Arsakes (Feb 20, 2012)

(Why?) When Sibelius destroyed his 8th symphony.


----------



## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

Arsakes said:


> (Why?) When Sibelius destroyed his 8th symphony.


I feel similarly about the day Bruckner died. Although I wouldn't be a fly on the wall; I'd find his 9th symphony and fend off the souvenir hounds trying to make off with its pages.


----------



## Vaneyes (May 11, 2010)

1960's Bernstein Mahler.


----------



## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Some great ones above. Of course, many historic concerts have been filmed. I'd liked to have been present at THIS _impromptu concert _the great *Paul Robeson *gave on the construction site of what was to become Sydney Opera House.

Another similar one, but more political, was *Yehudi Menuhin *playing violin on the street outside a venue he gave a concert in South Africa. The people on the street where black, not allowed into the concert. He was criticised for doing this by the apartheid regime. I think this was back in the 1970's. He was a humanitarian and I think he wanted to show his solidarity with black South Africans. But I doubt this was filmed, but it may have been photographed.



CarterJohnsonPiano said:


> ...
> Also, the circumstances under which Messiaen composed _Quatuor pour la fin du temps_, as well as the premiere of the work.


I get what you mean, but a fly would be okay there, but not a human. He said the inmates at the POW labour camp was the best (eg. most attentive) he had in his life. But they were all starved, dressed in rags and in freezing cold. So as a _fly on the wall _I would be there, as a human living through that, not really.


----------



## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

I'd like to be in the audience when ComposerOfAvantGarde's fanfare for orchestra entitled "Worker's of the World, Unite!" is performed at our school's student composition concert. I hope the conducting will be okay.


----------



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

Being around for Benjamin Britten's hissy fit when he found out that producer John Culshaw had made a rehearsal tape of the War Requiem. Culshaw, not realising that Britten was against recording any in-progress material without his knowledge, presented the tape to Britten as a 50th birthday present and for his pains was given an industrial strength mega-bollocking which presumably must have left Culshaw (and others present) writhing with embarrassment.


----------



## Vesteralen (Jul 14, 2011)

When Haydn discovered Mrs. Haydn had used some of his scores as kindling.


----------



## Jeremy Marchant (Mar 11, 2010)

I'd love to watch *Monteverdi *rehearse the choir of San Marco in his own music.
("By 1613, he had moved to the San Marco in Venice where, as conductor, he quickly restored the musical standard of both the choir and the instrumentalists. The musical standard had declined due to the financial mismanagement of his predecessor..." - Wikipedia)


----------



## Polyphemus (Nov 2, 2011)

I would love to have been at the disasterous first performance of Rachmaninov's Symphony N 1, just to tell him not to worry it would all come good.


----------



## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

Jeremy Marchant said:


> I'd love to watch *Monteverdi *rehearse the choir of San Marco in his own music.
> ("By 1613, he had moved to the San Marco in Venice where, as conductor, he quickly restored the musical standard of both the choir and the instrumentalists. The musical standard had declined due to the financial mismanagement of his predecessor..." - Wikipedia)


Actually I'd like to see Monteverdi's cellists go on strike because they had to play all those extends techniques which were "impossible"


----------



## SeanWolferl (May 19, 2012)

Moira said:


> Some of those premieres where people rioted may have been interesting for a fly on the wall.


I remember reading about that happening at the Rite of Spring premier. That's the only one I know, has it happened very many times?


----------



## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

SeanWolferl said:


> I remember reading about that happening at the Rite of Spring premier. That's the only one I know, has it happened very many times?


They rioted at the premiere of _Rite of Spring _as a ballet, but a while later (maybe a couple/few months or weeks), they loved it as an orchestral work. Purely orchestral, no dancing. Suggests the choreography was to blame, in large part. Stravinsky was apparently no fan of what they did with the choreography.

After the triumph of the orchestral premiere, Stravinsky was carried out of the hall on the shoulders of audience members. It soon after was performed all over Europe to similar acclaim. So it's more complicated than just the riot that happened at the ballet premiere that is notorious.


----------

