“Others, tiring of the sound of Buxtehude and Bach for hours on end, would complain there was no tune. That was exactly the thing he liked best. A fugue was not singular, as a melody was, but plural. It was a conversation.”

- Kate Grenville, 'The Lieutenant'

Sergei Prokofiev, utterly delighted that you've just stopped by to tell him all about the dress Dua Lipa wore to the Met Gala.

An example of how our fastidious attitude towards studying and performing the music of great composers reflects our current aesthetic values more than those in place when the works were written. Here's a recording of the London Symphony butchering Mozart in 1913:

The 20 year-old Bach's admiration for Buxtehude was such that he took a month's leave from his job as a church organist in the town of Arnstadt and walked the 250 miles north to Lübeck to hear him perform. He lingered there for 4 months before returning home, enraging his bosses.

On this date in 1707, the Danish composer and organist Dieterich Buxtehude died in the North German city of Lübeck. His ability to achieve a degree of professional freedom while serving as a church musician became a career model for composers such as Handel, Telemann and Bach.

'Inspiration may be a form of super-consciousness, or perhaps of subconsciousness I wouldn't know. But I am sure it is the antithesis of self-consciousness.'

- Aaron Copland

Consider the daily plight faced by an oboist: their success/failure is determined by two hair-thin reeds, tied together to vibrate against each other and produce their sound. And due to weather, moisture, etc., a great reed can go bad at any moment.

It's life on a high-wire.

Mahler routinely altered dozens of details in his works after conducting them and then sent them to his exasperated publishers for inclusion in new editions. Thus for some of his Symphonies (Examples: Nos. 5, 6), the idea of a 'final' version is tenuous.

(Below: Symphony #1)

Aaron Copland's 'Appalachian Spring' was originally composed for an ensemble of 13, due to space limitations at the premiere site. It was then adapted for orchestra. As specifically evocative as the music seems, he finished the score before the ballet was given a title.

78 years ago today, the 1945 Pulitzer Prize for Music was awarded to Aaron Copland for 'Appalachian Spring', a score written for The Martha Graham Ballet. The announcement of the award, which came with a $500 cash prize, coincided with the end of the Second World War in Europe.

'Composing can't be turned out like sewing. Bach, Mozart, Schubert, et al have spoiled us. But if we can’t match their beauty, we must avoid matching their speed. Many factors combine to make writing harder for us (my contemporaries), and especially me.'

- Johannes Brahms

In early 1888, Tchaikovsky and Brahms met in Leipzig, where they attended rehearsals of each other’s works. It didn't go well. At a reading of Tchaikovsky's 5th Symphony, Brahms fell asleep. Meanwhile, Tchaikovsky referred to Brahms' music as the work of 'a giftless bastard.'

Tchaikovsky with his erstwhile wife Antonina Miliukova at the time of their marriage in July of 1877. Although he'd married to quell rumors about his homosexuality, he soon found her presence 'repugnant.' He held on for two months then fled, never to see her again.

Clara Schumann and Brahms in 1853, when they first met. After the death of Robert Schumann in 1856, their friendship became the most important of their lives. Whether the relationship was ever romantic is unclear, although they did make a point of destroying their letters.

The Tchaikovsky family in 1848. L to R: Pyotr (then 8 years old), Alexandra Andreyevna (mother), Alexandra (sister), Zinaida (half-sister), Nikolay and Ippolit (brothers), and Ilya Petrovich (father). The future composer was described by a nanny as 'a child made of glass.'

Brahms' father Johann Jakob, who eked out a living in Hamburg as a freelance Double Bassist and French Horn player. A grandiose dreamer with a tendency to spend what little money he had irresponsibly, his famous son saw his relentless peasant ingenuity as a source of pride.

Tchaikovsky's birthplace in the town of Votkinsk, about 800 miles east of Moscow. Although it has attracted thousands of visitors in recent years, for much of the Cold War the town itself didn't appear on Soviet maps, as it was a manufacturing site for nuclear weapons.

The tenement in which Johannes Brahms was born on May 7, 1833. Like many buildings in Hamburg, it was destroyed by Allied bombing during World War II.

184 years ago today, the Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was born. The cosmopolitan orientation of his music stood in contrast to that of his most notable compatriots, making him the first Russian composer to establish an eminent international reputation.

191 years ago in Hamburg, Johannes Brahms was born in Hamburg. His musical output can be seen as the final flowering of a tradition that stretched back to Heinrich Schutz in the 1600s and ran forward through Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn and Schumann.