Music and Musicians
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Music and Musicians’
Joseph Joachim was regarded by most people in Europe as the greatest violinist ever, but in the home of Sterndale Bennett there was a dissenting voice.
Pianist, composer and teacher Sir William Sterndale Bennett (1816-1875) enjoyed the friendship and respect of many illustrious figures in the world of music, including Felix Mendelssohn, Jenny Lind, Robert and Clara Schumann. Bennett appeared alongside supreme violinist Joseph Joachim on many occasions, but not everyone in the Bennett household shared Sterndale’s admiration for the great man.
On realising that he had the edge on his rivals, music publisher John Brand moved quickly to secure one of Haydn’s peerless Quartets.
A contributor calling himself ‘A Constant Reader’ submitted this story to the Musical World in 1836. He declared that he could vouch for the truth of it, as he had heard it from ‘the originator,’ music publisher John Bland (1750-1840), who was still alive at the time and in a position to refute it. He never did, and the story found its way into Carl Ferdinand Pohl’s influential biography and thence into musical folkore.
Herbert Bury’s duties took him back to St Petersburg after the Russian revolution of 1917, but all he could think of was how it used to be.
On his visits to Russia in his capacity as the Church of England’s Bishop for North and Central Europe, Herbert Bury had been impressed by Emperor Nicholas II and his wife Alix (Queen Victoria’s granddaughter) and by the worship of the Russian Orthodox Church. Looking back after the unhappy revolution of 1917, one visit to St Petersburg remained with him vividly.
Ann Sancho would be in better health, said her husband, if she did not worry quite so much about him.
Several years after his death, some letters of Ignatius Sancho, a grocer trading from King Charles Street in London and a former slave, were presented to the public in the hope of demonstrating that he was a writer quite as accomplished as many a native English literary man. In this extract, dated October 24th, 1777, he talks (as he often does) about his wife Ann.
Composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor recalls his experiences as a judge in the distrustful world of music festivals and brass band contests.
‘Don’t you undertake that job at any price!’ was the advice given to composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor when he was first offered the role of judge at an eisteddfod. But he went, and never regretted it. He fell in love with Wales, and was much in demand ever after for choir festivals and brass band competitions across England too. Even so, the work was not for the faint-hearted.
Berwick Sayers tells how his friend, the composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, set out on his last voyage.
Composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912) died of pneumonia at the age of thirty-seven, leaving behind him his wife Jessie and two children, and a treasury of tuneful and often innovative music that is beginning to be appreciated again today. A close family friend, Berwick Sayers, tells of his last hours.