This edited article about G F Handel originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 668 published on 2 November 1974.

Handel threatens the diva Cuzzoni with defenestration, by Peter Jackson

The two men had fallen out and it was certainly not Handel’s fault. His so-called friend, Mattheson, was jealous of his success, and one night at the opera house in Hamburg, the young musicians came to blows in the orchestra pit.

No one knows the immediate cause of the fight, but the audience was delighted, especially when the quarrel was continued that night in 1704 out in the Goose-market before a cheering crowd. But now it was getting more serious for swords were drawn. After blows had been exchanged Mattheson’s sword struck a hard metal coat button and the sword splintered in his hand.

It was the end of the duel, which was just as well, for if it had struck a little higher, we would have had no Messiah, no Water Music, no Music for the Royal Fireworks and many other much-loved pieces.

But what has this quarrel between two Germans got to do with the very British Georgians? The answer is simple. Handel, born in Germany in 1685, the same year as that other master musician, Johann Sebastian Bach, was to become a naturalised Briton, as British as roast beef. And, as we shall see, his influence on British music was colossal.

Rumour has it that Handel’s Aunt Anna got him off to a good musical start by smuggling a clavichord (a predecessor of the piano) into the attic of his home in Halle, Saxony, when he was six years old. Father, a barber-surgeon at a time when the two professions were often one, disapproved of music and musicians and wanted his son to be “respectable” like himself. Fortunately, when the boy was seven, a duke heard him play the organ and persuaded the reluctant Handel senior to allow him to study music officially and away from the attic.

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This edited article about famous composers originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 663 published on 28 September 1974.

Edvard Grief spent his later years living in a specially constructed house overlooking a fjord

Edvard Grieg was born at Bergen in Norway on June 15th, 1843. He received his first music lessons from his mother who was an accomplished pianist, and he began to compose music at the age of nine.

In 1858 he went to Leipzig where he studied music for four years and then travelled to Copenhagen in Denmark to complete his musical education.

When he returned to Norway he became friends with another composer, Nordraak, and both men pursued a project for founding a Norwegian School of Music. Grieg began a musical union at Christiana, as Oslo was then called, and conducted its concerts during the years between 1867 and 1880.

In 1879 he played his piano concerto in A minor at Leipzig, and it was this work which established his reputation as a composer.

Grieg married his cousin, Nina Hagerup. She was a talented singer and helped to make many of her husband’s beautiful songs known. He spent most of his life in quiet seclusion at his country home near Bergen, although in 1888 he made the first of three visits to London and occasionally made trips to other countries in Europe. He died at his home on September 4th, 1907.

Grieg was one of the most popular lyrical composers. His most famous works include the piano concerto, a violin sonata, the music for Henrik lbsen’s play Peer Gynt (which has become more famous than the play itself), a string quartet and the Holberg Suite for piano or string orchestra.

This edited article about jazz originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 659 published on 31 August 1974.

George Gershwin made jazz respectable with his ‘Rhapsody in Blue’, by Pat Nicolle

When Scott Fitzgerald, the novelist, coined the famous American phrase, “The Jazz Age,” he was referring to the nineteen-twenties. But he wasn’t thinking so much about music as about, the frantic, frenetic way of life when fun and foolishness dominated the decade. However, the term did make sense in music, too. With the end of the First World War, Jazz took a grip of the American way of life.

Its history can be told only in fragments; for the new music spread in numerous directions, on different levels and at various speeds.

Everyone who played jazz or listened to it thought they were right in their interpretation of what it was, so for a while, anything went, you might say. If it was hot, punchy, lively and swung, then that was fine. It was jazz.

Slick commercialism and the popularity of the phonograph were what really spread jazz across America. After the New York success of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band in 1917, their records began to sell like the proverbial hot cakes. And this led to the record moguls almost falling over themselves to cash in on the phenomenon. Bands were assembled and recorded, and the public bought the music.

Paul Whiteman was king of this new music. With the largest band known at the time, he produced a full, smooth and rich sound, playing carefully rehearsed arrangements. He was heard from coast to coast, and by 1922 it was said he was making over a million dollars annually.

And then a rather odd thing happened. In February, 1924, Whiteman presented a concert at Aeolian Hall, the showplace of academic and classical music. His aim was to show the critics that jazz, as he played it, was a serious and legitimate form of music. The method he chose was to trace jazz from its “crude” roots up to the sophisticated sound he had created. But it didn’t quite work out as he had planned. Many of the critics applauded the “crude” jazz for its rhythm, vitality and colour. They also raved about George Gershwin who was there playing his own “Rhapsody in Blue.”

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This edited article about music originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 659 published on 31 August 1974.

Joseph Haydn

Franz Joseph Haydn was born at Rohrau in Austria in 1732. He was one of twelve children and his father was a wheelwright. At the age of eight he became a choirboy in Vienna and continued to work hard at his musical studies throughout his childhood.

As a young man, Haydn managed to earn a small living from teaching, and found a little time to devote himself to composition.

His fortunes improved when he was appointed composer to a count in 1759, and shortly after this he composed his first orchestral symphony. Two years later he became composer and musical director to Prince Paul Esterhazy and then to Prince Paul’s successor, Prince Nicolaus. These years as the director of the Prince’s orchestra allowed Haydn to experiment in orchestral composition, and he composed symphonies, chamber music and puppet theatre operas.

Haydn visited England in 1790 and again in 1794 and it was in London that he composed some of his finest work. He wrote 12 symphonies for two series of concerts, and he appeared at the English court where he was most popular.

‘Papa Haydn’ as the composer was known, was a highly prolific artist, and the total volume of his work is very great. He composed about 150 symphonies, 77 quartets and many chamber pieces and songs.

In 1809 Vienna was captured by Napoleon and just before Haydn died he was carried to his piano and played a tune he had composed which was called Austria. This became his country’s national anthem. He died in Vienna on May 31, 1809.

This edited article about popular music originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 606 published on 25 August 1973.

Dancing the risque cakewalk to the music of an early jazz band

One fine day, shortly after the end of the Second World War, the figure of a middle-aged man wearing all the trappings of success was seen wandering down a shabby back-street in the East End of London. Expensive shoes, a silver-knobbed walking stick, a well-cut overcoat with its fur-collar, a fat cigar and a silk tie – they were all there. The name under which the man was known to millions all over Britain was Geraldo, whose big band broadcast regularly throughout the war years. Before the war, Geraldo with his Gaucho Tango Orchestra, all tricked out in Latin American costume, had been a feature of the ballroom of London’s Savoy Hotel.

As he strolled along the mean streets of the East End on that post-war day, Geraldo was making a sentimental pilgrimage to the poor district in which he and his brother Sid, a brilliant pianist, had been born and brought up.

Geraldo’s rise to fame had begun some twenty-five years before, during the ‘twenties when the whole western world went dance and dance-band crazy. Ragtime became jazz and jazz became a sophisticated version of itself, more musicianly, more “dance-able-to,” and it was played by musicians wearing evening dress. The quartets and sextets of the true jazz age turned into “orchestras” featuring fourteen to twenty players and, in the case of “big bands,” into thirty or more.

The jazz of the post-1914-18 War years horrified the older generation, as anything new often does. Straight from the deep south of the United States came the voice of the American Negro. There was good jazz and there was bad jazz. There was jazz which relied upon sheer noise for its effect, and it made the newspapers ask, “Is jazz the music of the jungle?”

A critic of the kind of jazz which prevailed before the arrival of the real thing said that the sound “gave the sensitive listener the impression of an Armenian massacre.” And it was true that the percussion men of these early jazz-bands certainly let themselves go.

On the threshold of the ‘twenties the “real thing” turned up from New Orleans via New York and Chicago. Led by a cornet playing genius of improvisation named Nick LeRocca, the “Original Dixieland Jazz Band” came to Britain and truly took the country by storm.

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This edited article about music originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 605 published on 18 August 1973.

The Polish piano virtuoso and future Prime Minister, Ignace Jan Paderewski

Even though it meant a slow voyage by steamer and long journeys by rail, the ambition of every European pianist after about 1850 was to perform in the United States of America.

One of the first to do so was the Swiss pianist, Thalberg, who, having failed to outshine his rival, Liszt, in Europe, did what Liszt never achieved; he took the U.S.A. by storm. For two years he enthralled audiences in New York, Boston, and other American cities with recitals of his own compositions and his arrangements of music from the great operas which they knew and loved, sometimes giving three recitals in a single day.

Then suddenly, having made his fortune, Thalberg returned to Europe, bought an estate in Italy, and changed his way of life to that of a country gentleman and wine-grower. For the last ten years of his life he never touched a piano – he did not even have one in his home.

Other performers also went to America from Europe. Some of them were very odd characters indeed. There was a German pianist called Leopold de Mayer who entertained his audience by his strange antics scarcely less than his playing. Known as “The Lion” because of his fierce appearance (he had a beard like a lion’s mane), he seemed no less of a lion in the way he attacked a piano instead of merely playing upon it.

He always made a great fuss at the outset of a recital. He would sit down to play, and then decide that the piano was not facing in exactly the right direction. Having had it moved, he would make a fresh start, then decide that the lid needed raising or else lowering – anything to create a disturbance.

He would go into a rage about this, shout at the audience, and generally act like a man who was half-mad. After playing normally for a few bars, he would suddenly thump the piano with his elbows, his fists, or even his knees.

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This edited article about music originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 603 published on 4 August 1973.

Franz Liszt

It could almost have been a scene from a pop concert at the height of Beatlemania. Women swooned, fainted, and rushed to the stage, struggling to get near to the performer. But these were elegant ladies of the 19th century, flouting all rules of social decorum in a frenzy of adoration for Franz Liszt, the greatest pianist of all time

The final chords crashed out from the last of three pianos on the platform of a Paris concert hall. Broken wires dangled from the other two instruments, which had been played to the point of destruction earlier in the programme. The pianist then collapsed into the arms of the companion who had been sitting beside him, turning the pages of the music. Stage assistants rushed forward and carried the exhausted performer off the platform. Another “recital” (the player was the first to use this word for solo piano performances) by the greatest showman-pianist of the 19th century was over!

His removal was the signal for an even more astonishing scene. Several ladies in the audience immediately fainted, either overcome with emotion or in sympathy with the pianist himself. Two or three others pushed their way to the platform, where they struggled in most unladylike fashion to capture one of the green silk gloves which the pianist had taken off at the beginning of his performance, and left draped over the instrument. Others in the audience – which consisted mainly of women – threw flowers on to the platform, one even threw her jewels! There were cries of “encore” and resounding applause. After a time, the pianist, now revived, tottered on to the platform, and bowed to the frenzied crowd below.

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This edited article about music originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 601 published on 21 July 1973.

Ludwig van Beethoven at the piano

The “piano-forte” had certainly begun a revolution in the musical world of the early eighteen hundreds. No wonder players of the old school were doubtful about it. Instead of chattering gaily like the harpsichord, the pianoforte “sang” and its song was the song of a new century – the age of dreams, hopes, and revolution. For such a time it was the perfect musical instrument.

Beethoven, who was at the height of his powers at this very time, used the pianoforte with more telling effect than any composer before or since. He wrote many sonatas, and six great concertos – pieces in which he blended and contrasted the powers of the pianoforte with those of a full orchestra. He himself played the piano with such violence that at the end of a concert the instrument he had used was little more than a wreck – some of the wires broken, others with the hammers jammed between them. His pieces written for this instrument, which was such a novelty in his day, still form some of the most popular hits in the modern concert hall.

Today, Beethoven’s works stand in a class by themselves, but in his own time there were other musicians of note who were regarded as at least his equal, whether in writing music for the piano or performing on it. There was Jan Dussek, who in his twenties was giving piano recitals in all the capitals of Europe. Critics called his nimble fingers “a company of ten singers” – for it was the way this instrument “sang” that attracted its hearers – and they flocked to hear him. Today, Dussek is remembered only because he was the pianist who set the style of playing in profile, that is, seated side-ways on to the audience so that they could see his hands at work on the keyboard, the way that every pianist has followed since his time.

Another of Beethoven’s rivals was John Cramer – “Glorious John” as he came to be called. Born in Germany, he was brought to London when only a year old, and from being a child genius, he grew to rival Beethoven as a performer. Today his name is remembered only as that of a make of piano.

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This edited article about music originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 600 published on 14 July 1973.

Young Mozart at the piano keyboard accompanying his father and sister, by Peter Jackson

Today the thing that nearly everyone wants to have in their home is a colour television set. Fifty years ago, when even sound radio was a novelty, a piano was the thing to have. To own one was a sign of success, for it was an expensive item, and one to show off proudly to the neighbours. Mum wanted it; Dad bought it; one or other of the children learned to play it – at least for a time. Any number of amateur teachers made a few shillings a week extra by giving piano lessons on Saturday mornings. If you learned at school, piano lessons were an extra, and if you were lucky you had yours while the rest of the class were doing something much less interesting.

Pianos, good and bad, were turned out in their thousands by a score of firms, many of them with German connections. Look at the maker’s name on many pianos still in use and you will see the words London and Berlin, or London and Leipzig under the manufacturer’s name. For it was in Germany, over 250 years ago, that this, the most popular of all instruments, was developed, and where its later power to enthrall huge audiences in vast concert halls had its beginnings.

We call it a “piano,” which is simply the Italian word for “soft” or “quiet,” but the correct name for the instrument is the “pianoforte” – meaning “soft-loud” – and these words even though they seem to contradict each other, give the clue to what was new about the instrument.

Until that time it had never been possible for a player to vary the volume, that is, the amount of sound, which his playing produced from a keyboard instrument. This was because of the way in which these instruments were made. The most popular of them, the “harpsichord” plucked the strings when its keys were struck, like fingers plucking the strings of a harp. There was an instrument – the “Clavichord” – in which the strings were tapped by dainty hammers, but the sound was so delicate that it could only be heard in a small room. The hammers used in the “pianoforte” were much heavier, and rebounded at once, leaving a clear ringing note. Yet as soon as the player raised his fingers a “damper” closed swiftly on the strings and silenced the singing notes which the hammers had produced. By striking the keyboard notes lightly or heavily, the performer could produce a whole range of volume, varying from the very softest to thunderously loud notes; not only that, but by keeping his fingers on the keys he could make the sounds linger on in a way which no previous keyboard instrument made possible, yet he could cut the notes off briskly if he wanted to.

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This edited article about ballet originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 884 published on 23 December 1978.

Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring caused a riot, while Nijinsky beat out the complex rhythms from the wings. Picture by Andrew Howat

They howled, they jeered, they yelled so loudly that the dancers could not hear the music. Nor, of course, could the audience. At one point, while the scenery was being changed, fighting broke out and an aged French countess rose from her seat in a box and shrieked: “It’s the first time in sixty years that anyone has dared to make fun of me!”

She assumed that she was being hoaxed, but the first performance of The Rite of Spring that May night in 1913 was no hoax, even if it was a disaster of colossal magnitude. In fact, the audience made it the biggest single disaster in the history of ballet and of music. The most exciting and brilliant ballet company ever to appear on stage, Serge Diaghilev’s Russian Ballet, had apparently gone too far.

The troupe had erupted on Western Europe four years earlier. It was masterminded by two geniuses, the key figure being Michel Fokine, a great dancer turned choreographer – the person who invents the steps of a ballet.

Back in Russia. Fokine had had a dream. He wanted ballet to be a partnership of dance, music, drama and painting, all of them of the highest class, and his partnership with the organising genius, Serge Diaghilev, enabled his dream to come true.

Before them, even in Russia, where at least standards had remained high, ballet had mainly become a mere showpiece for a few ballerinas. In France, ballerinas had even taken over some of the male parts. Ballet had ceased to be a major art.

The first Diaghilev season in Paris in 1909 changed all that, from the moment the electrifying Polovstian Dances from Prince Igor galvanised the audience into storms of cheers for their barbaric splendour. Other triumphs followed, like Petrouchka; and like the amazing dancing of Nijinsky, who even seemed to pause at the top of his leaps.

So Fokine’s revolution had come true. The time was ripe for yet another giant step forward, The Rite of Spring, with Nijinsky as choreographer and the brilliant young Russian, Igor Stravinsky, as composer.

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