Resumo de Book Of Facts - Reader's Digest

MUSIC AND DRAMA-I

DISTANT ADMIRER
In 1877 the Russian composer Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky received a letter from a wealthy, middle-aged widow with 11 children, Nadezhda von Meck. She wrote to tell him how much she admired his music and offered to pay him a generous annual allowance on one condition ? that they never met. She did not want to run the risk of meeting her idol in the flesh and possibly being disillusioned-and this suited Tchaikovsky who, although married, was ill-at-ease in female company.
For the next 14 years- until Madame von Meck became gravely ill with tuberculosis- the couple frequently corresponded, but kept their vow not to meet. However, they sometimes attended the same concerts in Moscow, when they would surreptitiously observe each other. On one occasion they came face to face and Tchaikovsky politely doffed his hat to his patroness. She turned scarlet with embarrassment and became speechless.
This made Tchaikovsky equally flustered and they both hurried off in different directions.

DEADLY BEAT
The Italian born composer Jean Baptist Lully died as the result of a self inflicted injury sustained while conducting. In 1687 he was directing a Te Deum (a Latin hymn of thanksgiving to God) in Paris when he accidentally struck himself on his foot with the heavy, long staff which he was beating on the floor to indicate the tempo. An abscess developed, rapidly followed by gangrene, and Lully- director of music at the court of Louis XIV- died of blood poisoning at the age of 54.
The baton- the lightweight stick used by modern conductors to mark tempo- was introduced at a London concert in 1820 by the German conductor and composer Louis Spohr.

THERE AND BACH
In the autumn of 1705 the 20 year old Johann Sebastian Bach, then the church organist at Arnstadt in Thuringia, was given four week?s leave to visit Lubeck to hear the great Danish born organist and composer Dietrich Buxtehude. Because Bach was short of money, he walked the 350km between the two German towns. On arriving at Lubeck he found that the 68 year old Buxtehude was ready to retire. Bach was offered his job as organist on one condition. He had to marry Buxtehude?s 30 year old daughter. Bach turned it down, just as another young composer, George Handle, had done two years earlier. Bach walked back to Thuringia and arrived 12 weeks late- which earned him a severe reprimand from the church authorities.

OPERA IN THE CASTLE
The music of Richard Wagner so impressed the 18 year old Ludwig II, King of Bavaria from 1864, that he built an elaborate castle- Neuschwanstein- in which to stage the composer?s then little-performed operas. He also put Wagner on his payroll, and gave him money to start the annual Bayreuth Festival, which is still held today. Only Wagner?s works are performed at the festival.
Ludwig was always eccentric and he ended his days under restraint as a madman. He committed suicide in 1886, three years after Wagner?s death.

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