"He takes it twice as fast as it should be...When I tried to correct him, he replied: 'If I don't do it my way, it will fall flat.' Virtuosos! Lost in their dream worlds as though composers don't exist." - Ravel, regarding Arturo Toscanini's interpretation of "Boléro":

Part 2 of a timeline of the Snare Drum player's thoughts during a performance a performance of Ravel's "Bolero": (Credit: John Bogenschutz, ToneDeafComics.com)

A timeline of the Snare Drum player's thoughts during a performance a performance of Ravel's "Bolero", Part 1: (Credit: John Bogenschutz, ToneDeafComics.com)

What's often misunderstood about "Boléro" is that the monotony is the POINT. The ballet is set in a musty bar in rural Spain. Life is dull and grinding. The music begins; someone starts dancing. Others gradually join. Eventually, the room is filled with lusty, riotous humanity.

101 years ago today, the ballet "Bolero", with music by Maurice Ravel, choreography by Bronislava Nijinska and designs by Alexandre Benois, was premiered in Paris. Ravel was less ambivalent about the piece than surprised at its popularity as a stand-alone symphonic work.

In this Week's Edition of "The Refuge": Haydn in London Retiring a Toxic Title Telemann and the Art of Crisis Management Berlioz Enters the Opera Fray therefuge.substack.com Please Share and Subscribe!

A video I produced for the Boston Symphony about the complicated history of Bach's b minor Mass, one of the greatest achievements of the composer whose work represents - in my view - represents the ultimate synthesis of musical craft and inspiration youtu.be/QbTHxG-iBBc

The Mozart Effect: Makes a child smarter, more mathematically-adept. The Schoenberg Effect: Child never repeats a word until he's used all his other words. Also talks backwards and upside-down. Soon, people stop listening. Child blames them for not understanding him.

Mahler wasn't just criticized for stretching the boundaries of harmony and form. His realistic, non-stylized use of popular and folk music was considered inappropriate for the concert hall. Elements like the Klezmer music in his 1st Symphony were routinely described as "cheap" and "vulgar."

On this date in 1889, Gustav Mahler led the premiere of his 1st Symphony in Budapest. As a first essay in the genre, I think it reaches the same high plane achieved by Berlioz and Brahms, both in terms of overall effectiveness and clarity of artistic purpose.

"The art of music has here interred a precious treasure, but yet far fairer hopes." - Schubert's epitaph, by Franz Grillparzer (Note: when he died, the extent of Schubert's output was largely unknown.)

Between Mozart and Schubert, whose premature death was the greater tragedy for music? If forced to choose, I'd say Schubert's. His late instrumental works show he'd finally learned how to use his colorful harmonic language coherently in large-scale structures.

The scope of Schubert's achievement during his final year is mind-boggling. It included his last three Piano Sonatas, his 2nd Piano Trio, his String Quintet, the song cycles Winterreise and Schwangesang and his Mass in E-flat, all massive, highly-original works. Incredible.

The period of Schubert's full artistic maturity lasted about 6 years, beginning in 1822 with the "Unfinished" Symphony and the "Wanderer" Fantasy. It's notable that this coincided with the growing obscurity of Beethoven, who'd been a looming presence throughout Schubert's life.

On this date in 1828, Franz Schubert died at the age of 31 in his brother's apartment in Vienna, leaving behind an output of more than 1500 works in every major genre. The immediate cause of death was typhus; tertiary-stage syphilis had compromised his immune system.

'The orchestra sprang from the faith of my youth and has been the faith of my life and of my old age." - Henry Lee Higginson, Founder, Boston Symphony

Higginson was such a devoted musical Germanophile that every conductor hired as Music Director of the BSO during his lifetime hailed from either Austria or Germany. The last was Karl Muck, who was arrested and interred during WW1. Higginson died in 1919, shortly after Muck's deportation.

Higginson returned to Boston in late 1860, and shortly thereafter he joined the Union Army. He fought bravely in the Civil War, sustaining near-fatal wounds. After the war, he tried his hand at oil exploration and cotton farming before finally joining his family's banking firm.

While studying in Vienna, Higginson trained to be a pianist. But he was undermined by a problem that had forced him to drop out of Harvard: migraines. Seeking relief, he had a doctor bleed him - liberally. The result was nerve damage in his left arm that scuttled his aspirations.

On this date in 1834, the American businessman and philanthropist Henry Lee Higginson was born in New York City. A failed musician who pursued training in Vienna during the 1850s, he established the Boston Symphony in 1881, the first full-time professional orchestra in America.

"Our spirit of life is not identical with that of our ancestors, and therefore their music can never have for us precisely the same meaning it had for them. We cannot tear down the barricade that separates the present world from things and deeds past." - Paul Hindemith (Image: Hindemith at Yale)

Paul Hindemith, seen here serenading his favorite bedroom quilt.

Ironically, the Nazis' denunciations of Hindemith began reaching their peak well after his early years as a musical revolutionary. By the 1930s, much of his music could be described as neo-classical, reflecting a strong interest in traditional counterpoint and tonality.

A denunciation of composer Paul Hindemith as an opportunist on the front page of the Nov. 28, 1934 edition of Der Angriff (The Attack), the Nazi Party newspaper published by Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels. Having a Jewish wife, as well as his early reputation as a modernist, made him a target.

"There are two supreme gods in the art of music: Beethoven and Gluck. These two Jupiters form a single god, and all we can do is to lose ourselves in admiration and respect for him." - Hector Berlioz

Even with authoritative editions, close scrutiny of a score is merited. For example, the horns ("Cor.") ostensibly required to play this piece are two different instruments: a "Hunting" horn (Corni da caccia), and a "Crap" horn (Corni da cacca). Let the games begin...

The artistically uncompromising Gluck could be just as stubborn with regard to his personal affairs. When his doctor told him in 1787 that he'd die if he didn't radically curtail his drinking, the composer steadfastly refused. By the end of the year, he was dead.

After moving to Paris in 1770, Gluck was drafted into rivalry with Niccolò Piccinni, whose operas in the lighter old Italian style were preferred by some. A bitter controversy ensued; the question “are you a Piccinnist or a Gluckist?” ended many friendships.

On this day in 1787, the celebrated Bohemian-born opera composer Christoph Willibald Gluck died in Vienna. Now largely-overlooked, his belief that text and narrative should determine an opera's content and form would find its fullest expression in the works of Berlioz and Wagner.

"I offer these modest songs to my dear wife Olympe as a simple testimony of gratitude for the affectionate, intelligent care which she lavished on me during my overlong and terrible illness." - Dedication of Rossini's "Musique anodine" (1857).

Rossini, listening to someone trying to explain MAGA.

Rossini's light-hearted music hardly reflected his interior life. After his early retirement in 1829, he spent his final 39 years eating to dull his emotional pain, leading one critic to comment: “Rossini used to be stuffed with music; now he's stuffed with prosciutto."

After writing 39 operas between 1806 and 1829 (incredibly, 34 of them were written during one 13 year-stretch), Rossini simply stopped composing. Why? 1) he was burnt out; 2) a looming, unexplainable sense of despair; 3) advancing arthritis due to a gonorrheal infection.

On this date in 1868, the Italian composer Gioachino Rossini died in Paris of cancer at the age of 76. His 39 operas (many of which remain staples the repertoire) brought him astonishing wealth and fame. In the 1820s, he even overshadowed Beethoven in Vienna.

“The luck of having talent is not enough; one must also have a talent for luck.” - Hector Berlioz

Ralph Vaughan Williams, waiting for you to screw up that difficult 16th-note passage again.

The opening of Brahms' Op. 111 String Quintet is considered problematic, as the cellist often struggles to make the theme heard through a sonorous wall of sextuplets played by the violins and violas above. But the struggle is the POINT; it amplifies the tune's heroic character.

Brahms, a die-hard bachelor, once confessed that Alice Barbi was the only woman he’d ever wished to marry. It appears that the relationship foundered over his lack of interest in fatherhood. Nonetheless, they would always hold each other in high esteem.

135 years ago today, Brahms' 2nd String Quintet was premiered in Vienna. Composed at a point when he believed he was "written-out", this ebullient piece was inspired by a new friend: an attractive mezzo-soprano with extraordinary artistic gifts named Alice Barbi.

"Hands that are capable of executing that which is fastest are not always those which succeed in the tender and sentimental pieces, and I would acknowledge in good faith that I like better what touches me than what surprises me." - François Couperin.

Francois Couperin, seen here waiting for the leadership of the Democratic Party to grow a freakin' spine.

Both Debussy and Ravel celebrated Couperin, although for different reasons. Debussy, a cultural warrior, saw him as a symbol French musical prestige in an era before German music achieved hegemonic status. Ravel simply loved the exquisite lucidity of Couperin's aesthetic.

Couperin became the organist at the court of Louis XIV, giving him access to the most influential music patrons in Europe. In 1713, Louis granted him a 20-year publishing privilege, which he would use to issue 4 Volumes of keyboard works and a keyboard-playing treatise.

On this date in 1668, the French composer, harpsichordist and organist Francois Couperin was born. The product of a family of highly-skilled musicians, he was known as "Couperin the Great", a distinguishing nickname that reflected his status as a giant of French Baroque music.

Beethoven, on Goethe: "He delights in the court atmosphere far more than is becoming to a poet." Goethe, on Beethoven: "He isn't altogether wrong in finding the world detestable; but that doesn't make it more enjoyable for himself or others."

Beethoven's sketches reveal his ruthlessly-critical intellect. Although he became a hero to the Romantic generation of composers who followed him, his art was firmly rooted in the principles of the Enlightenment; his music expresses a Romantic spirit through Classical means.

Beethoven's Symphonies were a poisoned chalice to his successors. He'd made the genre so prestigious that they were desperate to emulate him. But the greater chromaticism of their music undermined the harmonic architecture upon which the Beethovenian symphonic form was based.

The contradictory nature of Beethoven's character could stun his contemporaries. After the triumphant premiere of his 9th, he sat down for dinner with friends who'd arranged the concert. He started complaining about the ticket sales, then falsely accused them of theft. They fled.

"The Incident at Teplitz" by Carl Rohling (1887). It depicts the likely-mythical story of Beethoven and Goethe encountering the Imperial family while on a walk, and their disparate reactions. Goethe was 21 when Beethoven was born; he outlived the composer by 5 years.

“But ever since those days in Vienna, I had been aware that Austria was lost, not yet suspecting, to be sure, how much I had lost thereby.” - Stefan Zweig, "The World of Yesterday