April 20, 2020 – davidbruceblog #2

Education

• Conductor Arturo Toscanini could get the best out of an orchestra. Occasionally, the members of one of his orchestras would be amazed at the beauty they had created under his direction. After a rehearsal of Debussy’s La Mer, a violinist in the NBC Symphony said to music critic B.H. Haggin, “You can quote me on this: We come here to go to school.”

• Emma Calvé was impressed by the upper notes of the castrato Domenico Mustapha, and she asked him how she could produce those notes. He told her that for 10 years she must practice singing with her mouth closed. Ms. Calvé was discouraged at first, but then she began practicing in that way. After two years, she discovered her “fourth voice.”

Fans

• American-born tenor Richard Tucker greatly impressed Pietro Moranzoni, retired conductor of the Chicago Civic Opera. Sitting with theatrical guru Danny Newman, Maestro Moranzoni listened to Mr. Tucker for a while, then asked Mr. Newman, “Theesa tenor, he ees Eetalian, no?” Mr. Newman replied, “No, Maestro, he’s American.” Maestro Moranzoni listened a while longer, then he asked Mr. Newman, “Eesa poppa and mamma, they Eetalian, ah?” Mr. Newman replied that Mr. Tucker’s parents were Romanian Jews. Maestro Moranzoni listened yet a while longer, then he asked Mr. Newman yet another question, “Eesa stody in Eetaly, ah?” Mr. Newman replied that Mr. Tucker had studied in New York City. At this point, Maestro Moranzoni said, “Ah donta care, eesa the best Eetalian tenor ah ever hear!” By the way, Luciana Pavarotti stated in his foreword to the book Richard Tucker: A Biography, by James A. Drake, that the career of Mr. Tucker definitely showed that even non-Italians could become “great Italian tenors!”

• John Lennon had many, many fans, including some in positions of authority. Kim Polson was a long-time fan of Mr. Lennon and the Beatles, and she lived only a block from the Dakota apartment building where Mark David Chapman murdered Mr. Lennon on Dec. 8, 1980. Four months before he died, Ms. Polson saw him in a coffee shop, so she stuck around to hear him talk to a companion. Doing this meant that she arrived two hours late for her job. Her boss was understandably irate, so she said, “Ask me why I’m late.” He did, she explained that she had been listening to Mr. Lennon talk to a colleague, and her boss was no longer irate.

• Like many, many other young girls, Lilie Ferrari had a crush on Beatle George Harrison, and like many, many other young girls, she wrote him a fan letter. Fortunately, she received a reply to her letter — from George Harrison’s mother, who happened to be a fan of Lilie’s mother, a writer of romance novels. The correspondence continued for a while, but slowed as Lilie grew up, although she continued to be one of George Harrison’s fans. Eventually, Lilie married, and her husband, Colin, was OK with her fan-adoration of George Harrison. He even signed his cards to her with “Love from George and The Other One.”

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Death

• Duke Ellington died of lung cancer, and he knew he was dying. In the last days of his life, he sent his friends his final greeting. It was a card on which was a cross. In the middle of the cross was an O. Lettered vertically on the cross was the word LOVE. Lettered horizontally on the cross was the word GOD.

Education

• Even early in her life, Joan Jett knew that she wanted to play rock and roll. She found a guitar teacher and told him what she wanted to learn, but it didn’t work out because she was so young and inexperienced that she didn’t realize that learning to play the guitar with a teacher involved a traditional educational process that she was unwilling to go through. The guitar teacher tried to teach her to play “On Top of Old Smokey,” but Joan’s response was, “Screw this.” Instead, she got herself a “Teach Yourself To Play Guitar” book, taught herself a few chords, and then started playing along with her records by Led Zeppelin and T.Rex.

• Thomas Beecham was a world-famous conductor, and he found it useful to know how to play various musical instruments. Occasionally, a musician would say that it was impossible to product an effect that Mr. Beecham wanted, so Mr. Beecham would take the musician’s instrument and demonstrate that such an effect was possible. Learning the instruments, of course, took effort. When Mr. Beecham started to learn the trombone, his neighbors protested, and so he ended up practicing in a small boat in the middle of a lake.

• When pop singer/actress Mandy Moore was a little girl, her mother got her a voice teacher, but her mother told the teacher, “If she doesn’t have any talent, tell me. I don’t want to waste your time.” In 1999, teenager Mandy got a hit with the single “Candy,” which propelled her album So Real into a million-copy seller in only 12 weeks. Of course, Mandy quickly became a star. She said back then, “There are people selling ‘What Mandy signed in my fifth grade yearbook’ on the Internet and that’s just scary.”

• Throughout his life, Arturo Toscanini studied music. When he was an old man, he was found in his bed studying the scores of Beethoven’s nine symphonies, although he had conducted the symphonies hundreds of times and had memorized the scores. When his son asked why he was studying scores that he so intimately knew, Toscanini replied, “Now that I am an old man, I want to come a little closer to the secrets of this music.”

• Conductor Pierre Monteux taught at a school for conductors, where a young student tried to impress him while conducting Franz Schubert’s Eighth Symphony. For 25 minutes, Mr. Monteux watched the young student wave his stick in all directions and show off with many expressions, then he told the student, “Now will you please play it again? And this time you will think of Franz Schubert — n’est-ce pas? — and not of yourself!”

• Famed conductor Sir Thomas Beecham once said to a young musician after tea, “I’m going to throw you out now.” When the young musician asked why, Sir Thomas said, “I’m going to have a look at my scores.” “But,” the young musician said, “you always conduct from memory.” Sir Thomas replied, “It is because I’m going to throw you out that I can look at my scores so that I can conduct from memory.”

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The Funniest People in Music, Volume 2: Buy the Paperback

The Funniest People in Music, Volume 2: Kindle

The Funniest People in Music, Volume 2: Kobo

The Funniest People in Music, Volume 2: Apple

The Funniest People in Music, Volume 2: Buy in Other Formats, Including PDF