One time Franz Liszt was playing before Czar Nicholas the First and his imperial court, but by the middle of his performance the host was bored and began talking to one of the spectators. At first the pianist ignored him, but after several minutes he simply stopped playing. All you could hear was the czar talking, louder now it seemed, and after a while even the emperor stopped and looked around. - Why have you stopped playing? he asked Liszt.
- When our czar speaks, everybody must be silent and listen.
When he was just a little, timid boy, Charles Gounod (the future famous composer) began taking classes with a famous teacher of his time. He was passionate, dedicated and it seemed that music was all he cared about. After a while his mother came to speak to the teacher about little Charles.
- Madame Gounod, I am an experienced teacher and I adore music. So I can tell you that little Charles already knows more than I could ever teach them. Yet he still doesn't know that he knows so much.
The mother was proud and kept on paying for little Charles tuition.
One time an old opera singer was complaining to Rossini:
- How tragic it is for a great singer to come to old age, especially when she starts losing her voice. So tragic.
- It is really a tragedy, my dear madam, when she loses her voice and doesn't realise it.
Hector Berlioz hated critics, and the critics delighted in attacking and annoying him. It was an all-out war, but sometimes the younger critics would write about Berlioz with the enthusiasm and respect he deserved. Once, when reading one of these reviews, in which the author never stopped complimenting Berlioz, the musician put the magazine aside, smiled to his friends and said:
- Well, you can't annoy them all, can you?
Paganini was just walking around Milan, carrying a violin, when in front of a small store he sensed the smell of fresh fish, one of his very favourite foods. He just stayed there, but before deciding to enter the owner exited the shop and furiously yelled at Paganini:
- Go away! I don't need travelling violin players around my shop! Go away now!
So the startled Paganini just looked, turned around and left. He was at a moment in his life when he was rich enough to buy to shop itself.
Photo: liszt.nl
