Incomplete And Utter History Of Classical Music

TWELVE MINUTES PAST SIX. TIME FOR AN OVERTURE

fi I heard you the first time. fifi The publishers would like to apologize for the coarseness of this line, especially applied, as it is, to one of the world's great composers. They in no way would like it to be inferred that either Brahms or Mrs Schumann were, in any way, the sort of composers to ever try and 'cop a feel3. Indeed, some of the publishers3 best friends are composers, and only a small percentage - certainly under 10-have ever tried to (cop a feel3 with the said publishers. Thank you. ?, 1882 was proving to be, all in all, not a bad year, really. Brahms unveiled his forty-five-minute-long finger-crunching piano concerto, Mr and Mrs Stravinsky gave birth to a bouncing baby boy, Igor - whose first words were no doubt a wisecrack about how awful the music was on his wind-up toy - and Gilbert and Sullivan produced Iolanthe in London. OK, two out of three isn't bad/ But let's not forget, also in 1882, that a fresh-faced, twenty-year-old Debussy produced one of his earliest works, the aptly entitled Spring.

Just to digress for a moment, in 1882 Debussy had a job teaching piano to the children of a wealthy woman of some standing, not to mention a fair amount of sitting down. He had been hired to play four-hand piano with them and tutor them, as well as going on holiday with them and generally being their musical 'man about the house!' But here's the thing.