On Air Now
Smooth Classics with Margherita Taylor 10pm - 1am
We went back in time and offered this advice to the great composers
Imagine going back in time and helping a composing legend to change the course of history. We've done just that...
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1. Gustav Holst
So Holst wasn't too keen about adding Pluto to The Planets suite when it was named the ninth planet in 1930. But what about the third rock from the sun?
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2. Johann Pachelbel
It's just the same eight notes over and over and over...but when do you stop?
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3. Edward Elgar
The Enigma Variations by Elgar are called that because there's an initial melody on which the variations are based. But nobody knows what it is.
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4. J.S. Bach
It's expensive to think about educating 20 children.
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5. Charles-Valentin Alkan
Legend has it that the poor composer died after he reached for a copy of the Talmud from the top of a bookcase and it toppled over.
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6. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
In July 1791, a masked stranger called on Mozart to commission a Requiem. Also known as the Man in Grey, the Mysterious Messenger and the Gray Messenger, the caller is seen as hastening Mozart's early death in the film 'Amadeus'.
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7. King Henry VIII
Alas, my love, you do me wrong...
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8. Anton Bruckner
Bruckner had a little trouble keeping things short.
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9. Jean-Baptiste Lully
Lully died from gangrene, having struck his foot with his long conducting staff during a performance of his Te Deum.
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10. Philip Glass
And again...
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11. Ernest Chausson
Poor Chausson had a fatal meeting with a stone wall.
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12. Sergei Rachmaninov
Stravinsky reportedly described Rachmaninov as "six foot two inches of Russian gloom."
