18th century composer Joseph Haydn was hired as a servant of the Esterhazy family. According to a contract from 1761, Haydn was required to dress in uniform, wasn't allowed to eat or drink with his employers, needed to avoid familiarity or casual interchanges with the family and had to appear before Prince Esterhazy twice a day for orders. The prince also decided which music Haydn wrote and owned the rights to his compositions. The contract also prohibited Haydn from composing music for anyone else without the prince's explicit permission. Even so, this was considered to be one of the most desirable positions in European music at the time.

Franz Liszt was a fan of the early Bosendorfer piano which started being made in 1826.

Scott Joplin’s opera, “Treemonisha,” is the only existing ragtime opera, and was given its first full production in the 1970’s - long after Joplin’s death in 1917.

When Van Cliburn won the Tchaikovsky Piano Competition in Moscow in 1958, his victory was every American pianist’s victory. American artists who had previously figured only in national competitions were suddenly acknowledged in the international arena. A career as a pianist was finally considered valid and was respected.

It is often suggested that Mozart lived and died in poverty, but that doesn't appear to be true. He enjoyed an upper-middle-class lifestyle by the standards of the period. He had a desirable apartment in the center of the city, dressed in style, hired a coach when needed, and dined in restaurants. He paid for his barber to visit his home daily to dress and powder his hair. Any financial difficulties were due to Mozart's spending habits rather than a lack of sufficient income.

One of Cristofori’s original pianofortes, dating from 1720, still exists and is on display at the Metropolitan Music of Art’s Rare Instrument Collection in New York City.

Jazz pianist Art Tatum used to practice away from the keyboard by running filbert nuts across his fingers like a magician.

In 1882, a case came to court in Bamberg, Germany involving a young woman who played the same three pieces by an open window from 8:00 PM to 10:30 PM. The neighbors called the police and she was taken to court, where the judge found in favor of the neighbors.

Beethoven's "Ode To Joy" has been embraced over the years by the leaders of both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, Chairman Mao's Cultural Revolution, the Peruvian Shining Path terrorist Abimael Guzmán and the Apartheid regime in South Africa.

By 1850, directories for London indicate that 200 piano manufacturers were serving the local market.

As a child, Elton John weighed about 200 pounds and had a terrible inferiority complex. He claims that’s why he likes to be outrageous and wear strange clothes onstage.

Cristofori came up with three principles still used by piano makers today, Besides inventing hammers, he developed an escapement device to permit the hammer to drop back immediately after delivering its string blow, leaving the string to vibrate freely as long as the key is held. Cristofori also invented the shifting soft pedal arrangement, called the una corda.

In the decades before the invention of the phonograph, the home piano embodied almost the entire scope of musical culture. It is where songs were written, where they were performed, where they were heard by new listeners, and where they became hits or were forgotten.

Beethoven's Ninth Symphony was performed to commemorate the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The most popular song at the midpoint of the 19th century was Stephen Foster's "O Susannah." When it was published in 1848, no American popular song had ever sold more than 5000 copies, but "O Susannah" sold more than 100,000 copies shortly after its release.

Although Stephen Foster built his reputation on nostalgic songs about the Deep South, he had virtually no firsthand knowledge or experience in the region.

For years, classical pianist Vladimir Horowitz would only give concerts at 4:40 PM on Sundays.

In the two years following the publication of "O Susannah," sixteen other companies released their own arrangements of the song and there was nothing Stephen Foster could do about it. He died in 1864 with 38 cents in his pocket.




Trivia Disclaimer: To the best of my knowledge, the music trivia and "factoids" within Pianotes are true, but I can’t guarantee it.