J.S. Bach was born on March 20, 1685. He would have been 339 this month!

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.

Mozart wrote his opera, “Don Giovanni,” in one sitting.

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.

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.

Roman Emperor Nero enjoyed playing the bagpipes in public.

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

Frederic Chopin was the most fashionable and expensive piano teacher in Paris in the 1830’s and ‘40’s.

From 1832 to 1849, Chopin spent an equal amount of time teaching and composing, teaching an average of five students a day from October until May. Chopin’s lessons were 45 minutes, and he often doubled them up to cover more material. He especially enjoyed teaching his most-gifted students on Sundays.

Mozart wrote his first opera when he was twelve.

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

Some of Mozart’s major works were not printed until the middle and end of the 19th century - about 100 years after his death.

JS Bach’s youngest son, Johann Christian, played the first pianoforte solo in an English concert on June 2, 1768.

The highest achiever among the famous composers was Franz Joseph Haydn, who wrote 340 hours of music in 54 years. If you started listening to his collected works for eight hours a day, you’d be done in just over six weeks.

The lowest achiever among the famous composers was Maurice Ravel, who wrote only 19 hours of music in 42 years. That’s a career average of about 30 seconds of musical output a week.

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 one of the most desirable positions in European music at the time.

At one of Andre Watts’ concert performances, the pedals came off as he was playing. He tried to hold the pedals up with his feet as he continued to play, but he finally had to give up and went offstage to find the emergency piano technician.