Art And Music | Example | Honor | Lost | Pride | Self | Sin

LIVES OF THE GREAT COMPOSERS:
Richard Wagner, while deep in conversation, would sometimes sit back and listen to the beautiful eloquence of the speaker. After an awkward silence, he would suddenly realize that the speaker was…himself! Gustav Mahler may have been the most preoccupied composer in history. At parties, he would confuse his coffee and his cigarettes. . . literally! He’d take a lit cigarette and use it to stir his coffee, or take a swig of coffee, and, thinking it was smoke, exhale it on whomever he was talking to. During an opera rehearsal, he once had to wait a few minutes for a set change. When the stagehands were finished, Mahler was absorbed in thought in the corner. Someone finally roused him from his thoughts, and he looked around, confused, and then stammered out. . . “Waiter! The bill!” When Leonard Bernstein was growing up, he took it upon himself to “teach” his little sister music. . . only one problem: he…