Numbering a Symphony: Schubert’s Great, D. 944

by Maureen Buja  June 15th, 2026

Depending on your sources, Franz Schubert (1797–1828) has his final symphony, The Great, D. 944, variously numbered as Symphony No. 7 or Symphony No. 8 or Symphony No. 9 or Symphony No. 10. We now know, through style and paper studies, that many different works got confused in the numbering of the symphonies.

Wilhelm August Rieder: Franz Schubert, 1875 after 1825 watercolour (Vienna Museum)

Knowing the D. numbers is important here! D. stands for Otto Erich Deutsch (1883–1967), an Austrian musicologist who created the first comprehensive catalogue of Schubert’s works (just as Bach‘s works have BWV numbers and Mozart‘s have K. numbers, the D. numbers are for Schubert’s works).

George Fayer: Otto Erich Deutsch, 1927

The problem stems from two places: Only one of Schubert’s last symphonies was truly completed, and, as publishers started to publish the works, they didn’t want gaps in the numbering.

Symphony No. 7 in E minor, D. 729, written August 1821, never went beyond a draft. It was never completed by Schubert, who sketched out the entire work but abandoned it in the middle of scoring the first movement. It showed a radical change from his earlier symphonies, which were very much based on Haydn and Mozart. D. 729 was originally not given a number, but when later scholars and performers started to make editions of it, it received a number, bumping D. 759 and the following symphonies.

With the addition of the now-completed D. 729, the earlier numbered Symphony No. 7 in B minor, D. 759, we now know as Symphony No. 8, with the nickname of ‘The Unfinished’ because there are only two completed movements of it (a third movement only exists in sketches). It was written in October 1822 and sent by Schubert to his friend, Anselm Hüttenbrenner, as a thank-you to Hüttenbrenner’s Graz Music Society, which had given Schubert an honorary diploma.

There’s a hypothetical D. 849 symphony that was written between June and September 1825, which was referred to in Schubert’s letters. It has been nicknamed the Gmunden-Gastein Symphony after the place where Schubert was located when he wrote his letter.

There’s a Symphony D. 936a that exists only in sketches and might have been written in mid-1828. This is now known as Symphony No. 10.

Then there’s the symphony in C major, D. 944. Now known as Symphony No. 9, this is the only symphony among his late works that Schubert actually completed. No matter what the number of the symphony might be, keeping track of the D. numbers will help you sort them all out!

Although originally thought to have been written in Schubert’s last year (1828), we now know that it was begun when he was in Gmunden-Gastein. D. 849, as numbered by Deutsch, actually does not exist. The Great C major, D. 944, was begun in 1824 (as evidenced by the letter dated March 1824, and as evidenced by the use of paper from that time). It was completed in the spring or summer of 1826, and it was sent to the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde. Schubert couldn’t afford to have the orchestral parts copied, so he dedicated the work to the Gesellschaft. In response, they gave him a small payment, had the parts copied, and did a trial run-through sometime in 1827. They never did a public performance of the work, though, as they thought it too long and difficult for the orchestra on hand. It wasn’t until Robert Schumann saw the manuscript in 1838, 10 years after Schubert’s death, that a public performance took place. He brought a copy of the score, given to him by Schubert’s brother Ferdinand, back to Leipzig, where it was given its premiere at the Leipzig Gewandhaus on 21 March 1839, with Felix Mendelssohn conducting. Robert wrote an article of celebration for the work in his magazine, the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, where he praised its ‘heavenly length’. When Mendelssohn took the symphony to Paris and London, orchestras refused to perform it because of its length and difficulty.

The work is considered Schubert’s finest work for orchestra, and the Scherzo movement is one of particular joy. The symphony is important in changing Schubert’s style from working solely on thematic development (as he learned from Beethoven) and focusing more on melody. The work is full of optimism and grand statements, starting from its opening horn call. The ‘joyous alfresco dance’ of the Scherzo develops from its opening statement to form a movement that is more monumental than scherzo movements were expected to be.

This recording was made in November 1957 in the Salle Wagram in Paris, with the Orchestre des Cento Soli under the direction of Ataúlfo Argenta.

The Orchestre des Cento Soli was a French classical orchestra based in Paris that began recording in 1953.

Ataúlfo Argenta

Spanish conductor Ataúlfo Argenta (1913–1958) studied at the Madrid Royal Conservatory and held his first positions with the Orquesta Nacional de España (Spanish National Orchestra), becoming the second conductor in November 1946 and, by January 1947, joint director. By 1950, he began conducting the Paris Conservatory Orchestra, appearing with them until his accidental death in 1958. He also started appearing with the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande from 1954. This recording brings out his energetic approach to Schubert’s music.

Performed by
Ataulfo Argenta
Orchestre des Cento Soli

Recorded in 1957

Official Website

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Jacques Offenbach (Born on June 20, 1819): Le Papillon A Butterfly in Flames

 by Georg Predota  June 20th, 2026

The magnificent German-born French composer Jacques Offenbach composed nearly 100 operettas, and his opera The Tales of Hoffmann had a powerful influence on Johann Strauss II and Arthur Sullivan.

But did you know that he also composed music for the 1860 ballet Le Papillon (The Butterfly), his only work in this genre?

To celebrate Offenbach’s birthday on 20 June 1819, shall we revisit this often-overlooked chapter in his life?  

A Ballet for Emma Livry

Jacques Offenbach (photo by Nadar)

The idea of creating the ballet originated with Marie Taglioni, a Swedish-born Italian ballet dancer whose fragile and delicate dancing typifies the early 19th-century Romantic style. Yet, Taglioni didn’t want the leading role for herself, but for her young protégée, the French ballerina Emma Livry.

Emma Livry gave her triumphant début in La Sylphide in 1858, and she danced the leading role in a divertissement in the opera Herculanum in 1859. A new star was born, and a new ballet was commissioned with Taglioni as the choreographer, Saint-Georges as the librettist, and Jacques Offenbach as the composer.

For the new ballet, hoping to create a work entirely identified with Livry, Saint-Georges opted for a fairy tale that was lighter in character and devoid of complexities. Essentially, it would tell the story of good and evil fairies, an enchanted princess who is cursed by the evil fairy, and the lovestruck prince who sets out to rescue her.  

A Butterfly by Any Other Name

Jules-Henri Vernoy de Saint-Georges

According to petipasociety.com, the ballet’s title was decided at the last moment. “Saint-Georges favoured Zaidée, which he had intended to be the name of the heroine, but Marie Taglioni requested Farfalla, the Italian word for butterfly.”

“Royer, the Opéra director, preferred the title Le Papillon et la Fée (The Butterfly and the Fairy), but those who were guarding Emma Livry’s interests objected, arguing that such a title took the focus away from her and gave too much prominence to a secondary character. After some discussion, it was finally decided that the ballet would be simply called Le Papillon.” (Le Papillon)  

An Enchanted Forest in Circassia

The action is set in Circassia, a former country and historical region in Eastern Europe that spanned the western coastal portions of the North Caucasus, along the northeastern shore of the Black Sea. The first act takes place in a forest, and we meet the evil old fairy Hamza, treating her servant roughly.

Hamza has been turned into an ugly woman for once, abducting Farfalla, the Emir’s daughter, who now serves as her maid. As she looks in the mirror, Hamza’s only wish is to become young again and be eligible to marry, but she will only recover her beauty if someone kisses her.

The young Prince Djalma and his entourage enter the scene, and they come across Hamza’s cottage. After enjoying food and much wine, Hamza sees this as the opportunity she has been waiting for. However, when the prince sees Farfalla, he falls in love. He dances a mazurka with her and thanks her with a kiss. 

The Butterfly Princess

Emma Livry as Farfalla in Le Papillon

Once the prince has left, the tipsy Hamza is teased by the others and flies into a rage. She lures Farfalla into a box and, with her magic crutch, transforms Farfalla into a beautiful butterfly. The cottage is soon filled with butterflies, which Hamza chases away.

With the prince resting in a forest clearing, a member of his party brings him a butterfly he has caught. But when the butterfly is pinned to a tree by the prince, it suddenly turns into Farfalla. She escapes from his grasp and rejoins the other butterflies.  

Hamza now arrives in the clearing with her gardener. She locates Farfalla with her magic crutch and tries to catch her in a net. Yet, as she has left her magic wand unattended for a moment, her gardener Patimate recognises Hamza as the kidnapper of the Emir’s missing daughter.

He seizes the magic wand, and when Hamza loses her powers, he frees Farfalla. Patimate tells Djalma about Farfalla’s real identity, but he forgets to take the magic wand, and it is stolen by a leprechaun. While the leprechaun rushes away with the wand, the prince carries Farfalla to his uncle’s palace.  

Temptation and Deception

Louise Marquet in Le Papillon

The second act takes place at the Emir’s palace, and the happy Djalma and Farfalla arrive in a golden carriage. It is quickly established that Farfalla is indeed the Emir’s daughter and that she can marry his nephew.

Djalma is overjoyed, but when he tries to embrace Farfalla, she repulses him. Farfalla reminds him that not long before, he wanted to impale a butterfly on a tree. As he tries to kiss her anew, Hamza, who had been lurking nearby, throws herself between them and obtains the kiss meant for Farfalla.

The spell on Hamza is working, and she is turned into a beautiful young girl. Prince Djalma is confused by seeing two beautiful women, and he courts Hamza, hoping that Farfalla will throw herself into his arms.

Treacherous Hamza, however, turns Farfalla back into a butterfly and puts a spell on Djalma, conjuring up a vision of an enchanted garden before his eyes. Clearly, Hamza wants to marry Djalma herself.  

Broken Wings and Broken Spells

In the last tableau, amid the grandiose gardens, Djalma awakens to find himself surrounded by a swarm of butterflies, including his beloved Farfalla. Hamza, accompanied by her sisters, the Diamond Fairy, the Pearl Fairy, the Flower Fairy, and the Harvest Fairy, arrives for the wedding.

At the rehearsal for her wedding, she summons a band of golden harps and a torch carrier. Farfalla is attracted by the glow of the torch, but in touching the lamp, she burns her wings, and the spell is broken.

She regains her human form, and Hamza’s sisters break the magic crutch and together transform Hamza into a statue. Farfalla and Djalma are reunited, and the fairies lead them into the enchanted Fairy Kingdom, where they are married.  

High Expectations and Mixed Reactions

Le Papillon, 1860 stage décor

Le Papillon was first presented, to high expectations, by the Paris Opera Ballet at the Salle Le Peletier on 26 November 1860. Even Emperor Napoleon III was in the audience, but the ballet received a mixed response.

“The plot was criticised for lacking simplicity and flow, and many felt that it had relied too much on the scenic effects. Offenbach’s score was also criticised, but this mainly came from music purists who were shocked that such a composer of popular music should be given a hearing within the walls of the Opéra.”

“The more open-minded, who listened without forming their opinions in advance, gave a more positive reaction, praising the skilful orchestration and the abundance of melodies. Some of the numbers that were particularly praised were the Valse des rayons, the mazurka entitled La Lezginka, the Bohémienne and a pastoral march.” (Le Papillon)  

Russian Revival

Marie Taglioni (1850)

Livry’s performance was a huge success, and Taglioni said about Emma, “it is true that I never have seen myself dancing, but I would like to think I did it like her.” Between 1860 and 1862, Emma Livry performed Farfalla forty-two times. However, she suffered fatal burns in a tragic theatre accident in 1862. She died in 1863 at the age of just twenty, and the ballet disappeared from the Paris Opéra repertoire.

Le Papillon was resurrected in 1874, but not in Paris, but rather in Russia. Marius Petipa, the dancer and choreographer who worked for nearly 60 years at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, extended the ballet from two to four acts, and Ludwig Minkus composed brand new music for Offenbach’s score.

Revivals and Legacy

Marius Petipa

Fast forward to 1979 and a production for the Houston Ballet, which adapted the scenario with the score re-orchestrated by John Lanchbery. The plot was pared down and reset in Persia, retaining many of the comic situations. Compared to Offenbach’s original 1860 score, however, Lanchbery integrated his own composition while changing the order of the numbers in the original score.

Today, Le Papillon is often considered a historical oddity, yet its story remains compelling. Conceived for the extraordinary Emma Livry and brought to life by Offenbach’s intoxicating melodies, it remains a relic of a vanished theatrical world.

While Le Papillon was Offenbach’s singular excursion into ballet, the score reveals many of the qualities that would later make him a great success. Above all, his unfailing gift for melody would subsequently light up the operetta stage, and some of the best melodies from Le Papillon found their way into later compositions.

Ethel Leginska: The Woman Who Rewrote the Rules

 by Nico de Napoli  June 16th, 2026

History has a reliable habit of erasing women who made their mark – and the history of classical music is no exception. Some were too inconvenient to remember.

Ethel Leginska (13 April 1886 – 26 February 1970) was one of them.  

One of the most famous pianists in America in the 1920s, she conducted major orchestras on two continents and founded multiple symphony orchestras. She also composed two operas and a substantial body of orchestral, chamber music and solo piano works. Yet you have almost certainly never heard of her.

Leginska was born Ethel Liggins in 1886 in Hull, a working-class port city in the northeast of England – the kind of place where, at the time, a girl with a gift for the piano was more likely to end up entertaining at church socials than performing in the world’s great concert halls.

The daughter of a builder and a governess, Ethel was different. By the age of six, she was performing entire concert programmes from memory. The city took notice, and so did Mary Emma Wilson, the wife of a shipping magnate, who became Ethel’s patron and funded her studies at the Frankfurt Conservatoire and then in Vienna with Theodor Leschetizky – the most sought-after piano teacher of the era.

When the time came to launch an international career, a well-connected socialite advised young Ethel that “Ethel Liggins from Hull” wasn’t going to cut it in concert halls still dazzled by the mystique of Russian and Polish virtuosos. So Ethel Liggins became Ethel Leginska – a name that suggested Slavic glamour. It was a small act of reinvention in service of a much larger ambition, and it worked.

Leginska debuted in London at the age of 16, toured Australia at 19, and by her 20s she was a fixture on European concert stages. In 1913, she arrived in New York for her official American debut, and the city went a little wild.

Ethel Leginska

There’s a tendency to imagine early 20th-century classical audiences as stiff and reserved, but Leginska’s American career played out more like a pop phenomenon than a polite recital series. Her concerts were sold out. She once performed an entire recital at Carnegie Hall without an interval, a novelty that added to her reputation for doing things differently.

Her programmes – which included the Germanic canon, Chopin, Liszt and Rachmaninoff – were delivered with a physical freedom and emotional intensity that seemed to defeat the usual critical vocabulary. One reviewer resorted to calling her “a musical Joan of Arc, a genius moved by unseen powers.”

Leginska also looked unlike anyone else on stage. While other women performers of the era wore the obligatory bare-shouldered evening gown, Leginska showed up in what amounted to a tuxedo: a black velvet jacket, slim skirt, and white shirt. Her hair was bobbed before bobbed hair was fashionable.

Her young fans copied her look so thoroughly that critics described seeing “numerous little Leginskas” in the audience. She later explained that her signature look was “always the same and always comfortable, so that I can forget my appearance and concentrate on my art.”

Ethel Leginska

Rameau–Leschetizky: Gavotte and Variations – Ethel Leginska  

But beneath the persona of the glamorous iconoclast was a woman under considerable professional and psychological pressure. The breakdowns, when they came, were dramatic and very public. In January 1925, she set out in a taxi for an appearance before a crowd of 2,000 at Carnegie Hall and simply vanished. A substitute was found at the last minute. The police searched for her for four days. She was eventually found in Boston, having wandered the city in a daze with, as she later described it, “music singing” in her head, stopping at a friend’s apartment to write the melody down.

The following year, she abandoned a performance before 4,000 people in Indiana, having complained the previous day about the concert hall, which she had called “an old barn”, and the absence of a proper orchestra. Doctors diagnosed a severe nervous breakdown and ordered her to rest for at least a year.

The press was not kind. In the 1920s, nervous breakdowns were widely considered the victim’s fault; the circumstances of a person’s life were largely discounted.

For a woman operating without the institutional support or management infrastructure available to her male counterparts, breakdowns were perhaps inevitable. The remarkable thing is that she kept going   .

Her marriage to the American composer Emerson Whithorne, whom she had met while studying in Vienna, produced a son, Cedric, and then a custody battle that she, predictably, lost.

This was an era when a woman who chose a career over domestic life was seen as morally suspect.

Leginska responded by declaring that self-sacrifice for the family’s sake was “overrated” and that “it is impossible for a woman with a career to be unselfish.”

In the early 20th century, that was practically revolutionary.

What came next was even more radical. By her late 30s, Leginska had pivoted. She studied conducting in London and Munich and traded on her fame as a pianist, offering to perform piano concertos in exchange for the opportunity to conduct. It was a savvy workaround for a field that had no real mechanism for letting women in through the front door.

It worked. She guest-conducted in Munich, Paris, London and Berlin, including a landmark performance with the Berlin Philharmonic in November 1924, where she appeared as pianist, conductor and composer.

Picture a slight woman wearing a black tuxedo jacket striding to the podium. The audience murmurs. Women do not conduct orchestras. They play in parlours or might perform as soloists if they’re very talented, but they certainly don’t stand in front of the New York Symphony Orchestra and raise a baton.

Ethel Leginska conducting

In 1925, Leginska did exactly that, making her American conducting debut at Carnegie Hall.

The Christian Science Monitor in Boston wrote that she “knew what she was about and had definite notions of what she wanted, as well as the means to impress her desires on the players.” At the Hollywood Bowl that summer, 30,000 people were in the audience, and the applause grew into what one critic described as “a veritable ovation culminating with cheers and bravos.”

The New York Herald Tribune, meanwhile, offered the backhanded compliment that nothing “serious” had occurred to mar the performance. Detractors in the press argued, without apparent irony, that women simply did not possess the intellectual rigour to handle the complexities of conducting.

None of which stopped her – quite the opposite. She founded the Boston Women’s Symphony Orchestra, took them on two major tours, established the National Women’s Symphony Orchestra in New York in 1932, and directed the Chicago Women’s Symphony Orchestra.

These weren’t consolation prizes for a woman locked out of the mainstream – they were deliberate acts of institution-building, creating spaces for female musicians at a time when women were still largely excluded from the orchestras that mattered.

In 1935, she conducted her own opera, Gale, at the Chicago Civic Opera House – the first time a woman had ever conducted her own opera in that city’s history. Many years later, at the age of 71, she conducted, in Los Angeles, another opera she had written decades earlier, The Rose and the Ring.

Ethel Leginska died in Los Angeles in 1970, aged 83, teaching piano nearly until the end.

And then she was more or less forgotten.

The orchestras she founded didn’t survive her; the operas she composed were never taken up by the mainstream repertoire; and the institutions she challenged had little interest in preserving her legacy.

She simply slipped away.

A 2002 reissue of her mid-1920s Columbia recordings introduced her playing to a new generation, to considerable acclaim. One critic described the recordings as revealing “a superior musical mind coupled to an unerring technique.”

The Naxos label included her in an anthology of historic women pianists, but her compositions remain largely unperformed. A biography published in 2002 by Marguerite and Terry Broadbent remains the only substantial account of her life, and is itself little known.  

The baton she carried, however, has been picked up by others. Women conductors like Marin Alsop – the first woman to serve as music director of a major American orchestra – and, in the UK, Alice Farnham, who runs a dedicated women’s conducting programme at the Royal Philharmonic Society, are doing now what Leginska was doing a century ago: fighting for space, building institutions and making room for others.

Ethel Leginska didn’t wait for permission. She didn’t wait for orchestras to decide they were ready to let a woman stand at the podium; she bargained her way in, and when that wasn’t enough, she built her own. She had no interest in softening her opinions about what women in the arts deserved, nor in performing the gracious, self-effacing persona the world expected of successful women. She wore a tuxedo, said what she thought, broke down occasionally under the weight of it all, picked herself up and kept going.

The structural barriers she was fighting – the assumption that serious composition and conducting were male domains, and the expectation that a woman should choose between her art and her family – are not entirely over. Women conductors are still rare enough that their appointments make news; women composers are still chronically underrepresented in concert programmes; and even women pianists are still in the minority in international competitions and major concert halls.

The conversation about how institutions support (or fail) creative women is still very much alive. Ethel Leginska was having that conversation in 1916.

It’s well past time we remembered her name.

Nico de Napoli is a classical pianist whose writing has appeared in several international publications, including Pizzicato and Classic Voice. He is also an integrative coach specialising in performance anxiety and stress management, drawing on his experience as a yoga therapist.

Debunking the Top 5 Myths About Mozart

 by Emily E. Hogstad  June 17th, 2026

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is one of the most famous composers in Western music history – and one of the most mythologised.

Over the past two centuries, popular culture has transformed Mozart’s legacy into a series of legends: the genius who never revised, the giggling fool, the composer of “easy” music, the enemy of Salieri, and the penniless prodigy whose body was tossed into a pauper’s grave.

Many of these stories are compelling, dramatic, and endlessly repeated – but they also don’t hold up under historical scrutiny.

Today, we’re looking at five of the most persistent myths about Mozart, separating romantic fiction from what historians, letters, manuscripts, and modern research actually tell us about his life and music.

Mozart at the piano

1. Myth: Mozart wrote music effortlessly, without revision.  

The concept of perfect music pouring out of Mozart without the need for revisions is a romantic myth.

It’s true that Mozart’s final scores often look clean, with few erasures, but that’s because he did much of his experimenting on scratch paper or in his mind before writing the final copy.

He liked having a keyboard at hand to try out new ideas, and occasionally set perplexing passages aside to revisit later.

He even described a set of six string quartets that he dedicated to Haydn as “the fruit of long and laborious effort.”

So why did this legend take hold? One reason was a letter that surfaced in 1815 in which the author described composing in his head without using an instrument. But in the 1850s, that letter was proven to be a forgery. Unfortunately, by that point, it had already contributed to the Mozart mythology.

It’s also important to note that Mozart’s wife, Constanze, burned many of his sketches after his death, leaving us a potentially misleading picture of his process.

In short, Mozart’s easy brilliance was also coupled with industriousness. His music was the product of astonishing inborn talent plus decades of hard work – not effortless magic.

Image created by ChatGPT

2. Myth: Mozart was a childish, giggling simpleton.  

The popular 1984 film Amadeus created the image of Mozart as a juvenile, shrieking, giggling buffoon – but historians say this caricature is misleading.

It is true that Mozart did have a bawdy sense of humour, and he made lots of scatological jokes in his letters, but this was not unique to him. Crude jokes of this kind were actually relatively common in 18th-century middle-class Vienna.

But far from being a buffoon, Mozart was highly intelligent and emotionally astute. By his teens, he had a deep understanding of human emotion, as his music attests. His psychological insight is especially evident in the sophisticated characters and emotions portrayed in his operas and Requiem.

He also handled complex business negotiations, taught students, joined the Freemasons, and wrote letters about finances and family matters – hardly the behaviour of a clueless simpleton.

In sum, Mozart was a multifaceted genius: playful and jovial at times, yes, but also serious, diligent, and, contrary to the mythology, emotionally perceptive.

3. Myth: Mozart’s music is “easy.”  

Mozart’s music has a reputation for sounding graceful and effortless, which leads some to think it’s simple or easy to perform.

But ask any trained musician, and they’ll quickly dispel that notion. The simplicity of Mozart’s melodies and textures is deceptive; in reality, his compositions demand flawless technique and deep musicality.

A famous quote often attributed to pianist Artur Schnabel sums it up: “Mozart’s music is too easy for children, and too difficult for adults.”

In other words, while a beginner might manage to pick out the notes of a Mozart piece, playing it well is extraordinarily challenging.

And as composer Gabriel Fauré observed, in Mozart’s music “the slightest mistake stands out like a black spot on white.” There’s no room to hide sloppy playing behind thick chords or pedal effects.

It’s true that a few of Mozart’s early works and simple tunes are accessible to students. But his masterworks – the late symphonies, concertos, operas, string quartets – are intricate and demanding.

In short, the graceful simplicity of Mozart’s music is an illusion. Underneath it lies a complexity and difficulty that challenge even the best performers.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Antonio Salieri © slavicwritings.com

4. Myth: Mozart hated Salieri  

The idea that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Antonio Salieri were bitter enemies – to the point of Mozart “hating” Salieri or vice versa – is mostly a creation of gossip and later dramatisations. (We’re looking at you, Amadeus.)

The kernel of the myth originated in the 1780s, when Wolfgang and his father, Leopold, grumbled to each other in letters that Italian composers were being given better commissions and jobs at the Viennese court than Austrian composers were.

Eventually, however, the two composers enjoyed a more cordial relationship.

They even collaborated on a piece in 1785: a short cantata called “Per la ricuperata salute di Ofelia” for a singer they both admired.

One of Mozart’s last surviving letters from October 1791 describes how he brought Salieri to a performance of The Magic Flute, and how Salieri applauded enthusiastically and shouted “Bravo!” after every aria he liked.

After Mozart’s death, his widow even hired Salieri to teach their son composition.

There is no evidence that Salieri sabotaged Mozart’s career in a significant way, or that he ever harmed Mozart physically. The famous murder plot – Salieri poisoning Mozart out of envy – is pure fiction, made famous by an Alexander Pushkin play and, later, the movie Amadeus.

Tragically, in his old age, Salieri suffered from mental health issues and reportedly believed he had poisoned Mozart. But historians universally agree these thoughts were likely dementia-related delusions, not facts.

In sum, Mozart and Salieri were competitors who respected each other and worked together. The dramatic tale of hatred and poisoning may be an entertaining story, but the historical record reveals a much more mundane – albeit rather heartwarming – truth.

Austria, Vienna, St. Marx Cemetery, The gravestone of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

5. Myth: Mozart died poor and was buried in a pauper’s grave.  

The image of Mozart dying in squalor and being dumped into a pauper’s mass grave is an exaggeration that became popular in the 19th century.

It is true that Mozart wasn’t particularly wealthy when he died. He had incurred debts, and his income dipped in the late 1780s due to a number of factors, including fewer concerts during the Austro-Turkish War.

But earlier in the 1780s, he’d actually made a very comfortable living. Modern research shows that during those years, he earned substantial sums – possibly in the top 5% of Viennese incomes for some years – thanks to concerts, teaching, and the support of royal patrons. His problem was cash flow and spending, not lack of money outright.

Consequently, when Mozart died in 1791, he was buried in a standard common grave in Vienna’s St. Marx Cemetery.

His wife, Constanze, and patron, Baron van Swieten, actually paid for his coffin and funeral, so we know he wasn’t buried at state expense or in a charity grave. His body was sewn into a linen shroud (not the cheap sack customarily used for paupers) and placed in a coffin for the funeral.

After the temporary marker disappeared, the grave was unmarked, but this was a customary practice for everyone who wasn’t royalty or a member of the aristocracy – not a reflection of a lack of respect.

So, although it’s tragic that we don’t know exactly where Mozart’s remains ended up, this wasn’t a particularly unique tragedy; it was simply the fate of most citizens who died in Vienna at the time.

Thanks to her savvy promotion and publication of her late husband’s works, Constanze actually was able to pay off his debts within a few years, adding weight to the idea that Mozart was better off than we tend to think of him.

The enduring image of a penniless genius buried in a pauper’s grave may be a popular narrative, but the truth is much less dramatic: he was a prolific working composer who had intermittent cash flow issues, extravagant spending habits, and a totally ordinary burial for his time.

Conclusion

Mozart’s enduring popularity may owe a lot to the powerful myths that surround him, but those same myths often obscure the more interesting truths.

Far from being an effortless savant, Mozart was a hard worker, revising carefully and thinking deeply about his craft. He was playful but perceptive, witty but emotionally intelligent. His music may sound graceful, but it demands extraordinary precision and insight to perform well. His relationship with Salieri was competitive yet respectful, not murderous. And while he struggled financially at times, he did not die abandoned or buried as a pauper.

These myths of effortless genius, childishness, simplicity, rivalry, and poverty may all collapse under scrutiny – but what remains is far more compelling. The real story of Mozart’s life paints a richer, more credible portrait of one of history’s greatest musical minds, and helps us to appreciate the human triumph that is his music better than ever.

6 Classical Music Masterpieces That Were Overnight Successes

 by Emily E. Hogstad  June 20th, 2026

Throughout classical music history, composers often endured years of study and obscure premieres before achieving gradual recognition.

But every so often, a single piece can shatter that trajectory.

During the 19th and early 20th centuries, a handful of composers experienced legendary overnight successes: times when a single piece exploded onto the scene, instantly transforming an unknown or underappreciated composer into a household name.

Here are six extraordinary cases where one composition’s premiere changed everything: six moments when years of training and ambition crystallised into sudden, unforgettable musical fame.

Carl Maria von Weber – Der Freischütz (1821)  

In 1821, Carl Maria von Weber was a respected 35-year-old Kapellmeister in Dresden, but, despite having written a handful of operas, he hadn’t yet achieved a true breakout hit.

Consequently, when Weber’s new opera Der Freischütz (The Marksman) was chosen to inaugurate Berlin’s brand-new Schauspielhaus theater, it was a bold gamble.

Carl Maria von Weber

Opening night – 18 June 1821 – became legendary for its enthusiastic audience response. Weber noted in his diary that out of seventeen numbers, fourteen were “uproariously applauded.”

The opera soon swept like wildfire across the German-speaking world – and beyond. By the end of 1822, at least 30 theaters had staged it, and Berlin alone saw its 100th performance within five years. Virtually overnight, Weber became the standard-bearer of German Romantic opera.

This ghostly folk-infused opera proved to be the defining masterpiece of Weber’s career.

Pietro Mascagni – Cavalleria rusticana (1890)  

In 1889, Pietro Mascagni was an obscure 26-year-old composer scraping by in provincial Italy. He’d dropped out of conservatory and spent years conducting touring companies and teaching music in a small town.

However, opportunity knocked when music publisher Edoardo Sonzogno announced a competition for a one-act opera.

Pietro Mascagni

Mascagni seized the chance. He chose to dramatise a gritty Sicilian love-triangle story, Cavalleria rusticana, based on Giovanni Verga’s novella and play about passion, betrayal, and a fatal duel on Easter Sunday.

An inspired Mascagni composed at a feverish pace; the score poured out of him in about two months.

But when it came time to submit it, the insecure young composer lost his nerve and stuffed the manuscript in a drawer. Only thanks to his wife, who mailed it in, did Cavalleria make the competition deadline.

To Mascagni’s astonishment, his opera was selected to premiere at Rome’s Teatro Costanzi. The debut on 17 May 1890 was a sensation, and he won first prize in the competition.

Mascagni was called back for forty curtain calls. Word of the opera spread rapidly, and within weeks, Cavalleria was the hottest ticket in Italy.

Mascagni kept composing, but no later work of his ever matched this sudden, shocking triumph.

Sergei Rachmaninoff – Prelude in C-sharp minor (1892)  

In the autumn of 1892, a tall, dark-haired 19-year-old pianist-composer named Sergei Rachmaninoff gave a recital at an industrial exhibition in Moscow. On the program was a little piano piece he’d just written: a brooding Prelude in C-sharp minor.

Rachmaninoff had composed the prelude shortly after graduating from the Moscow Conservatory in the spring of 1892. Legend has it he conceived the piece in a flash of inspiration. “One day the Prelude simply came, and I put it down,” he later said. “It came with such force that I could not resist it.”

Sergei Rachmaninoff

After its premiere at the industrial exhibition in Moscow, publishers began printing the prelude (often without paying the young composer any royalties).

Within a few years, the prelude was being transcribed, arranged, and performed all over Europe and America.

Its fame spread via family connections: Rachmaninoff’s cousin, pianist and conductor Alexander Siloti, helped introduce it to Western audiences in 1898 by featuring it on tour.

For Rachmaninoff, the Prelude in C-sharp minor became both a blessing and a curse. It certainly made his name known – perhaps too well known. The prelude became so popular that audiences would clamour for it at all his concerts.

The composer eventually grew weary of his own overnight hit. “Many, many times I wish I had never written it,” Rachmaninoff confessed with exasperation in 1912.

Engelbert Humperdinck – Hansel and Gretel (1893)   

Engelbert Humperdinck was nearing 40 and earning his living as a music teacher when an idea sparked by a family Christmas play changed his life.

In 1890, Humperdinck’s poet sister asked him to write a few simple settings of poems she’d written based on the fairy tale of Hansel and Gretel. Humperdinck obliged with some charming tunes for the kids to sing.

But soon the project took on a life of its own: those songs grew into a singspiel, and then into a full-length opera.

Engelbert Humperdinck

By 1893, the score of Hänsel und Gretel was complete, and the composer sent a copy to his friend Richard Strauss. Strauss was so enthusiastic that he personally conducted the world premiere on 23 December 1893.

Hänsel und Gretel was an instant and overwhelming success. The crowd in Weimar was enchanted by the opera’s mix of cosy folk melodies and Wagnerian orchestral lushness.

Such scenes repeated across Europe: within a year, Gustav Mahler had mounted Hänsel und Gretel in Hamburg. One report from a Vienna performance noted it was “a great success… The composer was called 16 times by the enthusiastic audience.”

By the 1894–1895 season, the opera was playing in cities from London to New York, winning the hearts of children and adults alike.

Although he wrote other works, none ever rivalled Hänsel und Gretel‘s fame. It remains one of opera’s greatest overnight successes.

Igor Stravinsky – The Rite of Spring (1913)   

By the spring of 1913, Igor Stravinsky was a rising young composer in the artistic hotbed that was late Belle Époque Paris.

His earlier ballets for Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes – the shimmering Firebird (1910) and quirky Petrushka (1911) – had put him on the map as a talented new voice steeped in Russian folklore.

Igor Stravinsky

But nothing could prepare the world for Le sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring), Stravinsky’s bold ballet about pagan ritual sacrifice in prehistoric Russia.

The premiere took place on 29 May 1913 at Paris’s Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, a brand-new modern theater packed with fashionable society and artists.

What unfolded that evening has since become the stuff of legend: the most infamous opening night in musical history.

The Rite quickly erupted into a veritable barrage of jagged rhythms and grinding dissonances that crashed against the genteel sensibilities of the sophisticated Parisian audience.

The music, combined with the choreography, caused pockets of the crowd to start booing and catcalling.

Viewers shouted insults at the stage; some laughed nervously while others answered back with shushes, and soon, spectators were yelling at each other. Fistfights even broke out in the aisles.

At one point, the clamour grew so loud that the dancers could not hear the orchestra, and the performance nearly fell apart.

Backstage, Stravinsky was so furious at the hostile reaction that he reportedly slipped out of the theater in a rage before the performance ended.

However – the next day, everyone in Paris was talking about The Rite of Spring. For Stravinsky, this infamous premiere of his brilliant score made him a household name across the musical world.

Dmitri Shostakovich – Symphony No. 1 (1924–1925)   

In 1925, a teenage student at the Leningrad Conservatory named Dmitri Shostakovich stunned his professors by completing an impressive symphony as his graduation project. It would go on to propel him to instant stardom.

A child prodigy in a time of political turmoil, Shostakovich had entered Petrograd Conservatory at 13 and endured years of hardship – practicing piano in unheated rooms, barely eating during a famine, even playing piano accompaniment for silent films to help support his family after his father’s death.

The premiere took place the year after it was written, on 12 May 1926, with the Leningrad Philharmonic conducted by Nikolai Malko.

Dmitri Shostakovich, 1925

The performance was a spectacular success, and the news spread quickly in musical circles: a conservatory student had written a symphony that could stand toe-to-toe with seasoned professionals.

The piece’s fame did not stay confined to Leningrad. Shostakovich’s teacher, composer Alexander Glazunov, helped send the score abroad, complete with his recommendation.

Within a year, Shostakovich’s symphony was being performed in cities across Europe and America, with esteemed maestros like Bruno Walter and Leopold Stokowski taking up the work. It was the start of his global fame.

Conclusion

Overnight success in classical music is the exception, not the rule – which makes all of these premieres so noteworthy.

Although musical mastery is achieved over a period of years or even decades, musical success can sometimes turn on the events of a single night.

As we’ve seen, the impacts of those nights continue to reverberate for listeners today, every time we hear now-beloved classics like the Rite of Spring, the C-sharp minor Prelude, and Cavalleria rusticana.