The Spanish composer Manuel de Falla was new to Paris in 1907 and looking to make friends. He went around town introducing himself to the city's musical figures, though summer was a bad time - most everyone was out of town.
But Falla persisted. One afternoon, he came to visit pianist and composer Claude Debussy. The staff informed Falla that Debussy was out and made him wait in a storage space full of frightening Chinese masks near the main dining room.
Soon, Falla heard Debussy come into lunch with his wife, Emma, and the composer Erik Satie. Falla was too shy to go into the dining room but too nervous to leave, hovering in the dark with the masks. He waited until the noise in the dining room was loud enough to hide his departure and scooted out into the hall, only to barrel right into Debussy's wife, who screamed.
Norman Gilliland's new book, "Scores to Settle: Stories of the Struggle to Create Great Music," is full of accounts like these. Exactly 366 tales of composers and musicians are arranged by day like a devotional or a page-a-day calendar (the Falla/Debussy one comes from Oct. 9).
"Scores," published earlier this month, continues in the vein of "Grace Notes," Gilliland's 2003 compilation.
Gilliland, a classical music radio host, novelist and playwright, began collecting unusual and unknown stories about musicians many years ago when he was working at a radio station in Florida. The station had a feature called "Letters from Composers," similar to a current daily digest from NPR called "Composers Datebook."
With syndication hopes, Gilliland helped develop a series of two-minute stories called "Grace Notes." His criteria were that each story should have a specific point and that the story wasn't too well-known.
"If I haven't heard this story, then probably most people haven't," Gilliland said. "I like the one story per page idea. People kind of know how long it's going to be and what to expect in terms of length."
Now, Gilliland reads one story each weekday on his classical music program, "The Midday," at around 11:30 a.m. on Wisconsin Public Radio (WERN/FM 88.7).
Some tales are poignant, like an excerpt from a letter Robert Schumann wrote to his mother about his career struggle. "I've come to the crossroads and I think with terror: Which way do I go now?"
Others are funny, tales of boredom at Bayreuth (Wagner's colossal annual opera festival), high-maintenance sopranos, gambling violinists and snarky opera composers. (After hearing Bizet's "Carmen," Charles Gounod reportedly said, "that melody is mine!")
More than anything, the stories are accessible. A story about a rift between Wagner and Nietzsche reveals telling weaknesses in both men. Early reviews of celebrated works are sometimes surprising, proving the fickleness of first impressions.
Gilliland gathered stories for the two books for more than a decade, but actually creating "Scores to Settle" took about 15 months. The stories come mostly from one of UW-Madison's libraries, he said.
"I went systematically through the shelves in the UW (Mills) Music Library, A to Z and back," Gilliland said. "Biographies, autobiographies, letters, memoirs. I could pick up a book and usually within two minutes I could tell if there's a story in there, just by the way they're written."
To find the narrative for Sept. 11,
Gilliland read the entire memoir of Rick Rescorla, a Cornish-born hero who helped rescue thousands at the World Trade
Center, calming them with song.
"It's pretty potent," he said. "It was worth the effort."
The best way to experience "Scores to Settle" is out loud, Gilliland explained, and he's right. The stories have a natural cadence to them, like they're music in themselves.
LISTEN
Hear Norman Gilliland on the "The Midday" from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Wisconsin Public Radio, WERN 88.7 or streaming live at wpr.org.
READ
"Scores to Settle" is published by University of Wisconsin Press and is available at University Bookstores, Borders East and West, Barnes & Noble (via order), the UW Press online, autographed via Gilliland's website sandmansions.com, Village Booksmith in Baraboo, Velveteen Rabbit in Fort Atkinson and a number of online vendors.
