Myth and Score

Myth and Score
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The most famous stories about great composers, held up to the light: what the letters, records and music actually say. Some turn out true, some half true, some pure legend. Told calmly, at length. Read by a synthetic voice.

Episodes

  1. 3d ago

    6. Did Bach Really Walk 400 Kilometres to Hear Buxtehude?

    In the autumn of 1705, a twenty-year-old church organist in Arnstadt asked for four weeks' leave, set out for Lübeck on the Baltic coast to hear the great Dieterich Buxtehude, and came home about four months later. His family later said he went on foot... about four hundred kilometres, two hundred and fifty miles. Is it true? Tonight we follow Johann Sebastian Bach from a brawl in a market square to the roads of a divided Germany, into the brick church of St Mary's and the famous Abendmusiken, past an old master's daughter whose hand came with the job (Mattheson and Handel had said no in 1703), and back to a church meeting in February 1706, whose minutes still record his strange harmonies and his long absence. Inside: the 1754 Obituary, the consistory minutes, the music he carried home. Additional sounds: Joseph Sardin, BigSoundBank.com (CC0). Chapters: The story everyone knows · A young organist in Arnstadt · A quarrel in the square · The man in Lübeck · Evening music · Four weeks · The road north · How long is four hundred kilometres? · The city of brick · Two evenings in December · The daughter · Coming home late · The minutes · Strange tones · Who said he walked? · What he carried home · The verdict · The road behind him Episode picture: Johann Sebastian Bach by Elias Gottlob Haussmann, 1748, public domain (Wikimedia Commons). Read by a synthetic voice; script written and fact-checked by the show's team. More calm shows for the late hours: Embers of History (history), Slow Orbit (space), The Quiet Armoury (swords and armour). Every episode's full script: https://garryassistantoffice-alt.github.io/myth/6.html On YouTube: Opera Stories https://www.youtube.com/@operastoriestv · Slow Orbit https://www.youtube.com/@sloworbitlectures Free line-by-line English translations of art songs: https://garryassistantoffice-alt.github.io/art-songs/ Enjoying the show? Leave a tip (no fees): https://ko-fi.com/artsongtranslations

    6. Did Bach Really Walk 400 Kilometres to Hear Buxtehude?

  2. 3d ago

    5. Did Handel Write Messiah in a Trance?

    Did Handel really write Messiah in a trance, weeping, with "all Heaven" before his eyes? And did King George the Second stand for the Hallelujah chorus? Tonight we hold both stories up to the documents. The speed is real: Handel's own dates in the score show twenty-four days, from 22 August to 14 September 1741. But the vision of Heaven first appears in print eighty years later, and four famous choruses began as Italian love duets he had written that same summer. We follow Messiah from Charles Jennens' libretto to a charity concert in Fishamble Street, Dublin, where ladies were asked to leave their hoops at home; to a doubtful London; to the orphans of the Foundling Hospital; and to Handel's last spring, blind, in Brook Street. Inside: a fast man and a slow legend, a disappointed librettist, and a king who may not have been there. Chapters: The story everyone knows · The boy from Halle · A bad year in London · The man at Gopsall · Twenty-four days · All Heaven before me · Old music, new words · A fast man · The road to Dublin · Fishamble Street · London is not so sure · The king who stood up · The children of the Foundling Hospital · Darkness · The storytellers · The verdict · Listening again Episode picture: George Frideric Handel by Balthasar Denner, about 1727, public domain (Wikimedia Commons). Read by a synthetic voice; script written and fact-checked by the show's team. More calm shows for the late hours: Embers of History (history), Slow Orbit (space), The Quiet Armoury (swords and armour). Every episode's full script: https://garryassistantoffice-alt.github.io/myth/5.html On YouTube: Opera Stories https://www.youtube.com/@operastoriestv · Slow Orbit https://www.youtube.com/@sloworbitlectures Free line-by-line English translations of art songs: https://garryassistantoffice-alt.github.io/art-songs/ Enjoying the show? Leave a tip (no fees): https://ko-fi.com/artsongtranslations

    5. Did Handel Write Messiah in a Trance?

  3. 3d ago

    4. How Did Tchaikovsky Really Die?

    Nine days after he conducted the first performance of his last symphony, Tchaikovsky was dead. His family and four doctors said cholera, caught from a glass of unboiled water in a city where the epidemic was not yet over. Nearly ninety years later, a scholar who had left the Soviet Union brought a darker story to the West: a secret court of his old school friends, a sentence, and arsenic. Tonight we follow both stories through the documents: his mother's death from the same disease, a marriage that lasted weeks, a friendship that lived only in letters, the supper at Leiner's, four days of doctors' bulletins, the open flat on Malaya Morskaya Street, a funeral paid for by the emperor, Alexandra Orlova's chain of witnesses and Alexander Poznansky's reply. His private life is told with facts only. Chapters: Two stories · A boy from Votkinsk · Music instead of law · A marriage, and a friendship on paper · The capital in the autumn of 1893 · The symphony · Leiner's · Four days · The flat on Malaya Morskaya Street · The funeral · Whispers in the city · The court of honour · A story that travelled · The rebuttal · The doctors' questions · The verdict · Listening again Episode picture: Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky by Nikolai Kuznetsov, 1893 (detail), public domain (Wikimedia Commons). Read by a synthetic voice; script written and fact-checked by the show's team. More calm shows for the late hours: Embers of History (history), Slow Orbit (space), The Quiet Armoury (swords and armour). Every episode's full script: https://garryassistantoffice-alt.github.io/myth/4.html On YouTube: Opera Stories https://www.youtube.com/@operastoriestv · Slow Orbit https://www.youtube.com/@sloworbitlectures Free line-by-line English translations of art songs: https://garryassistantoffice-alt.github.io/art-songs/ Enjoying the show? Leave a tip (no fees): https://ko-fi.com/artsongtranslations

    4. How Did Tchaikovsky Really Die?

  4. 3d ago

    3. Did Paganini Sell His Soul to the Devil?

    Did the greatest violinist of his age buy his gift from the Devil? In Vienna in 1828, some listeners swore they saw a horned figure at Niccolò Paganini's elbow. In Paris, a print showed him in a prison cell, where he had supposedly learned to play on one string after a murder. And when he died in Nice in 1840 without the last rites, the Church refused him a grave, and his body wandered for decades before it came to rest in Parma. Tonight we hold the legend up to the light: his childhood in Genoa, the court of Napoleon's sister at Lucca, the real arrest behind the prison tale, the planned "broken string" pieces, Heinrich Heine's feverish visions, his illnesses and the medical theories about his hands, the twenty-four Caprices, his gambling, and his violin, Il Cannone, still kept in Genoa. A calm, long listen. Chapters: The story everyone knows · A lane in Genoa · The court at Lucca · The witches at La Scala · The prison that never was · Vienna, 1828 · The man in black · The strings that snapped · The poet in Hamburg · A body that could bend · Twenty-four caprices · Cards and dice · The cannon · A long illness · Nice, May 1840 · The long journey · The verdict · Listening again Episode picture: Niccolò Paganini, nineteenth-century lithograph, public domain (Wikimedia Commons). Read by a synthetic voice; script written and fact-checked by the show's team. More calm shows for the late hours: Embers of History (history), Slow Orbit (space), The Quiet Armoury (swords and armour). Every episode's full script: https://garryassistantoffice-alt.github.io/myth/3.html On YouTube: Opera Stories https://www.youtube.com/@operastoriestv · Slow Orbit https://www.youtube.com/@sloworbitlectures Free line-by-line English translations of art songs: https://garryassistantoffice-alt.github.io/art-songs/ Enjoying the show? Leave a tip (no fees): https://ko-fi.com/artsongtranslations

    3. Did Paganini Sell His Soul to the Devil?

  5. 3d ago

    2. Who Was Beethoven's Immortal Beloved?

    In March 1827, days after Beethoven's death, his friends found a hidden letter in his desk: ten pencilled pages to a woman he called only his Immortal Beloved. No name, no address, no year... just "Monday, the sixth of July". Tonight we follow the clues the way scholars have: the weekday that leaves five possible years, the watermark that settled on 1812, the night journey to the spa town of Teplitz, and a slow post coach to a town called K. Then we meet the women: Giulietta Guicciardi of the Moonlight Sonata, the Brunsvik sisters Therese and Josephine, the singer Amalie Sebald, Bettina Brentano, and her sister-in-law Antonie, the woman Maynard Solomon argued for in 1972. We also look at the 1994 film Immortal Beloved and its sister-in-law twist, which is invention. The verdict is honest: most scholars lean to Antonie Brentano, but it is not proven. Letters are paraphrased. Chapters: The drawer · The letter · A man of forty-one · Monday the sixth of July · Paper and coaches · The first guess · The sisters · Josephine · The singer and the writer · A house in Vienna · The detective's case · The objections · What he said afterwards · The keeper of the papers · The film · The verdict · The ones who kept the secret. Episode picture: Ludwig van Beethoven by Joseph Karl Stieler, 1820, public domain (Wikimedia Commons). Read by a synthetic voice; script written and fact-checked by the show's team. More calm shows for the late hours: Embers of History (history), Slow Orbit (space), The Quiet Armoury (swords and armour). Every episode's full script: https://garryassistantoffice-alt.github.io/myth/2.html On YouTube: Opera Stories https://www.youtube.com/@operastoriestv · Slow Orbit https://www.youtube.com/@sloworbitlectures Free line-by-line English translations of art songs: https://garryassistantoffice-alt.github.io/art-songs/ Enjoying the show? Leave a tip (no fees): https://ko-fi.com/artsongtranslations

    2. Who Was Beethoven's Immortal Beloved?

  6. 3d ago

    1. Did Salieri Really Poison Mozart?

    Mozart died in Vienna in December 1791, and the rumour that Antonio Salieri had poisoned him has outlived both men. We follow the two composers through Vienna: the orphan from Legnago who became the emperor's Kapellmeister, the freelancer from Salzburg, a contest staged at the two ends of a palace orangery, a poet who wrote for both, a cantata they composed together that was lost for two centuries and found in Prague in 2015, Salieri cheering The Magic Flute number by number, a stranger who ordered a Requiem, a funeral storm that never happened, what doctors think today, Salieri's pupils (Beethoven, Schubert, Liszt and Mozart's own son), an old man's denial in a hospital, and how Pushkin, Rimsky-Korsakov and Amadeus made the legend. Chapters: The story everyone knows · The boy from Legnago · The boy from Salzburg · Vienna in the 1780s · A contest in the orangery · The poet between them · The cantata in the archive · Salieri conducts Mozart · The last autumn · The stranger and the Requiem · December · The doctors · The teacher · The old man · The storytellers · The verdict · Listening again. Sources: Mozart's letters (Anderson), Deutsch's Mozart documents, Niemetschek (1798), John A. Rice's Antonio Salieri and Viennese Opera, Brown and Rice (1996), the Czech Museum of Music (2016), Zegers et al., Annals of Internal Medicine (2009), Moscheles' recollections. Episode picture: Antonio Salieri, engraving by Carl Traugott Riedel, Leipzig 1802, public domain (Wikimedia Commons). Read by a synthetic voice; script written and fact-checked by the show's team. More calm shows for the late hours: Embers of History (history), Slow Orbit (space), The Quiet Armoury (swords and armour). Every episode's full script: https://garryassistantoffice-alt.github.io/myth/1.html On YouTube: Opera Stories https://www.youtube.com/@operastoriestv · Slow Orbit https://www.youtube.com/@sloworbitlectures Free line-by-line English translations of art songs: https://garryassistantoffice-alt.github.io/art-songs/ Enjoying the show? Leave a tip (no fees): https://ko-fi.com/artsongtranslations

    1. Did Salieri Really Poison Mozart?
  • 6 Episodes

About

The most famous stories about great composers, held up to the light: what the letters, records and music actually say. Some turn out true, some half true, some pure legend. Told calmly, at length. Read by a synthetic voice.

Information

  • Creator
    Myth and Score
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    6
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Show Website
    Myth and Score