In an 1899 treatise written while in exile, Vladimir Lenin critiqued the capitalist growth of Russian industries in which factory workers had replaced skilled craftsmen. Among his concerns was a shift toward the mass production of cheap accordions, which, he complained, “have nearly everywhere displaced the primitive string folk instrument, the balalaika.”

“Please send me something I can set to music, only don’t make it the history of the world, the Thirty Years’ War, the era of the popes, or the island of Australia,” wrote Fanny Hensel to her brother Felix Mendelssohn in 1834. “Instead, find me something really useful and solid.”

Paul Wittgenstein, brother of Ludwig, lost his right arm in combat during the First World War. Wishing to continue playing the piano, he commissioned one-handed works from esteemed composers, including Benjamin Britten, Sergey Prokofiev, and Maurice Ravel, insisting, for some, on having exclusive lifetime performance rights.

Before the nineteenth century, a conductor’s baton was a baseball-bat-size implement that was banged against the floor to keep time. This could be dangerous. In 1687, while conducting a symphony playing Te Deum for Louis XIV, who had just recovered from serious illness, composer Jean-Baptiste Lully accidentally struck his foot with his baton, causing inflammation in his toe. He refused amputation, and an infection spread, killing him two months later.