The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2

que chose de triste des oh!

it has served any purpose, and if the multitude o

sic is a love-food-in the sense I mean, that there is love-nourishment in tubes of paint, which can perpetuate your beauty, my fair readeress; or in ink-bottles all ebon with Portuguese sonnets and erotic rondeaux; or in tubs of plaster of Paris, or in bargain-counterfuls of dress goo

at, and as there are in ink-bottles sad potencies of tailors' bills and scathing reviews of this very book, so it is possible un

thing by statistics, if you can only choose your statistics and stop when you want to. But statistics are like automobiles. Sometime

with a thesis to the effect that music is an immoral influence. But that time is gone now, after a time spent in gathering material from everywhichway for this book o

-music" maidens who talk all through even dance-music. Nor would you take for your test one of those laymen who are fond of this tune or that, because it reminds them of the first time they hea

usic is as much a rarity a

n the souls of the people who live in it, breathe it, st

before us in historic mardi-gras? wearing their hearts on their sleeves, or in their letters, their music, their lives, as they t

st of result, in the music they have made, and the music that has made them. Let them pass again, only th

great virtuosi of their time, were finally idolised into gods in the Golden

he seven small notes he could get out of it. The gossips said he loved Daphne, and madly witha

cal, others as stodgily domestic and workaday as any village blacksmith. There is Marc Houtermann, called the Prince of Musicians. He lived at Brussels, and died there aged forty, and the same year he was followed to his grave by his musically named Joanna Gavadia, who knew music well, and who, let us st

parents to strengthen and purify his resolve. The only court he went to, to win her, was the court at Munich, where his Regina was a maid of honour. She bore him six children, and they lived ideally, it seems. But his health gave way now and then before his hard work, and fin

re affectionate toward his helpmeet, yet strangely he never mentioned his daughter, who was herself a compo

of this baggage, he fell into an intrigue with a lady of the court of Ferrara. Her name was Tarquinia Molza, and she was a poetess, but her relatives fro

ine years and raised twelve children, spending the greater part of his life with his faithful spouse in one long struggle against poverty, on

les, brightening the twilight of poverty, adorning that high noon of his glory, when the Pope himself turned to Palestrina, and implored him to reform and rescue the whole music of the Church from its corruptions. It was well that Lucrezia could offer him solace, for unwittingly she had once brought him his direst distress. When he was recovered and well, a

abylon we have set

ng Thee,

ows we have h

himself, the heart-broken composer, mourning by the banks

the career of Georges de la Hèle, who, being a priest,

a gambler and a drunkard, who kept a mistress, and was rebuked publicly for howling in

have been a good husband, and his married life a happy one, seeing how ardent his wife was for his memory, and how she celebrated him in a memorial

f this cloud of witnesses, bearing the mos

al, and yet the greatest organist of his time, as his father had been before him; and it was this father, Johann Sebastian Bach, who by his life and pre?minence in music, offers the biggest obstacle to any theory about the immoral influences of the art. For surely, if he, who i

live upon the charity of the town. It is unfortunate to have to include among the ungrateful children the stepson, Carl Philip Emmanuel Bach, who seems otherwise to have been a pleasant enough fellow, a fair family

f seventeen or eighteen, he fell in love with Francesca Capra, a widow of a man who had been assassinated. She was nine or ten years older than Stradivari, and they were married on July

, a woman fourteen or fifteen years younger than he. She bore him five children, and he outlived

their private affairs, though he who called himself "Jesus," was addicted to imprisonment, and is said to have

whose post he aspired, and had left behind him a daughter thirty-four years old as an incumbrance upon his successor. H?ndel could have got the job, if he would have had the girl. But she was almost twice his age, and he left her for another musician to marry in. Then he went to Italy, and was pursued in vain under those bewitching skies by no belated German spinster, but by a beautiful and attractive Italienne. Her, he also spurned. When he was in England, he seems to have come very near falling in love with two differen

boy. He led his wife a miserable existence on account of his hot temper, his brutality, and his excesses in solid and liquid food. After him came Rameau, who, like Stradivari, fell in love with a widow while he was still in his teens and she well out of hers. He did not wed, however, until he was forty-three, and then he wed an eighteen-year-old girl, who was, they say, a very

a temporary sorrow only, and Providence, like a playright, removed the stern parent in the next act. Gluck flew back from Italy to Vienna to his betrothed, "with whom to his death he dwelt in happiest wedlock." She went with him on his triumphal tours, and spent her wealth in charities. They had no chi

if only Gluck's friend and partisan, the successful composer and immortal writer, Jean Jacques Rousseau,

without bitterness toward his bitter rivals. He could, when Gluck died, strive to organise a memorial festival in his honour, and when his other rival, Sacchin

any children went through more vicissitudes than have fallen to the lot of many musicians; but always they loved one another and their art, and there always remains that picture which the Prince of Bru

more picturesque and dramati

flirtations were of the utmost frivolity, such as his hilarious courtship of his pretty cousin, the "B?sle," he was capable of the completest altruism, and could turn aside from the aristocracy to lavish his idolatry upon the fifteen-year-old daughter of a poor music copyist, whose wife took in boarders. For this girl, Aloysia Weber, he wanted to give up his own career as a concert pianist; he wanted to give up the conquest he had planned of Paris, and devote himself to the training of her voice, to writing operas for

sent-mindedness he carve off one of his valuable fingers. And when she was ill, as she frequently was, there could be no gentler nurse than he. Besides, wh

ed so good a husband that Constanze could not even withhold forgiveness for certain occasions when he strayed from the narrow path of absolute fidelity; for she knew that his heart had its home with her. When he died, supposedly of malignant typhus, she tried to catch his

ian has been surpassed by lovers of all walks of life, from blacksmiths t

stave of music. For Joseph Haydn was born twenty-four years before Mozart, and died ei

ld leave to a discarded mistress, whose name, strangely enough, was also Aloysia. And Haydn, more than strangely enoug

o clustered around her, eating Haydn out of house and home. Frau Haydn was a shrew, and he finally gave up trying to live at home, seeking his consolation at court with a young and beautiful Neapolitan singer, who was unhappi

d to leave her a pension. Meanwhile, in London, Haydn was having a quaint alliance, sub rosa, with a widow. Her letters to him, as doubtless his to her, were full of gentle idolat

leness along with so much of his musical manner? B

in which he wandered through the world, and found it as homeless and as bleak as did the Wandering Jew, whose quarrels with Fate were no more fierce, more majestic, nor mor

justified, then, in taking Beethoven as a man of domestic inclinations. The most confirmed bachelors have their moments of doubt, and Beethoven had every qualification for driving a wife even madder than he hims

d him as a great genius who rushed from love to love, and never tarried for wedlock. As to the quality of those love affairs,-we mee

upon Beethoven's heart, in the face of the antipodal life of such a fellow bachelor as H?ndel? And to these two bachelors there belongs a third great bachelor of music, Schubert, who is said never to have loved a woman. Even the paltry anecdote or two of his hopeless love for a very young countess is dismissed by the

of Schubert's obscurity. There is a difference also in the busy, promiscuous courtship of Beethoven, who dedicated thirty-nine compositions to thirty-six wo

e married elsewhere. The Polish Maria Wodzinska was his next flame, and he wished to marry her, but he, who had the salons of Paris at his princely behest, could not hold this nineteen-year-old girl. Then he fell into the embrace of George Sand, that mysterious sphinx who clasped him to her commodious heart, and held him as with claws, though little he cared t

, torment and solace. But that he would have lived his life differently in any way had he been a painter, a poet, an architect, a man of affairs, or an idler, with the same effeminate nature, the

nd almost in career. His frivolities ended in an arrest and punishment which sobered him with the abruptness of a plunge into a stream of ice. But his gaiety was as irrepressible as Chopin's melancholy, and he gave Germany some of its most cheerful music. His heart was restless, and still at the age of twenty-seven he was writhing in a

ur. It was a tour through England that exhausted Chopin's last strength, and it was Weber's fate to die alone in London in the midst of eager preparations and vast hunger to reach his home. He w

especially devoted to his sister. Her death indeed grieved him so deeply, that he died shortly after. A man of the utmost cheer and wholesomeness, revelling in dancing, swimming, riding, sketching, and billiards; he was idolised in the circle around him, though his life was not without its enmities. He ha

we any more right to blame his domestic outrages to the music that was in him, than to the almost equally intense religious ardour that fought for him, leading him again and again to seek to enter a monastery, and finally actually to take orders? Abélard was a sufficiently tempestuous and irregular lover, yet he was a priest, and not a musician

szt did not marry her. He even brought George Sand, the ex-mistress of so many men, including Liszt himself, to live at the house with the comtesse, who had borne him three children out of wedlock. One of these children became the wife of Hans von Bü

l love affair with a singer, Desirée Art?t, who jilted him, eventually married a girl by whom he seemed to have been deeply loved, without feeling any return? He claimed to have explained to the enamoured girl that he would marry her if she wished, but that he could not love her. On these terms she accepted him, and the bridegroom endured all the agonies of heart ordinarily ascribed to ba

of curious entanglements, especially in the matter of the men and women who have played upon the human voice, but we have surely coll

rominent in music. In fact, Clara Wieck has been called the most eminent woman who ever took up music as a profession. It would be hard to deny Robert Schumann a place among the major gods of creative art. Every one knows how he began to love Clara, and she him, when he was first leaving his teens and she entering her fam

married none. There have been the home-keeping breeders of children, and contentment, such as Willaert, Orlando di Lasso, Palestrina, the Bachs, Gluck, Piccinni, Weber, Mendelssohn, and Schumann; and Bizet, whose wife said after his death, that there was not a moment of their six years' honeymoon she could regret or would not re-li

nosticism: if any man argue to the effect, that music has a moral influence on life, I will hurl at his head some of the most brilliant rascals in domestic chronicle; and equally, if any man will deny that music has a moral effect, I will barricade his path with some of the most beautiful lives that have ever bloomed upon earth. It is,

any of its whims, and you can tune it to a softly chanted prayer, or to a dance orgy; to a hymn of exultation, or a tinkling serenade; a kindergarten song, to the bloodthirst of armies; to voluptuous desires that cannot or dare not be worded, or to rapt

are every-day puppets of circumstance and of inner and outer environment, who might have been happier, and might have been unhapp

E

IOGR

ulted and Cit

(GIU

ta e delle opere di G. Pierluigi

(RAPHAEL

Story of his Li

S LETTERS.

RT (

rich (1849-1859). 2

GNE (C

of Musicians. Translated b

IS (Ed

illustrative of his

(MARIE

rations sur Metastasio. Pub. 1814, first under the pseudonym L.A. Bombet, and when exposed as a steal from Carp

(MARIE

Métastase. Par de Stendahl (Pseu

(CARL

elm Friedemann Bach und deren

T (JA

ses effets, depuis son origin

T (Pierr

s son origine jusqu'a present. Et en quoi cons

RS. ANN

ssional. With thoughts on sacred mu

(M.

Bülow. Edited by his widow. Transla

MRS. TH

tes of Music and Musicians, Ancien

I (GIU

Giuseppe Haydn. Milano, 1812. Also in French, translated by Dom

IN, HOUST

ted from the German by

ANDER

del. 3 v

(A. M

f Fiddlers.

ELLEN CRE

st celebrated female vocalists, who have appear

(WILL

With select pieces of music composed by J.C. Smith, nev

T (FRE

e from every available so

T (FRE

and Music

NGS (

. Londo

S (HER

ketch. Translated, with additions

OTTE

attre. Paris, 1836. Translated int

ALICE M

mories. Lo

LBERT) and

Brahms. Translated by Do

(H. SUTH

Rossini. L

WILLIAM

ters to Wesendonck

N (L

and Their Work

L (C

nd Facts. 2 vol

S (F

s et Bibliographic générale de la M

S (GE

ists and Pianist

(HEN

d Personal Beaut

(HEN

Works. 2 vols.

(HEN

Musical Essays.

NG (F

London

(PIERRE

es oeuvrages de Nicola

PP (CAR

Cassel, 1877. English version (enlarged) by

D, CH

cal Reminisce

E (FRA

e. Cosmopolis Magazi

ER (GEOR

zen über Joseph Ha

E, G

ic and Musicians. 4

Y (E

n. By the author of "How to be Hap

(REV.

Morals. Lo

(REV.

Life. Lon

S (SIR

e Science and Practice

(CHA

he Opera and

RSON

s Life and His Dra

(SEBA

-1847. Translated by C. Klin

K (FER

n und sein Schaff

S (ED

uding his correspond

RD (E

f Great Musicians. In pamphlet

ER, F

dours. Lon

ER (J

Modern Music.

ER (J

and His Music.

ER (J

niacs. New

T (HU

s inédites de Georges Bizet

y P.D. Townsend. 3 vols. Ori

EN (

d in his letters. Translated by

N (ADO

aris Journal des Debats. Translated

N (ADO

Works. Translated by Florence

N (TH.

London. Vi

WSKI (

ers, and Works. Translated by E

See Revue

KIN

ter Iljitsch Tschai

(GUS

and Works. N

(HENRY

n the Classical Per

(HEN

To-day and Yeste

udonym of MA

iefe. B?nde. Lei

udonym of MA

edited by "La Mara." Translated by C

(W.

me from Personal Acquaintance. Tran

(EMMAN

rands Hommes.

T (F

of Wagner and L

T (F

ted by Martha Walter Co

NN, BE

en nach Tagebüchern und Briefen

RING (

Published anonymo

EW (J

re of Music.

TT

Lattre.

L (HE

r. Eine Biograph

N-BARTHOLD

Carl Mendelssohn. Translated

(CHA

the Crusa

NIL (M

mour profane et réligieux et de son influen

KE (E

e nach Prag. (A nov

LETTERS.

RCH (

ski. Lond

(FRED

a Man and Musician.

LI (

d Seine Werke. For this and ot

EORG NIKO

e herausgegeben von Constanze, Witwe von

CHEK (

eister's Wolfgang Gott

(LU

anslated by Lady Wallac

(LU

s Contemporaries. Transl

(LU

nslated by Geo. P.

(LU

slated by Geo. P. U

(LU

lated by Lady Wallace

(LU

. Translated by Lady Walla

(LU

eethovens. St

(LU

Artistic and Home Life of the Artist. T

(LU

ranslated by G.P

(LU

. Translated b

H (R

by E.F. Rimbault. Extra

OHM (G

na. Leip

(HE

in Venedig. A

(C.

n London. 2 vols.

(C.

. 2 vols. Le

O (E

nslated by Fanny Full

O (E

ssohn-Bartholdy. Translated b

R (FER

I Knew H

NN (

1811-1840. Translated by E. C

(HER

erleben. (A novel.

ANN (A

Leben und seine W

ANN (A

Gluck, sein Leben und se

ANN (A

rt Schumann. Translated by

MUSICA

Souvenirs inédites, pu

NN (H

dition. Translated by J.S.

(EDO

rs, propriétaire et

(JEAN J

onfes

TEIN (

-1889. Translated b

AN (JO

New Readings.

(Pseudonym of A

de ma V

R (HEI

irken nebst Bemerkungen uber dessen Bede

NDLE

by Moscheles. 1841. Transl

D (AN

Gluck, dessen Leben und tonküns

T (LEO

ydn. Berl

LCHER

Handel. Ne

NN (RO

cisms. Translated by Fanny R. Ritter.

NN (RO

his wife in 1885. Translated

NN (RO

told in his Letters. Trans

é (ED

Richard Wagner

A (PH

ra Bell, and J.A. Fuller Mai

R (L

ranslated from t

N (STEP

ohn. Lon

The Life of J.S

8

R (MA

ick (Beethoven's "Unsterbliche Geliebte"

D (PAUL

ydn. New

OVSKI (

ikovski. Translated into Germa

or ULIBISCHEF

nd Werke. 4 vols

(GEORG

usic. Chic

N

rs. 2 vols

STRAETEN

avant le XIXe siècle. 8

STRAETEN

ays-Bas du 13e-18e s

GN

szt. Translated into English by

E (PAUL

er Vortr?ge. 5 vols.

E (PAUL

rina, und die gesammte Au

WSKI (W

nn. Translated by A.L

RON MAX M

of an Artist. Translated by J.P

CHARLES F

Chopin. Lo

ZBA

uch. Wie

N

rd, P

on

ula

t, Co

ie Sophie,

ily of vio

si, P

?then, P

e,

rod

ol

o,

r

Dr.

ttina Bre

gnon

t, D

r, D

nha

en,

chy

ohann A

ohann C

Johann

ohann S

rl Phili

Maria

, Re

lhelm Fr

t, Pie

Abbate

Michael

ck,

us, He

ska, I

i, Mar

ame, mother

el, W

ani,

, Leo

ozzi,

rd,

ortinari),

Konsta

en, Lud

ren

rt,

usch, C

ngton

ni, V

, Fr?ul

t, Ste

enc

Charles

oz, H

oz, M

z,

Marie

hi, A

t, G

burn,

ka, Le

w,

us, A

r, Ch

eu, Fra

Despréau

net

ni, Gio

Cather

ell,

rde

Josse or

y, La

s, Jo

t, Ca

y,

os,

os,

, Genof

, Elean

g, Ste

George Augu

arlo (see

, Coun

Robert and

tti,

Charlotte,

ck, The

Marcus

, Dr

ma von (see

Danie

, Han

, Iso

ni (see

y, Ch

, Ja

ude, D

, Wi

on,

nh, Gui

i, Fra

li

bich,

, Fra

le, T

pan

, Pro

ska, Ludvi

es X.

ntier,

er, G

ni, M.L

n, Fr

Louise,

ander

sa, Do

nti,

opa

et, D

an, I

field,

rd

lli,

y, G

ro, C

ius, P

nis,

Ambro

atelain R

hoven,

Dr.

tofo

s, H

est,

ings

u

e, Cou

i, Fra

a

ph

a

id,

lm

me, M

rets,

ès, J

Wilhelmine

ns, C

rot,

Alice

Albe

ick, B

fe,

e, Gu

hess

urore (see

rier,

nc

Fra

ia,

t, Ge

, The

Counte

nn, B

sa, Ju

hazy,

azy, C

des,

properly Ca

na (se

r, Cle

nd VII.

osco,

s, F

ld,

ovna, N

, Hen

gny,

, Duch

w, Fr

nt

rt

ier,

ci,

ck,

z, R

, Ernes

oli,

i, Mar

enau,

la

ei, G

nberg

lla,

ldi,

r, The

ia, J

ani, F

st,

Maria Ann

nna

sio, Fan

é, Pier

one, G

ka, Con

app, K

henst

in, Mathild

Michail

toph Williba

Johann

d, Ch

wski,

gor

g, E

inger

, Andr

y, Lu

m, B

, Th

, Sir

araoen,

gnini

dreas, Pietro

bl

rdi, Gi

y, Ge

on, La

Georg

, Fr?ul

nger,

.A. and

ns, S

n, J

, Em

, Hei

n of

se, A

rson,

el,

, Lady

ld,

hel,

r, Fe

Marie (s

es,

k, Fer

d?m

ohe, C

, Jeann

ten

rmann

Lady E

rd, E

, Fr?

er, F

ictor a

el,

ries,

ker,

r, Mr

son,

r

Maria

ka, Car

n,

s, H

Cécile Sop

naud,

gs, Ca

him,

o

s III

rt, A

T.G., R

sovs

lov

hki

, Hofr

ts,

Babette, C

r, Re

erin

ll

er,

d,

, Coun

tock,

, Ba

el,

ner,

, Kat

rau Marie

Justice

l, Henr

er, Re

er, Co

er, Ru

, Cla

adame (wido

mbe,

" (see Bi

law,

rt, M

Lampi, painter

g,

ng

e, Adele,

, Ferd

s, Or

land de (s

r,

-Wély, L

eb, M

e

i, L

ore

sky, Pr

vsky,

stein,

tein, Ka

id

ln, A

t,

, Bla

t, D

t, F

nn, Be

re

ing,

ci

King o

Jean Ba

er,

ray, C

ring,

i, Thér

, Maria

New York

otti,

tti, L

lo, Be

llus,

ntoinet

k,

gh, The D

el, Ant

ner, H

eson,

usz

n, Mi

n, Duke o

lian,

ienne,

Queen

, Fr

ci f

, Lore

lssoh

hn, Felix

ssohn,

lssoh

rc

re

nn, D

eer, G

ye

elan

er,

, Antonin

on,

li

, Tar

lli,

erde,

sier, M

to, C

, Countes

eles,

on,

Anna or

rt,

t, Le

t, Ma

t, Wo

er,

t, Al

an

an

, Chr

mts

Horatio,

arch

n, Si

s, Fr

che, F

eorge Nic

ouis (o

ig,

lchi, P

ier,

ph

ler,

ere

la y

Ferd

llo, G

ini,

rina,

rina,

, Giovanni

trina

rina,

rina,

trina

a

se

IV.

t, p

sier,

er,

in,

, Mari

lesi,

, Ja

l,

s, S

mann,

er, Ma

Fr., And

nni,

nni,

ni,

IX.

ilhelmine

r, Co

l

ford

Edgar

l,

, Ri

iano,

o, E

e, Grand Duch

lli,

lli,

ka, C

r, Fd.

met

ent,

yc

ell,

ll, F

ell,

l, Mar

mal

rman,

, Jo

nn,

Jean P

arie Loui

el, p

, Jean

e, C

n, Joh

man,

an, He

ds, Si

r Rizzi

ard

dson,

ter,

r, Jea

ann,

Ferd

dancing

ini,

er,

eaud

ch

tro,

izabeth, wi

l, Jos

, Adèl

o

Cipr

i, C

untess (s

, Gioac

o

u, Jean

stein

tein,

, Geo

Pierr

man,

in,

i, Anto

ri, A

d, G

, Giu

a

, Duc

stein (see W

ti, Ale

Domenico Sc

th, Del

ffer

ler, D

erdeck

er, Fr

-Hohenlohe, Pr

dler,

idt,

r, Fra

cher,

nhauer

eter,

r, Johan

ter, M

ert,

Clara (see

ann,

é, Ed

, Sir

ld,

ghtly France

nzo,

d, Igna

kes

icenza (se

ki, J

a, Fri

th,

hson

cr

g, He

roff,

n, B

a, Au

r, L

i, Gasp

iq, Ca

elt,

De (pen na

n, Da

le, Sir

la, Ale

vari,

ari, Fr

ivari

tton

uss,

ss, J

uss,

e, pos

oni, S

k, F

borg,

, Jon

nx,

nh?

ig,

er,

, Vi

rg, Si

, Alex

e

s, Ge

toi,

, Duch

nd, Pa

fy,

i, Cou

tz, Jo

kovski

ovski,

ski, Pete

onanof

te, C

in,

g, T

, Geo

nd

Straeten

uicke

e

, Giu

ro

l, P

ill,

s, Mar

n, Fr

er,

, Hen

ner

r, Ri

r, Si

rave,

r, El

e, Lad

, Art

r, A

Maria von

, Con

r, D

Franz A

r, J

e, mother of

x Maria,

r, S

nger,

Jacq

, Dr. F

Grand

Captai

ng, Fr

onck,

donck

hold,

rslot

ck,

ra (see al

k, E

, Fri

k, M

k, Chr

k, Mag

ert,

rt, Ca

ert,

, Fra

Duke of

r, Lady M

in, Prince

ein, Prin

n, Prince N

tein, Pr

nska,

nski,

ernich, C

d,

o

Anna M

berg,

nt

g, C

lli,

no, G

er,

an, Mll

gar

o