“The only love affair I have ever had was with music.”
Maurice Ravel
The history of classical music, however, is full of fabulously gifted individuals with slightly more earthy ambitions. Love stories of classical composers are frequently retold within a romanticized narrative of sugarcoated fairy tales. To be sure, happily-ever-after stories do on rare occasions take place, but it is much more likely that classical romances lead to some rather unhappy endings. Johannes Brahms had an overriding fear of commitment, Claude Debussy drove his wife into an attempt at suicide, Francis Poulenc severely struggled with his sexual identity, and Percy Grainger was heavily into whips and bondage. And that’s only the beginning! The love life of classical composers will sometimes make you weep, or alternately shout out with joy or anguish. You might even cringe with embarrassment as we try to go beyond the usual headlines and niceties to discover the psychological makeup and the societal and cultural pressures driving these relationships. Classical composer’s love stories are not for the faint hearted; they are heightened reflections of humanity at its best and worst. Accompanying these stories of love and lust with the compositions they inspired, we are able to see composers and their relationships in a completely new light.
Women loved Franz Liszt, and Franz Liszt loved women. The pianist and composer is almost as famous for his love life and his effect on women as his music-making. Today we’re looking at ten of the most intense love affairs
There has been some speculation that the doomed love affair between the young and brilliant painter Richard Gerstl and Mathilde Schoenberg—mother of two and wife to Arnold Schoenberg—served as a catalyst for the composer’s historic leap towards atonality. While such
Louis Spohr’s marriage to Dorette Scheidler, and their subsequent residence in the town of Kassel marked an important turning point in Spohr’s creative life. Although he was at the height of his powers as a violinist, he devoted an increasing
We all have the image of the suffering and tormented artist in our minds. Constantly in money troubles and frequently neglecting personal hygiene, such artistic geniuses are all alone in a shallow world that does not understand nor appreciate them.
A Musical Journey of Passion and Obsession Valentine’s Day is here, and love is once again in the air. While I hope that I will get lots of chocolates and flowers this year, I am also intrigued by how love,
The play Hedda Gabler, written by the great Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen premiered in 1891. It details Hedda’s struggles as a newlywed with an existence she finds devoid of excitement and enchantment. She is the daughter of an aristocratic general
Béla Bartók (1881-1945) started his musical journey at age 5 with piano lessons at home before he went to the Budapest Academy of Music in his teens. His teacher, István Thomas, had been a student of Liszt and his training
The world of music is numerously populated by compositions that openly celebrate courtship, love, sex, and marriage. Equally numerous, although less overtly advertised, are works that exult in the suspension of a partnership, the break-up of a relationship, or the
