“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.
Franz Liszt Annees de pelerinage, 1st year, Switzerland, S160/R10 Following the tragic death of her daughter Louise, Marie d’Agoult found herself pregnant with Franz Liszt’s child. Since she was still married to Charles d’Agoult, it was impossible to stay in
“She was beautiful, very beautiful, a Lorelei: slender, of lofty bearing, enchantingly graceful and yet dignified in her movements, her head proudly raised, with an abundance of fair tresses, which waved over her shoulders like molten gold, a regular, classic
Devastated by having been forbidden to see his first sexual conquest and true love Caroline de Saint-Cricq ever again — her father had rather unceremoniously suggested that the boy take his Bohemian behind somewhere else — Franz Liszt seriously contemplated
One of the foremost musical personalities and arguable the greatest virtuoso of his day, Franz Liszt (1811-1886) expanded the technical limits of the piano and the performer in both his own playing and in his compositions. However, what really distinguished
By 1843, Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) was at the pinnacle of his career. He was almost universally acknowledged as an exceptional composer, conductor and educator. He had just founded the Leipzig Conservatory, and hired Ignaz Moscheles, Robert Schumann, Ferdinand David, Joseph
Paulus (St. Paul), Op. 36 (1836) On 4 May 1836, Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) happily conducted the chorus of the Frankfurt Cäcilienverein, substituting for an indisposed colleague. Although he was certainly concentrating on the music, his eyes got distracted by a
Towards the end of a highly successful performing and publishing career, the great Spanish guitarist Fernando Sor (1778-1839) — also known as Joseph Fernando Macari Sors, Josep Ferran Sorts I Muntades, Ferran Sor, Ferdinand Sor and Ferdinando Sor — vented
Jean-Delphin Alard’s motivation for uttering the immortal words “marry your violin, my son, never a woman” to his most famous charge, the teenage violinist Pablo de Sarasate, might have been twofold. For one, he was rather unhappily married to the