“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.
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
In April 1883, Rosina Jordana Lagarriga — daughter of the industrious businessman S. Simon Jordana, who lived and operated in the Catalonian capital of Barcelona — went to a local music store to look for sheet music by the sensational
Antonio de Cabezón Tiento XXV de sexto tono Pavana Italiana The immediate consequence of a rather messy political game of conspiracy and intrigue involving his own mother saw Charles V ascend to the throne of both Castile and Aragon in
Carlo Gesualdo GESUALDO: Tenebrae Responsories for Maundy Thursday (1611) The brutal slaughter of Maria d’Avalos and her lover Don Fabrizio Carafa at the hands of Don Carlo Gesualdo was not exclusively motivated by jealousy. In fact, Italian noblemen during the
Carlo Gesualdo Madrigals, Book 6 (1611) The third act of William Shakespeare’s tragic play “Othello” contains the ominous words “O, beware, my lord, of jealousy! It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on”. As we
After sampling the sexual exploitations by some members of the Viennese Strauss family, it might be time to restore our faith in humanity—especially with Valentine’s Day around the corner—by taking a look at a different Strauss, namely Richard from Munich.
Johann Strauss II Eine Nacht in Venedig (A Night in Venice) (1883) Kaiser Walzer (Emperor Waltz), Op. 437 (1889) Aufs Korn, Op. 478 (1898) Psychoanalytical models suggest that a human being, emotionally responding to the loss of a loved one,
