“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.
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
During his two London visits, Joseph Haydn was treated like royalty. As one of the most celebrated composers in Europe, he led highly successful concerts and composed a number of his best-known works, including his last twelve symphonies. With a
“A Gentleman Is Someone Who Knows How to Play the Banjo and Doesn’t” Considered the “greatest humorist the United States has produced,” Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known as Mark Twain (1835-1910), had an uneasy relationship with classical music. He wrote
By a remarkable coincidence, the German violin virtuoso and composer Ferdinand David (1810-1873) was born in the same house in which Felix Mendelssohn had been born a year earlier. Like Mendelssohn, David was Jewish but later converted to Christianity. And
We all know that music may melt the heart of stone! And that was seemingly the case when Mr. Hampton heard the Légende by superstar violinist and composer Henryk Wieniawski (1835-1880). You see, Henryk had fallen in love with Isabella
On 7 November 1699 the San Salvatore Theatre in Venice produced the drama per musica “L’amar per virtù” (To love for the sake of virtue), with music attributed to Antonio Draghi. The plot focuses on the establishment of Moorish rule
