The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2

more food than the little ones."-HENRY T.

iting of Sir Walter Scott, but this being a limited work, the covers already begin to bulge and creak, and it wi

difficulty and the chief regret, whom and what to omit. There are composers whom to neglect argues oneself ignorant, yet who composed no love affair of immortal charm. There are composers of who

N TROU

the agonies of travel of those days. Whether anticipation was better than realisation, we cannot know to-day, having no portrait of the countess; but at least anticipation was more fatal, for it wrought him into such a fever, that when at las

ambiguity about the t

, he begged that his heart be taken from his breast and sent home to her who had owned it. The stupid messenger, arriving at home, betrayed to the husband what it was he had been charged to deliver, and the husband chose a most medi?val revenge: he had the heart o

st foolish men who ever lived, for he believed everything to be just as it pleased him and as he would have it be." But the biographer contradicted his o

IN L

n, and song remains a fool his whole life long." No one claims that Luther wrote his own compositions, but that he dictated them to trained musicians who wrote down, and then wrote up such melodies as he played upon

After looking about for a good husband for her, at the end of a year he married her himself. She was then twenty-six years old. The married life of the jovial reformer wa

TIS

ld give up his professorship to marry "Elizabeth Walker, of the Strand, maiden, being about twenty-four, daughter of ---- Walker, citizen of London, deceased, she at

rie des Bois," and after this atrocious pun, married the poor girl in 184

, Cecilia Young, an eminent singer in H?ndel's company, and the daughter of an organist. She continued to sing, and he to write music for her.

ger, Rosen, who afterward

ybody he met that he had only married her to escape the necessity of giving her further lessons, which she would never pay for. The story seems to be, however, neither true nor well-found, for in spite of his awkwardness and the hard life he led at the hands of his teacher Clementi, who made him serve as a combined salesman of pianos and

, HUMMEL

for his miserly qualities, by which he r

l Dunciad, is credited with having won a courtship duel against Beethoven

ried a young and beautiful woman, who doubtless deserved her fate, since we are told that she was a wonderful performer on the tambourine. He succeeded to the post of Boieldieu, the eminent opera com

IEU AN

gh the flight may not have been surreptitious, it may well be credited to domestic misery. He buried himself in Russia for eight years, which may be placed in music's column of loss. Returning to Paris then, he found a clear field for the great success that followed. Soon after, in 1811, he formed an attachment with a woman who bore him a son in 1816. Her tenderne

one of whom, Lucille, had a one-act opera successfully produced when she was only thirteen years old, and

D AND

"Le Pré aux Clercs," had been produced and had wrung from him the wail: "I am going too soon; I was just beginning to understand the stage." He had married Adele élise Rollet four years bef

poser Halévy. In his letters to Lacombe he frequently mentions her, saying in May, 1872: "J'attends un baby dans deux ou trois semaines." His wife, he said, was "marvellously well," and a happy result was expected-and achieved, for in 1874 he sends Lacombe the greetings "de

pils, his immortal art: violà all his life!" But Auber, though too timid to marry or e

SIONS O

ans were strictly literary men,

years. Richard Wagner was well on in life before his compositions brought him as much money as his writing. Hector Berlioz

is memory, and he could only say, "I have forgot the colour of her hair; it was black I think. But whenever I remember her I see a vision of great brilliant eyes and of pink sho

ge of twenty-seven he won the Prix de Rome and went for three years

d Shakespeare through the prophetess. The remembrance of her had inspired him to write his "Lelio" in Italy. When he was again in Paris, he gave a concert, played the kettle-drums for his own symphony, and through a fr

n, a bizarre nocturne, only here and there relieved by the gleam of a woman's dress, sentimentally white, fluttering to and fro-or by a flash of irony, sulphur ye

for nearly three years Berlioz has been madly in love with her, and it is this

met his, he struck his k

en of the stage. Then Madame Berlioz fell from a carriage and broke her leg. This took her permanently from the stage, where she was no longer a success. A few managerial ventures brought her a handsome bankruptcy. Berlioz gave benefit concerts and wrote fiendishly for the papers to pay her debts, and always provided for her. But there was no more happiness for

velling companion attended him when he surreptitiously eloped with his music, and his clothes. In his "Mémoires," he paints a dismal picture of his wife's ill health, her jealous outbreaks, the final

rincess Sayn-Wittgenstein, and wrote her many letters which La M

ars his elder. He grew ferociously sentimental over her, and almost fainted when he shook her hand. He tried to reconstruct fr

n; my whole soul went out to its idol as though she were still in her dazzling loveliness. Balzac, nay, Shakespeare himself, the great painter of the passions, never dreamt of such a thing." [For t

ot her passion. She wrote him: "You have a very young heart. I am quite old. Then, sir, I am six years your elder, and at my age I must know how to deny myself new frie

UN

s a religious mystic, and Vernon Blackburn has said that the women who used to attend

royed all the documents. His "Mémoires" are disappointing in every way. Even his references to his marriage are about as thrilling as a page from a blue book. His account of his l

is due the fine school from which have come Prudent, Marmontel, Goria, Lefébure-Wély, Ravina, Bizet, and many others. I became by this alliance the brother-in-law of the young

friend, Lefu

atisfied with this union which seems to offer the most reliable assurances of lasting ha

y denies his wife, though he states that a year after the marriage she bore him a girl child, who died at birth, and that four years later she bore him a son. On the afternoon of this day he was to conduct a very

g for the sake of charity, and Gounod and she became romantically attached. She helped him train his choir, established an orphanage at her residence for poor children with musical inclinations, and published songs by Gounod and others, including herself, the proceeds going to the aid of her orphanage. At this time she cla

vaded payment by staying in France. Mrs. Weldon was also a composer, and she had edited in 1875 Gounod's autobiography and certain of his essays with a preface by herself. The lawsuit as usual exposed to public

S ITA

whose best operas was based on the life of that much mis-married enthusiast for divorce, John Milton, took to wife a member of the érard family. In the outer world Spontini was famous for his despotism, his jealousy, his bad temper, and his excessive vanity. None of these qualities as a rule add much to home comfort, and yet, it is said

retired with his wife to the little Italian village where he had been born of the peasantry. And there he spent years founding schools and doing other works for t

e first rate; for the Piccinnis and the Salieris and the Spontinis, who chance to fight earnestly against Glucks, Mozarts, and others, often sh

children in some distress. Salieri took care of the family and educated the two daughters as opera singers. His generosity was shown in numberless ways, and if by mishap he did not especially approve of Mozart, he was on most cordial terms with Haydn and Beethoven. He gave lessons and money to poor m

RAND

ue singer, and when the father was released, he joined the troupe as a horn-player. Rossini was left in the care of a pork-butcher, on whom he used to play practical jokes. He always took life easily, this Rossini. At the age of sixteen he was a

d he wrote ten roles for her. It was she who persuaded him away from comic to tragic opera. The political changes of the period soon changed her from public favourite to a public dislike, and Rossini, disgusted with his countrymen, married her and left Italy. It was said that he married her for her money, because she

ble woman. Who can doubt that th

t parents were at the wedding. Then the couple went to Vienna, where Carpani wrote of Colbran's voice: "The Graces seemed to hav

ctual charms. From England Rossini went to equal glory to France. At the early age of forty-three, he took a solemn vow to write no more music, a vow he kept almost literally. In 1845, his wife, then being sixty years of age, died. Two years later he married Olympe Pelissier, who had been his mistr

LL

take that interest in the neighbours that one is prone to take with a telescope. On the balcony of the opposite house he saw a beautiful girl; the opera-glasses seemed to bring her very near, but not near enough to reach. So, after much elaborate

l triumph, and he applied again, only to be told that "the daughter of Judge Fumaroli will never be allowed to marry a poor cymbal player." Later his success grew beyond the bounds of Italy, and now the composer of "La Sonnambula" and

andel had not written a single one of the oratorios by which he is remembered. In fact, he did not begin until he was fifty-five with the success which made him i

'S MI

in whose house he lived, and like Robert Schumann, he showed his gratitude by falling in love with the daughter; Margarita was her name. But Barezzi interpreted the r?le of father-in-law in a manner unlike that of Wieck, and to the youth to whom he had given not only instruction, but funds for his study and board and lodging while in Milan, he gave also his daughter, when the time came in 1836, Verdi being then twenty-three

me due in a few days. At that time if such a sum was of importance to me, it was no very serious matter; but my painful illness had not allowed me to provide it in time, and the state of communications with Busseto (in those days the post only went twice a week) did not leave me the opportunity of writing to my excellent father-in-law Barezzi to enable him to send the necessary funds. I wished, whatever trouble it might give

ent day of the lodgings go by. My wife then, seeing my annoyance, took a few articles of jewelry which she possessed, and succeeded, I know not how, in getting together the sum necessary, and

ading away, expired in the arms of his mother, who was beside herself with despair. That was not all. A few days after my little daughter fell ill in turn, and her complaint also terminat

or ever. I had no longer a family. And, in the midst of this terrible anguish, to avoid br

unes which had overwhelmed me, my spirit, soured by the failure of the opera, I persuaded myself that I should no longer find consolation in art, and formed the resolution to compose

success, and he ran home to tell her. The second act was also successful, and he ran home again, not noting that his wife was dying of starvation. The third act, and he was hissed off the stage, and flew home, only to find his wife dead. The chief objection to the story is the fact that his wife died on the 19t

as in a driving snow-storm that his friend Merelli decoy

singer Signora Strepponi praising Verdi's first opera. This was befor

d. Her enthusiasm for Verdi's work not only fastened the claim of operatic art upon him, but won his interest in her charms also, and Verdi and she were soon joined in an alliance, which after some years was legalised and churched. She shortly after left the stage without w

n opera composers. How

US GE

omposer of the day, married one of the most popular singers of her tim

rtations was with an artistic Jewess, with whom he quarrelled and from whom he parted, because they c

umentalist, travelling here and there with a family that increased along with his debts. It was n

d others. For Franz, who had married the song composer, Marie Hinrichs, lost his hearing a

rried a daughter of the great singer Lablache; she was the widow of the painter Boucher, whos

ld love with his cousin, Minna Mosson, and they were betrothed. Niggli says she was "as sweet as she was fair." Two years l

ldren did they want for compatibility's sake? Their son Johann married Jetty Treffy in 1863; she was a favourite public singer, and her ambition raised him out of a mere dance-hall existence

Genast, and followed her to Wiesbaden in 1856; he marr

se voice he wrote six studies. But he married Maria Pétrovna Ivanof, who was young, pretty, quarrelsome, and extravagant. She brought along also a dramatic mother-in-law, and he s

Vera Tschekonanof in 1865. She accompanied

fness ruined. He was immortalised in a composition as harrowing as any of Poe's stories, or as Huneker's "The

Z SC

a fabulous Pocahontas, we are asked to place the alleged one love of Schubert's life. Few composers have been so overweighted wit

and friendship is but anguish; whose enthusiasm for the beautiful threatens to vanish altogether." Of his music he wrote, that the world seemed to like only that which was the product of his sufferings,

ships, but the thought of marriage seems to have enter

e of his first affairs of the heart was with Theresa Grob, who sang in his works, and for whom he wrote various songs and other compositions. But he also wrote for her brother, and besides, she married a baker. Anna Mil

after his death seems to have turned her frien

on Hungarian melodies he heard her singing at her work. There is no disguising the fact that Schubert, prince of musicians, was personally a hopeless little pleb. He wrote his friend Schober in 1818 of the Esterhá

s and loved her-they say, till death. Once, she jokingly demanded why he had never dedicated a

leave it. There is some explanation for the belief that Schubert did not dare to love or declare his love, and some reason to believe that his reticence was wise and may have saved him worse pangs, in the fact that he was only one inch more than five feet high, and yet fat and

d in a filial way to Clara Schumann after the death of Schumann