THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF GREAT MUSICIANS
By Rupert Hughes
Illustrated
Volume I.
[Illustration]
1903
NOTE
Portions of a few of the chapters of this work appeared serially in _The
Criterion_, and the last chapter was published in _The Smart Set_.
While, so far as the author knows, this is the first book on the
subject, it is given, perhaps, especial novelty by the fact that
advantage could be taken of much new material given to the public for
the first time (with one exception) in the last few months, notably: a
revelation of the exact identity of Beethoven's "Immortal Beloved;" the
letters of Liszt to his princess; letters of Chopin long supposed to
have been burned, as well as diaries and letters gathered by an intimate
friend for a biography whose completion was prevented by death; the
publication of a vast amount of Wagneriana; the appearance of a full
life of Tschaikovski by his brother, with complete elucidation of much
that had been suppressed; the first volume of a new biography of Clara
Schumann, with a detailed account of the whole progress of her beautiful
love story, down to the day of the marriage; and numberless fugitive
paragraphs throwing new light on affairs more or less unknown or
misunderstood.
Love it is an hatefulle pees,
A free acquitaunce without re lees.
An hevy burthen light to here,
A wikked wawe awey to were.
It is kunnyng withoute science,
Wisdome withoute sapience,
Bitter swetnesse and swete errour,
Right eville savoured good savour;
A strengthe weyked to stonde upright,
And feblenesse fulle of myght.
A laughter it is, weping ay;
Reste that traveyleth nyght and day.
Also a swete helle it is,
And a soroufulle Paradys.
Romaunt of the Rose.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. THE OVERTURE
II. THE ANCIENTS
III. THE MEN OF FLANDERS
IV. ORLAND DI LASSUS AND HIS REGINA
V. HENRY AND FRANCES PURCELL
VI. THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF STRADELLA
VII. GIOVANNI AND LUCREZIA PALESTRINA
VIII. BACH, THE PATRIARCH
IX. PAPA AND MAMMA HAYDN
X. THE MAGNIFICENT BACHELOR
XI. GLUCK THE DOMESTIC, ROUSSEAU THE CONFESSOR,
AND THE AMIABLE PICCINNI
XII. A FEW TUNESTERS OF FRANCE AND ITALY
--PERI, MONTEVERDE, ET AL
XIII. MOZART
XIV. BEETHOVEN: THE GREAT BUMBLEBEE
XV. VON WEBER--THE RAKE REFORMED
XVI. THE FELICITIES OF MENDELSSOHN
XVII. THE NOCTURNES OF CHOPIN
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PRINCESS LICHTENSTEIN (Frontispiece)
DAPHNE
HÉLOISE
MARY STUART
ORLAND DI LASSUS (Roland de Lattre)
HENRY PURCELL
JOHN SEBASTIAN BACH
MORNING PRAYER IN THE FAMILY OF SEBASTIAN BACH
JOSEPH HAYDN
MRS. BILLINGTON
GEORG FRIEDRICH HANDEL
CHRISTOPH WILLIBALD VON GLUCK
JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU
NICOLA PICCINNI
JEAN BAPTISTE DE LULLY
WOLFGANG MOZART
MOZART, AT VIENNA, PLAYING HIS OPERA "DON JUAN" FOR THE FIRST TIME
LUDWIG VON BEETHOVEN
BETTINA BRENTANO VON ARNIM
COUNTESS THÉRÈSE VON BRUNSWICK
CARL MARIA VON WEBER
FELIX MENDELSSOHN
FREDERICK CHOPIN
GEORGE SAND
COUNTESS POTOCKA
THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF GREAT MUSICIANS
VOLUME I.
CHAPTER I.
THE OVERTURE
Musicians as lovers! The very phrase evokes and parades a pageant of
amours! The thousand heartaches; the fingers clutching hungrily at keys
that might be other fingers; the fiddler with his eyelids clenched while
he dreams that the violin, against his cheek is the satin cheek of "the
inexpressive She;" the singer with a cry in every note; the moonlit
youth with the mandolin tinkling his serenade to an ivied window; the
dead-marches; the nocturnes; the amorous waltzes; the duets; the trills
and trinkets of flirtatious scherzi; the laughing roulades; the discords
melted into concord as solitude into the arms of reunion--these are
music's very own.
So capable of love and its expression is music, indeed, that you almost
wonder if any but musicians have ever truly loved, or loving have
expressed. And yet--! Round every corner there lurks an "and yet." And
if you only continue your march, or your reading, you always reach that
corner.
Your first thought would be, that a good musician must be a good lover;
that a broken heart alone can add the Master's degree to the usual
conservatory diploma of Bachelor of Music; that all musicians must be
sentimental, if musicians at all; and finally that only musicians can
know how to announce and embellish that primeval theme to which all
existence is but variations, more or less brilliant, more or less in
tune.
But go a little further, and closer study will prove that some of the
world's greatest virtuosos in love could neither make nor carry a tune;
and that, by corollary, some of the greatest tunesters in the world were
tyros, ignoramuses, or heretics in that old lovers' arithmetic which
begins: 1 plus 1 equals 1.
If you care to watch the cohort of musicians, good, bad, and worse, that
I shall have to deploy before you, you shall see almost every sort and
condition of love and lover that humanity can include. And
incidentally--to tuck in here a preface that would otherwise be
skipped--let me explain that in the following affairs I have preferred
to give you the people as accurately as I can make them out.
In place of the easy trick of stringing together a number of gorgeous
fairy stories founded on fact, I have preferred the long labour of
hunting down the truth and telling only what I have found and believe to
be true. Fact and not fancy; presentation and not fiction; have been the
aim throughout. Where the facts are sparse, I have not hesitated to say
so; have not stooped to pad out gaps, with graceful and romantic
imaginings; and have indeed never hazarded a guess or an inference
without frankly branding it as such.
Furthermore, as far as space permits and documents exist, the musicians
tell their own stories in their own words.
For the making of this little book, I have not been able to include all
the men who ever wrote one note after or above another; nor to read all
the books ever published in all the world's languages: and yet, that I
have been decently thorough will appear, I think, in the list of books
at the back. This does not claim to be a complete bibliography of the
subject, but, omitting hundreds of books I have ransacked in vain, it
catalogues only such works as I have consulted with profit, and the
reader could consult with pleasure.
It may be well to say that, with the exception of the occasional
necessity or seeming-necessity for taking one side or the other in a
matter of dispute, I have avoided the facility of bandying highly moral
verdicts and labelling these victors or victims of life with tags
marking their destinations in the next world. He who gets into another's
heart with understanding, will find it impossible to indulge in
wholesale blame--"_tout comprendre, c'est tout pardonner_." So, without
pretending to have comprehended any of these human hearts altogether, I
have learned enough to lean almost always a little toward the defence,
and still more nearly always toward the praise of the woman in the case.
And yet, the whole effort and viewpoint of the work will be found, I
think, to be based upon a deep belief that one love is better than two,
and that earnestness and honesty and altruism are more blessed and
blissful, even with poverty and suffering, than any wealth of money, or
of fame, or of amorous experience.
As a last chapter to this series of "true stories," I have ventured to
sum up the conclusions, to which the study of all these affairs has
compelled me, and to state a general opinion as to the effect of music
on character. It might have been more exciting to some readers, if I
had started out with a hard and fast theory, and then discarded or
warped everything contradictory to it, but it would have been a
dishonest procedure for one who believes that musicians are neither
saints of exaltation nor fiends of lawless ecstasy; but only ordinary
clay ovens of fire and ashes like the rest of us. He who generalises is
lost, and yet I make bold to believe that the conclusion of this book is
true and reasonable and in accordance with such evidence as could be
collected.
And now after this before-the-curtain lecture, it is high time, as
Artemus would say, to "rise the curting."