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Title: Woman in music
Second edition revised and enlarged
Author: George P. Upton
Release date: September 20, 2026 [eBook #79613]
Language: English
Original publication: Chicago: A. C. McClurg and Company, 1886
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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
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WOMAN IN MUSIC.
WOMAN IN MUSIC
BY
GEORGE P. UPTON
AUTHOR OF “THE STANDARD OPERAS,” ETC., ETC.
Second Edition
REVISED AND ENLARGED
CHICAGO
A. C. McCLURG AND COMPANY
1886
COPYRIGHT,
BY A. C. MCCLURG AND COMPANY,
A.D. 1886.
As a tribute
TO THE
FRIENDSHIP OF A STEADFAST COMRADE,
AND AS AN ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF HER
HELPFUL SERVICE,
I Dedicate
THESE STUDIES OF MY LEISURE HOURS
_TO MY WIFE_.
PREFACE.
The first edition of this work appeared in 1880; but its circulation
was interrupted by a fire which destroyed the plates. A renewed demand
for the work seems, however, to warrant the author in presenting a
revised and much enlarged edition, in which the scope of the general
subject has been widened, and its illustration has been made still more
complete by additional stories of composers whose success has been due
in some degree to the influence of woman. The work has been written
in the leisure hours of other pursuits, and of necessity is compiled
from the writer’s musical readings. A long list of authorities has been
consulted for facts bearing upon the subject; and, so far as is known
to the writer, only the highest have been laid under contribution. As a
well-stocked musical library is something of a rarity in this country,
he ventures to hope that his compilations, and his comments thereon,
will be of interest to the musical student, and possibly of value to
the general public.
G. P. U.
CHICAGO, 1886.
If to the depths of tenderness and devotion in which the true and
irresistible empire of woman must commence, and deprived of which she
is only an enigma without a possible solution, Nature should unite
the most brilliant gifts of genius, the miraculous spectacle of the
Greek Fire would be renewed; the glittering flames would again sport
over the abysses of the ocean without being extinguished or submerged
in the chilling depths, adding, as the living hues were thrown
upon the surging waves, the glowing dyes of the purple fire to the
celestial blue of the heaven-reflecting sea.—LISZT.
There is no living soul so capable of enjoying and correctly judging
of a work of art as a finely cultivated woman; for her whole inner
life is in itself a sort of work of art. Even the highest kind of men
have something formless and unfinished about their natures. The hasty
demands of life do not stop to inquire whether it be Sabbath or not:
they surprise man amid the worship of the beautiful, and scarcely
give him time to refrain from profanation of the altar. But the life
of woman,—how calm as a festival day, how full of harmony may it not,
should it not be! When the storm-bells of passion have rung out, then
a pure ether remains behind.... In such minds the impression made
by a work of art is correct and immediate; for they are prepared to
receive it,—themselves serene and pure as bridal devotion.—EHLERT.
CONTENTS.
PART I.
PAGE
WOMAN IN MUSIC 15
PART II.
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH 35
GEORGE FREDERICK HÄNDEL 48
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN 60
FRANCIS JOSEPH HAYDN 84
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART 96
FRANZ SCHUBERT 112
ROBERT SCHUMANN 125
FELIX MENDELSSOHN BARTHOLDY 138
FREDERICK CHOPIN 149
CARL MARIA VON WEBER 162
RICHARD WAGNER 177
PART III.
WOMAN AS THE INTERPRETER OF MUSIC 187
APPENDIX 209
DEDICATIONS 211
INDEX 219
PART I.
WOMAN IN MUSIC.
[Illustration]
WOMAN IN MUSIC.
A GENERAL VIEW OF WOMAN’S INFLUENCE ON MUSIC.—LOVE ATTACHMENTS AND
HOME LIFE.—THE FAILURE OF WOMAN IN COMPOSITION.—SOME CONSIDERATION
OF REASONS WHY SHE HAS PRODUCED NO ENDURING MUSICAL WORK.
The special purpose of this essay is to characterize the real relation
which woman holds to music; and it makes no more pretentious claim than
to be a study of the subject, with such illustrations, drawn from the
lives of representative composers, as can be furnished by a musical
library. It is intended to be historical and æsthetic, rather than
philosophical or dogmatic; and to present facts for consideration by
the thoughtful reader, collated from the most authoritative sources,
rather than to attempt to explain all the problems of woman’s relation
to music.
The subject naturally divides itself into two heads: first, the
influence of woman in encouraging the great composers to labor, and
inspiring them in the production of their finest works; and, second,
the relations of woman to the performance of vocal and instrumental
music. The latter branch of the subject certainly does not require
special attention in these days of the great queens of song, whose sway
is everywhere acknowledged, and, so far as the scope of this essay
is concerned, hardly needs more than eulogistic reference. The other
branch, however, has been but little considered; and what little is
known is, as a rule, incorrect. The attachments of love, the bonds of
friendship, the endearments of home, and the influences of society
have played an important part in shaping the careers of the great
composers, and in giving color, form, and direction to their music. In
all these phases of life genius has more than once knelt at the feet
of beauty and executed her behests; and more than one immortal work
of music may be traced to the steadfast love and thoughtful care of
woman in the quiet duties of home life. Few students of music know
the effect of these subtile influences, except through the medium
of romances and rhapsodies that have been woven about the lives of
composers by enthusiasts of the Rau and Polko school, or of pretty
fancies and legends, current in their time, that have come down to us,
and are implicitly believed, though they have no foundations to rest
upon. There are probably very few persons, even among musicians, who
do not firmly believe that Beethoven addressed his immortal love-song,
the “Adelaide,” to some real inamorata; that his C sharp minor sonata
was inspired by the moonlight; that Mozart wrote his “Requiem” at the
request of a mysterious stranger who was in some manner connected
with his death; that Haydn expired in an ecstasy of joy during the
performance of his “Creation;” that Weber died at his piano; and that
Chopin died of a broken heart, because George Sand, tiring of her
passion and his morbidness, flung him away. It is easy for the world to
accept and believe such fancies, because it is ready to credit genius
with anything that is _bizarre_ or romantic, just as it is ready to
condone excesses and eccentricities that would not be tolerated in the
ordinary plodder.
The study of this subject, however, would not be complete without
considering one of its phases which is in the nature of an enigma, and
to which no satisfactory answer has yet been given. The writer does
not hope to solve the problem, but only to offer such hints as suggest
themselves, leaving to others better versed in the mysteries of the
female nature and in the peculiar intellectual and emotional qualities
necessary to the development of a great composer, to discover the exact
reasons why woman has failed to create important and enduring works in
music.
At the first glance it would seem that musical composition is a
province in which woman should excel. It may be laid down, as a
fundamental and indisputable proposition, that music is the interpreter
and the language of the emotions. It sounds every note in the gamut
of human nature, from ecstatic joy to profound despair. It is “of all
sweet sounds the life and element.” It wakes “thoughts that do often
lie too deep for tears.” It inspires, enrages, elevates, saddens,
cheers, and soothes the soul as no other one of the arts can. It can
“swell the soul to rage, or kindle soft desire.” It gives voice to
love and expression to passion, lends glory to every art, and performs
its loftiest homage as the handmaid of religion. Why is it, then, that
woman, who possesses all these attributes in a more marked degree
than man, who is the inspiration of love, who has a more powerful
and at the same time more delicate emotional force than man, who is
artistic by temperament, whose whole organism is sensitively strung,
and who is religious by nature,—why is it that woman, with all these
musical elements in her nature, is receptive rather than creative? Why
is it that music only comes to her as a balm, a rest, or a solace of
happiness among her pleasures and her sorrows, her commonplaces and
her conventionalities, and that it does not find its highest sources
_in_ her? In other fields of art woman has been creative. Rosa Bonheur
is man’s equal upon canvas. Harriet Hosmer has made the marble live
with a man’s truth and force and skill. Mrs. Browning in poetry, Mary
Somerville and Caroline Herschel in science, George Sand, Charlotte
Bronté, and Madame de Staël in fiction, have successfully rivalled man
in their fields of labor; while George Eliot, with almost more than
masculine force, has grappled with the most abstruse problems of human
life, and though an agnostic has courageously sifted the doubts of
science and latter-day cultured unbelief, and plucked many a rose of
blessing for suffering humanity from amid its storms of sorrow and pain.
These may all stand as types of creative power; but who is to represent
woman in the higher realm of music? While a few women, during the last
two centuries, have created a few works, now mostly unknown, no woman
during that time has written either an opera, oratorio, symphony, or
instrumental work of large dimensions that is in the modern repertory.
Man has been the creative representative. Beethoven has shown its
depth, its majesty, its immortality; Mendelssohn, its elegance of
form; Händel, its solemnity and grandeur; Mozart, its wondrous grace
and sweetness; Haydn, its purity, freshness, and simplicity; Schumann,
its romance; Chopin, its poetry and tender melancholy; Schubert, the
richness of its melody; Bach, its massive foundations; Berlioz, its
_grotesquerie_ and supernaturalisms; and Liszt and Wagner, its poetical
idealism. In the symphony, in opera, in oratorio, even in the lesser
realm of chamber music, woman has either been silent, or what she has
attempted to create has had but an ephemeral existence.
It has been claimed by some writers that the folk-songs of many
countries belong to women, though the claim is mere surmise, and by
others that the _trouveresses_ who accompanied the troubadours upon
their tuneful journeys created melodies; but even this is mythical,
and history, while it has carefully preserved numerous poems and songs
of the Provençal troubadours and German minnesingers, has consigned
nearly all that was accomplished by the _trouveresses_ to the Lethe
of oblivion. Some of their poems that have survived show much grace
and tender feeling, but their musical ability was mostly restricted to
the singing of their male companions’ songs. That there is a natural
aptitude among musical women for the writing of songs and ballads is
unquestionable; but they are mostly short-lived, and are rarely woven
into the fabric of national life. That woman has also ventured into the
realms of higher music is equally unquestionable, as the list of female
composers in the appendix to this essay will show, and as the songs
without words of Fanny Hensel, sister of Mendelssohn, and the piano
compositions of Madame Schumann attest; but of all the works written
by these numerous composers, hardly one is known to the lyric stage
to-day. And why?
The most palpable answer, and the only one that is fairly indisputable,
is that having had equal advantages with men, they have failed as
creators. This somewhat Milesian reply is illustrated in Mr. Bulwer’s
novel of “The Parisians.” Isaura Cicagna, writing to her friend Madame
de Grantmesnil, informs her that she has consulted Dr. C. upon the
subject of writing music instead of entering stage life as a _prima
donna_; to which the Doctor replied:—
“My dear child, I should be your worst enemy if I encouraged such
a notion; cling to the career in which you can be greatest: gain
but health, and I wager my reputation on your glorious success on
the stage. What can you be as a composer? You will set pretty music
to pretty words, and will be sung in drawing-rooms with the fame a
little more or less that generally attends the compositions of female
amateurs. Aim at something higher, as I know you would do, and you
will not succeed. Is there any instance in modern times, perhaps in
any times, of a female composer who attains even to the eminence of
a third-rate opera writer? Composition in letters may be of no sex.
In that Madame Dudevant and your friend Madame de Grantmesnil can
beat most men; but the genius of musical composition is _homme_,
and accept it as a compliment when I say that you are essentially
_femme_.”
Conceding that music is the highest expression of the emotions, and
that woman is emotional by nature, is it not one solution of the
problem that woman does not musically reproduce them because she
herself is emotional by temperament and nature, and cannot project
herself outwardly, any more than she can give outward expression to
other mysterious and deeply hidden traits of her nature? The emotion is
a part of herself, and is as natural to her as breathing. She lives in
emotion, and acts from emotion. She feels its influences, its control,
and its power; but she does not see these results as man looks at them.
He sees them in their full play, and can reproduce them in musical
notation as a painter imitates the landscape before him. It is probably
as difficult for her to express them as it would be to explain them.
To confine her emotions within musical limits would be as difficult as
to give expression to her religious faith in notes. Man controls his
emotions, and can give an outward expression of them. In woman they are
the dominating element, and so long as they are dominant she absorbs
music. Great actresses who have never been great dramatists may express
emotions because they express their own natures; but to treat emotions
as if they were mathematics, to bind and measure and limit them within
the rigid laws of harmony and counterpoint, and to express them with
arbitrary signs, is a cold-blooded operation, possible only to the
sterner and more obdurate nature of man. As I have said, so long as the
emotions are dominant, she absorbs music. When the emotions lose their
force with age, her musical power weakens. Almost every man who has
learned to play an instrument, or to sing, be it ever so poorly, and
be his troubles or his cares ever so pressing, continues to play or to
sing as long as he has strength. Max Müller, in his “Deutsche Liebe,”
has a neat illustration of this. He imagines one returning to his
native village after an absence of many years. As he wanders about the
streets he finds a familiar house: “here the old music-teacher lived.
He is dead; and yet how beautiful it seemed as we stood and listened on
summer evenings under the window when the faithful soul indulged in his
own enjoyment and played fantasies, as the roaring and hissing engine
lets off the steam which has accumulated during the day.” The large
majority of women drop their music long before the hair grows gray, or
at the first touch of sorrow. This may be due partly to the effect of
forced and unwholesome practice in these days, when it is thought that
every girl, whether she have musical intelligence and ability or not,
must learn to play the piano or to sing, and partly to the engrossing
demands of household cares; but these causes do not explain what is
a general rule: while, in the matter of care, even the pressure of
business does not divert man’s attention from his music; on the other
hand, he turns to it, even in his old age, for rest and solace.
There is another phase of the feminine character which may bear upon
the solution of this problem; and that is the inability of woman
to endure the discouragements of the composer, and to battle with
the prejudice and indifference, and sometimes with the malicious
opposition, of the world, that obstruct his progress. The lives of the
great composers, with scarcely an exception, were spent in constant
struggle, and saddened with discouragements, disappointments, the
pinching of poverty, the jealousies of rivals, or the contemptuous
indifference of contemporaries. Beethoven struggled all his life
with adverse fate. Schubert’s music was hardly known in his lifetime,
and his best works were not fairly recognized until after his death.
Schumann is hardly yet known. There is scarcely a more pitiable picture
than that of the great Händel struggling against the malicious cabals
of petty and insignificant rivals for popular favor, who now are
scarcely known even by name. Mozart’s life was a constant warfare; and
when this wonderful child of genius went to his grave in the paupers’
quarter of the churchyard of St. Marx, he went alone,—not one friend
accompanied him, and no one has known to this day where he sleeps.
Berlioz’s music is just beginning to be played in his native country.
Wagner fought the world all his life with indomitable courage and
persistence, and died before he had established a permanent place
for his music. There is scarcely a composer known to fame, and whose
works are destined to endure, who lived long enough to see his music
appreciated and accepted by the world for what it was really worth.
Such fierce struggles and overwhelming discouragements, such pitiless
storms of fate and cruel assaults of poverty, in the pursuit of art,
woman is not calculated to endure. If her triumph could be instant;
if work after work were not to be assailed, scoffed at, and rejected;
if she were not liable to personal abuse, to the indifference of her
own sex on the one hand and masculine injustice on the other,—there
would be more hope for her success in composition: but instant triumphs
are not the rewards of great composers. The laurels of success may
decorate their graves, placed there by the applauding hands of admiring
posterity, but rarely crown their brows.
It is a curious fact that nearly all the great music of the world
has been produced in humble life, and has been developed amid the
environments of poverty and in the stern struggle for existence. The
aristocracy has contributed very little to music, and that little can
be spared without detriment. Nearly all the masters have been of lowly
and obscure origin, and have lived and died in comparative poverty;
for, with rare exceptions, musical composition has been miserably
unremunerative until within the last fifty years. The enduring music
has been the child of poverty, the outcome of sorrow, the apotheosis
of suffering. Sebastian Bach was the son of a hireling musician.
Beethoven’s father was a dissipated singer. Cherubini came from the
lowest and poorest ranks of life. Gluck was a forester’s son. Lulli in
his childhood was a page, and slept in palace kitchens. Haydn’s father
was a wheelwright; and his mother, previous to marriage, was a cook in
the kitchen of Count Harrach, the lord of his native village. While on
his death-bed, Beethoven called Hummel’s attention to a picture, and
said: “See, my dear Hummel, the house in which Haydn was born; to think
that so great a man should have first seen the light in a peasant’s
wretched hut.” Mozart’s father was a musician in humble circumstances,
and his grandfather a bookbinder. Händel was the son of a barber and
surgeon. Méhul was the son of a cook. Rossini’s father was a miserable
strolling horn-player, who led a wild Bohemian life. Schubert was
the son of a poor schoolmaster; and his mother, like Haydn’s, was in
service as a cook at the time of her marriage. Cimarosa’s father was
a mason, and his mother a washerwoman. Schumann was a bookseller’s
son; and Verdi, the son of a Lombardian peasant. Weber’s father was a
strolling musician and actor. Wagner, the musician of the future, was
born in humble circumstances; his father having been a petty municipal
officer, and his stepfather an unpretentious portrait-painter, who
at one time had also been a very poor actor. Among all the prominent
composers, but three were born in affluence,—Auber, Meyerbeer, and
Mendelssohn. With these three exceptions, they developed the grandeur,
the sublimity, the passion, and the majesty of their music out of the
storms of life, the pangs of sorrow, and the hard battle with fate. In
this sphere of life, where music seems to have had its origin, the lot
of woman is bounded by homely but unintermitting cares. Her existence
is mainly devoted to the same tedious routine of labor from the rising
to the setting sun, which has few intervals of relaxation, certainly
no leisure for musical effort. Its demands are so exacting that she
has neither time nor disposition for the theoretical application which
musical composition requires.
But even assuming that woman had the disposition and the leisure to
devote to musical composition, would she _then_ succeed? The bluntest
answer to this is that she has not succeeded when she has had the
opportunity. But there is another way, perhaps, of arriving at an
answer. Woman reaches results mainly by intuitions. Her susceptibility
to impressions and her finely tempered organization enable her to feel
and perceive, where man has to reach results by the slow processes of
reason. So far as music is a matter of emotion, she is more immediately
sensitive to it than man; she absorbs it more quickly, if not so
thoroughly; she discriminates with more nicety, and often judges with
more impartiality; she recognizes what is true and what is false more
quickly. If music were only an object of the perceptions or a matter of
instinct; if it simply addressed itself to the senses; if it were but
an art composed of ravishing melody, of passionate outbursts,—of the
attributes of joy, grief, and exaltation, and vague, dreamy sensations
without any determinate ideas,—woman possibly would have grasped it
long ago, and flooded the world with harmony as she has with song: but
music is all this and more, for these are only effects. It is not only
an art, but an exact science, and, in its highest form, mercilessly
logical and unrelentingly mathematical. Its mastery requires long years
of patient toil and continuous application. The imagination does not
have a free flight, but is bounded within the limits of form. The mere
possession of the poetical imagination and the capacity to receive
music in its fullest emotional power will not lead one to the highest
achievements in musical art. With these subjective qualities must
be combined the mastery of the theoretical intricacies, the logical
sequences, and the mathematical problems which are the foundation
principles of music. It has every technical detail that characterizes
absolute science in its most rigid forms. In this direction woman,
except in very rare instances, has never achieved great results.
Her grandest performances have been in the regions of romance, of
imagination, of intuition, of poetical feeling and expression, or in
those still higher duties which call for the exercise of religious
“faith and works.”
For these and many other reasons growing out of the peculiar
organization of woman, the sphere in which she moves, the training
which she receives, and the duties she has to fulfil, it does not
seem that woman will ever originate music in its fullest and grandest
harmonic forms. She will always be the recipient and interpreter, but
there is little hope she will be the creator.
However this may be, there is a field in which she has accomplished
great results; namely, her influence upon the production of music. She
has done so much _for_ music that it is not exaggeration to claim
that without her influence many of the masterpieces which we now so
much admire might not have been accomplished at all; that the great
composers have often written through her inspiration; and that she
has, in numerous notable instances, been their impulse, support, and
consolation.
What music owes to her I shall try to show by reference to the lives
and labors of Bach, Händel, Beethoven, Haydn, Mozart, Mendelssohn,
Schumann, Schubert, Weber, Chopin, and Wagner,—eleven of the
representative names in the highest forms of composition,—and thus
establish the first branch of the general subject that was laid down in
the beginning of this essay.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
PART II.
BACH, HÄNDEL, HAYDN, MOZART, BEETHOVEN, SCHUBERT, SCHUMANN,
MENDELSSOHN, WEBER, CHOPIN, AND WAGNER: THE INFLUENCE OF WOMAN
UPON THEIR MUSICAL PRODUCTIVITY.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH.
I, my Fabius, who am in other respects an admirer of antiquity, am of
opinion that my Bach, and others like him, unite in their own persons
many Orpheuses and twenty Arions.—GESNER.
To thoroughly appreciate the influence of woman upon Sebastian
Bach in his musical development and creations, it is necessary to
regard the modest and God-fearing cantor of St. Thomas not only as
a musician but also as a man. He has left an imperishable name, and
his musical creations are the very foundations of the art; and yet
his life was mainly spent within the family circle, where, in the
true patriarchal spirit, he ruled over his numerous progeny. This
domestic characteristic distinguished all the Bachs, from the time when
Veit Bach, the old baker who played his zither while his mill was
running, and the founder of the family, travelled into Thuringia from
Hungary, that he might be free to worship God as he pleased. They were
all musicians; and their love of music, as well as their remarkable
purity of sentiment and strength of family affection, bound them
closely together. At one time there were no less than thirty Bachs who
were organists in Thuringia, Franconia, and Saxony. Nothing is more
beautiful in the records of music than their anniversary meetings, upon
which occasions they gathered together from all parts of Germany, and
enjoyed a genuine feast of music in singing chorals and folk-songs, and
improvising. No jar or disagreement ever disturbed these meetings. They
were as calm and peaceful as the movement of the chorals which opened
and closed them. They were simple, unaffected, pious people, remarkably
gifted in musical knowledge,—in fact, renowned all over Germany for
their skill,—and yet to a large extent living within themselves, and
depending upon their homes for their enjoyment.
Of this constellation, Johann Sebastian Bach was the very sun
and centre. He seems to have had none of the contrarieties or
eccentricities which have characterized so many other musical
geniuses. His mother died shortly after he was born, and his father
when the boy was but ten years of age. His youth was spent in the home
of his elder brother, Johann Christoph, an organist and music-master,
who brought him up with an austerity of discipline which seems very
harsh, and which particularly manifested itself, for some unaccountable
reason, in the apparent determination to crush out his musical impulses
and ambitions. His severe training, however, gave him self-reliance.
He grew up to be a self-sustained, evenly poised man, simple and
unostentatious in his bearing, strictly honorable in his intercourse
with men, strong and unvarying in his home love, and guided in every
event of life by a strict morality born of sincere religion. The spot
where Luther translated the Bible into German overlooked his native
place, and on the same spot the minnesingers had fought their romantic
battles of song; and the religion of the one and the romance of the
other affected his life until its close. He was an affectionate father,
laboring manfully and incessantly to support his large family; a good
citizen, faithfully fulfilling all his duties and commanding universal
respect; a plain, humble man, despising rank and show, making no boast
of his grand achievements, and yet recognized in the court of Frederick
the Great as above courtiers and nobility, by the title of his genius.
Such a man, domestic by nature, spending most of his time and doing
most of his work at home, and, more than all, doing this work for what
seems now a beggarly pittance, needed for a companion a sensible,
practical, industrious, and economical woman, capable of administering
the affairs of the family in such manner that his musical labor, which
was incessant, might not be disturbed by household cares, or solicitude
as to the ability of the lean family purse to meet the demands upon it.
Such a woman he found in his cousin Maria Barbara Bach, the youngest
daughter of Johann Michael Bach, of Gehren, himself a composer of
no mean ability. He made her acquaintance in Arnstadt, where he was
appointed first organist of the new church in 1703. He was at that
time too poor to marry; but the attachment between them was so strong
that they mutually agreed to wait until a position lucrative enough
to support them should offer itself. They did not have to wait long.
In 1706 he was successful in obtaining the position of organist of
St. Blasius Church, at Mühlhausen, and was left free to fix his own
salary. Although upon the verge of marriage, the contract made with
the town authorities shows that his requirements for establishing a
family and founding a home were modest in the extreme. The contract
reads: “Eighty-five guldens (a little more than thirty-five dollars),
three malters of corn, two clafters of wood (one of beech and one
of other wood), and six schock of small firewood, to be brought to
his door.” He also requests that he may be helped “with the loan
of a cart in bringing his furniture from Arnstadt.” He assumed his
duties at Mühlhausen in 1707; and in October of that year he and
Maria Barbara were married, starting in life with the modest outfit
already mentioned. Very little is known of her, except that she was an
affectionate and dutiful wife, of even temper and sunny disposition,
contented with her lot, and so prudent and thrifty in her management
that the home of Johann Sebastian was always a happy one, and his
musical labors were never disturbed by the interposition of household
troubles and annoyances. She died in 1720, during Bach’s absence at
Carlsbad with Prince Leopold, and so suddenly that no news of it
reached him until after she was buried. She bore him eight children,
five sons and three daughters,—Caroline Dorothea, born in 1708; Wilhelm
Friedemann, born in 1710, died at Berlin in 1784; Carl Philipp Emanuel,
born in 1714, and commonly known as the “Berlin Bach,” who died at
Hamburg in 1788; Johann Gottfried Bernhard, born in 1715; and Leopold
August, born in 1718. In addition to these, there were a pair of twins,
who died before they were a year old; and a daughter, who died very
young.
There is no record to show that his first wife was a musician, or that
she had musical taste or feeling; but it is on record that the thirteen
years of hard labor and of incessant struggle with the necessities of
life were years of mutual happiness, respect, and affection. She was
thrifty, contented, industrious, and withal unselfish,—qualities which
are very essential to happiness in life on an income of less than fifty
dollars a year and perquisites of the most meagre description. We may
therefore conclude that Sebastian Bach sincerely mourned the loss of
the companion so suddenly snatched away from him. His situation in life
was such, however, that he could not sorrow long. The necessities of
constant labor, the daily recurrence of multifarious household duties,
and the pressing cares of his little flock of children, all appealed
to him to supply the place of her who had gone, so that he might be
relieved of these exacting and worrying household cares, and give his
sole attention to his art. A year and a half after her death, in the
year 1721, he married Anna Magdalena Wülkens, the youngest daughter of
a trumpeter, court musician to the Duke of Weissenfeld. He was then
thirty-six years of age, and she was fifteen years his junior. This
disparity of years, however, never threw a shadow upon the affections
of the two, which remained beautiful and undisturbed until his death.
The union was a perfect one, perhaps more perfect than the first; for,
in addition to her devotion to household duties and her prudent and
economical management of their little income, she was a musician of
exceptional talent and had a very fine voice. His income, although
larger than he had received heretofore, was still small; for two years
after his marriage, when he signed his contracts as cantor of St.
Thomas, at Leipzig, his yearly stipend was eighty-seven thalers and
twelve groschen (about sixty-five dollars); sixteen scheffel of corn;
thirteen thalers, three groschen, for wood and candles; one thaler,
eight groschen, interest on a legacy; lodging and firewood free. This
sum, with certain fees for services at marriages and funerals, was his
only recompense for the arduous labors at the St. Thomas School, and
the equally arduous labor of composing and conducting the music for
four churches. Under her prudent management, however, they lived very
comfortably; and a new element of happiness sprang up in his home,
growing out of her knowledge and love of music. She had a soprano voice
of beautiful quality, and a knowledge of the technique of music of such
a decided character that for five years after her marriage she and the
children studied with Bach in thorough-bass and piano music; the father
finding time in the midst of his many duties to give them the benefits
of his knowledge. He wrote out for her the rules of thorough-bass; and
there still exists a testimonial of his great interest in her musical
progress in the collection of “easy pieces for the piano,” written in
1722, and inscribed with the autograph, “Clavier Büchlein vor Anna
Magdalena Bach.” Three years later he had completed for her a whole
volume of music, containing forty-six preludes, minuets, rondos,
polonaises, etc., thirty-five of which are for the piano; among them
the favorite C major prelude, No. 1 of the “Wohltemperirte Clavier;”
five chorals,—“Wer nur den lieben Gott lässt walten,” “Gieb dich
zufrieden,” “Schaff’s mit mir Gott,” “Dir, Jehovah, will ich singen,”
and “O Ewigkeit, Du Donnerwort;” and, lastly, seven songs, followed by
a wedding poem, which are not only of peculiar interest because they
were written for his wife, but also because they are the only short
songs, not of a sacred character, which Bach has left. To these songs
Bach probably furnished words as well as music; and one of them, the
“Willst du dein Herz mir schenken,” was inspired by his love for her
in the days of their brief courtship. Nearly all of them are filled
with true and tender devotion, none more so than that which asks the
question so happily answered by a lifetime of love,—the song of their
courtship, which brought them together in a bond of love too strong for
anything but death to sever. In this volume, written in figured basses,
her own handiwork appears, where she has filled in the chords; and his
corrections scattered through them leave an interesting and touching
souvenir of the great master, and the pupil who was to him the nearest
and dearest of all.
Bach died on the 28th of July, 1750, after long and keen suffering,
during the midst of which he did not cease work. Only a short time
before his death, he dictated his last work, “Wenn wir in höchsten
Nöthen sein,”—a choral born of his suffering and inspired by his
religion, a touching reflex of his own pitiable condition. He died
in his sleep, and no stone marks the spot in the Leipzig churchyard
where his body rests. The only record which is left is to be found in
the register of deaths, which thus affirms: “A man, age 67, M. Johann
Sebastian Bach, Musical Director and Singing-Master at the St. Thomas
School, was carried to his grave in the hearse, July 30, 1750.” His
widow survived him seven years, supporting herself as she best could
upon the scanty pension granted to cantors, and by the sale of her
husband’s manuscripts. She bore him thirteen children, but six of whom
survived their father’s death,—among them, Johann Christoph Friedrich,
born in 1732, known as the “Bückeburger Bach;” and Johann Christian,
born in 1735, who became famous as the “London Bach.” Only one
daughter, Regina Susanna, survived the mother, whose extreme poverty
aroused a widespread feeling of compassion, which took the form of a
public contribution in 1801, and becomes more than usually interesting,
as it allies the name of Beethoven with that of Bach. On the 19th of
May, 1801, Friedrich Rochlitz, one of Bach’s most zealous admirers, and
the editor of the Leipzig “Allgemeine Musikzeitung,” writes:—
“Our appeal for the support of the only survivor of the Bach family,
Sebastian Bach’s youngest daughter, has not been overlooked by the
public.... With deep emotion we received on the 10th of May, through
the Viennese musician, Herr Andreas Streicher, the considerable sum
of 307 Viennese florins, exchanged by the banker Löhr of this city
for 200 Reichthaler from the undersigned persons.
“The collection was made by the musician above mentioned, with
the assistance of Count Fries in Vienna.... At the same time the
celebrated Viennese composer and pianist, Herr von Beethoven,
volunteered to publish one of his newest works, through Messrs.
Breitkopf and Härtel, for the sole benefit of Bach’s daughter, that
the good old woman might from time to time derive benefits from
it, at the same time using all his efforts for the most speedy
publication possible, that she may not perchance die before this
object is attained.”
Destiny ordered kindly for Sebastian Bach in the arrangement of his
domestic life with reference to his musical creations. Notwithstanding
his immense and incessant labors, especially in connection with the
St. Thomas School and the Leipzig churches, the cares and troubles
naturally created by such a large family of children, and the small
compensation received for his work, his life ran smoothly, and the
grand monument he was erecting for posterity never suffered either
in its fair proportions or its complete form. At the outset of his
career, and before he entered upon the really great work of his life,
he needed for a companion a thrifty, prudent woman, of even disposition
and contented nature; and such a one he found in his cousin Maria
Barbara. After her death, and when his name had begun to be known as a
great organist and composer beyond mere local limits, he still needed
a thrifty and prudent and even-tempered woman, but, still more than
this, a woman who could sympathize with him, and encourage, assist,
and inspire him in his musical labors; and such a one he found in
Anna Magdalena. There can be no doubt that the second marriage was
the happier, although she was the wife of his prime, and the romance
of youth had faded away before the realities of life, with so many of
which Bach had to contend. How great that inspiration was his music
shows. It is doubly inscribed. First, like Haydn, he wrote upon his
scores his reverence to God,—S. D. G. (_Soli Deo Gloria_),—and then his
love for his wife.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
GEORGE FREDERICK HÄNDEL.
Remember Händel! who that was not born
Deaf as the dead to harmony, forgets,
Or can, the more than Homer of his age?
COWPER.
It is said by all his biographers that Händel was never a victim of
the tender passion, though many ladies paid homage to his genius
by laying siege to his heart. There was one love, however, in the
manifestation of which he was both ardent and constant; that was
his love for his mother. Händel’s father, George, had studied the
rude surgery of the time, with Christoph Oettinger, the town barber
of Halle, and eventually married his widow, Frau Anna Oettinger,
Feb. 20, 1643, and continued the business of his employer. Frau
Anna gave birth to six children, and died in 1682, at the advanced
age of seventy-two. In less than six months the bereaved husband
contracted a second marriage with Dorothea, daughter of Pastor Taust,
of Giebichenstein, who is described by Rochstro as “a lady equally
respected for the gentleness of her demeanor, her loving submission to
parental and conjugal authority, her earnest piety, and her reverence
for, and intimate acquaintance with, the text and teaching of the
Holy Scriptures,—qualities which were all faithfully reproduced in
the character of her children.” These children were a son who died
at birth; two daughters, Dorothea Sophie and Johanna Christiana; and
George Frederick, the subject of this sketch. Although the family was
not an artistic one in any sense,—indeed, the father was so averse
to music that he declared he would have no such “jingling” in the
house,—his childhood was a happy one. The old surgeon was resolutely
bent upon making a lawyer of his son; but as usual the maternal
instincts apprehended the true bent of the boy’s passion, and we may
well imagine that she found more than one way to encourage him, in
spite of the father’s opposition. The same authority quoted above says
he was “the fondest hope of a mother, to whose tender solicitude he
owed the training which, through all the trials and vicissitudes of a
long and more than ordinarily eventful life, kept him honest and just
and true, and secured him the respect of princes, and the affection of
all who were not blinded by jealousy to the splendor of his genius and
the depth of his moral worth.” She superintended his education, and
prepared him for his life-struggle with tender devotion, even stinting
herself, after his father’s death, to provide him with the means of
continuing his musical studies. Although it has been said of him,
by some of the earlier biographers, that his social affections were
not very strong, he was not lacking in filial piety. In June, 1725,
he writes a very cordial letter from London to his brother-in-law at
Halle, expressing his deep regret that he cannot spare time to visit
his mother. “I cannot be so ungrateful,” he says, “as to pass over in
silence the goodness you have shown to my mother in her advanced age,
for which I offer you my very humble thanks. You know how deeply I am
interested in all that concerns her, and can therefore judge the depth
of the obligation under which you have placed me.” He was always
loyal in his affection for her, and in his numerous journeys never
failed to find time to visit her. While in Venice in 1729, he received
a letter from his brother-in-law, informing him that his mother had
been seized with a paralytic attack. He hurried to Halle with all
possible despatch, and found her sufficiently recovered to be able to
walk about, though she had lost her sight and could only recognize
him by the pressure of the hand. The meeting was a very sorrowful one
to both, though mutual love lightened the pain. A year afterward she
died suddenly, while Händel was in London; and in the funeral oration
delivered over her grave, this love which had so strongly affected
their lives was particularly dwelt upon. In his reply to the letter
informing him of her death, Händel gives still another evidence of his
great love for the mother to whom he owed so much. He says:—
“I cannot yet restrain my tears. But it has pleased the Most High to
enable me to submit with Christian calmness to his holy will. Your
thoughtfulness will never pass from my remembrance until, after this
life, we are once more united, which may the All-good God in his
mercy grant us!”
The loving mother prepared him for his career, and upon its very
threshold he again experienced the beneficence of woman’s influence.
Friedrich, the Elector of Brandenburg, afterward King Friedrich I. of
Prussia, was a generous patron of arts. His consort, the Electress
Sophie Charlotte, who was subsequently styled the “Philosophic Queen,”
was not only a warm friend of artists, but was herself one of the
most accomplished musicians in Europe, and more than once occupied
the conductor’s desk in concerts and at operatic performances. The
Electoral palace was the favorite resort of artists from all parts of
Europe, and thither Händel was sent as a child. He was most kindly
received by the Electress. She was delighted with his performances,
introduced him to prominent artists who gave him many valuable
hints,—among them, Ariosti and Buononcini,—and at last offered to take
him into the service of the Court, send him free of expense to Italy to
complete his education, and upon his return to give him an important
position. His father, however, declined the offer. Hamburg meanwhile
was rapidly competing with Berlin as an art centre; and after the death
of the generous Electress, thither went Händel to continue his studies.
About this time an odd experience befell him, and all the more comical
when his aversion to matrimony is considered. Buxtehude, the veteran
organist at Lübeck, was about to retire from his position, and the
place was offered for competition. Händel, in company with Mattheson,
the principal tenor of the Hamburg Theatre, went to Lübeck to compete
for it. Mattheson himself relates their experiences:—
“We played on almost every organ and harpsichord in the place, and
with regard to our performances, agreed between ourselves that he
should play only upon the organ and I upon the harpsichord. We
listened also to the veteran performer, in the Marienkirche, with
deep attention. But because the question of succession involved also
that of a marriage contract, into which we neither of us had the
slightest desire to enter, we left the place, after receiving many
compliments, unusual honors, and very pleasant entertainment. Johann
Christian Schieferdecker afterward brought the affair to a more
satisfactory conclusion; accepted the bride, after the death of her
father, Buxtehude, in 1707, and obtained the coveted appointment.”
The royal ladies of the English Court were the devoted friends of
Händel. He had a handsome pension from the bounty of Queen Anne. When
George I. succeeded to the throne, he and the royal family were regular
attendants at the theatre whenever his operas were given. Eventually
the King added a second pension of £200 a year, and appointed him
music-master to the daughters of the Prince of Wales, afterward George
II., which brought him a third pension of £200 from the private purse
of the Princess, afterward Queen Caroline. Her death, in 1737, deprived
him of one of his most devoted friends. How deeply he was attached
to her is evidenced by the exquisitely beautiful anthem he wrote for
her funeral, “The Ways of Zion do mourn.” He gave lessons to all the
children of the royal family. The Princess Anne was devotedly attached
to him; and when she left England, her last act of kindness to him
was to commend him to the favor of Lord Harvey, a favorite of the
Queen. This royal favor must have been particularly grateful to him,
as it was bestowed at a time when his Italian rivals were organizing
cabals against him and seeking in every way to undermine and ruin him.
And yet, indebted as he was to them, he never restrained his temper
when they violated the proprieties. Schoelcher relates the following
incident:—
“At the concerts which he conducted for Frederick, Prince of Wales,
if the Prince and his wife were not punctual to the stated time, we
are told that the conductor used to be very violent; and the son of
George II.—to his great honor be it said—respected him too much to be
offended. If the ladies of the Princess talked instead of listening,
his rage was uncontrollable, and sometimes carried him to the length
of swearing and calling names, even in the presence of royalty;
whereupon the gentle Princess, who loved him much, would say to the
talkative ones: ‘Hush! hush! Händel is in a passion.’”
Another instance of his terrible temper is related by Rochstro:—
“At the first rehearsal of ‘Ottone,’ Francesca Cuzzoni flatly refused
to sing the lovely aria ‘Falsa immagine,’ which Händel had written
expressly for her. Said Händel: ‘I know, Madame, that you are a very
devil, but I will let you see that I am Beelzebub, the prince of
devils;’ and with that he seized her in his arms and threatened to
throw her out of the window, whereupon she yielded in terror to his
superior will, sang the song in exact accordance with his directions,
and achieved in it one of her most brilliant triumphs.”
In view of his success with refractory songstresses, one is disposed
to wish that the conductors of our own time had an equally healthy
discipline in the ranks of their capricious and moody _prime donne_.
Händel, as has already been said, was averse to matrimony. More than
this, he was not very social by nature and not at all domestic in his
habits. His complete devotion to his art, his impatience with whatever
crossed him, his hot temper, and the peculiar idiosyncrasies of his
nature illy fitted him to make any woman happy; hence it was fortunate
that he was never in love with any of the sex except his mother. In
his long and eventful career he was constantly associated with ladies,
and was much admired by them; but none of them touched his heart. It
is said by his biographers that he spent many of his afternoons at
the organ of St. Paul’s, in the midst of his admirers, and at night
resorted to the Queen’s Arms, a tavern near by, where he played the
harpsichord, smoked his pipe, and drank his beer. As he became more
absorbed in his compositions he cut loose from all society, and only
associated with three intimate friends, not one of whom had musical
tastes. His chief amusement was to visit exhibitions of pictures.
Hawkins says of him:—
“His social affections were not very strong, and to this it may be
imputed that he spent his whole life in celibacy. No impertinent
visits and few engagements to parties of pleasure were suffered to
interrupt the course of his studies.”
He had no passion except for music, and yet the opportunities for
the exercise of the all-engrossing passion were not lacking. While
he was in Italy, being then in his twenty-fourth year, the Prince of
Tuscany, brother of the Grand Duke John Gaston de Médicis, was present
at performances of his operas “Almeria” and “Florinda,” and was so
delighted with them that he gave him an invitation to go to Florence.
When the opportunity came he went there and brought out the opera of
“Roderigo,” written for the occasion, for which he was honored by the
Grand Duke with a present in money and a service of plate. It was
often the custom at that day for the ladies of the Courts to sing in
the works produced in the royal presence; and upon this occasion the
Archduchess Victoria, a beautiful woman, took the principal rôle.
Burney describes her as “a songstress of great talent.” She conceived
so violent a passion for him that she even followed him from Florence
to Venice, and literally demanded that he should marry her, after he
had manifested a repugnance to her approaches. The choleric Händel,
however, repelled her suit with disdain, and she gave up the chase.
His decision, or rather his indifference, fortunately saved him from
disastrous consequences, as the lady who had been so importunate was
the mistress of the Prince who had invited him to Florence.
The author of the “Anecdotes of Händel” also relates the following
incidents, in which he was a party of the second part:—
“When he was young, two of his scholars, ladies of considerable
fortune, were so much enamoured of him that each was desirous of
a matrimonial alliance. The first is said to have fallen a victim
to her attachment. Händel would have married her, but his pride
was stung by the coarse declaration of her mother, that she never
would consent to the marriage of her daughter with a fiddler; and,
indignant at the expression, he declined all further intercourse.
After the death of the mother the father renewed the acquaintance,
and informed him that all obstacles were removed, but he replied
that the time was now past; and the young lady fell into a decline,
which soon terminated her existence. The second attachment was a lady
splendidly related, whose hand he might have obtained by renouncing
his profession. That condition he resolutely refused, and laudably
declined the connection which was to prove a restriction on the great
faculties of his mind.”
It may be remarked that the first story does not comport with the
well-known character of Händel, and as it is not mentioned in any of
his biographies, may be set down as one of those popular romances
which attach to the careers of all geniuses. The second, however, is
characteristic of him, though it is to be regretted that the details
of his refusal are not given. It would be refreshing to know what the
irascible composer would have said to the proposition that he should
exchange his music for a wife. No woman touched him so nearly as to
affect his music; and yet, without his mother’s warm affection and
sympathy for him in his unartistic home, and her determination that
he should follow the course he had marked out for himself, he would
have lost many of his early advantages. Had it not been also for the
devoted friendship and generous support of good Queen Caroline and the
princesses of her Court, he would have fared badly, in England, at the
hands of his Italian rivals.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN.
He lived in the ideal world which Petrarch and Dante described,
and his passion took nothing from his austerity. Unable to marry,
he remained chaste; and he loved as purely as he wrote. He hated
licentious speech, and blamed the “Don Giovanni” of Mozart, because a
thing so holy as art should not so prostitute itself as to serve to
link together so scandalous a story.—M. TAINE.
Lenz says in one of his rhapsodies: “In the arts the animating or
life-giving element is furnished by the sentiment of love.” In music it
finds its highest and truest expression, and in no music more clearly
than in the immortal works of Beethoven. No other creation in tones has
done so much to dignify and ennoble love as his one opera, “Fidelio;”
no song has so expressed its beauty and its ardor as that most perfect
amatory lyric, the “Adelaide.” If the passion of love which is pictured
in these two works and in nearly all the others which he created,
whether song, sonata, or symphony, and the ardent aspiration as well
as profound self-abasement of religion which characterize the Second
Mass and clothe its measures with the divine presence, had been wanting
in his life, it is almost unquestionable that he would have yielded in
the bitter struggle with adverse circumstances, and that he would not
remain to-day as the one composer to whom all the world does homage.
No musician has ever so completely imbued his music with feeling,—that
feeling which implies sympathy with passion in all its heights and
depths, with the inner life of humanity, with the noblest forms of
emotion in man, and with the grandest aspects of Nature,—that feeling
which could not have existed without this great underlying principle of
love, joined with a naturally reverential and devotional habit of being.
Beethoven’s life was a battle with circumstances, commenced in his
boyhood, ending only on his death-bed, and fitly typified by the
fearful thunders and lightnings of the storm that raged about him in
his last moments. The dissipations of his father, a drunken musician,
cast a gloom over his earlier life. The drudgery and the misery of his
home fostered a misanthropic feeling. The want of general and liberal
culture which he might have had under more favorable circumstances
annoyed him all through life. In the midst of the corrupt society of
Vienna he had led a blameless career; but even this could not save
him from feeling the wretched effects of this corruption in his own
family. His nephew Karl was left to his care by his father; but to
secure the boy, whom he loved as if he were his son, he had to prove
that the mother was a dissolute woman. He abandoned his bachelor
habits, and commenced housekeeping on the boy’s account; he hoarded
up his money to educate him; he lavished his affection upon him; and
the graceless wretch requited it all by the most infamous career of
dissipation, making the uncle all the more suspicious and misanthropic.
From this point on, the story is one of the most pitiful kind. Painful
physical troubles set in one after the other, the most painful being
his deafness, which so increased upon him that in the latter years of
his life, during which he produced his greatest works,—the Mass in
D, the Choral Symphony, and the last sonatas and quartets,—he could
hear nothing. “_Miser et pauper sum_,” he writes in his journal at
this time. Over his sonata for violoncello, Op. 59, he writes, “_Inter
lacrymas et luctum_.” Where in all history is there a sadder wail of
despair, a more pitiable outburst of grief, than is to be found in
his utterance: “I have drunk to the dregs a cup of bitter sorrow, and
already earned martyrdom in art”? or in this extract from a letter to
his friend Wegeler:—
“How often have I cursed my existence! Plutarch has led me to
resignation. I will, if possible, set fate at defiance, although
there must be moments in my life when I shall be the most unhappy of
God’s creatures. I entreat you to say nothing of my affliction to any
one, not even to Lorchen.... Resignation! what a miserable refuge!
and yet it is my sole remaining one.”
In the midst of this life, in which this musical colossus was not only
struggling with painful physical ailments and severe mental troubles,
but was also annoyed with a swarm of petty household discomforts
brought upon himself by his love for his worthless nephew, there are
episodes upon which it is pleasant to dwell, growing out of his
relations to the other sex, of whom, most unquestionably, he was a
passionate though very diffusive admirer; and just as his inner life
developed more and more grandly, as his deafness compelled him to
retire within himself, and gave birth to his most sublime creations,
so the influence of woman, previous to this time, had aroused in him a
wonderful sense of beauty and depth of tenderness, which were helping
to prepare the way for the more majestic and enduring works which were
to crown the close of his remarkable career.
Beethoven’s earliest attachment was to the Breuning family in Bonn,
who were held in the highest esteem in that city. They were among his
earliest friends and protectors, and they clove to him to the last.
Frau von Breuning took a deep interest in him, and he regarded her in
the sacred light of a mother. Her son Stephen was one of his warmest
friends; likewise Eleanore, the daughter, who subsequently married Dr.
Wegeler, then his friend, and after his death his biographer. Some
writers, more particularly those of the Rau and “Furioso” class, who
have rhapsodized over the memory of a man in whose life there was not
a trace of romance, have sought to make it appear that Eleanore was
Beethoven’s first love; but there is nothing in his relations to her,
or in his correspondence with her or with the family, that indicates
any sentiment on his part except that of warm and exalted friendship.
After a year’s absence from the family, during which there had been an
estrangement between them, he writes to Eleanore from Vienna (Nov. 2,
1793):—
“Little as I may deserve favor in your eyes, believe me, my dear
_friend_ (let me still call you so), I have suffered and still suffer
severely from the privation of your friendship. Never can I forget
you and your dear mother.”
And with this letter he sends her, as a souvenir, his variations upon
the “Se vuol ballare” of Mozart. Nothing more ardent than expressions
of this kind appear in any of his letters to her. It was in the
Breuning house that he always found shelter from the misery and
squalor of his own home. It was through this family that he first made
acquaintance with German literature and the poets, whose creations
he so often set to music, and whose lofty and majestic spirit is so
clearly reflected in his larger works. All the members of the family
were musical, Frau von Breuning not the least so; and it was her
strong influence that kept him at work, and directed his genius in
the highest and best ways. She understood his eccentric moods, and
could make allowance for them. She knew when to urge him on to his
best endeavor, how to encourage him, and how to manage his restless,
wayward, and gloomy disposition. This woman, more than all others,
helped to lay the broad and strong foundation upon which Beethoven’s
fame now rests; and to her, more than to any other, should be due the
credit for the lofty position he holds in the world of music. He came
to her as a son would come to his mother for aid and counsel; and
she, better than all others, understood him. She foresaw his future,
because she recognized his genius; and she not only urged him on to the
accomplishment of its mission, but she helped to direct it in the right
course by supplying it with the noblest and most dignified examples of
art for study.
While there was no more ardent feeling than that of friendship in
the breast of Beethoven towards the Breuning family, there came one
day into the circle a friend of Eleanore’s who aroused the first
manifestation of love on his part. It was a sudden flame, suddenly
extinguished. The friend was Jeannette d’Honrath, a young lady of
Cologne, who was a frequent visitor at the Breuning house, a beautiful
blonde, a person of amiable disposition, a good singer, and a confirmed
coquette withal. She bestowed her favor so equally between Beethoven
and Stephen Breuning, and yet so deftly, that each believed himself
to be an accepted lover. She laid sportive siege to the infatuated
Beethoven with a well-known song of that day,—
“What! part with thee this very day?
My heart a thousand times says, Nay!”
And when he was away, the same song did good service for Stephen. Thus
each victim was enmeshed in the fair singer’s toils, unknown to the
other; and it was not until she had flitted away, with much feigned
regret, that the two luckless suitors discovered she was affianced
all this time to a young Austrian officer, Major Greth, whom she
afterward married, and who subsequently rose to the rank of general.
The fair Jeannette and her gallant husband passed away in due time,
and, like many other nobodies, have come down to posterity by virtue
of some slight connection with Beethoven. It is to be presumed that
neither Ludwig nor Stephen brooded long over their slight at the hands
of the Cologne beauty, since we find them not long afterward paying
assiduous court in the train of suitors and admirers that thronged
about Barbara Koch, the beauty of Bonn. Her mother, a widow, kept a
coffee-house which was the favorite resort of professors and students.
The fair Barbara herself was a very cultivated person, and she drew
about her those of like character; and in the pleasant evenings at the
coffee-house, art, philosophy, and music were discussed, all having
a direct bearing upon the future development of the young musician.
There is nothing to indicate that the acquaintance left any lasting
impression upon him; though he corresponded with her after he had left
Bonn, as we find, in a letter to Eleanore von Breuning, who was her
friend, his complaint that he had written twice to Barbara and she had
not answered, which may be accounted for by her marriage not long after
to Count Anton von Belderbusch, in whose family she had previously
served as governess.
Wegeler, his biographer, says of him, “Beethoven war immer in
Liebesverhältnissen;” and he himself said that he once loved the same
woman for seven whole months,—not a flippant remark, as would seem at
the first glance, but indicating a mood of his being which may well be
described in his own words:—
“I was born with a passionate and excitable temperament; I am keenly
susceptible to the pleasures of society; my heart and mind were, even
from childhood, prone to the most tender feelings of affection.”
With such a temperament, one may well fancy that the list of his
attachments was a long one; though the most of them were by no means
serious, since it was his fate as a rule to bestow them upon ladies
whose rank forbade any possibility of requital. These must be passed
over lightly, though in the case of some there is a degree of interest
attaching to them that warrants a detailed consideration. They were
nearly all his pupils. Among them was Mlle. de Gerardi, of whom we know
very little, who laid siege to the susceptible Beethoven in verse,
but without any more practical result than, as he says in a letter,
his serious annoyance. The young Baroness von Drossdich, a somewhat
volatile and eccentric person whom he addresses in his letters as “My
esteemed Thérèse,” was a favorite with him. In a letter written in
1809, he urges her not to forget her music, and mentions sending her
several of his compositions. Upon one occasion he paid her a visit at
Mödling, and, not finding her at home, tore a sheet of music-paper
from a book, wrote upon it some music for her, set to a verse of
Matthisson’s, and on the reverse dedicated it “To my dear Thérèse.” The
close of the letter to which I have referred clearly shows the strength
of his regard for her:—
“Farewell, my esteemed Thérèse. I wish you all the good and charm
that life can offer. Think of me kindly, and forget my follies. Rest
assured that no one would more rejoice to hear of your happiness,
even were you to feel no interest in your devoted servant and friend.”
After his rupture with Thérèse, another intimate affection consoled
him for her absence. In 1811 his pecuniary troubles and physical
ailments influenced him to quit Vienna for a time. His first thought
was to go to Italy; but by the advice of his physicians he changed his
intentions, and selected Teplitz, the little Bohemian town, where two
years later the King of Prussia and the Emperors of Austria and Russia
signed the treaty of the Holy Alliance. It was always a favorite resort
with artists and the aristocracy. In the select society to which
he had the _entrée_ he met many old acquaintances and made some new
ones,—among them, the poet Tiedge. There was one, however, who made a
deeper impression than all the rest. It was Amelia de Sebald, a young
and beautiful concert-singer, who cultivated music as an amateur, but
had, it is said, a very sympathetic voice and genuine talent. When the
fair singer left Teplitz, the master first became aware of the real
impression she had made upon him, and in a letter to Tiedge he thus
unbosoms himself:—
“Two affectionate words for a farewell would have sufficed me; alas!
not even one was said to me! The Countess von der Recke sends me a
pressure of the hand; it is something, and I kiss her hands as a
token of gratitude; but Amelia has not even saluted me. Every day I
am angry at myself in not having profited by her sojourn at Teplitz,
seeking her companionship sooner. It is a frightful thing to make the
acquaintance of such a sweet creature, and to lose her immediately;
and nothing is more insupportable than thus to have to confess one’s
own foolishness. I propose to remain here until the end of the
month of September. Write me as to how long you reckon to remain in
Dresden; it is not impossible that I may take a run to the Saxon
metropolis.... Be happy, if suffering humanity can be. Give, on my
part, to the Countess a cordial but respectful pressure of the hand,
and to Amelia a tender kiss—if nobody there can see.”
The next year Beethoven again visited Teplitz, with the hope of seeing
her; but the fair vision had vanished. His only consolation, if
consolation it can be called, was the opportunity it gave him of making
the acquaintance of Goethe. Except in so far as this acquaintance led
to the friendship between himself and the wonderful child Bettina,
of which more hereafter, his relations to the great poet were of no
special value to him. Goethe had too little music in his composition
to appreciate him at his true value, and he was too much of a
king-worshipper to suit such a red republican as Beethoven.
The Baroness Dorothea Van Ertmann was another titled pupil whom he held
in affectionate esteem, who inspired his wonderful sonata, Op. 101, and
who was afterward a warm friend of Mendelssohn. She was the wife of an
Austrian captain at eighteen, who died subsequently as a field-marshal
at Milan. She commenced her musical studies at a very early age, and
made the acquaintance of Beethoven by chance, while playing some of his
sonatas for the first time. He accidentally overheard her, and was so
captivated with her style that he offered to teach her, and soon became
a daily visitor at her house. As a teacher he was severe with her; as a
friend, affectionate; and when she had lost the last of her children,
he shared her grief and gave expression to it by extemporizing upon
the piano in her apartments for her. It is said that when he ended his
fantasie, her eyes were filled with tears so that she could not speak
to him. Among others who captivated him during his orchestral career in
Bonn, was a fair and brilliant singer, Magdalena Willmann, filling at
that time an engagement in the Court Opera at Vienna, to whom, it is
intimated, he offered his hand in marriage. It would appear that his
offer was a serious one; but the repulse was prompt and merciless, the
great songstress, afterward Mrs. Galvani, declaring that she rejected
him because he was “so ugly and half cracked.”
Mlle. Marie Koschak, who subsequently married Dr. Pachler, an
advocate in Gratz, a very beautiful woman, and an amateur musician of
extraordinary merit, inspired in Beethoven a glow warmer than that of
friendship, or even affection. In one of his letters he writes:—
“Love alone, yes, love alone, can make your life happier. O God!
grant that I may at last find her who can strengthen me in virtue,
whom I can legitimately call my own. On July 27, 1812, when she drove
past me in Baden, she seemed to gaze at me.”
“She” was Marie Koschak. It was an unhappy love. In 1816 he writes to
Ries:—
“My kind regards to your wife. I, alas! have none. One, alone, I
wished to possess but never shall I call her mine.”
In this connection a statement made in the “Grenzboten,” by Fraulein
del Rio, of a conversation between her father and Beethoven, confirms
the unhappiness of his attachment for the beautiful Marie. She writes:—
“My father’s idea was that marriage alone could remedy the sad
condition of Beethoven’s household matters; so he asked him whether
he knew any one, etc. Our long existing presentiment was then
realized. His love was unfortunate. Five years ago he had become
acquainted with a person with whom he would have esteemed it the
highest felicity of his life to have entered into closer ties; but it
was vain to think of it, being almost an impossibility, a chimera;
and yet his feelings remained the same as on the very first day he
had seen her. He added that never before had he found such harmony;
but no declaration had ever been made, not being able to prevail upon
himself to do so.”
Marie Pachler and her husband were also friends of Franz Schubert, and
to her he dedicated a number of his songs as a token of his esteem and
friendship. It is touching to think that Beethoven, who had never made
the acquaintance of Schubert, though living near him, did not really
appreciate or recognize the beauty of his music until he was on his
death-bed, when the songs dedicated to Marie were handed to him. He
examined them, and exclaimed, “Truly, Schubert is animated by a spark
of the sacred fire!” One year later Schubert passed away, almost his
last words being the expression of a desire to be buried by the side of
Beethoven. And now the world’s greatest musician and Germany’s greatest
song-writer, strangers in life, sleep side by side.
There were two other attachments of Beethoven’s which unquestionably
exercised a strong influence upon his creative power. The first of
these was for Bettina von Arnim, _née_ Brentano, the wonderful child
whom Goethe has immortalized no less than Beethoven. She it was
who brought these two giants together. She keenly and thoroughly
appreciated and understood the great master; and to her he explained,
not only his own music, but all music, with an enthusiasm of manner,
as well as closeness of analysis, that have never been excelled. One
cannot read that extraordinary letter written by Bettina to Goethe,
in which she prepares the way for a meeting between them, without
feeling how closely Beethoven penetrated to the very soul of music,
and how sacred his art was to him. The real meaning and character of
music are better set forth in the few lines of this letter than in
many volumes that have been written. Bettina, with a genius akin to
that of Beethoven’s, clearly comprehended him, and laid his very soul
before Goethe with her glowing and enthusiastic eloquence, so that he
was ready to embrace it, though the difference between the spiritual
nature of the composer and the sensual nature of the poet was a radical
one. Beethoven’s attachment to Bettina was purely Platonic, and yet it
was strong. His three celebrated letters to her furnish proofs of its
strength, and equal proofs of the great influence she exerted upon him.
On the 11th of August, 1810, he writes to her:—
“Art! Who comprehends it? With whom can I discuss this mighty
goddess? How precious to me were the few days when we talked
together, or, I should rather say, corresponded! I have carefully
preserved the little notes with your clever, charming, most charming
answers; so I have to thank my defective hearing for the greater part
of our fugitive intercourse being written down. Since you left I have
had some unhappy hours,—hours of the deepest gloom, when I could do
nothing. I wandered for three hours in the Schönbrunn Allée after you
left us; but no angel met me there to take possession of me as you
did.”
In 1811, about the time she was married, he writes:—
“I carried your letter about with me the whole summer, and it often
made me feel very happy. Though I do not frequently write to you,
and you never see me, still I write you letters by thousands in my
thoughts. I can easily imagine what you feel at Berlin in witnessing
all the noxious frivolity of the world’s rabble, even had you not
written it to me yourself. Such prating about art, and yet no
results!”
In still another letter, written to her a year later, he bears direct
testimony to her power over his musical creative ability:—
“Heavens! if I could have lived with you as _he_ [Goethe] did,
believe me, I should have produced far greater things. A musician is
also a poet; he, too, can feel himself transported into a brighter
world by a pair of fine eyes, where loftier spirits sport with him
and impose heavy tasks upon him. What thoughts rushed into my mind
when I first saw you in the observatory, during a refreshing May
shower, so fertilizing to me also! The most beautiful themes stole
from your eyes into my heart, which shall yet enchant the world when
Beethoven no longer directs.”
Elsewhere in the same letter he says:—
“Spirits may love one another, and I shall ever woo yours. Your
approval is dearer to me than all else in the world.”
The second attachment was for the beautiful Countess Guiletta
Guiccardi,—one of his pupils, around whom popular fancies of all sorts
have clustered, and several writers have woven very pretty romances.
Mr. Thayer, in his biography, has done much to divest this attachment
of its romance with his merciless dates and hard facts; but so long
as it has probability on its side, and it has been believed for years
without question, even as it was during his own life, let us still
believe that she was the “Immortal Beloved” to whom he addressed such
passionate letters, and of whom he writes to Wegeler:—
“I am leading a more agreeable and less misanthropic life. This
change has been wrought by a lovely, fascinating girl who loves me,
and whom I love. It is the first time I ever felt that marriage could
make me happy. Unluckily, she is not in my rank in life; and indeed
at this moment I can marry no one.”
His feelings towards her admit of no question, as the following extract
from one of the letters will show, which, Mr. Thayer to the contrary
notwithstanding, we will assume was written to the Countess:—
“MY ANGEL, MY ALL, MY SELF,—A few words only to-day in pencil—your
pencil [_mit Deinem_, the _Du_ being used throughout the original]:
only till to-morrow is my lodging fixed; what miserable waste of
time! Why this deep grief when necessity speaks? Can our love exist
except by sacrifice, by not demanding all? Can you help not being
quite mine, I not quite yours? Ah, God! look into beautiful Nature,
and calm your mind over what must be. Love demands all, and justly;
so it is from me to you, from you to me; only you forget too often
that I must live for myself and for you. If we were quite united, you
would feel this grief no more than I.... My journey was terrible;
I did not arrive till four in the morning: for want of sufficient
horses the mail-coach chose a different route; and what a terrible
road! At the last station they warned me not to travel at night,
and frightened me with a wood; but that only tempted me, and I was
wrong. The carriage could not but collapse in the terrible road,
bottomless, a mere country road; but for my postilions I should have
stuck there.... Now quickly from the external to the internal. We
shall probably see one another soon; and to-day I cannot tell you
the thoughts I had regarding my life during these few days. Were our
hearts but always close together, I should have none such. My heart
is full: I have much to say to you. Oh! there are moments when I
find that language is nothing. Be cheerful; remain my faithful sole
treasure, my all, as I am yours; the rest the gods must send, what
shall be and must be.
Your faithful
LUDWIG.
Incoherent eloquence; but could there be a surer proof of love than
its very incoherence? When Beethoven first knew the Countess, she
was a lovely girl of seventeen, his pupil, and an excellent musician
as well as a skilful linguist. She was possessed of every quality to
attract him,—exquisite personal beauty, rare intellectual ability,
irreproachable character, and withal was proud of his admiration,
or rather adoration, of her. Beethoven then was twice her age; but
disparity in years did not occur to him as an obstacle to their union,
any more than disparity in rank, though he afterward discovered the
effectual bar in the latter. There is every reason to believe that he
offered her his hand, and that she would have accepted it had it not
been for her father’s opposition. She yielded to his remonstrances,
and, at his solicitation, two years later married Count Gallenberg,
an impresario and very prolific writer of very poor dance-music.
The affair, therefore, was mortifying to Beethoven in a double
sense,—first, that he should have been rejected at all; and, second,
that he should have been rejected in favor of such an insignificant
rival. It is said that upon her refusal he fled to the villa of her
friend, the Countess Erdödy, then disappeared for two days, and was
eventually found, exhausted with exposure and fasting, in a distant
part of her grounds. Certain it is that he never entirely recovered
from the pain and mortification of the rejection. He always spoke of
her with tenderness; and nearly twenty years after, in a conversation
with Schindler, alluded to his discomfiture with a sort of subdued
bitterness. Of her influence upon him in his music there remains no
question. If no other proof were at hand, the exquisite C sharp minor
sonata, so familiarly known as the “Moonlight,” which she inspired,
and which he dedicated to her, would be sufficient testimony, in its
wealth of beauty, tenderness, and passion, to the magic power of this
woman’s love over him. It is not unfair to assume that all he wrote
during this period was made brighter, purer, and more majestic by her
memory. Lost from his home and his heart, she shone resplendent in his
music.
The instances I have cited—and to these many others might be added—show
that Dr. Wegeler was correct when he said that Beethoven was always in
love. Though fixed and grounded in every other habit of life, in love
his nature was contradictory. In this long list of attachments there
were but two that made a deep impression upon him. In the other cases
he flitted from flower to flower, making butterfly pauses at each. His
world was always an ideal one: ardent he may have been, but his passion
was none the less austere. Surrounded with corruption, he led a life
of absolute purity. Love to him was a light which illumines, not a
flame that burns. He found more pleasure in the society of women than
of men; and if his energetic, impulsive nature suggested exaggerated
feelings, it is very sure that they soon found their sentimental level
in his cooler moments. His letters, which at first glance seem imbued
with passion, when viewed from this stand-point are only expressions of
aspiration rather than of desire. If there were no other proof of this,
his purity and nobility of character forbid any doubt. If one wishes
to know how these attachments affected him in his music, it is only
necessary to look at the long list of his dedications, and remember
that almost every one of them sprang from the relations of friendship
and love. The very soul of Beethoven’s music is love in its varying
forms. His love for humanity rings out in the vocal finale of the Ninth
Symphony:—
“Seid umschlungen Millionen
Diesen Kuss der ganzen Welt.”
His love of freedom burns in the “Eroica.” His love of God shines
resplendent and majestic in the immortal measures of the Second
Mass. His love of art is shown by the remorseless manner in which he
pressed the thorns of life into his own heart,—this Titan doing battle
with Fate, and winning immortality; and all along the fields of this
struggle are scattered the roses of woman’s love.
[Illustration]
FRANCIS JOSEPH HAYDN.
Sir, if you and I were both melted down together, we should not
furnish materials for one Haydn.—MOZART.
“Papa” Haydn—not only the father of the symphony and quartet, but
father to the musical world by the grace of his unaffected, naïve,
fresh, and smoothly flowing numbers, so full of cheerfulness and
good-nature—has been endeared to all musicians since his time by this
familiar and affectionate prefix; but the homely family word is a
strange misnomer when one considers his domestic relations and their
influence upon his music.
Haydn commenced his musical career as a chorister in Vienna, having a
voice of great power and beauty. In the midst of his success, however,
as a vocalist, one disappointment after another overtook him; and,
to crown all, he finally lost his voice, and was discharged from his
position besides, upon some trivial pretence, to make room for another
with greater vocal ability, and that other his own brother Michael. In
his twentieth year he was thrown out upon the world without friends and
without money, but, fortunately for him, with a very happy and hopeful
temperament. He soon procured a few pupils, borrowed some money,
rented a garret of an old stocking-weaver,—attracted by his sign, “A
poor person can find a sleeping-room in the attic very cheap,”—devoted
himself to composition, made the acquaintance of musicians, and
at last had the good luck to be selected as musical director and
chamber composer to a Bohemian count. This yielded him a good salary
for those days, and he thereupon began to think of marriage. He was
of an excitable, impulsive temperament, and withal susceptible to
female blandishments, and consequently was in a condition to accept
whatever chance might throw in his way. The stocking-weaver had an only
daughter, Mary, a young girl of lovely character and pious disposition,
whose admiration of Haydn’s musical talent soon developed into love for
him. There is little doubt but that the affection was reciprocated.
Haydn was struggling at this time, however, between two strong
passions,—love, on the one hand, and his mother’s ardent desire that he
should become a monk, on the other. The latter was the stronger; and
he soon entered the Servite monastery as a novice, where he devoted
himself to the pursuit of his art with the greatest industry. The
stocking-weaver’s daughter made no complaint when she found herself
forgotten and saw that her love was hopeless. She died not long
afterward; and among her last words to her parents were these: “Father
and mother, you must pray for Joseph as long as you live; for he is a
rare gift of God to men, and he will one day be a great man, but he
will always remain humble. The world will applaud him, but he will not
become unfaithful to his God on that account. He should not weep for
me, but sing a hymn at night when he sits all alone at his instrument.”
Upon learning of her death, Haydn visited the parents, sympathized with
them, and provided them with the money to procure her a befitting grave.
Haydn did not remain long in the monastery. He had not the monastic
disposition, though he was a man of very simple and childlike piety.
He could not seclude himself from a world in which he felt that he
was destined to achieve a great name, nor abandon the profession of
music, whose claims upon him were growing stronger and stronger. He
was hardly out in the world again before another opportunity for
marriage presented itself. Without any unnecessary delay he accepted
it, and regretted it all the rest of his life. He was introduced
into the family of a hair-dresser and wig-maker, named Keller, who
was of a sufficiently musical turn to appreciate his talent. He had
two daughters whose education was giving him much trouble, and was
delighted when Haydn consented to give them musical instruction. The
old wig-maker, having gained this point, took another step ahead, made
the most desperate arguments to convince him he ought to love some
one, and finally offered him the youngest daughter in marriage, who
would have made him an excellent wife. Haydn, however, with the usual
perversity of lovers, wanted the other, whereupon the disappointed
younger sister retired to a convent. Not a whit discouraged, the
wig-maker baited his hook with the other daughter, and easily caught
the susceptible Haydn. Never was there a more ill-assorted match. The
bride soon displayed herself as a scold and shrew of most ungovernable
temper. She had no sympathy with his musical ambition, and no pride
in his compositions. He himself said of her that she did not care
whether he were an artist or a shoemaker. Long before the honeymoon
was over, poor Haydn found himself tied to a Xanthippe, who when she
was not utterly unsociable, which probably were his happiest moments,
amused herself with curtain lectures of the most vigorous description.
And yet, oddly enough, the termagant influenced his music in a very
curious manner, and one not peculiarly agreeable to him. Added to all
her other disagreeable qualities, she was a religious bigot and prude,
with a decided _penchant_ for entertaining priests and monks. She
kept the house full of them; and they, realizing his genius, induced
her to make him write sacred music. To the religious admonition and
argument which she brought to bear upon him, she also added her own
personal commands and objurgations; and Haydn, being already under good
family discipline, could not do otherwise than submit; so, while the
fat fathers were revelling below stairs in carnal enjoyments, “Papa”
Haydn above stairs was writing anthems, motets, and masses for their
convents and churches, for which he received no remuneration. One can
easily imagine the wrath and imprecations he must have hurled at the
prude and her roystering companions, as the sounds of their revelry
smote upon his ears, and how little of the “Laus Deo” there was in his
heart as his fingers penned the scores that were to be sung upon the
following Sabbath. Gradually this kind of life became unendurable, and
he sought elsewhere the happiness which he could not find at home.
Fate, however, was kind to him, and brought him speedy release. The
Capellmeister of the reigning prince, Paul Esterhazy, as devoted to
music, even, as the present King of Bavaria, was growing old; and the
Prince applied to Haydn to fill the position of second Capellmeister.
Haydn joyfully accepted it, all the more so as it was an unwritten law
of the musical Count that musicians’ wives could not accompany them.
It was a happy day for “Papa” Haydn. He not only secured a lucrative
and important position, but, what was still better, a permanent release
from domestic torture. It was a lasting separation from his wife; but
he always acted honorably by granting her an annual stipend for her
support. Whenever they met the meeting was sure to be a stormy one, and
always on the subject of money. She was a spendthrift, and not only
wasted half his earnings, which he always sent her, but contracted
debts in his name, knowing he would pay them rather than have trouble.
Year by year she grew more extravagant; but at last death put an end to
her demands upon him. When the old Capellmeister died, he was appointed
to his place, and had full control of the Prince’s musical household,
which consisted not only of an excellent orchestra, but also of a large
chorus and corps of solo singers; so that he was enabled to bring out
large works, and the symphonies and operas of his own composition.
Besides these forces, he had travelling companies and _virtuosi_, and
an elegant theatre, at his disposal. Musically he had everything that
heart could wish; and in this musical atmosphere he composed nearly all
his operas and most of his songs, besides some of his most important
instrumental works. The place of his wife was very happily, but not
very honorably, filled by Luigia Polzelli, a vocalist in the chapel,
and wife of Anton Polzelli, a violinist in his orchestra. The lady was
an Italian by birth, and an ordinary singer, but possessed of personal
charms that commended her to him, and resulted in a _liaison_, at first
very agreeable, but ultimately subjecting him to almost as much trouble
as he had had with his wife, since the Roman woman made constant use
of his violent passion for her to extort money from him. She had two
children, one of whom was popularly supposed to be his son. There is no
record that the Polzelli was of any benefit to him musically; certainly
she was not morally.
There were those, however, who exercised a great and lasting influence
upon his musical production; and among them was Madame Genzinger, the
wife of a prominent physician in Vienna, at whose house he spent much
of his time, and for whom he wrote several symphonies and a large
number of sonatas. His correspondence with her was very voluminous;
and it bears almost constant testimony to the powerful influence she
exerted upon him, both during his service under Prince Esterhazy and
after he had quit that service. Her husband was the physician in
ordinary to that Prince, and it was thus he became acquainted with
the family. He visited the house every Sunday; and as the lady was a
fine singer and an admirable musician, whose home was the centre of
attraction for all the musicians in Vienna, he soon became an honored
guest; and the acquaintance which was based upon music soon ripened
into a lasting and honorable friendship, though the lady was by many
years his senior. It is a bright spot to contemplate in the unhappy
and not altogether blameless life of Haydn. Turn to almost any letter
in their long correspondence, and it will be found to testify to her
influence over him. At one time he writes:—
“I cannot but admire the trouble and patience you lavish on my poor
talents; and allow me to assure you in return, that in my frequent
evil moods nothing cheers me so much as the flattering conviction
that I am kindly remembered by you.”
At another time he writes:—
“Well, here I sit in my wilderness; forsaken like some poor orphan,
almost without human society; melancholy, dwelling on the memory of
past glorious days. Yes, past, alas! And who can tell when those
happy hours may return,—those charming meetings where the whole
circle have but one heart and one soul,—all those delightful musical
evenings which can only be remembered and not described? Where are
all those inspired moments?”
In the same letter he playfully laments the loss of the good things at
Madame Genzinger’s home, in the following humorously lugubrious strain:—
“I found everything at home in confusion. For three days I did not
know whether I was _capell_ master or _capell_ servant; nothing could
console me. My apartments were all in confusion; my pianoforte, that
I formerly loved so dearly, was perverse and disobedient, and rather
irritated than soothed me. I slept very little, and even my dreams
persecuted me; for while asleep, I was under the pleasant delusion
that I was listening to the opera of ‘Le Nozze di Figaro,’ when the
blustering north-wind woke me, and almost blew my nightcap off my
head. I lost twenty pounds in weight in three days; for the effects
of my good fare in Vienna disappeared on the journey. ‘Alas! alas!’
thought I to myself, when forced to eat, at the restaurateur’s,
instead of capital beef a slice of a cow fifty years old; instead of
a ragout with little balls of forced meat, an old sheep with yellow
carrots; instead of a Bohemian pheasant, a tough grill; and instead
of good and juicy oranges, Hungarian salad; instead of pastry, dry
apple-fritters, and hazel-nuts, etc. ‘Alas! alas!’ thought I again
to myself, ‘would that I now had many a morsel that I despised in
Vienna!’ Here in Estoras, no one asks me, ‘Would you like some
chocolate, with milk or without? Will you take some coffee, with or
without cream? What can I offer you, my good Haydn? Will you have
vanilla ice or pineapple?’ If I had only a piece of good Parmesan
cheese, particularly in Lent, to enable me to swallow more easily
the black dumplings and puffs! I gave our porter this very day a
commission to send me a couple of pounds.”
After Haydn had left Vienna and gone to London, under the management
of Salomon, to give concerts, he continued his correspondence, and
constantly expresses his obligations to her, besides sending her many
of his compositions written expressly for her. During his London
visit, where his concerts were all the rage, he made many female
friends,—among them, Madame Bartolozzi, the wife of the celebrated
engraver, for whom he wrote three piano trios and a sonata; the wife
of John Hunter, a celebrated surgeon of that time, who wrote the
words for many of his canzonets; Mrs. Hodges, whom he describes as
“the loveliest woman I ever saw, and a fine piano-player,” for whom
he wrote many pieces; and, lastly, a lady named Schrolter, widow of
the Queen’s music-master, who conceived a violent passion for him,
which was reciprocated, though he was then sixty years of age and she
still older. Referring to her afterward, in connection with some of
her letters to him, he said: “These are from an English widow who fell
in love with me. She was a very attractive woman, and still handsome
though over sixty; and had I been free, I should certainly have married
her.” For her he wrote three of his best trios. Of all his numerous
female acquaintances, however, not one exercised such an influence
upon him musically as Madame Genzinger, for whom his friendship was
honorable. We owe much of his music to his wife; but the savage and
truculent manner in which she inspired him was not conducive to the
best work of his genius. To Madame Genzinger’s exalted friendship
and noble influence we must assign his best instrumental pieces; and
who shall say that his two greatest works, the “Creation” and the
“Seasons,” written in his old age, when the passions had cooled and the
dross of life had been swept away, when, as he himself says, “I knelt
down every day, and prayed God to strengthen me for my work,” may not
also be attributable to the same inspiring influence?
[Illustration]
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART.
He was a man whose mission in the world seems to have been entirely
fulfilled; to whom it was given to link together the godlike with
humanity, the mortal with the immortal,—a man whose footprints not
all the storms of time can ever efface,—a man who, amid all his
lofty aims, esteemed the loftiest of all to be the elevation of
humanity.—NOHL.
There were but two women who strongly influenced Mozart in his
music,—his wife Constance and her sister Aloysia. When in Munich
seeking the patronage of the Elector, and while yet a lad, he attended
the German opera, and was much smitten with the voice and personal
charms of Mlle. Keiserin, the _prima donna_, a _débutante_, who was
singing in a work called “Das Fischer Mädchen,” adapted from Piccini.
It was only a boyish fancy, however, and resulted in nothing more
serious than some gushing letters to his father about her; referring
to which, several months later, he says, “I must confess that I was
an ass to write such a complete falsehood.” His heart was at one time
lightly touched by his cousin Marianne, whom he visited at Augsburg;
but it ended in a sportive mood between them, and, long after his
departure, in many of his most rollicking, frolicsome letters, full of
jest and banter, he alludes to it.
On the 30th of October, 1777, young Mozart arrived at Mannheim. The day
after his arrival he visited at the house of M. Cannabich, the director
of the Elector’s orchestra. He went there many times afterward, for
the director’s daughter Rose became his pupil. She was a sprightly,
beautiful, amiable girl; and a strong attachment sprang up between
them, with music, however, rather than love, for its basis. Painters
and poets afterward raved over her; but Mozart never was seriously
touched except in admiration of her beauty, and by the strong musical
sympathy between them, which led to his writing the B flat sonata for
her, the _andante_ movement of which he marked _amoroso_. It was a
favorite movement with both. What story of passion it may have told her
can be imagined. He at least never cared much for the response. His
fate was yet to come, but it came very speedily.
About this time he made the acquaintance of M. Weber, an uncle of the
composer of “Der Freischütz,” who was a prompter and music-copyist. He
was an honorable and open-hearted but poor man, with a wife and six
children depending upon him for support. The second daughter, Aloysia,
a girl of fifteen, had a remarkably beautiful voice, and Mozart offered
to instruct her. The offer was accepted, and master and pupil soon
became lover and mistress. His own letters tell the story of this
ill-fated love so completely that we do not need to look elsewhere for
it. On the 17th of January, 1778, he first speaks of her in a letter to
his father, and says:—
“She sings admirably, and has a lovely, pure voice. She is only
fifteen. She fails in nothing but in stage action; were it not for
that, she might be the _prima donna_ of any theatre.... My aria
for ‘De Amicis’ she sings to perfection, with all its tremendous
passages.”
Two weeks later he writes again, but only to inform his father that
she had been singing with him at Kirchheim-Boland, the residence of
the Princess of Orange. Meanwhile the two lovers are forming all kinds
of impracticable plans,—among them, one to travel together. With that
strong sense of filial duty which always characterized Mozart, he laid
the plan before his father. He had never expressed even a suggestion
of his love for Aloysia to him; but the father surmised it, and
disapproved of the plan to travel. He now grows bolder in his letters,
and makes no secret of his warm admiration of her, and strives also
to induce his father to take an interest in her musical abilities. He
wrote arias for her full of passion and feeling; and as she sang them
to him with all the beauty and richness of her voice, there can be
little doubt that the songs went to their hearts, and that they fully
believed in the reality of their love for each other, never dreaming
how soon the illusion would vanish. About the middle of March (1778)
he went with his mother to Paris. The parting with Aloysia was a sad
one: Weber wept, Aloysia wept; and Mozart writes his father: “Pray,
forgive me, but really tears come to my eyes when I think of it;” from
which we may infer that he himself also did a generous share of the
weeping as he bade adieu to the Webers. In Paris, music occupied his
attention; and concerts which he attended, and at which he played,
tempered the sorrows of separation, and, we may well believe, allayed
the rankling of the stings which his father’s satirical allusions to
his love-affair had left. Work is the universal panacea, but he by no
means forgot Aloysia. He had in his mind the idea of a speedy marriage
with her; and he writes to his father, July 31, intimating that he
would like to leave Paris and return to Mannheim, where Aloysia was
struggling against the cabals of jealous singers who were striving to
prevent her from getting an engagement in the Court concerts at Munich.
Little he dreamed of the fate that was to await him when he should see
her again. Three months later Aloysia secured the coveted situation
in that city; and Mozart immediately decided to seek an appointment
there, that he might be near her. In December we find him in Munich,
where he experienced the second painful shock of his life, the first
being the death of his mother during their Paris visit. Aloysia was
faithless to him. The blow came upon him like a thunder-stroke. She
hardly recognized him when he met her; whereupon he went to the piano
and sang a song of unconcern, with his heart full of tears. She had
met an actor named Lange at the house of the Princess of Orange, was
captivated with his appearance, and subsequently married him. Time was
kind to the one, and cruel to the other. It healed Mozart’s wounds,
and brought him one who was the soul of honor and constancy. After
Aloysia’s marriage he could calmly write to his father: “I was a great
fool about Madame Lange. I own it; but what is a man not when he is
in love?” The handsome actor whom Aloysia had married was a drunken,
dissipated wretch, who went from bad to worse, until at last she had to
separate from him. She continued her profession in Vienna, and in 1782
appeared in Mozart’s “Die Entführung.” Nohl says:—
“Neither happiness nor riches brightened Aloysia’s path in life,
nor the peace of mind arising from the consciousness of purity of
heart. Not till she was an aged woman, and Mozart long dead, did she
recognize what he really had been. She liked to talk about him and
his friendship; and in thus recalling the brightest memories of her
youth some of that lovable charm seemed to revive that Mozart had
imparted to her and to all with whom he had any intercourse.”
There is every reason to believe that on the day Mozart lost Aloysia
he gained her sister Constance; because there is no question that the
calm, quiet, domestic sister not only more thoroughly appreciated and
understood him, but had long nourished a strong though unuttered love
for him. She was the one whom he needed, the one whom fate had marked
out for him. She was quiet and restful in temperament, domestic in
nature, and patient, docile, and sweet in disposition. She was very
fond of music; and though not possessed of the brilliant powers of her
sister, she was still a singer of good taste and excellent voice, and
had a deeper insight into music than Aloysia. Joined to a rare tact in
managing household affairs, she had the influence necessary to assist
and inspire him in composition. She first appears in his letters May
25, 1781, only a few months after the separation from Aloysia, who was
now Madame Lange. She finishes a letter to his father, which business
engagements had prevented him from closing, and only writes a few
formal words regarding Mozart’s concerts. On the 25th of July of the
same year we find his first serious allusions to Constance, and these
are not very encouraging. He writes to his father that he is going to
leave the Webers because people are beginning to gossip. He says:—
“We went together twice to the Prater; but her mother was with us,
and as I chanced to be in the house I could not well refuse to
accompany them; besides, at that time I had heard none of these
foolish rumors. I must also tell you that I was only allowed to pay
my own share; and the mother, having since then heard these reports
from others as well as from myself, does not wish us to go anywhere
together, and herself advised me to remove to another house in order
to avoid any further unpleasantness.... I will not say that, living
in the same house with the young lady to whom people have married
me, I am ill-bred, and do not speak to her; but I am not in love
with her. I banter and jest with her when time permits, but nothing
more. If I were obliged to marry all those with whom I have jested, I
should have at least two hundred wives.”
Jesting saved him from one hundred and ninety-nine misfortunes,
perhaps; but there was one whose strong, steady, deep love turned the
edge of all his sportive jests, changed his frolicsome humor into
serious feeling, and at last gave him home and happiness. How soon jest
was turned into reality Mozart himself tells us; for in less than six
months he writes to his father, announcing his love for her, and asking
his consent to his marriage. The letter is an interesting one, as he
draws a picture of his affianced:—
“But now who is the object of my love? Do not be startled, I entreat.
Not one of the Webers, surely? Yes, one of the Webers,—not Josepha,
not Sophie, but the third daughter, Constance. I never met with such
diversity of disposition in any family. The eldest is idle, coarse,
and deceitful,—crafty and cunning as a fox. Madame Lange (Aloysia)
is false and unprincipled, and a coquette. The youngest is still too
childish to have her character defined; she is merely a good-humored,
frivolous girl,—may God guard her from temptation! The third,
however, namely, my good and beloved Constance, is the martyr of the
family, and probably on this very account the kindest-hearted, the
cleverest, and, in short, the best of them all. She takes charge of
the whole house, and yet does nothing right in their eyes.... Before
releasing you from this subject I must make you better acquainted
with the character of my Constance. She is not plain, but at the same
time far from handsome. Her whole beauty consists in a pair of bright
black eyes and a pretty figure. She is not witty, but has enough
sound good sense to enable her to fulfil her duties as a wife and
mother. It is utterly false that she is inclined to be extravagant;
on the contrary, she is invariably very plainly dressed,—for the
little her mother can spend on her children she gives to the two
others, but to Constance nothing. It is true that her dress is always
neat and nice, however simple; and she can herself make most of
the things requisite for a young lady. She dresses her own hair,
understands housekeeping, and has the best heart in the world. I love
her with my whole soul, as she does me. Tell me if I could wish a
better wife.”
Surely here was a Cinderella in real life; but Cinderella and the
Prince were to fight a hard battle yet, before they came to their
own. The composer Peter Winter, while in Salzburg, filled the ears of
Mozart’s father with bad reports about his son and scandalous stories
about Constance, and thus satisfied a grudge which he and his teacher,
the Abbé Vogler, had against Mozart. The father replied to his son’s
letter in a furious manner; and the son was for a time hardly less
indignant at the father for listening to such baseless accusations
against him and his affianced, than he was at the slanderers.
Constance’s guardian (the father being dead) was also very uneasy at
the insinuations against the young composer, and at last prevailed upon
the mother to insist that Mozart should make a written contract of
marriage. The contract was drawn up in this form:—
“I bind myself to marry Mlle. Constance Weber in the course of three
years; and if it should so happen, which I consider impossible, that
I change my mind, she shall be entitled to draw on me every year for
three hundred florins.”
Mozart, in a letter to his father, naïvely comments upon this contract:—
“Nothing in the world could be easier than to write this: for I knew
that the payment of the three hundred florins never would be exacted,
because I never could forsake her; and if, unhappily, I altered my
views, I would only be too glad to get rid of her by paying the three
hundred florins; and Constance, as I know her, would be too proud to
let herself be sold in this way.”
Constance had a more summary way of dealing with this contract. After
the guardian had gone, she demanded it of her mother, and resolutely
tore it to pieces, saying to her lover, “Dear Mozart, I require no
written contract from you; I rely on your promises.”
In January (1782) he again asks his father’s consent, and is busy
devising ways and means to procure money, first, for the performance
of the marriage ceremony, and second, for support after marriage.
He writes that he has in view three sources of income: first, the
composition of music for a new military band about to be organized by
Prince Lichtenstein; second, the Emperor and the Archduke Maximilian;
and, third, his pupils. More troubles begin to crowd in upon the
luckless lovers. Malicious gossips are not only spreading stories
about them, and Mozart’s father giving ear to them, but Constance’s
mother, who all along has favored the alliance, now begins to grow
indifferent to it, and demands that if they are united they shall stay
with her; to which Constance is opposed, and Mozart, with a wholesome
fear of mothers-in-law, decidedly objects. Indifference soon becomes
irritation, and there is wrangling in the household, and the mother
accosts the young lovers with sneering remarks. At last there is a
quarrel even between Mozart and Constance over a petty matter; but it
is only an April shower. The cloud passes quickly over, and the sun
shines again; but the future mother-in-law remains cloudy with frequent
storms, and at last the house becomes so hot that Constance quits it
for the domicile of the Baroness Waldstädten,—a somewhat flighty,
eccentric, and not altogether reputable person, but a good friend to
them. This step precipitated the marriage. Madame Weber threatened
to send the police to remove her daughter from the Baroness’s house.
Mozart and Constance decide to marry at once. He writes his father
of his intentions; and the latter gives his consent, coupled with the
condition, however, that he must expect nothing in future from him.
His opera, “Die Entführung,” had been performed, July 12, with great
success, and secured him the means for the ceremony. They were married,
August 4, in very simple style, at the house of the Baroness, four or
five persons being present. Three days later Mozart writes his father:—
“Our sole wedding festivities consisted of a supper which Baroness
Waldstädten gave us; and, indeed, it was more princely than baronial.
My darling is now a hundred times more joyful at the idea of going
to Salzburg; and I am willing to stake—ay, my very life, that you
will rejoice still more in my happiness when you really know her, if
indeed, in your estimation as in mine, a high-principled, honest,
virtuous, and pleasing wife ought to make a man happy.”
Eighteen years after Mozart’s death, his widow married the Danish
councillor, M. Nissen, and lived with him in Copenhagen; and her
declining years were spent, in conjunction with her husband, in the
preparation of the memoirs of the distinguished composer.
Notwithstanding many pinches of poverty and burdens of debt, their life
together was a happy one. Their mutual love never decreased, but burned
strong and clear to the end. She was his constant guide and monitor.
She brightened all his days with her loving words and letters, and his
love for her was always tender and delicate. She was a prudent manager
of his domestic affairs, a safe counsellor in business matters, always
a cheerful companion, and tended him in his last days with unfaltering
devotion until the final bitter moment, when she flung herself upon
his bed and prayed to die with him. The influence of Aloysia upon his
music showed itself by the production of numerous brilliant arias
which he wrote for her; but all his great works, “Die Entführung,”
“Idomeneo,” “Don Giovanni,” “Die Zauberflöte,” “Nozze di Figaro,” “Cosi
fan Tutti,” “Titus,” the “Ave Verum,” and the “Requiem,” were written
after his marriage; and every one of them bears, in greater or less
degree, the imprint of Constance’s influence. She took special care
of his health, which was always delicate, so that his work might not
be interrupted. She not only spurred him on to the fulfilment of his
engagements; but when it happened that he was over-burdened with work,
at which times he was apt to pursue his fancies late into the night to
his physical detriment, she devised various means to relieve him. Her
devotion to him in this regard was untiring. He immortalized her in the
“Entführung,” written when they were lovers. The main idea of the opera
is based upon their relations to each other; and in it he pictures
himself in the character of _Belmonte_, and her in that of _Constanza_.
The Mass in C minor was written by him as a votive offering for her
recovery in her first confinement, and she sung the solos at the first
public performance. She was passionately fond of the Bach and Händel
fugues, and never ceased her entreaties until he commenced writing in
this form. The “Don Giovanni,” “Zauberflöte,” and “Requiem” are largely
due to her. In his dedications her name does not appear as frequently
as Aloysia’s, for we only find six solfeggi, a fugue, two sonatas,
and an aria written for her; but there was no need of specifying
her name where almost everything was due to her love, her care, and
her encouragement. In delicate health and straitened circumstances,
the victim often of bitter musical jealousies, harassed by business
complications, with which he was unfitted to contend, it is due to
her, not only that he produced so much, but that his music preserved
all its original joyousness, sweetness, and freshness, and that it has
done so much to bless and gladden humanity.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
FRANZ SCHUBERT.
Truly, Schubert is animated by a spark of the divine fire.—BEETHOVEN
(_on his death-bed_).
Franz Schubert, if not the creator, certainly the ablest and clearest
exponent, of the German Lied, wrote from his inner life; and his music,
so full of beauty and melodiousness, only recently appreciated and
known, will place him, in the near future, upon still loftier heights
than he now occupies. The life out of which he wrote was in the main a
sad one. There were days of cheer and gladness; but the most of them
were set to a minor key, so full of sadness and of suffering that they
appeal to personal sympathy, though their experiences richly colored
all he wrote. Exquisite as his songs are, they did not find a publisher
until near his death, and his best works were not known to the world
until long after the grave closed over him; while even now there remain
treasures of his melody no voice has yet sung. Dwelling by the side
of Beethoven, as he now sleeps by his side, the latter never knew the
worth of his music until it was shown him on his death-bed; and then
he recognized “the divine spark” of Schubert’s genius. In all beauty
there is sadness. It is the test of beauty in Nature, in humanity, and
in music. It determines the motive of Beethoven’s grandest works. It
colors with exquisite tints the measures of Chopin, most poetic of all
musicians. It is constantly present in Schubert’s works, though not
one of them is morbid. We may say that Schubert himself was morbid.
Certainly, sadness was almost the constant habit of his life, dispelled
now and then by an excess of hilarity, which when it was ended only
left him sadder than before; but his music does not reflect this
organic morbidness and despondency so much as it does the effort to get
out of the shadow into the sunshine. In this struggle he poured out
the rich treasures of his genius with marvellous energy and industry.
They reflect the beauty of the sunlight, but the sun is always shining
through the cloud. Thus, in great degree the exponent of the common
lot, his songs go to the heart, because they are full of the sorrows
and the sympathies of the heart, tempering its joys. So long as there
are voices to sing, the “Erl King,” the “Wanderer,” the “Ave Maria,”
the “Serenade,” and the gems of the “Winterreise” will be sung, because
they reflect the awful sadness of the supernatural, the pathos of the
homeless, the piteous appeal of the soul to Heaven, and the sad and
tender beauty of ideal love. It is a great genius singing by divine
right out from the depths of his own sadness what is most sacred to
every other heart. Search all through the long catalogue of his works,
from song to symphony, and while you may find outbursts of joy, you
will rarely find the triviality of humor; while you may discover the
constant expression of sorrow and tenderness and pathos, there is no
complaint.
The sadness of Schubert’s life is more than once expressed in his
letters and diary. In the latter (1816) he writes:—
“Man bears misfortune uncomplainingly, and for that reason feels it
all the more acutely. For what purpose did God create in us these
keen sympathies?”
To his friend Kupelwieser, professor at the Kunstakademie in Vienna, he
writes (1824):—
“Picture to yourself a man whose health can never be re-established,
who from sheer despair makes matters worse instead of better,—picture
to yourself, I say, a man whose most brilliant hopes have come to
nothing, to whom the happiness of proffered love and friendship is
but anguish, whose enthusiasm for the beautiful (an inspired feeling
at least) threatens to vanish altogether,—and then ask yourself if
such a condition does not represent a miserable and unhappy man.”
And to this burst of grief he adds the hopeless words of Gretchen:—
“Meine Ruh’ ist hin, mein Herz ist schwer:
Ich finde sie nimmer und nimmermehr.”
How this sadness affected his music he more than once tells us. His
diary says:—
“Grief sharpens the understanding, and strengthens the soul; whereas
joy seldom troubles itself about the former, and makes the latter
either effeminate or frivolous.”
In his “Dream” he says:—
“For many, many long years I sang my Lieder. If I would fain sing of
love, it turned to pain; if I would sing of pain, it turned to love.
Thus I was divided between love and sorrow.”
Still more decidedly does he express himself in his diary (1824):—
“My productions in music are the product of the understanding, and
spring from my sorrow; those only which are the product of pain seem
to please the great world most.”
Schubert had many sentimental friendships inspired of his music, but he
was not an easy victim to love; consequently his attachments were not
at all serious, except in one instance to be alluded to hereafter, and
that of so absurd a sort as to be almost incomprehensible, not the less
so that it involved an abrupt transition from a _femme de chambre_ to
her mistress, a princess. He was susceptible to female charms, and had
several alleged “affairs of the heart;” but he said little about them
and wrote still less. He was accustomed to make himself merry over the
dolors of his friends who were in love, and is constantly bantering
them in his letters and in his daily intercourse with them. It is
questionable whether he ever seriously thought of marrying, though in
his diary he once writes quite sentimentally:—
“Happy is he who finds a true friend; happier still is he who finds
in his wife a true friend. To the free man at this time marriage is
a frightful thought: he confounds it either with melancholy or low
sensuality.”
From this we may infer that if he had married it would have been in a
Platonic sense. He was by no means proof against the tender passion,
but it attacked him so lightly that he never compromised himself.
He was not a stranger to deep and true affection, but physically he
was not cast in a mould to be attractive to women. Had he been more
fortunate in the latter regard, it is entirely probable that he might
have married, and that, under happy domestic influences, much of the
sorrow of his life might have been avoided. Nevertheless this man with
a tender, loving soul, and a nature full of beautiful traits, set in
an unattractive frame, had relations and friendships with the gentler
sex which deeply influenced his music, though in the case to which I
have referred they were as _bizarre_ and inconsistent as could well be
imagined.
One of the earliest of his compositions to attract public attention
was his Mass in F, written for a festival of the parish church at
Lichtenthal, which he himself conducted. The soprano part was sung
by Theresa Grob, a vocalist of considerable repute. Attracted by her
voice and by the musical abilities of her brother, he had become at
this time a frequent visitor at her home. Many of his masses and other
compositions were rehearsed there, and several of his earlier songs
were first sung by her in these musical gatherings. His interest in
her, at first musical, soon became personal; but it never advanced
beyond the limits of a romantic attachment, which was ended not
long after by her very unromantic marriage to a baker. During his
comparatively brief relations with the family he wrote a “Tantum
Ergo” and “Salve Regina” for Theresa, and an adagio and rondo for her
brother, who played with great skill, both upon the piano and ’cello.
That he must have written many songs for her is also shown by the fact
that the descendants of the Grob family still possess a large number of
his compositions which have never been made public.
The great artist, Anna Milder, for whom Cherubini wrote the part of
_Faniska_, and Beethoven that of _Leonora_ in his “Fidelio,” also
played an important part in Schubert’s musical productivity. She
corresponded with him for several years; and her letters are replete
with valuable suggestions of themes for music, for which duty her long
and varied experiences peculiarly adapted her, while she also made
some of her most emphatic successes in singing his songs. Among other
compositions written for her, was “Zuleika’s Second Song,” of which she
says in a letter to him, “‘Zuleika’s Second Song’ is divine, and each
time I sing it my eyes fill with tears;” and the “Hirt auf dem Felsen,”
in which he departed from his usual Lied style by making the song of
a bravura character to suit her dramatic method. She suggested to him
many of Goethe’s poems for music, gave him some very valuable advice
about his opera “Alfonso and Estrella,” and was the first singer to
call special attention to his “Erl King,” though she did not make such
an immense success with it as Schröder-Devrient, who drew from Goethe
the remark: “Executed as you execute it, the whole becomes a complete
picture.”
Marie Pachler, whose influence upon Beethoven we have already seen,
also occupied a prominent place in Schubert’s musical life. At the time
he made the acquaintance of the Pachler family, it consisted of the
husband, Carl Pachler, Marie, and their son Faust. We have already
seen, in the Beethoven chapter, that she was a lady of rare musical
accomplishments and intellectual ability, and her home was the favorite
rendezvous of composers and artists. In 1827 the family lived in Gratz,
and in that year Beethoven had intended visiting them. He died about
that time, however, and Schubert filled his place, going there with
his friend Jenger, who was to have accompanied Beethoven. Many of
his happiest days were spent in the charming society of this family.
Many singers came and went. Excursions were made into the surrounding
country. Little musical parties were given. Schubert sang his old
Lieder, and wrote many new ones. Though at that time in the very valley
of the shadow of death, they were the happiest days of his life. His
visit is immortalized by numerous compositions. Belonging to those days
are the songs, “Das Weinen,” “Vor meiner Wiege,” “Heimliches Lieben,”
and “Silvia,” which are dedicated to Madame Pachler; the “Scotch
Ballad,” of Herder, written at her suggestion; the “Schluchtgesang,”
for double chorus; the “Ständchen,” the “Nachtgesang im Wald” chorus,
an Italian cantata, and many pieces of dance-music, among them the
“Valses Nobles” and “Originaltänze.” His music during this visit was
of a very cheerful character; but immediately after his return home
he composed the exquisitely beautiful but sorrowful cyclus of songs
known as the Winterreise, in some of which it almost seems as if he
recognized the shadows of the sad fate so swiftly approaching him.
Dr. Wegeler, in speaking of Beethoven’s numerous attachments, says,
in every man’s life there is one complete love episode. Schubert is
an exception to this rule. There was an episode in his life which
he unquestionably thought was complete from an amatory point of
view; though, to the practical, unromantic reader, it must have a
serio-comic if not even a grotesque aspect. In 1818, then a young
man of twenty-one, Schubert was recommended as a music-teacher to
Count John Esterhazy. The latter, who was a princely patron of music,
recognizing at once his abilities, proposed that he should enter his
family, spending the winters with him in Vienna, and the summers at
his country estates. It was an offer which Schubert gladly accepted.
The Count had two daughters,—Caroline, then eleven years of age; and
Marie, two years older. Both had excellent voices, the one soprano,
and the other alto, and became his pupils. He soon was a favorite
in the family, and was treated as an intimate. The atmosphere was a
very musical one; but it speedily grew romantic also on Schubert’s
part, though no one else shared in his affairs of the heart. He first
devoted himself to a flirtation with one of the servants, a _femme de
chambre_ to the Princess Caroline; to which at least we are indebted
for the exquisite “Divertissement à la Hongroise,” the themes of which
are the Hungarian melodies he heard her humming as she went about her
work. Finding that there was no response from the maid, he at once
transferred his affections to the child Caroline; and notwithstanding
the ridiculous disparity of age, the hopeless disparity in rank, and
the general absurdity of the relation, his admiration of her developed
into an earnest, fervent passion, which continued even to his death.
The child was not too young to appreciate his genius, to admire his
music, or to be sincerely attached to him as a friend; but she was
too young, not only to reciprocate his passion, but even to conceive
of it or understand it. She went on with her music enthusiastically,
and was quite as enthusiastic in her admiration of the genius of poor
Schubert; thus continually adding to the flame she had kindled in his
heart without being aware of it. She always remained a good friend to
him, and one of the most devoted admirers of his songs, as well as
her sister Marie, who did all she could to assuage his pangs of heart
when he found his passion was hopeless. She was not married until many
years after his death. Some biographers declare the age of Caroline
at this time to have been but seven years, which would make his
attachment still more inexplicable. Leaving the affair of the heart,
however, there is no question that the young Princess, as well as the
whole family, exercised a powerful influence upon his musical work. He
himself has left a record of Caroline’s influence upon him; for upon
one occasion, being reproached by her for not dedicating more of his
music to her, he replied in the most abrupt and passionate manner,
“What is the use of that, when everything I write belongs to you?” It
was under her influence and that of her sister that he wrote the songs,
“Abendlied,” “Blondel zu Marien,” “Ungeduld,” “Des Müllers Blumen,”
“Erlafsee,” “Sehnsucht,” “Am Strom,” and “Der Jungling auf dem Hügel,”
the trio in E flat, two overtures for four hands, several waltzes, the
“French Romance” in E minor, the Fantasie in F minor, the Variations
(op. 35), and a piano duet (op. 140). All these works, besides many
manuscripts not yet known to the public, are clearly attributable to
the Esterhazy family.
Though Schubert never knew the happiness of love, he has sung of
it with the purest ideal feeling. Though his life was clouded with
sadness, he has given to the world immortal pictures in tones of the
tenderest, loveliest, and truest aspirations of the heart. Though he
died wretchedly poor in this world’s goods, he bequeathed to the world
a rich legacy,—the outpouring of a beautiful soul’s musical wealth. The
wastes of sorrow which stretch across his life were made beautiful with
exquisite flowers of song, whose perfume will never be lost and whose
beauty will never fade.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
ROBERT SCHUMANN.
Beneath these flowers I dream, a silent chord. I cannot wake my own
strings to music; but under the hands of those who comprehend me, I
become an eloquent friend. Wanderer, ere thou goest, try me. The more
trouble thou takest with me, the more lovely will be the tones with
which I shall reward thee.—EUSEBIUS.
There was but one woman to whom Schumann was indebted for inspiration;
and that was the woman who was the nearest and dearest to him of
all women, his wife. Affianced to him by love and a kindred spirit
in musical genius, she roused him to musical effort, she shared in
his triumphs while he was living, and, from the day of his sad and
untimely death until now, she has revealed the beauty of his music to
the world. If he were a creator by the divine right of genius, by the
same divine right she has been the interpreter. The bond of love and
the affinity of music drew them together in an attachment nothing but
death was strong enough to break. His name, his fame, his memory, she
has preserved, and made still more beautiful by her own genius, and
by the force and influence of her noble womanhood. Clara Schumann has
kept her husband’s laurels green, has placed wreaths of immortelles
upon his grave, and has embalmed his name in an immortal love which had
its birth in music, and which still knows no more beautiful or tender
expression than in the revelation of that music to the world, though
twenty-five years have gone since the poor crazed brain ceased its work.
Clara Wieck, daughter of Friedrich Wieck, the well-known teacher, who
numbered such musicians as Schumann, Von Bülow, Krause, Spindler, and
Merkel among his pupils, was born in Leipsic in 1819, and is still
an honored and favorite artist in the concert-room. She commenced
studying the piano with her father in her fifth year, and at nine
years of age played in a public concert. Under her father’s careful
tuition,—and it is a thousand pities there are not more piano teachers
like him,—she made slow but very sure progress. It was no part of
his method to hurry a pupil. How many teachers to-day can say with
him: “I have always preferred a gradual, even a slow development,
step by step, which often made no apparent progress, but which still
proceeded with a certain constancy and with deliberation, and which
was combined with dreamy sensibility and a musical instinct, requiring
slow awakening, and even with a certain flightiness, one for which the
patient labor and perseverance of six years or more was required, and
where childishness allowed no encouragement to sordid speculations
for the future”? In her eleventh year she also commenced the study
of composition with Heinrich Dorn. Shortly after this she made a
concert-tour to Berlin, Vienna, and other cities, which met with such
success that it decided her to adopt the concert-stage, and enter
upon the career of a professional artist. With this purpose in view
she returned to Leipsic, and resumed her studies, which were very
comprehensive in character, including technique, theory, harmony,
counterpoint, instrumentation, score-reading, the voice, and the
violin. The foundations of her future greatness as a _virtuoso_ were
laid deep and strong. For five years, from 1835 to 1840, she made
concert-tours, which extended her reputation all over Germany and
France; and during this period she did more than any other in making
the German people acquainted with Chopin’s music. All her associations
and surroundings were calculated to aid her in her artistic career, and
to prepare the way for just such a success as this remarkable woman has
achieved in her long and honorable public life as an artist. She was
not only trained with conscientious fidelity to the highest and noblest
ideals of her art, but she was brought up in a musical atmosphere.
At a very early age the great violinist Paganini was astonished at
her precocity of talent, and when in Leipsic played with her almost
continually. In Paris she heard Chopin, Liszt, Kalkbrenner, and other
prominent artists; and many of their works she played for the first
time in Germany. She had already commenced the work of composition; and
in this connection a review of one of her pieces, the “Soirée für das
Pianoforte,” Op. 6, by Schumann himself, will be interesting. He says:—
“On one side this composition betrays such a tender and yet
superabundant life that the most silent whisper could touch it, and
again such riches of unusual wealth and fulness of intricacies and
solutions as only the most experienced musicians could create. Where
Sebastian Bach digged his golden treasures in the deepest shafts of
his grand musical mines; where Beethoven, like a huge giant, flashes
up toward the brightest regions of the skies; where the present
masters bring forth their new combinations, endeavoring to reconcile
the old and new,—all these unexplored regions are perfectly familiar
to her, and yet she chats about them with the modesty of a maiden,
and at the same time leads one to expect so much from her that one
hardly knows where it all shall end. When you listen to the young
artist’s notes on the piano, interpreting her own innermost emotion,
one cannot imagine how it is done. It seems almost impossible that
such notes, such depths of feelings, can be written on paper with
visible signs. In reality, one cannot express with words what she is.
It is even impossible to describe the impressions her playing makes,
not to speak of what she does to create such sensations.”
There is something more than the mere critical spirit revealed in this
eulogium. Read between the lines, it is not difficult to discover the
human passion which inspired it.
When Schumann first met Clara Wieck, she was already recognized as a
genius, though but a child. He was a musical student of a very romantic
nature, exquisitely sensitive, moody even to the verge of melancholy,
and completely permeated with the spirit of Jean Paul, whose works he
had closely studied, and whose influence was already visible in his
letters and other writings. It was during his visit to Leipsic in 1828
that he became acquainted with Friedrich Wieck. He formed a strong
attachment for him; and the remarkable musical accomplishments of his
daughter Clara led him to seek the same tuition that had developed
such skill in her case. He requested Wieck to teach him; and the
latter complied, though at this time he gave him but few lessons, and
these were not satisfactory to his teacher, as Schumann kept himself
within the narrow range of mere facility in playing, and, with the
same persistence that characterized him for years afterward, declined
to perfect himself in harmony. He never recognized its necessity until
he commenced serious work for the orchestra, and then it was too late
for him to reach his complete development. During all this time he had
been studying law in deference to the wishes of his mother, who was
bent upon making him a lawyer, while he was equally bent upon following
music as a profession. At last, in 1830, he writes to her, desiring
her to consult with Wieck, saying that he will abide by his decision
whether he shall continue to study law, or return to Leipsic and resume
his musical studies. His mother complies with his wish, and writes to
Wieck:—
“All rests on your decision,—the peace of a loving mother, the whole
happiness for life of a young and inexperienced man, who lives but in
a higher sphere and will have nothing to do with practical life. I
know that you love music. Do not let your feelings plead for Robert,
but consider his years, his fortune, his powers, and his future.”
Wieck had already considered his powers and his future during the short
time he had taught him, and he replied at once in favor of Schumann’s
musical plans. The mother thereupon withdrew all opposition; and the
son enthusiastically writes to his old teacher, “Trust me, I will
deserve the name of your scholar;” and to his guardian, “I was born for
music, and will remain true to it,”—a promise never broken.
At Michaelmas, 1830, Schumann arrived at Leipsic, and resumed his
studies. At the commencement of this chapter I have quoted from Wieck
to show that he believed in the old maxim of hastening slowly. Schumann
was impatient, and by over-practice in the prosecution of a system
of his own devising, lost the use of his right hand. This ended his
studies with Wieck, and his professional career as a pianist. He now
entered upon the higher career of a composer; upon which Clara Wieck
was to exercise a powerful influence, and also shone out speedily with
remarkable brilliancy as a critic in the “Neue Zeitschrift für Musik,”
in the columns of which Florestan, Eusebius, Raro, and Serpentinus soon
became as familiar as household names. Schumann entered upon his work
with all the romance, zeal, fire, and freshness of youth. He heralded
Chopin as the rising star in music, and first made him known by his
criticisms, as Clara did afterward by her interpretations of his music.
Jealousy was a thing unknown to him. He did more than any other to
establish the fame, not only of Chopin, but of Franz, Heller, Gade, and
Henselt, and was one of the first to recognize the genius of Berlioz,
besides fighting a life-long battle for Schubert, Mendelssohn, and
Hiller.
Up to this time Schumann’s interest in Clara Wieck was purely of an
artistic character; but even now she was influencing him, for in 1833
we find his “Impromptus” for piano upon a romanza which had been
published by her. The theme was a favorite one with her, and he wrote
eleven variations upon it; and the next year she appears in that
picturesque and fanciful masquerade in notes, the “Carnival,” under
the pseudonyme of “Chiarina.” In 1835 a sonata appeared “dedicated by
Florestan and Eusebius to Clara.” In 1836 his interest in Clara Wieck
became not only artistic but personal. He fell deeply in love with her,
and from that moment a struggle for her possession commenced. Of that
struggle he writes, in 1839, to Heinrich Dorn:—
“There is much in my music, no doubt, that might seem like a
narrative of the struggle for the possession of my Clara. You have
probably been able to understand it. These very troubles have
solely given the impulse to the ‘Concerto,’ the ‘Sonata,’ the
‘Davidsbündlertänze,’ the ‘Kreisleriana,’ and the ‘Noveletten.’”
Up to 1840 Schumann had not written a single song; but after he found
that she was really his own, no less than one hundred and thirty-eight
of the most beautiful songs ever written attested his happiness. The
father opposed their union, and it is doubtful whether his passion was
at first returned. They were separated for some time by a concert-tour
made by Clara and her father; but through a third party Schumann
managed to hear from her, and to this party he writes, March 1, 1836:—
“Clara Wieck loves, and is loved. You might easily discover it by her
gentle, almost heavenly look and mien. Pardon me if I omit for the
present her lover’s name. The happy pair met, saw, spoke, and became
engaged, without her father’s knowledge. He has discovered it, would
cut it down, forbids all intercourse on pain of death; but they have
braved him a thousand times.... Now comes my most heartfelt prayer
that you will let me know all you can learn, directly or indirectly,
concerning Clara, her feelings, and her life.”
In 1837 he wrote to Wieck, asking for the hand of his daughter; and his
answer may be inferred from the following extract from a letter written
to his sister-in-law, Theresa:—
“The old man won’t let Clara leave him yet; he’s too fond of her. And
he is really in the right; for he thinks we ought to earn more money
first, so that we may live comfortably.”
To attain that object he went to Vienna, but failed in his purpose; and
he returned to Leipsic, and once more sought to mollify the obdurate
heart of Wieck, who again refused his consent. He then appealed to
the law; and in 1840 the Royal Court of Appeals requested the father
to yield, which paved the way to their union. In September of that
year he met her at Weimar at the house of a friend, and their nuptials
were celebrated on the 12th of that month. In an extract already
made from one of his letters, it is shown that the “Noveletten,” the
“Kinderscenen,” and the “Kreisleriana” were inspired by Clara Wieck. It
might be added that all his piano compositions from 1831 to 1840—and
they are very numerous—were born of his artistic and personal relations
to her. Not only this, but she inspired all his lyrical work during the
year 1840, which includes the songs already spoken of, revealing his
inner life during this period. After their marriage the real work of
his life began. He emancipated himself from the narrow limits of the
piano, and commenced writing for the orchestra, both symphonies and
chamber-music. It was the real work of his life; and the symphonies
he has left, particularly the B flat major and the E flat major (the
Rhenish), are eloquent suggestions of what he might have accomplished,
following, as he did, closely in the footsteps of Beethoven, had not
the derangement of his mental faculties brought his life to a tragic
close.
Schumann had other attachments during his life,—among them, those for
an amateur vocalist named Agnes Carus, whom he met in Zwickau, and
whose singing had a rare fascination over him; for Clara von Kurner,
daughter of Dr. von Kurner, a chemist of Augsburg, of whom he writes
to his friend Rosen, “The lovely Clara’s image floats before me, both
sleeping and waking;” and with Ernestine von Fricken, who lived at
Wieck’s house in 1834, and studied the piano, whose blooming personal
charms aroused his passion. To Henrietta Voigt, the wife of a Leipsic
merchant, who was a very warm and influential friend of Schumann’s in
1834, he writes in his Jean Paulish way:—
“I was completely exhausted yesterday, and your letter came. It
soothed me like an angel’s hand; that is, for a day and night, and
this morning every nerve is a tear.... Is it a weakness to confess
it? ’Tis my Ernestine whom I love beyond all measure; ’tis you,
Henrietta, my beloved friend. You glorious creature, what can I offer
in return for your supreme favor? ’Tis said that those who love each
other shall meet again in some other star, where they shall live and
rule alone. Let us hold this lovely saying to be true.”
Schumann sought the fair Ernestine’s hand in marriage, but his suit
was unsuccessful. Not one of these attachments, however, specially
influenced him in musical production. Clara Schumann was the genius of
his life, the companion, friend, and counsellor of his work, the guide
and inspirer that led him to his highest and most enduring efforts. Her
ideal of art was always the purest and loftiest. As an artist she has
commanded the homage and admiration of the world. As a woman she stands
peerless in the nobility, dignity, and beauty of her womanhood. Since
her husband’s death she has been his faithful interpreter, besides
editing his works. The love which crowned their lives with so much
happiness, notwithstanding the cruelty of fate, still remains, and
keeps the memory of the composer fresh by her executive tribute to his
genius, and her loving and skilful interpretation of his works, which
she did so much to inspire and help produce.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
FELIX MENDELSSOHN BARTHOLDY.
Mendelssohn is betrothed, so is very much occupied, but great and
good as ever. No day passes in which he does not utter at least two
thoughts worthy to be graven in gold.—SCHUMANN.
Nearly all the great and enduring music of the world has been conceived
of sorrow or born in the struggle with destiny. The exercise of
the heroic qualities in the battle of life has called out heroic
music. Disappointments in life, the pressure of poverty, the pangs
of suffering, the struggle against circumstances, and sometimes the
spur of malicious competition, have aroused qualities of character
in composers which have reflected themselves in their music. These
elements have given us majesty, grandeur, and strength in music. More
tranquil lives, kindly smiled upon by fate and lifted above all
necessities, undisturbed by care and untouched by sorrow, have given
us beautiful, graceful, elegant music, strains of enticing melody, and
measures of smooth, flowing harmony, but rarely rising above the world.
They may touch the heart, but they do not appeal to the soul. They may
reveal the beauties of the earth and sky, but they do not go beyond
finite boundaries, and give us glimpses of the infinite.
Felix Mendelssohn’s music belongs to this class, and his life-currents
ran in channels that were never vexed by a storm. Of all composers,
it might almost be said of all men, his career and his experiences
were the most fortunate. He belonged to a family remarkable for its
talent in literature, philosophy, music, and the plastic arts. It was,
moreover, a wealthy family; so that he not only had every advantage
which wealth could procure in his studies, but during his entire life
was enabled to surround himself with luxuries, and at no time was
obliged to compose owing to financial straits. He was brought up in
an atmosphere of art. The great poets, painters, composers, singers,
and players of Europe were among the frequent and welcome visitors at
his home fireside. He was endowed with rare personal beauty, and was
richly gifted in scholarship and accomplishments of various kinds,
as well as in those qualities of head and heart which attract a wide
circle of friends and admirers. There was no sorrow in his life until
his sister died, and then he succumbed to grief and soon passed away.
The smooth and even tenor of his life had enervated him, as it were;
and when the first blow came, it crushed him.
To estimate the influences of woman upon Mendelssohn’s music, it is
not necessary to go beyond the limits of his home circle; and these
influences tended to color it with the same peculiarities of which
we have spoken. His mother, his sister, and his wife—women of noble
character, genial disposition, and loving nature—helped to impart to
his music its peculiar grace and beauty. His mother first discovered
his talent, and gave him his first lessons, and in his boyhood guided
his studies, placed him under competent teachers, and accustomed him
to hear the best music performed by the best musicians, with whom the
Mendelssohn home was always a favorite resort. His sister Fanny, who
afterward married the painter Hensel, was a pianist and composer of
more than ordinary ability. In youth they were inseparable musical
companions. They studied together; they composed together. Like her
brother, she called about herself the best musical talent in Berlin.
In the earlier collection of his songs, many of hers appear so closely
similar in feeling and color that they would be indistinguishable were
no signature attached. Devrient says:—
“His elder sister Fanny stood musically most related to him; through
her excellent nature, clear sense, and rich fund of sensibility (not
perceptible to every one), many things were made clear to him.”
At the Sunday performances in the Mendelssohn home, she and her brother
played in trios with a small orchestra which was accustomed to assemble
there. His letters constantly bear testimony how eagerly he waited for
her criticisms upon his work. Their musical sympathy was extraordinary,
and is indicated by their correspondence upon more than one occasion
in musical notation. Each was possessed of rare sensibility, and their
musical affinities drew them together in a companionship of heart and
soul which was never disturbed except by her sudden death. Devrient
thus tells the sad story:—
“In perfect health and cheerfulness she had been presiding at a vocal
rehearsal for the next of her Sunday performances on the afternoon
of May the 14th (1847). All at once she felt her hands powerless at
the keys, and was compelled to ask a friend to take her place at
the instrument. The rehearsal proceeded. It was of the choruses of
the ‘Walpurgis Night.’ She was listening to them from an inner room
through the open doors, whilst she was fomenting her hands in hot
vinegar. ‘How beautifully it sounds!’ she said joyfully. She thought
herself restored, and was on the point of returning to the music-room
when a second and total paralysis struck her; she lost consciousness,
and had breathed her last by eleven o’clock that night.... Upon Felix
her loss fell heavier than upon any one, bound up with her as he was
in all his musical associations from earliest childhood.”
Lampadius, in his “Life of Mendelssohn,” says of her:—
“This cherished sister, Fanny, had been the companion of the great
musician’s pursuits during the years of childhood, in the days when
they used to take five-minute lessons together, and in later days
also, when (as I have heard him tell) they vied with each other
which could best execute a certain difficult left-hand passage in
Kalkbrenner’s ‘Effusio Musica.’ Had Madame Hensel been a poor man’s
daughter, she must have become known to the world by the side of
Madame Schumann and Madame Pleyel, as a female pianist of the very
highest class. Like her brother, she had in her composition a touch
of that Southern vivacity which is so rare among the Germans. More
feminine than his, her playing bore a strong family resemblance to
her brother’s in its fire, neatness, and solidity. Like himself, too,
she was as generally accomplished as she was specially gifted.”
He never entirely recovered from the shock of her death. He secluded
himself almost entirely within the family circle, and always seemed to
be living in the presentiment of his own speedy departure. The last
time that he had parted from her, she reproached him for not spending
her birthday (November 8) with her. He replied, “Depend upon it, the
next I shall spend with you.” Fanny died May 14, 1847. He died November
4, the same year, and was with her upon her birthday. The influence
of such a woman, bound to him by such strong ties of affection and
such rare musical sympathy, cannot even be estimated. When she died,
his hold upon music was gone. A few brief months, and they listened
together to the music of a higher world, companions no more to be
separated.
Mendelssohn’s own home was full of the sunshine which had always
illuminated his charmed life. Though a great favorite with women, and
sought after by many, he had never contemplated marriage until the
death of his father. The latter had always been anxious that his son
should marry happily, and thus have the influences of a pleasant home
surrounding him, and affecting his music. Only a few days after the
funeral, knowing his father’s wishes, he told his sister Fanny that he
was resolved to marry. The event came speedily. In the summer of 1836
he was in Frankfort, conducting the Cecilia Society, and giving his
“St. Paul” and some of the works of Händel. During his stay he had been
introduced to the family of Madame Jeanrenaud, the widow of a minister
of the French Reformed Church in that city. She was living with her
children in her parents’ home. The oldest daughter, Cecilia, at once
attracted him. Devrient describes her as follows:—
“Cecilia was one of those sweet, womanly natures, whose gentle
simplicity, whose mere presence, soothed and pleased. She was slight,
with features of striking beauty and delicacy. Her hair was between
brown and gold; but the transcendent lustre of her great blue eyes
and the brilliant roses of her cheeks were sad harbingers of early
death. She spoke little, and never with animation, in a low, soft
voice. The friends of Felix had every reason to hope that his choice
would secure repose to his restless spirit, and happy leisure for
thought and work in his home.”
And this was so, for never was there a happier home. The enthusiastic
Élise Polko says of her:—
“Cecilia Jeanrenaud, whose mother belonged to a distinguished
emigrant family, was at that period considered one of the most
beautiful girls in Frankfort, always so rich in female charms, where
indeed to this day, as in Saxony, ‘fair maidens grow on every tree;’
and when I now recall her image as I first saw her, though some time
after her marriage, I feel that to this present hour she has always
remained my beau ideal of womanly fascination and loveliness. Her
figure was slight, of middle height, and rather drooping, like a
flower heavy with dew; her luxuriant golden-brown hair fell in rich
curls on her shoulders; her complexion was of transparent delicacy,
her smile charming; and she had the most bewitching deep-blue eyes I
ever beheld, with dark eyelashes and eyebrows.”
Such was the fair vision that presented itself to Mendelssohn during
his visits, which became more and more frequent and quickly resulted in
betrothal and marriage. Of their courtship, Hiller, in his delightful
“Reminiscences,” says:—
“His visits became more and more frequent, but he always behaved with
such reserve towards his chosen one, that, as she once laughingly
told me, in her husband’s presence, for several weeks she did not
imagine herself to be the cause of Mendelssohn’s visits, but thought
he came for the sake of her mother, who, indeed, with her youthful
vivacity, cleverness and refinement, chattering away in the purest
Frankfort dialect, was extremely attractive. But though during this
early time Felix spoke but little to Cecilia, when away from her
he talked of her all the more. Lying on the sofa in my room after
dinner, or taking long walks in the mild summer nights with Dr. S.
and myself, he would rave about her charm, her grace, and her beauty.
There was nothing overstrained in him, either in his life or in his
art. He would pour out his heart about her in the most charmingly
frank and artless way, often full of fun and gayety; then again
with deep feeling, but never with any exaggerated sentimentality or
uncontrolled passion. It was easy to see what a serious thing it was;
for one could hardly get him to talk of anything which did not touch
upon her more or less.”
Their intercourse was one of the purest love. Their home was always a
happy one, and the centre of attraction for all the great artists of
his time. She was a good singer, was possessed of more than ordinary
musical intelligence, sympathized with and encouraged him in his work,
and rejoiced in his triumphs. She understood him, and she prized him
at his real value. Slight as she was in physique, and calm and gentle
as she was in her bearing, her spirit was more heroic than his. In
all other regards she was his complement. She cared for him until his
last moment, and strong in her very tenderness accepted his death with
resignation and heroism. Of the funeral Devrient says,—
“When the church was almost deserted, a female form in deep mourning
was led to the bier. She sank down beside it, and remained long in
prayer. It was Cecilia, taking her last farewell of the earthly
remains of Felix. She knew that she would not long survive him.”
She lived but five years longer, and those years were lovingly and
faithfully devoted to the care and education of his children. Then she
passed quietly away, and, like her illustrious husband, was buried with
imposing musical ceremonies.
The influences of mother, sister, and wife, all led Mendelssohn in
the same direction of beauty and grace of style, rather than of great
strength. His life never knew but one pang, and that was the last one.
It was never clouded by any sorrows except such as are the common lot;
and for these he had not the common endurance. It was a life without
regrets and without reproach, and therefore a life without great
moments or great struggles that call out the deepest and best that is
in human effort. He imparted to his music his own elegance and grace;
and it reflects also the gentleness, the sweetness, the loveliness, and
the beauty of mother, sister, and wife.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
FREDERICK CHOPIN.
Chopin died slowly, consuming himself in the flames of his own
genius.... He was a poet of a mournful soul, full of reserve and
complicated mystery, and familiar with the stern face of sorrow. He
constantly reminded us of a convolvulus balancing its heaven-colored
cup on an incredibly slight stem, the tissue of which is so like
vapor that the slightest contact wounds and tears the misty
corolla.—LISZT.
The very name of Chopin suggests the name of woman, and of one woman
more than any other,—George Sand. Liszt says his music is cannons
buried in flowers. He himself was buried beneath an exterior of elegant
_hauteur_ and graceful courtesy, and no one ever penetrated to his
inner self but the woman who was at once his good and evil genius.
Under this goodly exterior was an imagination of exquisite fineness
and power; feelings, though pent up, that raged at times like a
volcano; a physical constitution enervated and undermined by disease; a
pride so sensitive and so secretive that it allowed but one to intrude
upon him or to peer into his inner life; a dread of human contact, not
from hatred of men, but from the very fineness of his organization,
that made him a stranger even among his friends. Such conflicting
qualities of mind and body marked him out for suffering; but his
suffering was concealed, as well as the real character of his life.
There is scarcely an event of Chopin’s life, scarcely a phase of his
passion or his temperament, hardly a phrase of his music, that is not
related to woman. It was in his Paris salon, surrounded by lovely
women, that he improvised so enchantingly. Almost every piece he has
written was inspired of woman, and is dedicated to her. The finest
interpreters of his music have been women. It was Clara Schumann who
first really made Germany acquainted with it, as it was Robert Schumann
who first proclaimed his genius in a critical manner. His passion
itself was peculiarly feminine, as appears very clearly from his
relations to George Sand. A woman’s voice was the last sound he heard,
as she sang in his dying chamber.
There are but two sources to which we can go for information that
is authoritative as to the events of Chopin’s life, and that bears
directly upon the subject of woman’s influence,—Liszt’s so-called
biography, which is in the nature of a rhapsody; and the biography
recently written by M. Karasowsky, which may be considered reliable,
though in some parts highly colored.
Liszt has drawn a fascinating picture of his earlier attachments,
especially his love for a young lady who never ceased “to feel a
reverential homage for him,” but was lost to him by the more intense
and fatal passion which George Sand kindled. Liszt says:—
“This young Polish lady, unfortunately separated from Chopin,
remained faithful to his memory, to all that was left of him. She
devoted herself to his parents. The father of Chopin would never
suffer the portrait which she had drawn of him in the days of hope
to be replaced by another, done by the hands of a far more skilful
artist. We saw the pale cheeks of this melancholy woman glow like
alabaster when a light shines through its snow, many years afterward,
when, in gazing upon this picture, she met the eyes of his father.”
At the house of the Princess Czetwertynska in Warsaw, a lady who was
a passionate admirer of music, and who appreciated his playing and
his talent of composition, he met with a group of young and noble
ladies,—among them the Princess of Lowicz, the Countess Zamoyska, the
Princess Radizwill, the Princess Jablonowska, and others,—who exercised
a powerful influence upon him. Liszt bears testimony to this influence
in the following glowing words:—
“As these visions of his youth deepened in the long perspective of
memories, they gained in grace, in charm, in delight in his eyes,
fascinating him to such an extent that no reality could destroy their
secret power over his imagination, rendering his repugnance more and
more unconquerable to that license of allurement, that brutal tyranny
of caprice, that eagerness to drink the cup of fantasy to the very
dregs, that stormy pursuit of all the changes and incongruities of
life, which rule in the strange mode of life known as _La Bohéme_.”
In 1830, at Nice, he met three beautiful and accomplished Polish
ladies, Marie, Nathalie, and Delphine, daughters of Count Comar. They
subsequently married wealthy noblemen; and in their elegant Paris
salons Chopin was a frequent visitor, and the centre of admiration and
attraction. Their friendship for him was enthusiastic and lasting, and
helped to inspire him to loftier effort than ever before; and one of
them, Delphine, then the Countess Potocka, was with him in his dying
moments, sustaining and glorifying them with her lovely voice.
His connection with George Sand cannot be called an episode. From the
moment that he felt the weird fascination of this enchantress, he was
completely in her power. She ruled his life. She changed its currents,
directed its purposes, controlled its destiny, absorbed his very
existence, until, in a fatal moment, he asked what it was impossible
for her to grant; and then she left him, as one writer coolly says, “to
his cough and his piano.”
It were a difficult task to analyze the strange relations between
George Sand and Chopin, because the two natures had little in common.
The one was prosaic, virile, coarse, and unconventional; the other was
poetical, feminine, delicate, and sensitive. They were allied in the
possession of genius and in the recognition of what was beautiful;
beyond this they touched at no point. The narratives of Liszt and
Karasowski, so far as they cover this period of his life, though
differing in view, for Liszt himself had felt the influence of George
Sand, are extremely interesting. Liszt draws an attractive picture
of the coterie of poets and artists who were wont to assemble in
Chopin’s salon, among whom not one more clearly recognized his genius
than George Sand. “After having named Madame Sand, whose energetic
personality and electric genius inspired the frail and delicate
organization of Chopin with an intensity of admiration which consumed
him, as a wine too spirituous shatters the fragile vase, we cannot
now call up other names from the dim limbus of the past,” says Liszt.
She was naturally anxious to establish a friendship with Chopin,
for she shared with him his intense admiration of the beautiful;
but he at first shrank from her, for his melancholy, sensitiveness,
exclusiveness, tenderness, ideality, and sincere religious feeling
were all repulsed by her boldness, energy, unconventionality, and
masculine nature: but the acquaintance which she forced upon him at
last dissipated all his fears; and, as might be expected of such a
nature, once devoted to an object, he concentrated himself with all the
strength of that nature upon it, and was utterly absorbed by his ideal.
Henceforth George Sand was to him a fatal necessity.
In 1836 his health began to decline. A year later he was seized with
a dangerous illness, and was advised to go South, where he would have
the benefit of a balmier climate. He selected the island of Majorca,
and Madame Sand accompanied him. Under her care and the influences of
the climate he improved. “He breathed there that air,” says Liszt, “for
which natures unsuited for the world, and never feeling themselves
happy in it, long with such a painful homesickness.” She herself says:—
“The funereal oppression which secretly undermined the spirit of
Chopin, destroying and corroding all contentment, gradually vanished.
He permitted the amiable character, the cheerful serenity of his
friend, to chase sad thoughts and mournful presentiments away, and to
breathe new force into his intellectual being.”
For a time Chopin was happy, and Madame Sand was his inspiration. In
her “Lucrezia Floriani,” where he figures as Prince Karol, she says:—
“He was no longer upon the earth, he was in an empyrean of golden
clouds and perfumes; his imagination, so full of exquisite beauty,
seemed engaged in a monologue with God himself; and if, upon the
radiant prism in whose contemplation he forgot all else, the magic
lantern of the outer world would ever cast its disturbing shadow, he
felt deeply pained.”
The dream, however, was suddenly dissipated. Liszt does not tell the
cause, but it is well known. He desired her to marry him. His nature
was all love. Love was his life. Madame Sand says:—
“He loved for the sake of loving. No amount of suffering was
sufficient to discourage him. He could enter upon a new phase, that
of woe; but the phase of coldness he could never arrive at.”
To transform a passionate friendship into a pure love was an impossible
thing for her. They separated, and that separation strained and rent
every cord that bound him to life. As Liszt says,—
“His last pleasure seemed to be the memory of the blasting of his
last hope; he treasured the bitter knowledge that under this fatal
spell his life was ebbing fast away. He seemed to inhale the poison
rapidly and eagerly, that he might thus shorten the time in which he
would be forced to breathe it. Only a short time before he died, he
wrote to a Polish friend: ‘It is the end. I am only vegetating, and
awaiting the last of it. I have never cursed any one, but now I am so
worn and weary of life that I am now ready to curse that Lucrezia.
But she suffers as well: ill-fortune devours her daily.’”
M. Karasowski’s version differs somewhat from that of Liszt. According
to the later biographer, chance brought him to Paris, and face to face
with the woman who from that moment cast a dark and fatal shadow upon
his life. One rainy day, in a fit of despondency, he travelled about
the streets of Paris; and suddenly, remembering it was reception-day
at a house where he was always a welcome guest, he turned his steps
thither. As he mounted the stairs he fancied he was followed by a
shadow from which there came a strong perfume of violets (his favorite
flowers). He was about to retrace his steps, as if it were an ill-omen;
but, smiling at his fears, entered the salon. He took his seat in a
corner aside from the company, preferring to listen and be a spectator;
but upon being pressed to play, he went to the piano and improvised.
As he finished he became aware that a plainly dressed woman, leaning
upon the other end of the piano, was gazing at him with a boldness and
intensity that made him redden. A few minutes later she was introduced
to him by Liszt as George Sand. His first feeling was aversion. In
writing home about her, he says her features are coarse, and her voice
harsh and masculine. She glowingly praised his playing, and each time
she met him cunningly flattered him, until at last he was madly in
love with her. Karasowski’s narrative of their life in Majorca does
not agree with Liszt’s. According to the former, he was thoroughly
uncomfortable and unhappy during the stay, and returned to Paris worse
off in health than when he left. As his health declined, Madame Sand’s
passion for him cooled; and at last she found an occasion to quarrel
with him, and he left her, vowing never to return. Some time after he
met her at a friend’s house. She held out her hand, and softly said
“Frederick,” as if she would be reconciled, but he turned away from her
without recognition.
Sainte-Beuve has perhaps given the most reasonable explanation of the
rupture between them. She felt a man’s passion towards him, he felt a
woman’s love towards her; she was a woman of masculine nature, he was a
man of feminine nature. When he proposed marriage her passion cooled,
and she was ready to leave him as she had left others. His nature,
being feminine, imposed upon him the female torture of endurance. Her
attachment was in one sense a coarse one, to be ended at any moment
by caprice or whim; his was an absorption profound and unalterable: he
was not necessary to her; she was necessary to him. It was a union of
two natures with nothing in common,—most fatal of all mistakes. The
cruelty of this relation was the first fascination; a grotesque and
unnecessary episode of it was the manner in which she has drawn his
picture in the least attractive of all her works, “Lucrezia Floriani;”
the hopelessness of it was her refusal to marry,—a shock which his
sensitive, affectionate nature could not sustain; then followed the
natural results to such a nature,—decline, despair, death.
His last hours were consoled and comforted by a tender, loving woman,
who had been his friend and admirer before he came under the fatal
influence of George Sand. Liszt touchingly and beautifully describes
the scene:—
“On Sunday, the 15th of October (1849), his attacks were more
violent and frequent, lasting for several hours in succession. He
endured them with patience and great strength of mind. The Countess
Delphine Potocka, who was present, was much distressed; her tears
were flowing fast, when he observed her standing at the foot of his
bed, tall, slight, draped in white, resembling the beautiful angels
created by the imagination of the most devout among the painters.
Without doubt he supposed her to be a celestial apparition; and
when the crisis left him a moment in repose, he requested her to
sing. They deemed him at first seized with delirium, but he eagerly
repeated his request. Who could have ventured to oppose his wish?
The piano was rolled from his parlor to the door of his chamber,
while, with sobs in her voice and tears streaming down her cheeks,
his gifted countrywoman sang. Certainly this delightful voice had
never before attained an expression so full of profound pathos. He
seemed to suffer less as he listened. She sang that famous canticle
to the Virgin which, it is said, once saved the life of Stradella.
‘How beautiful it is!’ he exclaimed. ‘My God, how very beautiful!
Again—again!’ Though overwhelmed with emotion, the Countess had
the noble courage to comply with the last wish of her friend, a
compatriot; she again took a seat at the piano, and sang a hymn from
Marcello.... The sacred silence was only broken by the voice of the
Countess floating like a melody from heaven, above the sighs and sobs
which formed its heavy and mournful earth-accompaniment.”
Two days later he died; and his last act was in accordance with the
love and courtesy which had always characterized him. He bent his
head, and kissed the hand of his friend Gutman, and quietly fell into
the dreamless sleep, leaving behind him a legacy of music, which,
though small as compared with the works of other composers whom we have
considered, is of imperishable beauty, and bears trace on every page
of woman’s love and influence,—trace, too, of woman’s fatal spell,
darkening and destroying.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
CARL MARIA VON WEBER.
May God still grant me the blessing which he has hitherto so
graciously accorded me, that I may have the power to make the dear
one happy, and, as a brave artist, bring honor and advantage to my
fatherland! Amen!—WEBER’S _Diary_.
Fridolin von Weber, steward to the noble family of Schönau-Zella,
grandfather of the composer of “Der Freischütz,” had two sons. The
elder became the father of Constance, the wife of Mozart; the younger,
Franz Anton, the father of Carl Maria; so that the two eminent
composers were cousins by marriage. Franz Anton’s first wife was
Maria Anna von Fumetti, daughter of the Court Financial Counsellor at
Cologne, who died in 1783, worn out with the vagaries, eccentricities,
and dissipations of her husband, who was a member of a strolling
company of comedians. Two years afterward, being then in his fiftieth
year, he married Genofeva von Brenner, a pretty girl of sixteen, who
was destined to become the mother of Carl Maria. For years the child
was carried by his patient, suffering mother in the company of the
strolling comedians, surrounded by the worst of influences, and cared
for, trained, and educated by her alone, until at last her health
was shattered, and she fell into a decline. She died in 1798, and
Franz Anton’s sister Adelheid took the boy under her protection. She
was a maiden lady of excellent judgment and kindly heart, and filled
the mother’s part in shielding him from the contaminations all about
him, besides superintending his education. The influence of these
two women upon the future of the child placed under such unfavorable
circumstances was powerful for good, and unquestionably laid the
foundations of his future fame.
In his eighteenth year Carl Maria, then earning a precarious living
by teaching, made the acquaintance of Fraulein von Belonde, maid of
honor to the Duchess Louise of Würtemberg, wife of Prince Eugene
Friedrich, resident at Carlsruhe. She is described as an admirable
piano-forte player. Impressed with the beauty of Weber’s improvising,
and sympathizing with his unfortunate circumstances, she became much
interested in him and determined to aid him, and succeeded so well that
she secured for him the position of musical director to the Prince,
who not only took Weber himself, but his old worthless father and his
good aunt Adelheid into his own house and kindly cared for them. Their
stay, however, was not of long duration. The tide of war broke up their
asylum. Weber drifted about for some time, almost hopelessly in debt
and drowning his troubles in excesses of dissipation, until in 1807 he
found himself in the service of Prince Ludwig and his wife, a princess
of Nassau-Weilburg. He was intrusted with the musical education of
their children; and, says his son in his excellent biography, “to
this new position of the young composer are probably owing not only
the ‘six pièces à quatre mains’ dedicated to the Princess Ludwig, but
many others of his brilliant instrumental works belonging to this
period.” It was about this time that he wrote his opera “Sylvana” for
King Friedrich’s theatre,—an event which played an important part in
his life, as it brought him in contact with Gretchen Lang, one of the
singers,—“the charming, winning, coquettish little serpent,” with whom
he became speedily fascinated. His biographer says:—
“She became the central point of all his life and aspirations. There
is no evidence to show to what degree of intimacy this union of the
two young fiery artist-natures was carried. It is certain, however,
that from the time Carl Maria made Gretchen Lang’s acquaintance, he
seldom quitted her side.”
It was an unfortunate attachment in every way. It brought down upon
him the displeasure of his patron, secured for him the enmity of the
King, and plunged him deeply into debt. Creditors pursued him, and
at last he was sent to the debtors’ prison. To crown his misfortunes
came an order from the King that he should be transported beyond the
boundaries of Würtemberg. In Frankfort he subsequently met Gretchen
again, but her passion for him had cooled. He sought in vain to renew
the old relations. They spent their last evening together at a concert,
and in this moment of adieu to her he had loved so passionately he saw
for the first time the one who was destined to be his wife. This was
Caroline Brandt, who was the solo singer on the occasion. A few days
later his opera “Sylvana” was put in rehearsal. Gretchen was engaged
at the theatre, but she refused to sing. The title rôle was given to
Caroline Brandt, and it was due mainly to her efforts that the opera
was successful. The composer was loudly called for at the close, and
Caroline led him forward to receive the applause of the people. As his
son says:—
“Little did the youth then know that the hand which clasped his was
one day to be his own for life; that from that hand he was destined
to receive his life’s greatest happiness.”
Many tribulations, however, were in store for Weber before
he reached that important event in his life.
His prospects meanwhile were brightening. We next find him in Munich,
with his new opera “Abu Hassan.” Its rehearsals brought him in contact
with the female artists and with a crowd of admirers who lavished
their blandishments upon him. He passed a gay life among them; but the
general result could not have been very favorable, for in his diary at
this time he constantly writes: “All women are worthless,” (“All are
bad alike.” From a musical point of view, however, female influence
added to his productivity and inspired his work. About this time he
paid a visit to the Bavarian minister at Jegisdorf, and while there
wrote his brilliant scena and aria from “Athalie,” for the singer
Frau Peyermann, an inmate of the house, to whose charms Weber was
peculiarly susceptible. Had his visit been a prolonged one, the destiny
of Caroline Brandt might have been disturbed; for his next work for the
singer was the “Künstler’s Liebesforderung” “The Artist’s Declaration
of Love”), one of the most beautiful of all his songs. Weber next
appears in Prague as opera-director, busy with the rehearsals of
Spontini’s “Cortez.” In the troupe was a dancer named Brunetti, who had
been married for many years to a woman who had risen from the ballet to
light operatic rôles. Weber’s son says of her:—
“She was the mother of several children, but still possessed a
considerable charm in her fine, plump figure, and her beautiful blue
eyes. She was as full of the absurdest tricks and caprices as she
was lively and impetuous in temperament; and that her reputation of
being a mistress of all the finest arts of coquetry did not belie
her, Weber had soon to learn to his cost. Thérèse Brunetti was fond
of attending the operatic rehearsals, even when not herself employed.
On these occasions Weber was frequently thrown in her way; and he
soon conceived for the handsome, seductive woman a passion which
seemed to have deprived his otherwise clear mind of all common sense
and reason, and which neither the flood of administrative affairs nor
the cold breath of duty could extinguish. Vain were all his efforts
to conceal it. In a very short time it became the topic of general
remark; excited the ridicule or grave anxieties of his friends;
involved him in a thousand disagreeable positions; robbed him of
the most precious treasures of a heart rich in love; lowered his
moral character, without the slightest compensating advantage to his
artistic career; and wellnigh dragged him down into an abyss beyond
hope of rescue.”
There is no doubt that Weber was thoroughly infatuated with this woman,
and there is equally no doubt that she led him a life of torment.
His diary is full of his troubles growing out of this relation, and
lamentations over her unworthiness and his own folly; but still she
kept him in slavery to her charms. His deliverance, however, was near
at hand. Caroline Brandt arrived in Prague, and on the 1st of January,
1814, appeared on the stage under Weber’s direction. I take the story
of her _début_ and what followed from his son’s biography:—
“Caroline Brandt was small and plump in figure, with beautiful,
expressive gray eyes and fair wavy hair, and a peculiar liveliness in
all her movements. Her first appearance on the stage at Prague at
once decided her position in that capital.
“The honor of a recall before the curtain—an honor in those days
seldom bestowed—was awarded to her; and from the first, many of her
competitors, among whom was naturally Thérèse Brunetti, began to
look on her askance. This feeling of jealousy was soon increased.
When introduced by Weber into the houses of Count Colowrat, Prince
Lobkowitz, and others of the first families of Prague, she was
welcomed there with the distinction due not only to her great
artistic merits and her innate charms, but to the purity and worth
of her moral character. Weber was thus thrown greatly in her
company. He could not but feel the magic power of so fascinating
a woman; he could not but draw comparisons, little by little,
between the worthless object of his passion,—to whom, by a strange
coincidence, Caroline Brandt bore a vague resemblance in fresher,
younger form,—and this pure, bright, artless creature. Still, during
the commencement of the year 1814 no traces are to be found of
any diminution of his passion for the coquettish, artful Thérèse
Brunetti. He suffered bitterly, it is true, from her deceptions, her
sordidness, her infidelities; but his heart yearned for love, and
clung with desperation to the rotten plank on which he had stored
all his hopes of requited affection. In the months of January and
February there still appear in his note-book such remarks as, ‘I
was very sad; but she was good to me, and I was content.’ ‘I found
Calina with Thérèse, and I could scarce conceal the fearful rage that
burned in me.’ ‘No joy without her, and yet with her only sorrow!’
“But the unworthy bond was at last to be broken; and the release was
effected by two comparatively trifling circumstances. The tender
lover, on the birthday of the object of his passion, had prepared for
her a present, consisting of a gold watch, to which were appended a
variety of trinkets, all chosen with symbolical reference to his deep
affection. At the same time he had ordered her a dish of oysters,
then a rare and costly delicacy in Prague. To the valuable watch the
fair Thérèse paid little heed, still less to the profound meaning
of the symbolical trinkets. She flung herself upon the oysters with
a gluttony which disgusted the sentimental lover. On a sudden the
scales fell from his eyes. The other circumstance was not perhaps
so trifling. Weber had long remarked, with all the pangs of the
most fearful jealousy, the marked attentions paid by Thérèse to a
certain Calina, often alluded to in his notes,—a man of substance.
Although this affair had become a matter of town talk and scandal,
the infatuated adorer had still followed in the train of the delusive
woman, until she herself announced to him, with the utmost coolness,
that she had been offered, with her husband, an apartment in Calina’s
house, and had accepted it. This utter want of delicacy of feeling
toward him revolted Weber. For once disdain overmastered passion.
Still more irritated was he when he learned the foul advice given by
Thérèse to Caroline Brandt, for whom the banker Kleinwächter showed a
preference. ‘Hold him fast,’ had said the worldly-minded woman; ‘he
is worth the trouble, for he is rich.’ All this might have failed in
opening the eyes of a man so utterly blinded by mad passion, had he
not had a little physician by his side, who had the best means of
curing his disorder by the sweetest homœopathic medicaments, which
doubtless had already begun to work their spell.”
It was not long before his passion for Thérèse Brunetti was
extinguished. Caroline charmed him more and more as he became
acquainted with her; and at last he was allowed to pay his court to
her, not, however, without rousing the demon of jealousy in Thérèse.
She used every wile and fascination to gain him back. It was a long,
hard struggle; but she failed. But now a fresh trouble arose; for
Caroline was of a jealous disposition also, and the knowledge of his
past relation to Thérèse, as well as the sight of her efforts to
beguile him, very nearly ended the new love as well as the composer.
Between the two charmers he was prostrated with trouble and bodily
ailments, which had this good effect, however, that they removed him
from the neighborhood of Thérèse’s fascinations. By the advice of
his friends he went to the baths of Friedland, and was thus released
from the one tyrant and was able to devote himself more assiduously
to the other. His ardent letters to Caroline soon smoothed over all
difficulties, and removed her doubts of him for several weeks. They
arose once more, however, before he returned to Prague, when she heard
that he was again the centre of an admiring group. She tormented him
with a letter on the subject, to which he answered:—
“Be pacified. The attention ladies show me is but the amusement or
the affectation of the hour. There is no thought of love in it, my
child. You must not suppose all other women have the same bad taste
as you. The embraces of dear old Mamma Beer can surely be no reproach
to me. My lips, eyes, and ears might all be subjected to the most
inquisitorial examination.”
Thus the two lovers were harassed by storm after storm. At last came a
period of rest. Then scandal began to assail Caroline. She was charged
with maintaining improper connections with Weber. To rescue her from
this cowardly assault, he implored her to marry him at once. Acting
upon the advice of her mother, she replied that she must have time to
reflect whether she was ready to give up her art. Her answer led to a
bitter quarrel between them, which was still further intensified by
a fresh fit of jealousy on her part, owing to the alleged attentions
which he had bestowed upon an actress named Christine Böhler, though
there were no grounds for her suspicions. Overwhelmed with his
troubles, he precipitately left Prague and went to Munich. During his
stay in that city he received a letter from Caroline saying that it was
best the engagement between them should be severed. He hurried back to
Prague, and at their very first meeting the tie was renewed, never to
be broken again; and with her consent public announcement was made of
their formal engagement. From this moment his creative power reasserted
itself, and song after song came from his pen, inspired by her love,
while new positions of honor and distinction were offered him.
From this time also her influence is clearly apparent upon his musical
work, particularly in his masterpiece, that flower of German operas,
“Der Freischütz.” He consulted her constantly, both in the preparation
of the libretto and of the score; and her suggestions heightened its
beauty and wonderful dramatic power. He called her his “public with
two eyes,” and when it was finished he said to her in a note:—
“The whole has now a far better effect, and I must thank you for
that, my poppet. Your ideas were bold, but they have succeeded.”
On the 4th of November, 1818, the fête-day of the affianced pair, they
were married at Prague, and on that day he writes in his diary:—
“May God bless our union, and grant me power and strength to make my
beloved Lina as happy and contented as my inmost heart would desire!
May his mercy lead me in all my doings!”
Though she was still occasionally harassed by jealous doubts of him
when he was absent from her, their life was a very happy one.
In 1826, shattered in health, he left for London, whence he was
destined never to return. As his wife heard the carriage door close, on
the cold winter morning that he left home, she rushed to her room, sank
upon her knees, and cried out in the bitterness of her soul, “It is his
coffin I heard closed upon him.” The only tie between them now was that
of correspondence. His son says:—
“Nothing can be more touching than these letters, amounting in all to
fifty-three, in which the sufferer was always striving to conceal,
as far as he could, his sufferings; the anxious woman, left behind,
always repressing her own bitter anguish lest it should increase the
other’s sorrow.”
In another place his son says:—
“On the morning after the first representation of ‘Oberon,’ Weber lay
exhausted in his easy-chair, when Fürstenau entered his room with a
new potion. ‘Go, go!’ murmured the sufferer. ‘No doctor’s tinkering
can help me now; the machine is shattered. But, ah! would but God in
his mercy grant that it might hold together till I could embrace my
Lina and my boys once more!’”
On the evening of the 2d of June he wrote his last letter to his wife:—
“What a joy, my own dear darling, your letter gave me! What a
happiness to me to know that you are well! As this letter requires
no answer, it will be a short one. What a comfort it is not to have
to answer.... God bless you all, and keep you well. Oh! were I but
amongst you all again! I kiss you with all my heart and soul, my
dearest one. Preserve all your love for me, and think with pleasure
on him who loves thee above all, thy Carl.”
Two days later he called his friends about him, and with solemn
earnestness turned to them and murmured, “God reward you all for
your kind love to me.” One by one they sorrowfully left the room.
Fürstenau helped him to retire. He gave him his thanks, and then with
a kindly smile illuminating his face said, “Now let me sleep.” They
were his last words. The next morning he was found dead. On the 14th of
December, 1844, the body of the master reached Dresden, and was borne
to the cemetery chapel amid thousands of people, who lined the streets
and stood with uncovered heads paying silent homage to his memory. His
son says:—
“In the richly decorated chapel of the cemetery, all the ladies of
the theatre, with Schröder-Devrient at their head, awaited the body
and covered the coffin with laurels. The ceremony was at an end. The
torches were extinguished; the crowd dispersed. But by the light of
two candles still burning on the altar might be seen the form of a
small, now middle-aged woman, who had flung herself upon the bier,
whilst a pale young man knelt praying by her side.”
The next day the body was placed in the family vault; and Richard
Wagner, the rising genius of German music, spoke a solemn and eloquent
tribute of praise over the remains of the composer of “Euryanthe,”
“Freischütz,” and “Oberon.”
[Illustration]
RICHARD WAGNER.
I believe in God, Mozart, and Beethoven, and in their disciples and
apostles. I believe in the Holy Ghost and the truth of Art,—one and
indivisible. I believe that this art proceeds from God, and dwells
in the hearts of all enlightened men. I believe that all may become
blessed through this art.—WAGNER.
The career of Richard Wagner, the musician of the future, the
stanch protester against all that is artificial and conventional in
music, poet, littérateur, and dramatist, the great high-priest who
wedded music and poetry in a union now known the world over as the
music-drama, was strongly influenced by the power of woman. His father,
who was superintendent of police at Leipsic, died shortly after the
composer’s birth; and his mother, who, Dr. Nohl says, was “a woman of
a very refined and spiritual nature,” then married an actor, Ludwig
Geyer, who had been an intimate friend of the family. The step-father
died before the boy had reached his seventh year, but he had already
recognized his artistic talent and had intended he should be a
portrait-painter. In his last sickness, however, he heard him playing
melodies from “Der Freischütz” in an adjoining room, and exclaimed,
“Can it be that he has a talent for music?” He commended him to his
mother, and she did all in her power to realize almost the last words
of her husband: “I would have made something out of him.”
But little has been made known of Wagner’s first wife, Minna Planer,
an actress whom he married Nov. 24, 1836; but from that little it is
certain that she was not a helpmate to him in any sense. She was an
ordinary woman, having little knowledge of music and still less taste
for it. She could not appreciate his ambitions, or understand the great
purpose of his life. She died in 1866; but during her last years she
had lived separately from him at Munich, supported by an allowance
which he settled upon her. At this time Wagner was living in retirement
at Triebscheu, near Lucerne, where Frau von Bülow, wife of the eminent
pianist, Hans von Bülow, who keenly sympathized with his artistic
aspirations, ministered to his domestic comforts. “This man, so
completely controlled by his demon, should always have had at his side
a high-minded, appreciative woman, a wife that would have understood
the war that was constantly waged within him,” is the judgment passed
on his first wife by one of her own friends. This woman he found in
Cosima von Bülow; and it certainly is an extraordinary tribute to Von
Bülow’s generosity, unselfishness, and self-sacrifice that he himself
acknowledged the fitness of their union.
In 1834 Liszt, the pianist and composer, was the centre of a brilliant
musical and literary coterie in Paris, which comprised such members as
Chopin, George Sand, Lamartine, Victor Hugo, and others almost equally
noted. Among them was the Countess d’Agoult, better known by her _nom
de plume_, “Daniel Stern.” His acquaintance with her ripened into an
attachment of familiarity, which was at first attractive to Liszt and
subsequently repugnant. He was considerably her junior, and she was
already married; but she threw herself upon his protection, deserted
her family, and became his travelling companion. She accompanied him
in his years of travel through Italy and Germany, but in 1840 the
attachment began to weaken. A short time before, he had written to a
friend:—
“When the ideal form of a woman floats before your entranced soul,—a
woman whose heaven-born charms bear no allurements for the senses,
but only wing the soul to devotion,—if you see at her side a youth
sincere and faithful in heart, weave these forms into a moving story
of love, and give it the title, ‘On the Shores of the Lake of Como.’”
The romance was a brief one. The Countess was speedily off to Paris
again with her children, for during their attachment a son and two
daughters had been born to them. The son, and one of the daughters, who
married M. Émile Ollivier, the French statesman, are dead. The second
daughter was Cosima, so named in memory of Como, who subsequently
married Von Bülow. She was afterward divorced from him, and, as has
already been said, met Wagner at Triebscheu. She was in complete
sympathy with him, understood him, inspired him, and proved a blessing
to him. They were married in 1870; and the first fruit of this
union was the boy Siegfried, to whom the next year he dedicated the
incomparably beautiful “Siegfried Idyl,” which pictures the charming
environments of his childhood at Lucerne. “For the first time in his
life,” says Dr. Nohl, “he secured that complete human happiness which
sustains and animates our powers.” Judith Gautier, in her charming
volume, “Richard Wagner and his Poetical Work from Rienzi to Parsifal,”
gives the following pleasant picture of the family home:—
“At sunset I reached Triebscheu, that consecrated bit of land where
since that time I have passed so many pleasant hours. It was a sort
of promontory, extremely picturesque, jutting into the lake. There
was neither grating nor door; the garden had no defined limits,
and extended indefinitely toward the neighboring mountains. The
exterior of the house was perfectly plain,—gray, with dark tiles;
but in the interior arrangements, full of grace and elegance, one
felt the presence of a woman. Madame Wagner appeared in the midst
of her children, fair, tall, and gracious, with a charming smile,
and tender, dreamy-blue eyes. The sympathy with which she inspired
me from the first moment has never been broken; and our friendship,
already of long standing, has never known a cloud. It was a
delightful evening; the master displayed incomparable animation and
gayety of spirits.”
Never was there a more perfect companionship, perhaps, than that of
Wagner and his wife. Whatever may be thought of the manner in which
the separation from Von Bülow was accomplished, it was unquestionably
in accordance with German law; and the fact that he made no objection
to the separation, or to the subsequent union with Wagner, but on the
other hand acknowledged its peculiar fitness, and that he was and
still is one of the composer’s stanchest and most zealous adherents,
perhaps ought to satisfy the most scrupulous moralist. From the time
that Wagner first met Cosima in Switzerland to the hour of his sudden
death in Venice, his life was crowned with perfect happiness. She is
a woman of rare personal accomplishments and extraordinary magnetic
power, and she drew about her in their Villa Wahnfried a circle of
friends and artists who made the atmosphere congenial and inspiring to
Wagner. She herself, however, was the magician who exerted the most
powerful influence upon him. She advised, consoled, encouraged, and
inspired him. He lived always by her side, and he died in her arms, she
not knowing that the beloved one had passed away, but fancying that he
was asleep. After a life of strife such as few men have to encounter;
of hatred more intense and love more devoted than usually falls to the
lot of humanity; of restless energy, indomitable courage, passionate
devotion to the loftiest standards of art, and unquestioning allegiance
to the “God that dwelt within his breast,” he rests quietly under the
trees of Villa Wahnfried. Inspired by man’s steadfast courage and a
noble woman’s love, he has lifted the musical art out of its grossness,
artificiality, and vulgarity, invested it with a new body, and animated
it with a new and pure spirit.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
PART III.
WOMAN AS THE INTERPRETER OF MUSIC.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
WOMAN AS THE INTERPRETER OF MUSIC.
It only remains, in tracing the influence of woman upon music, to
consider her as its interpreter, mainly through the medium of the
voice, though there are not wanting many female artists who have
excelled in instrumental music. This branch of the subject needs but
brief consideration, since its facts are conceded, and it is almost an
axiom that without interpreters there would be no composers. All the
elements which woman has in her nature—love, pathos, passion, poetry,
and religion—combine to perfect her song, and give fitting expression
to the ideas of the masters. Woman’s song is the first sound the child
hears. May we not fancy that when the child has grown to old age, it
is still the song of woman which, though inaudible to those standing
around, kindles a smile upon the dying face, and brings a look of
recognition to the eyes, as if they beheld once more the old familiar
face of the mother, and heard the familiar voice which sung to the
old man when all his world was contained in the hollow of a cradle?
And between these extremes of birth and death in every age, what an
endless procession of singers memory will summon! How they approach,
pass before us, and disappear, crowned with their laurels of victory!
The last two centuries have been prolific in great artists, though
the present time is poorer than any other. To name only a few of them
will suffice for the purposes of this essay; and they may readily and
conveniently be divided into eras, as follows: From 1700 to 1750, the
four great artists were Faustina Bordoni, Caterina Mingotti, Caterina
Gabrielli, and Francesca Cuzzoni. Bordoni was from Venice, and Cuzzoni
from Parma; and their names will always be associated in consequence
of their bitter rivalry. Händel brought Bordoni to London to sing
in his operas, in which Cuzzoni had already performed with success.
Their simultaneous appearance was a signal for the most extraordinary
popular demonstrations. The city was divided against itself; and the
partisanship at last extended even to families, as we find Sir Robert
Walpole declaring for Bordoni, while Lady Walpole was an enthusiastic
advocate of Cuzzoni. The press was filled with stinging epigrams and
atrocious libels. Duels were fought. The wrangling of audiences at
times was riotous. One night, when the two queens of song appeared on
the same stage, they came to blows. At last Bordoni drove her rival
from the field, and the latter ended her days in a charity hospital.
Bordoni continued her victorious career with great brilliancy for
thirty years, winning in her last years the plaudits even of the
captious critic, Frederick the Great. Her successor was Mingotti, a
Neapolitan, who was educated by Porpora, and patronized by Metastasio.
She eclipsed the fame of Bordoni, though her stage life was briefer.
The last of the four, Gabrielli, who was educated by a cardinal of the
same name, with the additional help of Metastasio, excelled all the
others in natural talent, and aroused a frenzy of enthusiasm whenever
she sang, with the brilliant execution and exquisite quality of her
voice.
From 1750 to 1800 there were six representative singers: Gertrude
Elizabeth Mara, Sophie Arnould, Nancy Storace, Elizabeth Billington,
and Angelica Catalani. Mara’s name is inseparably connected with
Händel’s music. Insignificant in appearance and indifferent as an
actress, her sweet and powerful voice and her unrivalled skill in
bravura music more than atoned for her other deficiencies. When
Frederick the Great first heard her sing, he testily declared he would
rather hear his horse neigh; but she soon conquered the royal grumbler,
and he speedily became her enthusiastic champion. In Paris she made a
warm friend of Marie Antoinette. She brought all London to her feet
by the manner in which she sang at the great Händel Commemoration in
Westminster Abbey, in May, 1784. Burney, the musical historian and
critic, who was present on that occasion, has left his impression of
her singing, in the elegant volume he published, describing the various
days’ performances of that festival, which excelled all others held up
to that time. Of her singing in the solo from Händel’s anthem, “Oh,
sing unto the Lord a new song,” he says:—
“Madame Mara’s voice and manner of singing in this plain and solemn
air, so admirably accompanied on the hautbois by Fisher, had a sudden
effect on myself, which I never before experienced, even from her
performance of more pathetic music. I have long admired her voice and
abilities in various styles of singing; but never imagined tenderness
the peculiar characteristic of her performance; however, here, though
she had but a few simple notes to deliver, they made me shiver, and I
found it extremely difficult to avoid bursting into tears on hearing
them. Indeed, she had not only the power of conveying to the remotest
corner of this immense building the softest and most artificial
inflections of her sweet and brilliant voice, but articulated every
syllable of the words with such neatness, precision, and purity that
it was rendered as audible and intelligible as it could possibly have
been, in a small theatre, by mere declamation.”
As an interpreter of sacred music this great artist stood
almost peerless. Her triumphant career was continued to the extreme age
of seventy-three; and on her eighty-second birthday Goethe dedicated
a poetical tribute to her. Sophie Arnould was brought to Paris by
Gluck, and sang in his operas under the patronage of Marie Antoinette
with the most brilliant success. Nancy Storace was among the first who
made successes in English opera. She had previously made a brilliant
reputation in Italy, and carried Vienna by storm, including the Emperor
Joseph, with whom she was a great pet. Elizabeth Billington, as
beautiful in person as she was brilliant in song, captivated Haydn,
during his London visit, with her beautiful voice. Sir Joshua Reynolds
painted her as St. Cecilia, as a companion to his portrait of Siddons
as the Tragic Muse. Haydn, contemplating the picture, exclaimed to the
artist, “You have made a great mistake.” “How! what!” said the startled
painter. “Why,” replied Haydn, “you have represented Mrs. Billington
listening to the angels; you should have made the angels listening
to her.” Salomon, Haydn’s manager, used to say, “She sings with her
fingers,” for she was a marvellous pianist as well as singer. Catalani
had a career of almost unexampled success and good fortune, though a
cold singer, carrying her audiences by storm with the tremendous volume
and wonderful richness of her tone, as well as with the marvellous
facility and rapidity of her execution. She had so powerful a voice
that Queen Charlotte, after hearing her and being asked her opinion,
declared: “I was wishing for a little cotton in my ears all the time.”
A wag, being asked if he would go to York to hear her, replied: “I
shall hear her better where I am.” A critic, describing her singing of
Luther’s Hymn, says:—
“The majesty of her sustained tones,—so rich, so ample as not only
to fill but overflow the cathedral where I heard her,—the solemnity
of her manner, and the St. Cecilia-like expression of her raised
eyes and rapt countenance, produced a thrilling effect through the
united medium of sight and hearing. Whoever has heard Catalani sing
this, accompanied by Schmidt on the trumpet, has heard the utmost
that music can do. Then in the succeeding chorus, when the same awful
words, ‘the trumpet sounds, the graves restore the dead which they
contained before,’ are repeated by the whole choral strength, her
voice, piercing through the clang of instruments and the burst of
other voices, is heard as distinctly as if it were alone! During the
encore I found my way to the top of a tower on the outside of the
cathedral, and could still distinguish her wonderful voice.”
The half-century from 1800 to 1850 was rich in great artists; and to
this period belong Pisaroni, Pasta, Schröder-Devrient, Anna Milder,
Sontag, Malibran, Grisi, Falcon, Clara Novello, Pauline Viardot,
Dorus-Gras, Persiani, Catharine Hayes, Alboni, and Jenny Lind,—a
galaxy of singers unexcelled in all the annals of song. Meyerbeer and
Rossini kept their pens busy for Pisaroni. Pasta, with her wonderful
dramatic power, founded a new school of lyric art, and astonished the
world with her personation of _Norma_, which Bellini wrote for her.
Beethoven’s _Leonora_ in “Fidelio” will ever be associated with Milder,
the creator of the part,—a singer of whom the aged Haydn said, when
he heard her sing to her teacher, “The best way to form an idea of
her voice is to hear a full, well-tuned organ register;” and of whom
Napoleon more briefly said, “Voilà une voix!” Schröder-Devrient, the
daughter of Sophie Schröder, described as “the Siddons of Germany,” was
also associated with this magnificent rôle, in which her success was
extraordinary. Where have the great artists gone, that there are no
longer any _Leonoras_ or _Normas_ of the heroic stamp? Of Malibran and
Sontag, Théophile Gautier writes:—
“In 1827 Mlle. Sontag was attracted to Paris, the art-centre
whither all celebrities tend. She made her _début_ in the rôle
of _Desdemona_. Her success was incredible; and it was no slight
matter to occupy the _prima donna’s_ golden throne with Malibran,
who was the most wonderful incarnation of music. Malibran, as great
a tragedienne as a vocalist,—grace, self-possession, originality,
poetry, and genius combined in one impassioned organization,—was
reproduced by one of those rare miracles of which Nature is
unfortunately too sparing. Their loyal rivalry was profitable to
art; passion reigned on the stage and among the audience; thunders
of applause were evoked by both performers, for the two camps ended
in uniting in a reciprocal enthusiasm; Sontag’s partisans applauded
Malibran, and Malibran’s partisans applauded Sontag. To gain access
to the Italians, even by paying three times the usual price for a
seat, was a rare favor; and the _queue_ often included Meyerbeer,
Halévy, Auber, Rossini. O happy days, when art engrossed all minds,
and absorbed all political passions!”
Grisi was a peerless _diva_ in personal beauty; a great actress,
especially in the rôles of _Norma_ and _Lucrezia Borgia_; and a singer
who could act, as well as an actress who could sing,—a rare combination
now-a-days. Chorley says of her:—
“A quarter of a century is a fair length of reign for any queen,—a
brilliant one for an opera queen of these modern times, when wear and
tear are so infinitely greater than they used to be. The supremacy of
Madame Grisi has been prolonged by a combination of qualities rare
at any period. In our day there has been no woman so beautiful, so
liberally endowed with voice and with dramatic impulse as herself,
Catalani excepted.”
Mlle. Falcon, of the Grand Opera, achieved wonderful success as
_Rachel_ in Halévy’s “Jewess.” Says one who heard her:—
“Who does not know the power, the soul, which she threw into this
glorious personation? Who does not retain the strong recollection
of her brilliant tragic and lyric qualities? She was the genuine
type of Hebrew beauty,—the real daughter of the Mounts of Sinai and
of Bethlehem. The eagle eye sparkles with liquid flame; the form of
steel is pliant in its strength; the complexion is brown and warm;
the long hair of raven black floats in the breeze, free from that
pale and sickly shade which the climates of the north give to the
skins and locks of their daughters. It is ebony bathed in sunlight.
When M. Scribe saw Mlle. Falcon, he perceived at once, with his
usual penetration, that he had Judith before him, and that he had
a glorious representative of a well-devised drama. That drama he
wrote, and created for his heroine a world of tragic pomp, thrilling
situations, and deep emotions.”
Clara Novello, one of the noblest of women, commenced her career as an
operatic singer, and closed it, with wonderful success, as the grandest
oratorio singer England has yet produced, and the principal vocalist at
the great English festivals. When Rossini first produced his “Stabat
Mater,” with Donizetti for conductor, she had the rare honor of being
selected as the principal soloist. Persiani was one of the finest
singers in the school of light operas, like “Lucia” and “Somnambula,”
and her _Rosina_ in the “Barber of Seville” was always a triumph of
enthusiasm. Pauline Viardot, second daughter of the famous singer and
musician, Garcia, is still remembered for her wonderful personation
of _Valentine_ in “The Huguenots,” and as one of those great dramatic
singers of the grand school whose mantles are still waiting for
successors. Schumann sang her praises; and M. Escudier, the great
French critic, says of her:—
“Her singing is expressive, descriptive, thrilling, full, equal and
just, brilliant and vibrating, especially in the medium and in the
lower chords. Capable of every style of art, it is adapted to all
the feelings of nature, but particularly to outbursts of grief,
joy, or despair. The dramatic coloring which her voice imparts to
the slightest shades of feeling and passion is a real phenomenon of
vocalization which cannot be analyzed.”
Madame Dorus-Gras, another great singer of this time, made almost as
deep an impression in her personation of _Marguerite de Valois_ in
“The Huguenots,” as Viardot in that of the principal rôle. Catharine
Hayes, the lovely Irish singer; Bosio; D’Angri; Alboni, the greatest
alto of the present century, whose sonorous and yet mellow liquid
voice embraced fully two octaves, every note pure and beautiful; and
Jenny Lind, whose fame is world-wide,—may almost be said to belong to
the present day, so near are their victories to us. But who are their
successors? The catalogue of singers in our own day is a long one;
but, as compared with the list from 1800 to 1850, it does not contain
equally great names. Two of the greatest singers of the present period,
Tietjens and Parepa, are forever silent. Of all these artists, Tietjens
was incomparably the greatest. One of the best of critics a few years
ago wrote:—
“We presume it is useless to say a single word upon the extraordinary
gifts and accomplishments of this truly extraordinary singer. A voice
so rich in quality, so extensive and so flexible, combined with
a temperament so passionate, and a dramatic perception so exact,
carries us back to the highest standards of lyric excellence in our
memory. The great line that commenced with Pasta, and was sustained
in all its honors by Schröder, Malibran, and Grisi, finds no feeble
vindication in the genius of Tietjens.”
And with her the line stops. Madame Parepa-Rosa, “the stainless lady of
the matchless voice,” was a great vocalist, not a great _prima donna_;
for she lacked the intense dramatic quality to make her personations
complete and rounded. As a singer of exceptional power and beauty of
voice, and as a versatile vocalist, she has rarely been excelled;
for she shone with equal brilliancy in the opera, the oratorio, and
in the ballad school, while in the beauty, sweetness, grace, and
dignity of her noble womanhood, she commended herself to the public
so intimately that her death was almost universally regarded as a
personal loss. Zucchi, Lagrange, Gazzaniga, and Parodi were types of
the old school, when great singers were great actors, and great actors
were great singers; but they have retired, and we have left a list
of beautiful, brilliant singers, nearly all of whom, however, have
made their successes in the light works of the lyric stage,—Adelina
Patti, Pauline Lucca, Marie Roze, Madame Torriani, Zelda Seguin, Emma
Nevada, Emma Abbot, Alwina Valleria, Anna de Belocca, Minnie Hauck,
Emma Albani, Christine Nilsson, Clara Louise Kellogg, Anne Louise
Cary (lately retired from the stage), Etelka Gerster, Marie Marimon,
and others; and on the concert stage Carlotta Patti, fast losing her
brilliant powers, Miss Emma Thursby, Antoinette Sterling, Mrs. Osgood,
who has taken a leading position as an oratorio and ballad singer, Anna
Drasdil, the veteran Anna Bishop, come down from a former generation,
and a long list of others whom it is not necessary to mention. Will the
Wagner school develop a second line of the heroic artists? It is not
improbable; for already one has appeared, Frau Materna, the majestic
_Brünnhilde_ of the Nibelungen cyclus.
It is almost superfluous to emphasize the fact that the interpretation
of vocal music is specially the province of woman, or that she is
destined to achieve triumphs in the future as brilliant as those in
the past. It is a realm where her sway will always be undisputed; and
so long as there are artists to sing, they will inspire composers to
write. It does not follow, however, that every singer will be a _prima
donna_, though she may achieve a great name as an artist, and figure
upon the bills and programmes by that appellation. Singers are plenty:
_prime donne_ are few. The late Richard Grant White, in one of his
brilliant essays, “The Musical Monster,” referring to Gabrielli, says:—
“No woman can be a great _prima donna_ who has not to a certain
degree her three principal qualifications,—a grand voice, the grand
style which comes of fine and highly cultivated musical intelligence,
and beauty, or, if not beauty, at least an attractive person and a
pleasing manner.”
Some exception might be taken to the last qualification, at least
so far as he claims it to be an essential condition. Unquestionably
personal beauty goes a great ways in making an artist a favorite with
the public; but many artists with beautiful persons have been favorites
with the public, who were not great _prime donne_, while many artists
have been great _prime donne_ to whom Nature had been unkind in the way
of physical charm. Another qualification, and almost an indispensable
one, should be added to his category; and that is repose, which is
one of the foundation principles of true art. Still, while a given
age may produce but few great _prime donne_, this should not be a
discouragement, for it may produce many great singers who may give
real pleasure to audiences. All composers cannot be Beethovens, any
more than all painters Raphaels: but there are degrees of culture and
service worth striving for by woman, that will command great success
and ample reward; and no time was ever more advantageous for these
results than the present. The conditions, however, are exacting.
Any one can recall singers with exceptionally fine voices, who have
failed, not because they had fine voices, but because they never had
the patience, perseverance, and intelligence to learn how to use them.
Duprez used to say, “Nothing injures a singer so much as a fine voice.”
Perhaps his aphorism would have been less exaggerated had he said,
“Nothing is so fatal to a singer as to rely upon a naturally fine
voice for success.” The greatest singers have reached their positions
by persevering study, resolute courage, patient endurance, and the
constant habit of doing even the most unimportant thing well. A really
great artist employs the resources of her art as conscientiously in a
ballad as she would in a grand dramatic aria. With the proper study
and a rightly directed culture, there is no reason why American women
should not take leading places in the musical world, as they have
exceptionally fine voices. Surely there is every impulse and incentive
for study in the experiences of Adelina Patti, Emma Albani, Minnie
Hauck, Marie Litta, Antoinette Sterling, Emma Osgood, Anne Louise
Cary, Clara Louise Kellogg, and other American women who have made
themselves famous all over Europe.
* * * * *
In instrumental music woman has not taken as high a position
as in vocal music, mainly because her advantages have not been
improved wisely. It has become the fashion to educate all girls,
indiscriminately, to play the piano, without reference to their ability
or musical taste. The result is that Clara Schumanns, Essépoffs,
Mehligs, Goddards, and Krebbses do not abound, and that out of fifty
young ladies who go through the conventional piano course, one may
become a good amateur player. The gradus of the piano in our time
seldom leads to Parnassus. There are other instruments which might be
studied with great advantage by woman, especially the violin and harp.
Camilla Urso, the sisters Milanollo, and Madame Neruda have shown what
woman can accomplish with the violin. The instrument is admirably
adapted to her delicacy of taste and sensibility, and nothing but a
silly prejudice keeps her from its study. There is no reason why she
should not learn to play, except it may be the awkwardness of the
admixture of women in orchestras. This may militate against its study
for such a purpose; but there is no reason why she should not strive to
be a solo-player. The harp has gone out of fashion; but it should be
speedily reinstated, not only as a beautiful medium of accompaniment
and an elegant ornament for the drawing-room, but as the instrument
above all others best calculated to display woman’s taste and
sweetness, and most happily adapted to her native grace of person and
elegance of movement. The organ also should be more generally studied
by woman, as a guide to a higher musical knowledge and the gateway
to the truest and noblest forms of musical literature. Two women of
this country—Miss Carrie T. Kingman of Chicago, and Mrs. Frohock of
Boston—have shown that its most extreme difficulties can be mastered.
The latter now devotes herself to the piano, but at one time took a
high position as an organist; while the former, by constant practice
and study, has mastered even the colossal difficulties of Thiele, and
played the works of Bach, and the sonatas of Merkel, Haupt, and other
modern German organ-writers, in a manner few male players can equal.
* * * * *
The instances which have been given in these pages are only a few out
of the many, showing the influence of woman upon musical composers and
in the field of vocal and instrumental music, which belongs of right
to her, but which has not yet been cultivated with the earnestness and
intelligence it deserves. Although not the creator, she has inspired
the creations, and then interpreted them to the world. Man may be the
intellect of music: she is its heart and soul. What she has not done
_with_ music matters little compared with the great glory and beauty
she has given _to_ music. By the side of the great composers, in equal
glory and fame, should be placed such women as Constance Weber, Fanny
Mendelssohn, Bettina von Arnim, Madame Voigt, the friend of Schumann,
Cosima Wagner, Delphine Potocka, Clara Schumann, Pasta, Malibran,
Grisi, and those others who have elevated music to greater heights by
inspiring its creation, and giving it to the world through the medium
of the voice.
No grander work can occupy woman’s attention. Music was the first
sound heard in the creation, when the morning stars sang together.
It was the first sound heard at the birth of Christ, when the angels
sang together above the plains of Bethlehem. It is the universal
language, which appeals to the universal heart of mankind. It greets
our entrance into this world, and solemnizes our departure. Its thrill
pervades all Nature,—in the hum of the tiniest insect, in the tops of
the wind-smitten pines, in the solemn diapason of the ocean. And there
must come a time when it will be the only suggestion left of our human
nature and the creation, since it alone, of all things on earth, is
known in heaven. The human soul and music are alone eternal.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
APPENDIX.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
APPENDIX.
To make this essay complete, the writer appends, first, a list of
the prominent female composers during the past three centuries: and,
second, a list of the dedications made to women by the composers
mentioned in the body of the work, so far as it has been possible to
obtain them.
FEMALE COMPOSERS.
=Seventeenth Century.=
CACCINI, FRANCESCA. _Italy._ Songs.
CALEGARI, CORNELIA. _Italy._ Songs.
GUERRE, ELIZABETH CLAUDE. _France._ Operas.
STROZZI, BARBARA. _Italy._ Songs.
=Eighteenth Century.=
LEBRUN, FRANCESCA. _Germany._ Sonata for piano.
DUSSEK, SOPHIA. _Scotland._ Piano and harp music.
CIANCHETTINI, VERONICA. _Bohemia._ Concertos and sonatas.
AGNESI, MARIA TERESA. _Italy._ Operas.
ANNA AMALIA, _Duchess of Saxe Weimar_. Dramatic music.
ANNA AMALIA, _Princess of Prussia_. Cantatas.
PARADIES, MARIA THERESA. _Austria._ Operettas.
POUILLAU, Mlle. _France._ Three sonatas.
REICHARDT, JULIA. _Germany._ Songs.
SCHROETER, CORONA ELIZABETH. _Poland._ Songs.
SERNIEN, MADDALENA. _Italy._ Violin music.
WENSLEY, FRANCES FOSTER. _England._ Songs.
ABRAMS, Miss. _England._ Songs.
BAYER, Mlle. _Austria._ Songs.
BLANGINI, Mlle. _Italy._ Violin music.
BRANDENSTEIN, CHARLOTTE DE. _Germany._ Sonatas.
BRANDES, CHARLOTTE WILHELMINA. _Germany._ Songs and piano music.
BRESSON, Mlle. _France._ Songs.
GRETRY, LUCILE. _France._ Dramatic music.
GUENIN, Mlle. _France._ Operas.
LANNOY, LA COMTESSE. _Italy._ Romances and sonatas.
LILIEN, ANTOINETTE DE. _Austria._ Piano music.
LOUIS, Mme. _France._ Sonatas.
MARTINEZ, MARIANE. _Austria._ Masses.
MONTGERAULT, Mme. _France._ Sonatas.
TRAVANET, Mme. DE. _France._ Romances.
BLAHETKA, LEOPOLDINE. _Austria._ Songs.
=Nineteenth Century.=
MOUNSEY, ANN SHEPARD. _England._ Oratorio of “The Nativity.”
MOUNSEY, ELIZABETH. _England._ Pieces for organ and piano.
LODER, KATE FANNY. _England._ One opera, one overture, and three
sonatas.
LANG, JOSEPHINE. _Germany._ Songs.
HENSEL, FANNY CECILE. _Germany._ Songs and piano music.
GABRIEL, MARY ANN VIRGINIA. _England._ Operettas and songs.
BLAHETKA, LEOPOLDINE. _Austria._ Concert pieces for piano.
BONNE, D’ALPY. _France._ Songs.
CARADORI, ALLAN. _Italy._ Songs.
GAIL, SOPHIE. _France._ Dramatic music.
MILES, Mrs. _England._ Concertos.
BEARDSMORE, Mrs. _England._ Sonatas and songs.
SCHUMANN, CLARA. _Germany._ Songs and piano music.
DUFFERIN, COUNTESS OF. _England._ Songs.
POLKO, ÉLISE. _Germany._ Songs.
PUGET, LOUISE. _France._ Songs.
SAINTON-DOLBY, Mme. _England._ Songs.
DEDICATIONS.
MOZART.
Two sonatas for piano and violin, to Princess Victoire of France.
Two sonatas for piano and violin, to Countess de Tessè.
Six sonatas for piano and violin, to Queen Charlotte of England.
Six sonatas for piano and violin, to Princess Caroline of Nassau.
Aria, “Fra cento affanni,” to Countess Firmian of Milan.
Two-act serenade, “Ascanio in Alba,” to Maria Theresa.
Concerto for three pianos, to Countess Lodron and her daughters
Aloysia and Giuseppa.
Concerto, to Countess Lützow.
Serenade, to Elizabeth Haffner.
Aria, “Ah! t’invola agli,” to Josephine Duschek.
Aria, “Non so donde vienes,” to Aloysia Weber.
Sonata for piano and violin, to Thérèse Pierron.
Six sonatas for piano and violin, to Princess Marie Elizabeth.
Song, “Oiseaux si tous,” to Mlle. Wendling.
Aria, “Io non chiedo,” to Aloysia Weber.
Aria, “Ah, non sò io,” to Countess Baumgarten.
Aria, “Nehmt meinen Dank,” to Aloysia Weber.
Solfeggien, to Constance Mozart.
Sonata for piano to Constance and Sophie.
Sonata for piano, to Constance Mozart.
Aria, “Ah! non sai, qual pena,” to Aloysia Weber.
Aria, “Vorrei spiegar-vi,” to Aloysia Weber.
Aria, “No, no, che non sei capace,” to Aloysia Weber.
Mass (comp. 1783), to Constance Mozart.
Concerto, to Barbara Plöyer.
Sonata for piano and violin, to Regina Strinassacchi.
Trio, to Francisca von Jacquin.
Rondo, to Nancy Storace.
Aria, “Resta, O caras,” to Josephine Duschek.
Aria, “Ah se in Ciel,” to Aloysia Weber.
Aria, “Schon lacht der holde Frühling,” to Mme. Hofer.
Aria, “Chi sa, chi sa, qual sia,” to Mlle. Villeneuve.
Aria, “Vado ma Dove?” to Mlle. Villeneuve.
BEETHOVEN.
Sonata, op. 7, to Countess von Keglevics.
Three sonatas, op. 10, to Countess von Browne.
Trio in B major, op. 11, to Countess von Thun.
Two sonatas, op. 14, to Baroness de Braun.
First concerto, op. 15, to Princess Odescalchi.
Sonata in F major, op. 17, to Baroness de Braun.
Septet in E major, op. 20, to Empress Maria Theresa.
Sonata, op. 27, No. 1, to Princess Lichtenstein.
Sonata, op. 27, No. 2, to Countess Guicciardi.
Variations in F major, op. 34, to Princess Odescalchi.
Marches, op. 45, to Princess Esterhazy.
Rondo in G major, op. 51, No. 2, to Princess von Lichnowsky.
Aria, “Ah! perfido,” op. 65, to Countess von Clary.
Trios in D and E major, op. 70, to Countess von Erdödy.
Six songs, op. 75, to Princess Kinsky.
Sonata, op. 78, to Countess Therese von Brunswick.
Three songs, op. 83, to Princess Kinsky.
Polonaise, op. 89, to Empress Elizabeth of Russia.
Song, “An die Hoffnung,” to Princess Kinsky.
Sonata, op. 101, to Dorothea Ertmann.
Sonatas, op. 102, Nos. 1 and 2, to Countess von Erdödy.
Sonata, op. 109, to Fraulein Brentano.
Thirty-three variations, op. 120, to Frau Brentano.
Twelve variations in F major, to Eleanore von Breuning.
Trio in B major (one movement), to Fraulein Brentano.
Twelve variations in G major, to Princess von Lichnowsky.
Six variations in D major, to Princesses Deym and Brunswick.
Lichte sonata in C major, to Eleanore von Breuning.
Nine variations in C minor, to Countess von Wolf-Metternich.
Twenty-four variations in D major, to Countess von Hatzfeld.
Twelve variations in A major, to Countess von Browne.
Ten variations in B major, to Countess Keglevich.
Eight variations in F major, to Countess von Browne.
Song, “An die Geliebte,” to Regina Lang.
March in F major, to Empress of Austria.
SCHUBERT.
Three songs, op. 20, to Justina von Bruchmann.
Zuleika’s Second Song, op. 31, to Anna Milder.
“Der zürnenden Diana,” to Katharina von Lacsny.
“Nachtstück,” to Katharina von Lacsny.
Seven songs from Scott’s “Lady of the Lake,” op. 52, to Countess of
Wessenwolf.
“Divertissement à la Hongroise,” to Katharina von Lacsny.
Overture to “Alphonso and Estrella,” to Anne Honig.
Three songs, op. 92, to Josephine von Frank.
Four songs, op. 96, to Princess von Kinsky.
Fantasie, op. 103, to Countess Caroline Esterhazy.
Four songs, op. 106, to Marie Pachler.
“Der Hirt auf dem Felsen,” op. 129, to Anna Milder.
Sonata in C major, op. 140, to Clara Wieck.
SCHUMANN.
Variations on name “Abegg,” op. 1, to Countess d’Abegg.
“Papillons,” op. 2, to Thérèse, Rosalie, and Émélie.
Impromptus, op. 5, to Clara Wieck.
Allegro, op. 8, to Baroness de Fricken.
Sonata No. 1, op. 11, to Clara Wieck.
“Fantasie Stücke,” op. 12, to Anna R. Laidlav.
“Arabeske,” op. 18, to Majorin Serre.
“Blumenstück,” op. 19, to Majorin Serre.
“Humoreske,” op. 20, to Julie von Webenau.
Sonata No. 1, op. 22, to Henrietta Voigt.
“Liederkreis,” op. 24, to Pauline Garcia.
“Myrthen,” op. 28, to Clara Wieck.
Three songs, op. 30, to Josephine B. Cavalcabo.
Three songs, op. 31, to Countess von Zedtwitz.
Scherzo, gigue, romance and fugue, op. 32, to Amalie Rieffel.
Six songs, op. 36, to Livia Frege.
Quintet, op. 44, to Clara Schumann.
Andante and variations, op. 46, to Harriet Parish.
“Dichterliebe,” op. 48, to Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient.
“Bilder aus Osten,” op. 66, to Lida Bendemann.
“Waldscenen,” op. 82, to Annette Preusser.
“Fantasie Stücke,” op. 88, to Sophie Peterson.
Six songs, op. 89, to Jenny Lind.
Three songs, op. 95, to Constanze Jacobi.
“Bunte Blätter,” op. 99, to Mary Poltz.
Six songs, op. 104, to Elizabeth Rutmann.
Six songs, op. 107, to Sophie Schloss.
“Jugend Album,” op. 109, to Henrietta Reichmann.
Three “Fantasie Stücke,” op. 111, to Princess Reuss-Kostritz.
Three sonatas, op. 118, to Julie, Élise, and Marie.
Three songs, op. 119, to Mathilde Hartmann.
“Albumblätter,” op. 124, to Alma von Wasielewski.
Seven piano pieces, op. 126, to Rosalie Leser.
Five piano pieces, op. 133, to Bettina.
Overture to “Hermann and Dorothea,” op. 136, to “Seiner lieben Clara.”
Four songs, op. 142, to Livia Frege.
MENDELSSOHN.
Six vocal quartets, op. 59, to Henriette Bennecke.
Songs, op. 57, to Livia Frege.
Motets, op. 39, to the nuns of Trinita da Monti Rome.
Songs without words, op. 53, to Sophie Horsley.
Songs, op. 34, to Julie Jeanrenaud.
Songs without words, op. 67, to Sophie Rosen.
Concerto, op. 25, to Delphine von Schaurotte.
Songs, op. 47, to Constanze Schleinitz.
Songs without words, op. 62, to Clara Schumann.
Symphony (Third), to Queen Victoria.
Songs without words, op. 30, to Elisa von Worringen.
Songs without words, op. 38, to Rosa von Worringen.
CHOPIN.
Études, op. 25, to Countess d’Agoult.
Nocturnes, op. 27, to Countess d’Appony.
Polonaise, op. 44, to Princess de Beauvan.
Nocturnes, op. 32, to Baroness de Billing.
Valse, op. 64, No. 3, to Baroness Bronicka.
Rondo, op. 14, to Princess Czartoryska.
Scherzo, op. 54, to Mlle. Caraman.
Prelude, op. 45, to Princess Czernicheff.
Mazurkas, op. 63, to Countess Czosnowska.
Nocturnes, op. 48, to Mlle. Duperré.
Grande Polonaise, op. 22, to Baroness Est.
Allegro, op. 51, to Countess Esterhazy.
Bolero, op. 19, to Countess de Flahault.
Mazurkas, op. 17, to Mme. Freppa.
Scherzo, op. 31, to Countess Fürstenstein.
Berceuse, op. 57, to Mlle. Gavard.
Rondo, op. 16, to Mlle. Hartmann.
Valse, op. 18, to Mlle. Horsford.
Variations, op. 12, to Mlle. Horsford.
Nocturnes, op. 62, to Mlle. Köuneritz.
Rondo, op. 1, to Mme. de Linde.
Impromptu, op. 29, to Countess Loban.
Mazurkas, op. 56, to Mlle. Maberly.
Rondo, op. 5, to Countess Moriolles.
Mazurkas, op. 33, to Countess Mostowska.
Allegro de Concert, op. 46, to Mlle. Müller.
Ballade, op. 47, to Mlle. Noailles.
Sonata, op. 58, to Countess Perthius.
Nocturnes, op. 9, to Mme. Camille Pleyel.
Mazurkas, op. 6, to Countess Plater.
Concerto, op. 21, to Countess Potocka.
Valse, op. 64, No. 1, to Countess Potocka.
Valse, op. 64, No. 2, to Baroness Rothschild.
Ballad, op. 52, to Baroness Rothschild.
Fantasie, op. 49, to Princess Souzzo.
Nocturnes, op. 55, to Mlle. Stirling.
Barcarole, op. 60, to Baroness Stockhausen.
Polonaise Fantasie, op. 61, to Mme. Veyret.
Mazurkas, op. 30, to Princess of Würtemberg.
WEBER.
Two allemandes for piano, op. 4, to Mlle. Lisette d’Arnhard.
Variations for piano, op. 5, to the Empress Maria Theresa.
Variations for piano, op. 7, to the Queen of Westphalia.
Polonaise for piano, op. 21, to Margaret Lang.
Six pieces for piano, op. 10, to the Princesses Marie and Amélie of
Würtemberg.
Recitative and rondo, op. 16, to Luise Frank.
Vocal duett, op. 31, to Queen Caroline of Bavaria.
Canzonet, op. 29, to Queen Caroline of Bavaria.
Six-voice song, to Madame Schröck.
Grand sonata for piano, op. 24, to the Grand Duchess Marie Paulowna.
Seven variations for piano, op. 28, to Fanny von Wiebeking.
Six waltzes, to the Empress Marie Louise.
Scene and aria, op. 52, to Therese Grünbaum.
Air Russe, op. 40, to the Grand Duchess Marie Paulowna.
Scene and aria, op. 51, to Hélène Harlas.
Cavatina for soprano, to Madame Weixelbaum.
Cantata “L’Accoglienza,” to Maria Anna Carlina of Saxony.
Scene and aria, op. 56, to Mme. Milder-Hauptmann.
Mass in G, op. 76, to Queen Maria Amalia Augusta of Saxony.
“Invitation to the Dance,” op. 65, to “his Caroline.”
Concert-Stück, op. 79, to the Princess Marie August of Saxony.
Cantata, to the Duchess Marie Amalia of Saxony.
Cantata, to the Princess Therese of Saxony.
Song, “Nourmahal,” to Miss Stevens.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
INDEX.
Abbott, Emma, 199, 202.
Adelaide, 17, 61.
Albani, Emma, 199, 202.
Alboni, Mme., 193, 197, 198.
Arnim, Bettina von, 72, 205.
Arnould, Sophie, 190, 191.
Auber, 29, 195.
Bach, Johann Sebastian, 20, 129, 204;
his ancestry, 35;
youth and manhood, 37;
his first wife, 38;
her marriage and death, 39;
his second wife, 41;
their domestic life, 42;
her musical influence, 43;
Bach’s death, 44.
Bach, Maria Barbara, 38.
Bartolozzi, Mme., 94.
Beethoven, 17, 20, 26, 28, 45, 60, 113, 118, 119–121, 135, 194, 201;
domestic conditions, 62;
the Breunings, 64–67;
a flirtation, 67;
Barbara Koch, 68;
Mlle. de Gerardi, 69;
Baroness von Drossdich, 69;
Amelia de Sebald, 71;
Bettina von Arnim, 72–78;
Dorothea van Ertmann, 72;
Magdalena Willmann, 73;
Marie Koschak, 73–75;
Countess Guicciardi, 78–81.
Belocca, Anna de, 199.
Berlioz, 20.
Billington, Elizabeth, 190–192.
Bishop, Anna, 200.
Bonheur, Rosa, 19.
Bordoni, Faustina, 188–189.
Brandt, Caroline, 165, 166, 168–176.
Breuning family, 64–68.
Bronté, Charlotte, 19.
Browning, Mrs., 19.
Brunetti, Thérèse, 167–171.
Cannabich, Rose, 97.
Caroline, Queen, 54.
Cary, Anne Louise, 199, 202.
Catalani, Angelica, 190, 192, 193.
Cherubini, 28.
Chopin, 17, 113, 128, 132, 179;
a Polish attachment, 151;
in Warsaw, 152;
at Nice, 152;
relations with George Sand, 153–159;
his death, 159, 160.
Choral Symphony, 63, 83.
Cimarosa, 28.
Cuzzoni, Francesca, 188, 189.
Devrient, Edouard, 141.
Dorus-Gras, Mme., 193, 197.
Drasdil, Anna, 200.
Drossdich, Baroness von, 69.
Eliot, George, 19.
Erdödy, Countess, 81.
Eroica Symphony, 83.
Ertmann, Dorothea van, 72.
Essépoff, Mme., 203.
Esterhazy, 89, 91, 121–124.
Falcon, Mlle., 193, 195, 196.
Fidelio, 60, 118, 194.
Frohock, Mrs., 204.
Gabrielli, Caterina, 188, 189, 200.
Gazzaniga, Mme., 199.
Genzinger, Mme., 91–93, 95.
Gerster, Etelka, 199.
Glück, 28, 191.
Goddard, Arabella, 203.
Goethe, 72, 75, 76, 77, 119, 191.
Grisi, Giulietta, 193, 195, 205.
Grob, Theresa, 118.
Guiccardi, Countess, 78–81.
Händel, 20, 26, 28, 48, 110, 144, 188, 190;
childhood, 49;
his mother, 50;
her death, 51;
royal patronage, 52;
queer matrimonial conditions, 53;
Händel at court, 54;
temper with singers, 55;
social habits, 56;
relations with Vittoria, 57;
anecdotes, 58.
Hauck, Minnie, 199, 202.
Haydn, Joseph, 17, 20, 28, 47, 84, 192, 194;
his first love, 85, 86;
courtship and marriage, 87;
service with Prince Esterhazy, 89;
an Italian liaison, 91;
friendship with Mme. Genzinger, 92, 93;
visit to London, 94;
the English widow, 95.
Haydn, Michael, 85.
Hayes, Catharine, 193, 197.
Hensel, Fanny, 21, 140–143, 205.
Herschel, Caroline, 19.
Honrath, Jeannette de, 67.
Hosmer, Harriet, 19.
Hummel, 28.
Jeanrenaud, Cecilia, 144–147.
Keiserin, Mlle., 96.
Kellogg, Clara Louise, 199, 202.
Kingman, Carrie T., 204.
Koch, Barbara, 68.
Koschak, Marie, 73.
Krebbs, Marie, 203.
Lagrange, Mme., 199.
Lang, Gretchen, 164, 165.
Lind, Jenny, 193, 198.
Liszt, Franz, 20, 128, 149, 151, 153, 155, 159, 179.
Litta, Marie, 202.
Lucca, Pauline, 199.
Lulli, 28.
Malibran, Mme., 193–195, 205.
Mara, Gertrude Elizabeth, 189–191.
Marimon, Marie, 199.
Materna, Frau, 200.
Mehlig, Anna, 203.
Mehul, 28.
Mendelssohn, 20, 29, 132;
his sister, 140–143;
descriptions of his wife, 144–147;
his death, 147.
Meyerbeer, 29, 193, 195.
Milder, Anna, 118, 193, 194.
Mingotti, Caterina, 188, 189.
Moonlight Sonata, 17, 81.
Mozart, 17, 20, 26, 28, 65, 96, 162;
his early fancies, 97;
Aloysia Weber, 98;
her sister Constance, 101;
letter to his father, 104;
a marriage contract, 105;
love quarrels, 107;
the marriage, 108.
Müller, Max, 24.
Neruda, Mme., 203.
Nevada, Emma, 199.
Nilsson, Christine, 199.
Novello, Clara, 193, 196.
Osgood, Emma A., 200, 202.
Pachler, Marie, 73–75, 119.
Parepa, Euphrosyne, 198, 199.
Parodi, Mme., 199.
Pasta, Mme., 193, 194, 205.
Patti, Adelina, 199, 202.
Patti, Carlotta, 199.
Persiani, Mme., 193.
Pisaroni, Mme., 193.
Potocka, Delphine, 152, 159, 160, 205.
Requiem, Mozart’s, 17, 109, 110.
Rossini, 28, 193, 195, 196.
Roze, Marie, 199.
Sand, George, 17, 19, 149, 151, 153–159, 179.
Schubert, 20, 26, 28, 75, 112, 132;
extracts from diary and letters, 114, 115;
Theresa Grob, 118;
songs for Anna Milder, 119;
visit to the Pachlers, 120;
the Esterhazy family, 121;
relations to the daughters, 121–124.
Schumann, 20, 26, 28, 150, 195, 203;
Clara Wieck, 126–137;
other attachments, 136;
marriage, 135.
Schumann, Clara, 21, 126–137, 143, 150, 203, 205.
Schröder-Devrient, Mme., 119, 176, 193, 194.
Schrolter, Mme., 94, 95.
Sebald, Amelia de, 71.
Seguin, Zelda, 199.
Somerville, Mary, 19.
Sontag, Henrietta, 193–195.
Sophie Charlotte, Electress, 52.
Staël, Mme. de, 19.
Sterling, Antoinette, 200, 202.
Storace, Nancy, 190, 191.
Thursby, Emma, 199.
Tietjens, Theresa, 198.
Torriani, Mme., 199.
Trouveresses, 21.
Urso, Camilla, 203.
Valleria, Alwina, 199.
Verdi, 28.
Viardot, Pauline, 193, 197.
Vittoria, 57.
Vogler, 105.
Voigt, Henrietta, 136, 205.
Von Bülow, 178, 182.
Wagner, 20, 26, 28, 176, 200;
his youth, 177;
his first wife, 178;
meeting with Cosima von Bülow, 178;
the second marriage, 180;
his death, 182.
Wagner, Cosima, 178, 180–183, 205.
Weber, 17, 28;
his ancestry, 162;
meeting with Gretchen Lang, 164;
Caroline Brandt, 165;
troubles with Brunetti, 167;
engagement to Caroline Brandt, 173;
marriage, 174;
his death, 176.
Weber, Aloysia, 96, 98–102, 109.
Weber, Constance, 101–110, 162, 205.
Wegeler, 63, 64, 68, 78, 82, 121.
Willmann, Magdalena, 73.
Wülkens, Anna Magdalena, 41.
Zucchi, Mme., 199.
[Illustration]
THE STANDARD OPERAS. Their Plots, their Music, and their Composers.
By GEORGE P. UPTON, author of “Woman in Music,” etc., etc.
=12mo, flexible cloth, yellow edges= =$1.50=
=The same, extra gilt, gilt edges= =2.00=
“Mr. Upton has performed a service that can hardly be too highly
appreciated, in collecting the plots, music, and the composers of
the standard operas, to the number of sixty-four, and bringing them
together in one perfectly arranged volume.... His work is one simply
invaluable to the general reading public. Technicalities are avoided,
the aim being to give to musically uneducated lovers of the opera a
clear understanding of the works they hear. It is description, not
criticism, and calculated to greatly increase the intelligent enjoyment
of music.”—_Boston Traveller._
“Among the multitude of handbooks which are published every year, and
are described by easy-going writers of book-notices as supplying a
long-felt want, we know of none which so completely carries out the
intention of the writer as ‘The Standard Operas,’ by Mr. George P.
Upton, whose object is to present to his readers a comprehensive sketch
of each of the operas contained in the modern repertory.... There are
thousands of music-loving people who will be glad to have the kind of
knowledge which Mr. Upton has collected for their benefit, and has cast
in a clear and compact form.”—_R. H. Stoddard, in “Evening Mail and
Express” (New York)._
“The summaries of the plots are so clear, logical, and well written,
that one can read them with real pleasure, which cannot be said of the
ordinary operatic synopses. But the most important circumstance is
that Mr. Upton’s book is fully abreast of the times.”—_The Nation (New
York)._
_Sold by all booksellers, or mailed, post-paid, on receipt of price, by_
A. C. McCLURG & CO., PUBLISHERS,
COR. WABASH AVE. AND MADISON ST., CHICAGO.
MUSIC-STUDY IN GERMANY. By AMY FAY. Eighth edition. 12mo, 352 pages.
Price, $1.25.
“One of the brightest small books we have seen is Amy Fay’s
‘Music-Study in Germany.’ These letters were written home by a young
lady who went to Germany to perfect her piano-playing. They are full of
simple, artless, yet sharp and intelligent sayings concerning the ways
and tastes of the fatherland.... Her observation is close and accurate,
and the sketches of Tausig, Liszt, and other musical celebrities are
capitally done.”—_Christian Advocate (New York)._
“It is bright and entertaining, being filled with descriptions,
opinions, and facts in regard to the many distinguished musicians and
artists of the present day. A little insight into the home life of the
German people is presented to the reader, and the atmosphere of art
seems to give a brightness and worth to the picture, which imparts
pleasure with the interest it creates.”—_Dwight’s Journal of Music._
“The intrinsic value of the work is great; its simplicity, its minute
details, its freedom from every kind of affectation, constitute in
themselves most admirable qualities. The remarkably intimate and
open picture we get of Liszt surpasses any picture of him heretofore
afforded. It is a charming picture, strong, simple, gracious, noble,
and sincere.”—_Times (Chicago)._
“In delicacy of touch, vivacity and ease of expression, and general
charm of style, these letters are models in their way. The pictures
which she gives of the various masters under whom she studied have the
value that all such representations possess when they are drawn from
life and with fidelity.”—_Graphic (New York)._
_Sold by all booksellers, or mailed, post-paid, on receipt of price, by_
A. C. McCLURG & CO., PUBLISHERS,
COR. WABASH AVE. AND MADISON ST., CHICAGO.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
Except for those changes noted below, all misspellings in the text,
and inconsistent or archaic usage, have been retained.
Page 11. Dedications page “210” corrected to “211”.
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