MENDELSSOHN, Chopin, Schumann, Liszt, Verdi and Wagner, born within four years of one another, were composers who epitomised the Romantic Movement. One of the key figures was Schumann, who investigated the Romantic’s obsession with feeling and passion thoroughly. The women in these men’s lives played a key role (as all women do… for better or for worse…) in their compositions taking them to great heights.
Clara Wieck was born on September 13, 1819 in Leipzig, and studied piano with her domineering and difficult father Freidrich. Schumann was also a student of Freidrich Wieck from 1830, when he first met Clara. Freidrich Wieck was violently opposed to Clara’s relationship with Schumann and his actions over the years won him a place in music history, not as the obscure teacher of a great composer or as the father of a great pianist, but as the disagreeable father-in-law who thwarted young love.
He forced the couple to separate, opened their love letters and initiated a campaign of personal vilification against Schumann, so opposed was he to his daughter’s marriage. In 1840, the affair ended in court and judgement went against Wieck, allowing the happy couple to be married on September 12, 1840 – the day before Clara’s 21st birthday.
Clara was the love of Schumann’s life and undoubtedly inspired the composer with one of his richest periods of composition before the deterioration of his mental health which culminated on February 27, 1854 in an attempted suicide when he tried to drown himself in the Rhine.
He was rescued and placed at his own request in an asylum at Endenich near Bonn. Brahms was one of the few welcome visitors. Some sources say Schumann refused to see Clara or any of their seven children, others that Clara would not visit for fear of upsetting him.
Shortly before he died though, Clara visited Schumann and initially did not recognise him as he had aged so much. She wrote that he smiled and put his arms around her with great difficulty because he had almost lost control of his limbs. “I would not give up that embrace for all the treasures on earth.” He died in Clara’s arms and was buried the following day in Bonn. Opinions vary as to his final cause of death, but whatever it was, it was the cruellest and most un-Romantic of ends.
Brahms became an increasingly important figure in Clara’s life and to this day, the exact nature of their relationship is unclear, but it is difficult to refute claims that they had an affair. Brahms was 14 years younger than Clara and possibly felt their age difference too great an obstacle for marriage. Clara continued to give concerts until 1891 before she died of a stroke on May 20, 1896.
Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin had his first great love in Paris with the flirtatious daughter of Count Wodzinska. but the family terminated the affair as they deemed Chopin unfit due to his poor health and rather irregular lifestyle.
His next was perhaps the most unlikely woman of his circle – Aurore Dupin or Madam Dudevant, the radical, free-thinking novelist who wrote under the pseudonym of George Sand. She was not good looking, smoked cigars and wore men’s clothing and Chopin’s initial reaction was repulsion. But she held a fascination for him and a relationship developed which lasted 10 years.
She was a mother figure who became the love of his life, although one of her personal letters implies that the physical side of their liaison was less enthusiastically embraced by Chopin. In 1838 they had a disastrous trip to Majorca with George Sand and her children and although for the next few years Chopin was at the height of his creative powers, his health deteriorated.
In 1848, his relationship with Sand became increasingly tense. There is so much conjecture about who did what to whom in the dramatic story of their break-up that blame is almost impossible to apportion. However, Chopin told Liszt that in breaking this long affection and powerful bond, he had broken his life. After the collapse of their relationship in 1847, he scarcely put pen to manuscript paper again, before his death two years later. Chopin never stopped loving her though – after his death a small envelope was found in the back of his dairy which contained a lock of her hair.
Ferenc Liszt was the very embodiment of the Romantic spirit and had at least 26 major love affairs and several illegitimate children. By 16, Liszt was famous throughout Europe and embarked on his first passionate love affair with Caroline de Saint-Cricq, a 16-year-old whose father was the French Minister of Commerce and who nipped the romance in the bud. By 1834, he met and fell in love with the beautiful Cometesse Marie d’Agoult – the fact that she had a husband and three children was of no importance when it came to such grand passion!
Within a year, she had left them and joined Liszt in Geneva where Blandine, their first child was born. Their second child Cosima was born in 1837 and was destined to become the wife of Richard Wagner. (When she fell in love with Wagner, she was the wife of Hans von Bulow who was Wagner’s friend and champion. However, despite Wagner taking his wife, Bulow remained devoted to the composer and wrote to Cosima “You have preferred to devote your life and the treasures of your mind to one who is my superior. Far from blaming you I approve your action from every point of view and admit you are perfectly right.”)
At the height of Liszt’s powers, he changed direction and so the relationship with Marie d’Agoult gradually disintegrated. While on a trip to Kiev in 1847, he met the Polish-born Princess Carolyne Sayn-Wittgenstein, a cigar-smoking, unhappily married intellectual who suffered from a morbid fear of fresh air. The two discovered a mutual interest in religion and mysticism and within a short time the princess had abandoned her husband and 30,000 serfs to join Liszt in Weimar where he had been made Kapellmeister to the Grand Duke.
They lived at the court as an unmarried couple for the following ten years and although Liszt wanted to marry her, the Pope revoked the sanction for her divorce at the last moment. They stayed together until Liszt’s death from pneumonia during a performance of Tristan und Isolde.
So however you are going to celebrate Valentine’s Day, make sure that it is with passion in whatever you do…
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JOKE
Two bass players were engaged for a run of Carmen. After a couple of weeks, they agreed to take an afternoon off to watch the matinee performance. Joe duly took his break; back in the pit that evening, Moe asked how it was. “Great,” says Joe. “You know that bit where the music goes `Boom Boom Boom Boom’ – well there are some guys on top singing a terrific song about a Toreador at the same time.”
FAMOUS QUOTES
“Had he been a little more human, he would have been great for all time”
Debussy speaking about Richard Wagner
MUSICAL TERM
Accelerando – A symbol used in musical notation to indicate a gradual quickening of tempo.
THIS DAY IN HISTORY……
* Premiere of Anton Bruckner’s Symphony No 9 in d minor in Vienna 1903
* Premiere of Franz von Suppe’s Boccaccio in Vienna 1879
* Premiere of Donizetti’s La Figlia del Regimento in Paris (1840) with Donizetti conducting.
* Premiere of Mozart’s Piano Concerto in d minor in Vienna 1785 with Mozart at the piano
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