{"id":7211,"date":"2021-11-04T11:39:28","date_gmt":"2021-11-04T10:39:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/?p=5638"},"modified":"2021-11-04T14:34:08","modified_gmt":"2021-11-04T13:34:08","slug":"6-composers-with-wretched-love-lives","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/rss_feed\/6-composers-with-wretched-love-lives\/","title":{"rendered":"6 composers with wretched love lives"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By Jeremy Pound\n \t\t<\/p>

Published: Thursday, 04 November 2021 at 12:00 am<\/p>

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Take a look through the musical history books and you will find plenty who enjoyed long, happy and devoted relationships with their other halves \u2013 such Grieg<\/a>, Britten<\/a> or, heading further back, Tallis<\/a>, for instance. Then, there are those whose affairs of the heart were ardent and turbulent in equal measure, often matching their own music \u2013 the likes of arch-Romantic composers<\/a> Chopin<\/a>, Schumann<\/a> and Wagner<\/a> spring to mind, here.<\/strong><\/p>\n

There were some who simply didn\u2019t care. And then, alas, there were the composers for whom, for one reason or another, love brought more than its fair share of pain. Some were cruelly rejected by the objects of their fondest desires, others found themselves lumbered with spouses they could scarcely abide, and others were driven by jealousy to the brink of despair\u2026 or worse.<\/p>\n

We present six composers who had wretched love lives<\/p>\n

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Haydn<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Joseph Haydn<\/a><\/strong> (1732-1809) was married for 30 years, but not to whom he\u2019d have liked. As a young man, the Austrian composer fell madly in love with Therese Keller, the daughter of a Viennese wig-maker, but his would-be parents-in-law had other plans \u2013\u00a0Therese was sent to a nunnery, leaving Joseph to marry her older sister, Maria Anna, instead. Duly wed in 1860, the two were at loggerheads from almost day one. The marriage was childless, both had affairs \u2013\u00a0she with the painter Ludwig Guttenbrunn, he with the soprano Luigia Polzelli \u2013 and gossip about their feuding became standard fare. Several years after Haydn and Maria Anna had died, the Swedish composer Berwald reported that \u2018They say in Vienna that Haydn\u2019s rather unhappy and childless marriage is the reason why he composed so much.\u2019<\/p>\n

  • Five essential works by Haydn<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>

    Schubert<\/strong><\/h2>\n

    Like Haydn, Franz Schubert<\/strong><\/a> (1797-1828) also fell in love with a Therese, but in the then-teenage composer\u2019s case, his hopes of wedlock were shattered not by the will of her parents, but by his own penury \u2013\u00a0a law at the time prohibited marriage if the man could not prove his financial wherewithal to support a family. Later in his short life, Schubert became smitten with one of his pupils, Countess Caroline Esterh\u00e1zy, but she, it would seem, had little interest in her skint, short, puffy-faced admirer, despite his obvious talents. He, then, had to turn elsewhere for pleasure. Whether or not the syphilis that brought about his death at just 31 was the result of regular visits to prostitutes is not known.<\/p>\n