Klaus Döring's Classical Music/Klaus Döring's Klassische Musik

Vienna Meets Tokyo 70 Years of Music, Friendship and Tradition

2026-11-09T22:27:40.475-08:00

by Georg Predota November 5th, 2026

In 2026, Japan has two magnificent reasons to celebrate its rich musical and cultural heritage. Tokyo’s magnificent Suntory Hall marks its 40th anniversary, while the Vienna Philharmonic celebrates 70 years since its first visit to Japan.

The connection between the Vienna Philharmonic and Suntory Hall dates back to 1999, when the inaugural “Wiener Philharmoniker Week” in Japan brought the orchestra to this celebrated venue.

These milestones share a deep respect for tradition and a commitment to excellence nurtured through generations of craftsmanship. Both Japanese culture and the Vienna Philharmonic value preserving their artistic heritage and passing on their traditions to future generations.

Vienna Philharmonic Japan Tour 1956

A Musical Friendship Begins

The Wiener Philharmoniker’s first concerts in Japan took place in 1956, under the baton of composer and conductor Paul Hindemith. This historic visit began a concert tradition, with subsequent tours led by Herbert von Karajan and Karl Böhm, among others.

The first engagement at Suntory Hall took place in 1987, with Claudio Abbado conducting, just months after the hall had opened its doors.

The magnificent Suntory Hall is in Tokyo’s Akasaka district and consists of a main concert hall, widely considered one of the finest in the world for its acoustics. The Main Hall also houses a magnificent organ made by the Austrian firm Rieger Orgelbau, showcasing an incredible 5,898 pipes.

Suntory Hall

A Jewel Box of Sound

The performance complex also includes a smaller hall for chamber music, known as “Blue Rose,” and its roof is an extended, tiered landscape garden. The “Herbert von Karajan” plaza in front of Suntory Hall was created in April 1998 in remembrance of the maestro, who was involved in the hall’s design.

Suntory Hall (2018)

He recommended its vineyard style, in which the audience surrounds the concert floor in the Main Hall, and he helped with its acoustic evaluation. He would later call it “a jewel box of sound.”

Shoichi Sano of Yasui Architects and Engineers handled the architectural design, while Minoru Nagata of Nagata Acoustics provided the acoustic expertise. The latest research also influenced the hall’s acoustic design, as well as the opinions of music lovers.

A Second Home in Tokyo

As a result, all 2,006 seats face the stage, much like terraces of vines oriented toward the sun. This design allows musicians and audiences to feel in perfect harmony and be fully immersed in the musical experience, both acoustically and visually.

Following the 1997 visit to Japan, Suntory Hall and its founder, Keizo Saji, began inviting the orchestra and organising subsequent visits and residencies. Under this arrangement, the first Wiener Philharmoniker Week took place in March 1999, with Riccardo Muti conducting. As the chairman of the Vienna Philharmonic explained, “Suntory is our second home.”

Riccardo Muti (2010)

Friendship Beyond the Stage

The orchestra and Suntory Hall share a particularly close relationship, as they have a common vision. They want to pass on the joy of music to the next generation. In addition to regular concerts during the “Wiener Philharmoniker Week,” they collaborate on special activities that connect performers with audiences, as well as special programmes aimed at young people.

A deep friendship guides the relationship between the Vienna Philharmonic and Suntory Hall. Following the devastating earthquake and tsunami in eastern Japan in March 2011, the “Music Aid Fund” was created. The Vienna Philharmonic immediately pledged one million euros, and Suntory matched the donation with another million.

Orchestra members visited and played in disaster areas such as Sendai, and they also visited schools, where they rehearsed together with the students. In the afternoon, they held master classes, and in the evening, they played concerts together.

The Heart of the Harmony

In 2016, the Wiener Philharmoniker performed a concert together with children from the affected areas at Suntory Hall, titled “The Heart of the Harmony.”

They rehearsed and performed the final movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, and, as one participant reflected, “it was about more than just playing the notes.”

The “Music Aid Fund” has since continued, with further visits to the Sendai Junior Orchestra in 2019 and musical exchanges with students in Rikuzentakata in 2025.

Opening Doors

For 2026, they have also organised several education and outreach events. There is a free open rehearsal on November 8 for students and members of the Suntory Hall Members Club, an instrumental master class with horn player Wolfgang Vladár on November 10, and a school programme for junior high and high school students on November 7.

Ninety youth tickets, for everyone from junior high students to young people aged up to 25, will be available for the concert on November 8. In addition to the four concerts at Suntory Hall, the orchestra will tour Takasaki (Gunma), Nagoya, and Osaka.

Wiener Philharmoniker Week 2026

A Living Tradition

Suntory Hall has four concerts scheduled in 2026, all conducted by Riccardo Muti, who has worked with the orchestra for 55 years. The anniversary programme is rather special, as it brings together two symphonies premiered by the Vienna Philharmonic itself.

Brahms’ Second Symphony was premiered under Hans Richter in 1877, and Bruckner’s monumental Eighth Symphony first sounded under Richter in December 1892.

Both works have become cornerstones of the symphonic repertoire, and hearing the Vienna Philharmonic return to these masterpieces many decades later means reconnecting with an important part of its own history while passing on accumulated insights to a younger generation of listeners.

Interlude looks forward to being part of this special anniversary celebration on 12 November, experiencing firsthand a musical tradition that continues to bring Japan and Vienna together.

In Touch With Unsuk Chin

2026-11-09T21:59:06.513-08:00

by Frances Wilson

As the 75th Aldeburgh Festival – founded by Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears – gets underway, we spoke to Korean-born composer Unsuk Chin, one of the festival’s Featured Artists.

Unsuk Chin © Priska Ketterer

Who or what are the most significant influences on your musical life and career as a composer?

The most formative influences are probably those from childhood when the senses react to everything around them in a more ‘holistic’, immediate approach. Then, there was the time of my studies: immersing myself in European avant-garde music in the early 80s was vital, as I had before that known ‘Western’ musical history only until Stravinsky’s Violin Concerto. Conversely, the experience of studying with Ligeti, who denounced the avant-garde, requested utterly original music of excellent craftsmanship from himself and his students, asking me to throw away my prize-winning works, was a pivotal moment. Indeed, moments of crisis and subsequent attempts to find a way out are essential moments and threshold experiences.

The excellent Danish poet Inger Christensen wrote that the major influences on her work were creative stumbling blocks, irritations that, in the long term, made her question and develop her approach. For me, such a moment was when I worked, in the late 80s, and after a writer’s block of almost three years, for a couple of years at a studio for electroacoustic music. Through this, I could re-evaluate the essential elements of my compositional approach and expand the basis of my music. Another significant experience was, in the 90s, longer stays in Bali, where I studied Gamelan music – the acquaintance of a different tradition of great refinement and quality deeply rooted in the society was a discovery.

What have been the greatest challenges of your career so far?

That was to realise my childhood dream of becoming a professional musician and fighting my way out of difficult circumstances – in the 1960s and 1970s, South Korea was a poor post-war country on the periphery, and it was not easy to start as a female Asian composer in Germany.

What are the special challenges and pleasures of working on a commissioned piece?

Without a commission or deadline, I would never compose a work. One needs much pressure from the external world to get through this crazy process. I don’t have any work in my drawer. Writing a new piece is a very demanding process and can take years. I wouldn’t go for it without external pressure and the adrenaline rush. At the same time, I would never accept a commission with conditions that don’t fit into the musical thoughts and goals I am working with during a specific period.

What are the special challenges and pleasures of working with particular musicians, singers, ensembles or orchestras?

I always choose very carefully which commissions I accept. One has to prioritise. It almost needs to be a compulsion: if I don’t have an idea what to write for a certain instrument or concept, I won’t do it. For example, I wrote my First Violin Concerto in 2001 and was convinced I would never write another one. But then, when there was a possibility to write for Leonidas Kavakos, I reconsidered, and the work, 20 years later, is very different from the first one.

Of which works are you most proud?

I move on and try to do something new with every piece. I have removed several earlier works from my work list as I am not content with them. As for the remaining ones, I accept them, but there are also pieces to which I feel more emotional distance than others – which is unsurprising when one revisits works from several decades ago. But I can also name a counterexample – my Piano Concerto, which is from 1995 but which wasn’t much performed before the Deutsche Grammophon recording two decades later. This is a work into which I put all the energy and frenzy of my then 34-year-old self – I wouldn’t compose in this manner anymore, but I feel emotionally close to it.

How would you characterise your compositional language?

I prefer not to, as it may make it more difficult for the listener to approach the work without prejudices. Besides, when I compose a new work, the most important thing for me is its unique shape. Of course, as a composer, you have a particular craft; you prefer certain materials and draw on compositional techniques acquired through the years. You cannot and perhaps shouldn’t avoid that. Nonetheless, it is important for me to attempt each work to be singular in character. Pablo Picasso once expressed it this way: style holds the painter captive in the same point of view, in a technique, in a formula, but he always wants to make something that is new and unknown to himself.

How do you work?

With pen and paper. Composing is, above all, waiting — days, sometimes weeks, before the empty staves. And then, suddenly, a door opens in the head. With age and experience, one develops trust that this door opens at some point if one tries hard enough. The music is in my head. I sometimes jot down ideas, plan harmonies, etc., but for me personally, it is an abstract process without piano or other devices. It can take several years for thoughts and concepts to mature. And when the pressure is great enough, it’s like giving birth: the thoughts have to come out, then you write.

What advice would you give to young or aspiring composers?

To think carefully if one really wants to have a life as a professional composer. It is usually a back-breaking and lonely job, and the financial prospects are often non-existent. If one really wants to do it, one should, but one should be aware what price it takes.

What do you feel needs to be done to grow classical music’s audiences?

This is not easy since, nowadays, there is a tendency to think more and more in purely economic and functional categories, on top of which you have to add the quickness of modern mass media. Besides, there exists a mistaken notion that classical music would be something ‘elitist,’ which is why the notion that society should support art forms that only a small minority will engage with has lost traction. All of this does not mean that things were better during other times. However, it is concerning and a scandal that music is often no longer even considered a minor subject in schools due to very obscure claims of competitiveness and economic success – claims often made, for example, by numerous politicians. It is wrong to withhold from children the experience of art, which is one of the things that distinguishes human beings from AI, not to mention that art often provides indispensable solace and a utopia. Anyway, there are also ‘late bloomers’, audiences that can be won over with creative ideas and new approaches even if they won’t have had previous exposure to classical music; after all, the experience of great music can be a deeply emotional one. The methods and approaches used to try to develop classical music’s audiences depend on the place and context. But the main thing, I believe, is trust. Trust in quality, the hard work of serious performers and composers, the slow progress of building audiences and overcoming obstacles, an almost aggressive defence of artists’ quality and hard work, the audience’s right to hear this music, and the need for financial support of the whole musical ecosystem.

What is the one thing in the music industry we’re not talking about but you think we should be?

I doubt that such a thing exists as ‘the music industry’ – fortunately, we live in a diverse world. At the same time, of course, certain tendencies exist, but these are intertwined with societal developments. Our times are obsessed with the speed of information, packaging, and the surface, which can be problematic for developing sustainable quality standards. Also, the future of classical music institutions in many places is endangered. That leads often to market-think and occasionally to a winner-takes-it-all mentality. At the same time, fortunately, there are many niches and different initiatives. It was much more polarised in the 50 years after the Second World War: there was the established conservative music world, and then there were the rebellious circles of both the avant-garde and the early-music revival, who not infrequently fractured into warring factions. But every time has its challenges.

What do you enjoy doing most?

How Conductors Explain Conducting

2026-11-06T18:00:13.287-08:00

by Janet Horvath March 14th, 2025

When audiences are transported by a concert, they imagine that a kind of magic happens onstage attributed to the conductor. Sometimes that is true. But many other attendees wonder: what does a conductor actually do?

We’re in luck. Several conductors have shared their theories about how to conduct. Richard Strauss for example, who was not only a wonderful composer but also an exacting conductor, published these instructive Ten Golden Rules for the Album of a Young Conductor in 1927. We published them in 2015 but many of them bear repeating here:

• Remember that you are making music not to amuse yourself, but to delight your audience.

• You should not perspire when conducting. Only the audience should get warm.

(My teacher Janos Starker used to say, “Don’t be so moved. Move your audiences.”)

• Never look encouragingly at the brass except with a brief glance to give an important cue.

(Richard Wagner quipped, “Never look at the trombones…It only encourages them.” This quote is also attributed to Strauss!)

• But never let the horns and woodwinds out of your sight. If you can hear them at all, they are still too strong.

• It is not enough that you yourself should hear every word the soloist sings. You should know it by heart anyway. The audience must be able to follow without effort. If they do not understand the words, they will go to sleep.

• When you think you have reached the limits of prestissimo, double the pace.

Some conductors do accelerate to unplayable tempos. I’ve experienced it! Strauss later, in 1948, changed his mind: Today I should like to amend this. Take the tempo half as fast.

Conductor and legendary pianist Daniel Barenboim seconds that notion:

“The tempo is the suitcase. If the suitcase is too small, everything is completely wrinkled. If the tempo is too fast, everything becomes so scrambled you can’t understand it.”

Herbert von Karajan, the famed conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic added, “Quick music sounds dull unless every note is articulated.”

Renowned composer and conductor Gustav Mahler agreed, “If you think you’re boring your audience go slower not faster.”

Gustav Mahler

There are a lot of opinions on how to interpret music and there are often differences in timing and tempo. Take Beethoven’s famous opening to his Symphony No. 5. I think you’ll be surprised by the versions of the first four bars from Carlos Kleiber, Claudio Abbado, Herbert von Karajan, Pierre Boulez, Bruno Walter, and John Eliot Gardiner. Carlos Kleiber with Vienna plays in a refined style, while Pierre Boulez leads a diabolically slow opening to the 5th.

Comparing 5 conductors VERY different openings of Beethoven 5th Symphony (& why they chose that)

Aside from being a timekeeper, what more does a conductor do? During an interview when asked this question, Sir Simon Rattle responded, “It’s one of the great fake professions…We are nothing without the orchestra…”

Sir Simon Rattle

Simon Rattle | What Does A Conductor Actually Do?

South Korean pianist and conductor Myung Whun Chung recently elaborated,

“A conductor almost by definition is a strange animal; he is the only musician on stage that makes no sound, yet he is responsible for everyone else’s. I often would like to think of myself as just a colleague or collaborator with the other musicians, but ultimately, we must come together to be the truthful messengers of the composer we play – and make their music come alive!”

Like other professions, sometimes there’s a domineering and controlling boss. We orchestral players have been subject to heavy-handed conductors, ones we disagree with, or even incapable ones we must ignore.

We’re surprised that Herbert von Karajan, the maestro with a legendary sound, who was an autocrat, once said, “The art of conducting consists in knowing when to stop conducting to let the orchestra play.”

And this is fascinating. Simon Rattle on Karajan:

Simon Rattle on Herbert von Karajan

Leonard Bernstein, who was the music director of the New York Philharmonic from 1957-1970 and recorded with them until the end of his life, puts it in a nutshell,

“Conducting is like making love to a hundred people at the same time.”

The wonderful thing about music-making is that each orchestra has a personality and will sound different depending on the maestro in front of them. And we can tell from the first upbeat in the music whether the leader is any good. One conductor will inspire a refined, polished sound while another will coax a more robust and aggressive quality, and everything is reflected through the different people onstage.

Conducting gestures vary. The stick or hand technique is essential, but every gesture, facial expression, and overall body language matters.

Here’s an illustration:

Breaking down orchestra conducting gestures to show you what they mean

Many conductors have an affinity to certain music and a predilection for conducting those works. Our former music director Osmo Vänskä, for example, was terrific with the works of Jean Sibelius but not comfortable with French music. The Minnesota Orchestra’s complete recordings of all the Beethoven Symphonies are considered one of the best, especially of the 4th and 5th symphonies. Other wonderful interpreters include Otto Klemperer, Riccardo Chailly, with Leipzig Gewandhaus orchestra, and Carlos Kleiber. Wilhelm Furtwängler’s Beethoven No. 9 performance at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus live in 1951 is notable, and Karajan of course.

Watch this rare live video of excerpts of Beethoven Symphony No. 9 being rehearsed and performed by Herbert von Karajan and the Berliner Philharmoniker. It’s their New Year’s Eve concert of 1977 and was the first ever to be broadcast live.

Excerpts of Beethoven’s 9 rehearsal and performance by Herbert von Karajan (1977)

Some composers inspire controversy, and Maher was certainly one of them. Gustav Mahler, the Vienna Philharmonic and Vienna Opera conductor from 1898-1901 and beyond, is quoted as saying, “A symphony must be like the world. It must contain everything.” Admired Mahler interpreters include Leonard Bernstein, who was critical in reviving Mahler’s music.

Claudio Abbado, Klaus Tennstedt, Rafael Kubelik, and Sir Simon Rattle, who says, “The Mahler virus is incurable,” are also noted Mahler interpreters. But here’s a caveat from von Karajan.

“Mahler’s music is full of dangers and traps, and one of them, which many fall into, is over sensualizing the thing until it becomes sort of …kitsch.” (‘Kitsch’— when art is considered in poor taste due to garishness or sentimentality.)

From Maestro: Encounters With Conductors of Today
Helena Matheopoulos book “Maestro” consisting of interviews with the world’s twenty-three top orchestral conductors.

Conductors tend to disagree on this subject too. One’s tasteless interpretation is another’s deep revelation.

Strauss even said so, “Must one become seventy years old to recognize that one’s greatest strength lies in creating musical kitsch?”

You might ask, can an orchestra play without a conductor? Of course we can.

I recently came across an outstanding orchestra that plays without a conductor. Now don’t get me wrong. There is a long tradition of smaller ensembles, chamber orchestras, that play without a conductor. In fact, we have one here in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul—the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. Their stellar performances often lead me to say, “they must be psychic!” as they do not only relegate themselves to so-called classical repertoire of Haydn and Mozart, but they play challenging contemporary works such as Bartók Divertimento, with aplomb and brilliance.

The Going Home Project Orchestra based in Korea plays large-scale works without a conductor including, Stravinsky Rite of Spring, an exceedingly complex work with difficult rhythms and tempo changes. Uncanny. I was flabbergasted at their brilliance as well as their impeccable ensemble. The famous bassoon opening is gorgeous, and the playing of the orchestra throughout is virtuosic.

Self-conducted Live Performance of “Le Sacre du Printemps”

But the maestro can make magic happen onstage and then it’s inexplicable even to us. Whatever the interpretation we agree with von Karajan,

“To be involved professionally in a thing as creative as music is a great privilege and we have a duty to make in such a way that we can help bring pleasure and a sense of fulfillment to those who are not so fortunate {to be able to play music}.” From Osborne’s Conversations.

I hope this explains conducting. But if you’d like to know more, here is a delightful interview with Simon Rattle, who speaks candidly about his art.

Schubert Facts: 13 Things You Didn’t Know About the Great Composer

2026-11-06T17:30:51.447-08:00

by Emily E. Hogstad November 1st, 2026

Franz Schubert only lived for 31 years, but he left a massive, astonishing body of music: countless songs, symphonies, chamber works, sacred compositions, and even operas.

His life held unique and fascinating contradictions. A devoted circle of friends celebrated him, but he never experienced the public acclaim his peers did. He was enormously prolific, even as his music remained unheard and unpublished. He was one of the greatest composers of his generation, but only one all-Schubert concert was performed during his lifetime.

Here are 13 facts about the life and career of Franz Schubert that reveal the man behind those contradictions – and some of the most beloved music of the 19th century.

Franz Schubert

1. Schubert was the twelfth of fourteen children. He grew up close to his brother Ferdinand – who would go on to claim credit for some of Schubert’s music.

Franz Schubert was the twelfth of fourteen children born to Franz Theodor and Elisabeth Schubert. Only five of those children survived past infancy.

As a child, Franz grew especially close to his brother Ferdinand, three years his senior. Ferdinand was a musician and schoolteacher, and he helped mentor his younger brother.

Ferdinand Schubert

Ferdinand also claimed some of Franz’s works as his own, especially while searching for musical jobs. (For what it’s worth, there’s no record of Franz objecting.)

After Franz died in his apartment, Ferdinand inherited Franz’s papers, including his unpublished manuscripts. He navigated the publication and distribution of the works after Franz’s death.

We wrote about Ferdinand Schubert’s story here: https://interlude.hk/ferdinand-schubert-the-composer-who-stole-his-brothers-music/.

2. Schubert composed “Erlkönig” at 17 or 18. It became one of the most famous songs ever written for piano and voice.

Schuber

Goethe’s spooky ballad recounts the story of a father racing on horseback through the night, seeking aid for his feverish son who is hallucinating a supernatural force – the Erlking, a malevolent spirit from German folklore – following them.

The piano part gallops under a vocal line that shifts character between narrator, father, son, and the Erlking himself.

It’s a work of shocking maturity for a teenager: tightly constructed and dramatically expressive. It remains one of the most performed and analysed songs in the entire German Lied tradition.

3. Schubert never held a traditional full-time job past his mid-twenties. Instead, he relied on intermittent teaching and the generosity of friends and family.

After a brief, unenthusiastic stint teaching at his schoolmaster father’s school, Schubert essentially opted out of conventional employment and chose to spend his time composing instead.

He survived on piecework: giving intermittent piano lessons, collecting modest fees from publishers, and accepting financial help from his admiring circle of friends.

This economic precarity colored the rest of his life and career and left him with few means to do things like pay professional musicians to mount large-scale performances.

4. Schubert was so close to his friend Franz von Schober that they referred to themselves using a mashup name: “Schobert.”

Schubert’s Alfonso und Estrella

Franz von Schober – a poet, actor, lithographer, and general dilettante – became one of the composer’s closest and most enduring friends. More than once, he offered him lodging when Schubert ran short of money.

Schober collaborated with Schubert on the 1822 opera Alfonso und Estrella, writing the libretto. They couldn’t mount a performance. (Liszt was the first to do so in 1854; the reception was cool, in part due to Schober’s uneven libretto.)

5. Schubert was only around five feet tall, making him one of the shortest of the great composers.

Franz Schubert, c. 1827

He was so petite and round-faced that his friends nicknamed him “Schwammerl” (“little mushroom”).

He also wore spectacles to help correct his intense nearsightedness. He was never seen without them – and even slept in them so that he didn’t have to struggle finding them if he woke up in the middle of the night with a musical idea.

6. He never married and had no known long-term romantic partner – but did frequent brothels.

The musical life of the 19th century was populated by composers who ran off with married women (for example, Wagner and Liszt) or had cinematic years-long love stories that culminated in happy marriages (the Schumanns).

Schubert’s biography has none of that romantic drama. Indeed, in 1815, a potential groom could not get a marriage license in Vienna without proving he could support not only himself, but a household. Schubert would have had to change lifestyles to marry completely.

We do know that he visited Viennese brothels, a common practice among unmarried men of his generation. He is believed to have contracted syphilis around 1822, when he was in his mid-20s.

7. Schubert abandoned his eighth symphony in 1822, after writing just two movements. He never explained why, and the work wasn’t performed until decades after his death.

Schubert’s Symphony No. 8

The “Unfinished Symphony” is one of classical music’s great mysteries. It consists of two complete, fully orchestrated movements – and that’s it, even though symphonies of this era have four movements. No sketches survive beyond an abandoned third-movement scherzo, and no letters explain why he stopped.

Theories as to what happened range in seriousness from “fatal illness kept him from continuing” to a simple “he just got distracted by new projects.” But nothing is confirmed.

It remained unperformed until 1865, nearly forty years after Schubert’s death. When it finally premiered in Vienna, it was admired, despite its brevity.

8. Only one public concert of Schubert’s work was given during his lifetime.

On 26 March 1828 – the first anniversary of Beethoven’s death, which may have been a deliberate scheduling choice – a concert was held in Vienna devoted entirely to Schubert’s music.

It was a modest success, well attended and warmly welcomed by a composer who badly needed the money. But it also was the only event of its kind in his lifetime, and Schubert would die less than eight months later.

In the end, any career momentum this concert might have brought Schubert was overshadowed by the arrival of sensational virtuoso violinist Niccolò Paganini in Vienna.

9. His friends often gathered to hear his new songs and chamber music; these gatherings became known as “Schubertiades.” They included food, drink, dancing, and performances by Schubert himself.

Schubertiade

Held in the homes of supportive friends and patrons, these informal evenings became the closest thing Schubert had to a regular public for his music. A rotating cast of poets, painters, singers, and civil servants all gathered regularly to hear whatever songs or piano pieces Schubert had been working on.

They weren’t stiff recitals, either; accounts describe charades, dancing, wine, and general conviviality alongside the music. It was a blend of salon and party that suited Schubert’s shy temperament much better than the concert hall ever could.

The Schubertiades were also important for the encouragement they brought him, as one of the few occasions when his talent could actually be witnessed and celebrated.

10. He was arrested in early 1820 because the Austrian secret police, alarmed by the aftermath of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, were aggressively investigating groups of young people and activists.

In 1820, Austria was deeply paranoid about tamping down revolutionary sentiment among students and intellectuals.

That March, the paranoia caught up with Schubert’s circle. His rebellious poet friend Johann Senn was arrested for his defiant conduct toward authorities. Schubert too was swept up, briefly detained, and questioned by police before being released with a reprimand. Senn fared far worse: he spent months in prison and was deported from Vienna.

The story reminds us that the same artistic, tight-knit social circle that nurtured Schubert’s music also existed under very real political surveillance – and not all of Schubert’s friends escaped it unscathed.

11. While composing songs, he set poems by his own friends, not just famous poets.

The young Schubert

Yes, Schubert set poetry by legendary masters like Goethe, Schiller, and Heine.

But his appetite for poetry was insatiable, and his inspiration endless. He also set music to poems by his poet roommate Johann Mayrhofer, Franz von Schober, and others who attended the Schubertiades.

Mayrhofer in particular is worth noting; Schubert set dozens of his poems to music over the years.

This breadth of material says something about what inspired Schubert. He didn’t need the most celebrated works by the most celebrated poets to be inspired.

12. We don’t know exactly what Schubert died of. He had syphilis, but it seems likely that another kind of infection actually killed him.

Schubert died in his brother Ferdinand’s apartment on 19 November 1828 at the age of 31, after a short but severe final illness marked by fever, weakness, and delirium.

He had been living with syphilis for roughly six years by that point, and its long-term effects (along with the side effects of the standard prescribed mercury treatments) had already taken a toll on his health.

But many modern scholars believe the immediate cause of death was something else entirely, possibly typhoid fever contracted from contaminated water or food.

13. Much of Schubert’s music was published or premiered only after his death.

Schubert’s Symphony No. 9

In 1838, ten years after Schubert died, composer Robert Schumann visited Ferdinand Schubert in Vienna.

While digging through the piles of unpublished manuscripts, he came across the score for the Symphony No. 9 in C major – a sprawling, ambitious work that had never been performed.

Schumann recognised its worth immediately and arranged for Mendelssohn – then the conductor of the storied Leipzig Gewandhaus orchestra – to premiere it.

Even in rehearsal, Schumann and Mendelssohn were delighted by what they heard, and the work has remained in the repertoire ever since.

Over the years, Schubert’s other unpublished work surfaced, too. Today, much of it – orchestral music, chamber music, Lied, piano sonatas, and so much more – remains in the repertoire, to the gratitude of musicians and music lovers everywhere.

Herbert Blomstedt (1927–2026) Obituary: Farewell, Legend

2026-11-06T17:18:17.605-08:00

by Jude Leng November 5th, 2026

The death of Swedish-American conductor Herbert Blomstedt, at the age of 99, marks the passing of one of the last great conductors whose careers reached back to the musical world of the mid-20th century. For more than seven decades, Blomstedt stood before some of the world’s finest orchestras, offering interpretations of extraordinary integrity and conviction. The sheer longevity of his career remains one of the most remarkable phenomena in contemporary musical life, while the uncompromising musicality that Blomstedt brought to his performances is yet another part of his legend.

Blomstedt died on 4 November at his home in Gothenburg, just eight months short of his hundredth birthday. Until his final months, he remained an active presence on the international concert platform. On 15 May 2026, Blomstedt conducted his final concert in San Francisco with the San Francisco Symphony, coincidentally performing Mahler’s Ninth Symphony, a work about farewell in the face of death. The concert was interrupted by Blomstedt’s frail health: during the third movement, Blomstedt slumped farther and farther to his right, prompting his attendants to rush onto the stage. Blomstedt, however, insisted on resuming and completing the performance despite his serious health difficulties, and he subsequently cancelled the remaining two performances in the series.

Herbert Blomstedt in Gothenburg, May 2015 © Eskil Malmberg / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

Blomstedt’s last appearance in London, on 21 November 2024, was also a performance of Mahler’s Ninth, this time with the Philharmonia, which I had the honour of attending. By then, Blomstedt had already suffered serious falls in 2022 and 2023, and had to conduct from a piano bench. It was, nevertheless, a performance of incredible magic and musicality. There were undoubtedly compromises imposed by age, but the expressive power was never diminished; on the contrary, it seemed honed to its most vivid form (with no dragging of tempi at all!), culminating in a most nobly Olympian final movement. At the general rehearsal, Blomstedt concluded by saying something to the effect that the body will age and die, but the “spirit” lives on. The performance that very evening was indeed a perfect reflection of his words.

Daniel Barenboim once said that Wilhelm Furtwängler was a philosopher in rehearsal and a poet in performance. I believe the same applies to Blomstedt, who, well into his tenth decade, continued to discover and refine his musical understanding, remaining an ageless poet. Furtwängler himself was, indeed, an idol of Blomstedt’s, from whom the latter drew inspiration by listening to his rehearsals and concerts. He even obtained Furtwängler’s autograph when the conductor performed in Gothenburg while he was still a boy. Of course, it is difficult to discern obvious links between the conducting styles of the two, but what they perhaps shared was the magical musicality they were able to draw from their orchestras, something that belongs only to great conductors.

Born Herbert Thorson Blomstedt on 11 July 1927 in Springfield, Massachusetts, to Swedish parents, he spent his childhood in Sweden and Finland. His parents were Seventh-day Adventists, and their religious convictions profoundly shaped the young Herbert’s upbringing. Music was central to family life, and he learned the piano, violin and organ before developing an increasingly powerful attraction to orchestral music. The values of discipline, modesty and service, instilled in him from childhood, would remain inseparable from his musical outlook.

In 1945, Blomstedt entered the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, where he began studying conducting. His education continued under a broad range of influential figures, including periods of study with John Cage at Darmstadt, Igor Markevitch in Salzburg, Jean Morel at Juilliard and Leonard Bernstein at Tanglewood in 1953, the year in which Blomstedt won the Koussevitzky Conducting Prize. His formal conducting debut came in 1954 with the Stockholm Philharmonic, leading directly to his first professional appointment with the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra in Sweden.

After eight years in Norrköping, Blomstedt’s career grew steadily, and he subsequently served as chief conductor or music director of the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra (1962–1968), the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra (1967–1977) and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra (1977–1982), with most of which he maintained lifelong associations as conductor laureate. His Nordic years established him as one of the most notable interpreters of Nielsen and Sibelius, while his interests also extended to the neglected Swedish symphonist Franz Berwald.

Herbert Blomstedt in 1967 © Johan Brun / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

A major turning point in his career came in 1975, when the Staatskapelle Dresden, the oldest surviving orchestra in the world, and the Saxon State Opera invited him to become their new chief conductor, following several years during which the orchestra had been without a chief conductor. Blomstedt’s affinity for Austro-German music was further deepened during this period. Over his ten-year tenure, Blomstedt recorded complete cycles of Beethoven’s and Schubert’s symphonies with the orchestra, and helped lift it out of the low ebb that had followed Kurt Sanderling’s departure.

Blomstedt displayed a different side of his artistry during his subsequent tenure with the San Francisco Symphony, where his career reached new heights of international recognition. Having signed with Decca Classics in the late 1980s, Blomstedt and the SFSO recorded a wide range of repertoire for the label, becoming benchmark artists of the digital era and winning three Grammy Awards, a Gramophone Award and a Grand Prix du Disque. There are admirable recordings of Austro-German composers such as Brahms, Mendelssohn and Bruckner, as well as Nordic composers including Berwald, Sibelius and Nielsen, whose works Blomstedt retained at the core of his repertoire in later years. But perhaps most astonishing are the spectacular performances of Hindemith and Bartók, which reveal Blomstedt in his prime, bringing out extraordinary balance and colour. Some of these recordings remain reference recordings for collectors today.

After leaving San Francisco in 1995, Blomstedt returned to Germany as chief conductor of the NDR Symphony Orchestra in Hamburg, before assuming one of the most historically significant positions in European musical life: Gewandhauskapellmeister of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the world’s oldest civic orchestra, a post he held from 1998 until 2005. Perhaps there was a certain quality in Blomstedt that fostered his affinity with eastern Germany. During his seven-year tenure, Blomstedt expanded the orchestra’s repertoire and refined its unique sound: his love of Hindemith and Nordic repertoire continued here. But, of course, the traditions of Leipzig were not forgotten, particularly his admiration for Bach and Mendelssohn, and the significance of conducting the orchestra with which Mendelssohn himself had once worked. It was under Blomstedt that the Mendelssohn-Festtage became established as a regular fixture in Leipzig’s musical calendar.

Herbert Blomstedt at the Leipzig Gewandhaus, December 2015 © Alexander Böhm / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

After 2005, at the age of 78, Blomstedt decided not to take on any further chief conductorships. The Bamberg Symphony, an orchestra with which he had worked frequently, appointed him honorary conductor in 2006. Perhaps Blomstedt himself would not have imagined that his career would continue for another twenty years. He first conducted the Vienna Philharmonic on 26 January 2011, aged 83, during Salzburg’s Mozartwoche festival, stepping in at short notice to replace Nikolaus Harnoncourt, who was actually two years his junior, and becoming the oldest debutant in the orchestra’s history at the time. What began as a last-minute substitution developed into a celebrated artistic partnership, culminating in his appointment as an honorary member in 2019.

Why was Blomstedt loved by so many orchestras? Authority, of course, comes from age and experience, but it was his unique humility and wealth of knowledge that made Blomstedt such an adored figure. Conducting mostly without a baton in his later years, Blomstedt was not a conductor who marked every beat clearly; rather, his magical hands shaped poetry with wonderful directness and genuineness. By contrast, films of his earlier, baton-wielding years reveal a certain sharpness and power. Particularly in his later years, Blomstedt’s conducting technique was economical but effective, and, of course, worked best with orchestras that knew him well. Yet there was never any wallowing, despite his frail health in the final years. Blomstedt knew too well how to shape phrases according to the natural flow of breath, and his musical pulse retained an inner vigour.

There was much modesty in Blomstedt’s character, but also a determination born of his firm beliefs. A devout Seventh-day Adventist, Blomstedt always refused to rehearse on Friday evenings or Saturdays, the Sabbath in Seventh-day Adventism, while remaining open to concert performances on those days. And Blomstedt only conducted works that he absolutely loved, which, according to Esa-Pekka Salonen, was the secret that kept him vigorous.

Bruckner, in particular, occupied a special place in Blomstedt’s artistic life. A natural Brucknerian, Blomstedt devoted a large proportion of his career to conducting Bruckner, which was not unusual for conductors of his generation. His interpretations of Bruckner continued to evolve over time, but always possessed a wisdom, patience, command and spiritual conviction rarely encountered among conductors, as well as an inner vitality that made even the most expansive passages purposeful.

Herbert Blomstedt, Bruckner’s Ninth, Elbphilharmonie © Gerda Arendt / Wikimedia Commons, CC0

In his later years, Blomstedt generally focused on the works that interested him most, particularly Bruckner and, of course, Beethoven, Brahms, Mendelssohn, Sibelius and others. What made his interpretations so admirable—and probably why Blomstedt remained a figure beloved by orchestras and audiences alike—was that they always offered new discoveries and insights that could scarcely be found elsewhere. But there was new repertoire, too. Blomstedt came rather late to the Second Symphony of his fellow Swede Wilhelm Stenhammar, taking it up in his late eighties, around 2013, and subsequently making a recording of the Symphony No. 2 and the Serenade for Orchestra, Op. 31, with the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra.

Vigour lay at the very heart of Blomstedt’s artistry and, indeed, his personality. I once heard someone close to him say that “music kept him alive”, and perhaps it is most fitting to conclude with Blomstedt’s own words to CBS News Sunday Morning in 2025: “Without work, I don’t live. If I just twiddle my thumbs, that is not living.” May he live forever through the music he leaves behind.

The Great Unknown: Count Wassenaer

2026-11-06T17:10:26.969-08:00

by Maureen Buja November 1st, 2026

Sometimes, being too modest can work against you. In the case of Count Unico Wilhelm van Wassenaer (1692–1766), his refusal to put his name on his six Concerti armonici, published in 1740, has led to centuries of confusion about who composed them.

The works are for string and basso continuo and have been so popular that they have very rarely been out of print.

Title page of the VI Concerti armonici, 1740

The Concerti were first printed in The Hague by the Italian violinist Carlo Ricciotti (1681–1756), dedicated to Count Willem van Bentinck (1704–74), a distinguished Anglo-Dutch musical amateur. Ricciotti directed a French opera company in The Hague. Ricciotti and Bentinck were also part of a musical society that included the composer of the Concerti.

Because the dedication is confusing, scholars have assumed the original author was the publisher, Ricciotti. Over the following decades, other composers, including Handel, J. A. Birkenstock, Fortunato Chelleri, and Willem de Fesch, were proposed. Still, the most popular choice was the Italian Baroque master Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (1710–1736). The amount of music [mis] attributed to Pergolesi would be a problem for musicologists for centuries.

Domenico Antonio Vaccaro: Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (Museo Storico Musicale del Conservatorio Di Musica San Pietro A Majella)

The elements that made Pergolesi seem like the perfect composer were that the music, though published in the Netherlands, was Roman in style, with four violins (rather than the Vivaldian/Venetian style of three violins), and that its texture matched the Italian style of Corelli and Locatelli. In addition, the music quoted the Roman composer Palestrina.

Pergolesi’s identification as the author was so complete that the Concerti were published as part of his complete works. Because it was given authority as part of the complete works, the Concerti remained popular through the 19th century, and Igor Stravinsky used one movement for his neo-classical ballet, Pulcinella. Declaring Pulcinella as being ‘after Pergolesi’, Stravinsky used the third movement from the Concerto No. 2 as his ‘Tarantella’.

After all this misdirection, who composed this beloved set of Concerti? It took nearly 240 years to discover that the composer was not Pergolesi (or any other likely suspect) but Count Unico Wilhelm van Wassenaer (1692–1766). It is thought that he hid his identity not because he was a nobody, but because he was someone. His grandfather was Jacob van Wassenaer Obdam, supreme commander of the Dutch fleet in the Second Anglo-Dutch War, and his father was a general who served under Marlborough in the War of the Spanish Succession.

Georg Desmarées: Unico Wilhelm van Wassenaer Obdam, 1745

Unico studied law and worked in government, serving in diplomatic, military, and business posts. When he was young, he took the obligatory Grand Tour, visiting Germany, France, and perhaps Italy from 1717 to 1718. His musical skills were recognised even as he served as a member of the Dutch Admiralty and a Director of the East India Company.

In 1979, Dutch musicologist Albert Dunning spoke with colleagues in art history who told him about music manuscripts they had recently seen. Following their lead, Dunning examined these musical manuscripts at Twickel Castle in the Netherlands, the seat of the van Wassenaer family. What he discovered was not only a manuscript of the concerti but also a handwritten preface by Unico that proved his authorship and told how the works came to be published. Finally, a definitive identification of the composer!

Wassenaer wrote in his preface:

These concertos were composed at different times between 1725 and 1740. When they were ready, I took them along to the musical gathering organised in The Hague by Mr Bentinck, myself and some foreign gentlemen. Ricciotti played the first violin. Afterwards I allowed him to make a copy of the concertos. When all six were ready, he asked permission to have them engraved. Upon my refusal he enlisted the aid of Mr Bentinck, to whose strong representations I finally acquiesced, on condition that my name did not appear anywhere on the copy and that he put his name to it, as he did. Mr Bentinck wanted to dedicate them to me; I refused absolutely, after which he told Ricciotti to dedicate them to him. In this way these concertos were published against my wishes. Some of them are tolerable, some middling, others wretched. Had they not been published, I would perhaps have corrected their mistakes, but other business has left me no leisure to amuse myself with them, and I would have caused their editor offence.

It’s not really certain why Wassenaer fought identification with the works. Perhaps a gentleman of his standing wouldn’t associate with a commercial enterprise, or he knew the works could have used some correction. In any case, Ricciotti and Wassenaer’s performance at their musical society convinced Ricciotti to print the works.

Dunning brought out his new edition of the Concerti in 2003, based on the newly found manuscript, and this has brought renewed interest in these works, which were misidentified for so long. Wassenaer emerges as a composer who incorporated the new styles and techniques of his time into his music. The pieces blend early- and late-Baroque idioms, and, in some ways, look forward to the new Galant style. The string instruments are expertly handled. Although the first and second violins get most of the action, Wassenaer doesn’t shy away from true 7-part writing (4 violins, viola, cello, and bass), with each voice having its own authority. He includes fugues, canons, and even quotations from one of the most distinguished Roman composers, Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, in both the 3rd and 5th concerti. The 5th Concerto also has an unusual movement done with muted strings.

As an example of a movement that blends Baroque and Galant style, consider the third movement of Concerto No. 4.

In the first Concerto, Unico includes a cello obbligato part, highlighting its dark, rich sound.

The Concerti weren’t Wassenaer’s only works; some recorder sonatas were (re)discovered and published in the 1990s, and they also serve to reinforce Wassenaer’s unique voice.

The rediscovery of the authorship of a loved piece of music 239 years later is astonishing enough. Discovering a statement about the composer’s participation in Amsterdam’s musical life was another treat, giving us a unique view into the life of an 18th-century diplomat.

The Best Symphony of Each Decade of the 1800s

2026-11-06T16:58:19.005-08:00

Emily E. Hogstad October 31st, 2026

Ten decades, ten symphonies, and one central question: what happened to the symphony over the 1800s?

The form entered the century as a genteel curtain-raiser: twenty minutes of Classical politeness, often featuring courtly, aristocratic minuets.

It left the century capable of embodying autobiography, nationalist argument, spiritual crisis, and philosophical statement – sometimes all at once, and sometimes for the better part of two hours.

This list traces that transformation decade by decade, picking the symphony that did the most to move the genre forward.

1800s – Beethoven, Symphony No. 3, “Eroica” (1803–1804)

Beethoven’s third symphony broke the rules the genre had followed for decades. Before 1804, symphonies were expected to last between twenty and thirty minutes. However, Beethoven’s Third lasts nearly fifty minutes. Its opening movement alone is longer than many of Haydn’s and Mozart’s symphonies.

Christian Hornemann: Ludwig von Beethoven, 1803

That massive first movement isn’t the only stand-out moment in the work. The second movement is a dramatic funeral march; the third a beefy scherzo with three horns; and the finale is a massive set of variations on a theme.

That doesn’t even touch on the extramusical story of the work. It was originally meant to be a tribute to Napoleon. Still, after Napoleon declared himself emperor in 1804, Beethoven was furious and struck out the symphony’s nickname so violently that he tore a hole in the title page.

It was a fittingly dramatic coda to the creation of a work that went on to shape the rest of the 19th century.

1810s – Beethoven, Symphony No. 7 (1811–1812)

Beethoven’s Third permitted symphonists to dream bigger, but his Seventh let them find inspiration in one of music’s smallest, most basic elements: rhythm.

Each movement of Beethoven’s Seventh showcases a different, insistent pulse. The first movement uses swinging, dotted rhythms; the second, hushed funereal march rhythms; the third, bouncy presto rhythms; and the fourth, swirling sforzandos on dazzling fly-by sixteenth notes.

As different as each movement is, this focus on rhythm lends coherence to the entire work.

Richard Wagner called this symphony “the apotheosis of the dance.” It gave future composers a blueprint for building large-scale orchestral works around rhythmic drive rather than melody alone.

1820s – Beethoven, Symphony No. 9 (1822–1824)

You might be thinking, Beethoven again? But it’s undeniable: for three decades in a row, Beethoven composed what is unquestionably the most important symphony of the decade.

Beethoven’s ninth (and final) symphony is where he pushed himself furthest creatively. First, it outpaced even the Third Symphony in length, taking around 70 minutes to perform.

More consequentially, he created a final movement scored for orchestra and voices, setting a text from Schiller’s Ode to Joy in an ecstatic celebration of universal brotherhood.

Beethoven’s Ninth has reverberated ever since. Mahler answered Beethoven directly, writing choral symphonies of his own. Brahms avoided choral writing in his symphonies entirely, aiming to prove a purely orchestral symphony alone could pack the same punch. Meanwhile, Wagner found the Ninth so overwhelming he came to believe it marked the culmination – and the end – of purely instrumental music and turned to opera instead.

This symphony isn’t just influential for how it sounds; it’s influential for the ideas it unleashed.

1830s – Berlioz, Symphonie Fantastique (1830)

Berlioz heard Beethoven’s Ninth in 1828 and was deeply inspired. Two years later, he took the form a step further, giving his own symphony an overt narrative.

Inspired by his obsession with Shakespearean actress Harriet Smithson, the Fantastique tells the (suspiciously autobiographical) story of a drug-fueled artist obsessing over a woman. The story ends with the artist’s execution and a witches’ sabbath.

The young Hector Berlioz

In the symphony, Berlioz uses a device called an idée fixe, a single melody that recurs and mutates across all five movements. It grants the symphony a new kind of unity: narrative rather than purely structural or rhythmic.

The orchestration was also groundbreaking, calling for col legno bowing (string playing that uses the wooden part of the bow), offstage oboe, and church bells.

The flash and colour of Berlioz’s storytelling and orchestration inspired composers for the rest of the century, from Liszt’s symphonic poems to the psychological programs of Tchaikovsky’s later symphonies.

1840s – Mendelssohn, Symphony No. 3, “Scottish” (1829–1842)

After Berlioz’s fever dream of a symphony, Mendelssohn wrote one that also embraced the idea of thematic material transforming from movement to movement.

However, where Berlioz aimed for narrative, flash, and spectacle, Mendelssohn focused on atmosphere and control, proving the two impulses could coexist within Romanticism rather than compete. Even the symphony’s structural innovation – having each movement performed without any break in between – is inextricably linked to the fact that the work employs the traditional four-movement structure.

Eduard Magnus: Felix Mendelssohn, 1846 (Berlin State Library)

In the end, Mendelssohn’s third became a model for composers who wanted emotional impact without completely abandoning convention.

The “Scottish” took Mendelssohn thirteen years to finish. He began it after visiting a ruined chapel at Holyrood, Scotland, during his European Grand Tour in 1829.

“In the deep twilight we went today to the palace where Queen Mary lived and loved… The chapel below is now roofless… Everything is ruined, decayed, and the clear heavens pour in. I think I have found there the beginning of my ‘Scottish’ Symphony.”

Although he may have found the beginning there, he didn’t finish it until 1842.

1850s – Schumann, Symphony No. 3, “Rhenish” (1850)

Robert Schumann wrote this symphony in a five-week burst in the fall of 1850, between November 2 and December 9. Although it was the last symphony he completed, it’s numbered as his third.

Schumann gravitated naturally toward songwriting throughout his career, and that instinct shaped his symphonic writing too. He admired how Mendelssohn had folded songlike, lyrical melodies into orchestral form, and he used that device in his own symphonies.

Robert Schumann

That same instinct extended to a taste for storytelling, though Schumann resisted attaching an explicit program the way Berlioz had. Instead, the “Rhenish” suggests its story rather than narrating it: the second movement evokes the Rhine River, and the fourth movement portrays a “solemn ceremony,” inspired by an archbishop’s elevation to cardinal at Cologne Cathedral, which Schumann had witnessed in person.

Where Beethoven had expanded the symphony in his third and ninth symphonies by making its four movements longer, Schumann expanded it by adding a fifth movement outright – treating movement count itself as a variable, rather than a fixed convention, to be adjusted to fit the material.

That precedent gave later composers room to do the same: Mahler, working within an even more flexible sense of symphonic structure, would take that same license further.

1860s – Tchaikovsky, Symphony No. 1, “Winter Dreams” (1866–1868)

The 1860s were a quiet stretch, symphonically speaking. Brahms was a decade into writing his first symphony but paralysed by Beethoven’s enormous shadow. Meanwhile, Bruckner, Borodin, and Dvořák were still young men finding their voices.

A 26-year-old Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky stepped into that gap. Tchaikovsky, a recent graduate of the St. Petersburg Conservatory, wrote his first symphony while suffering something close to a breakdown from insomnia and overwork.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky at 23

He revised it twice over the following years, never fully satisfied.

What survives is the first symphony by a Russian composer to enter the standard modern repertoire. Although Tchaikovsky’s later symphonies ultimately overshadowed it, this first one is important, proving that the German-Austrian tradition wasn’t the only path to symphonic legitimacy.

1870s – Brahms, Symphony No. 1 (1854–1876) Play

Brahms began sketching this symphony in the 1850s and didn’t finish it for over twenty years, paralysed by the idea that any symphony he wrote would be compared to Beethoven’s.

He was right to be nervous about the inevitable comparisons, because they came. In fact, when it finally did premiere, in 1876, a conductor dubbed it “Beethoven’s Tenth” – fortunately for Brahms, meant as a compliment.

The symphony’s Beethovenian C minor-to-C major trajectory, its finale’s echo of the “Ode to Joy” theme, and its sheer structural and technical rigour all read as a direct answer to Beethoven.

Johannes Brahms, 1866

Brahms was working against another headwind too: Liszt and Wagner’s flashy new symphonic poems and music dramas were making the case that the old purely instrumental forms Brahms treasured were becoming obsolete.

Brahms’s success with this work breathed new life into a form that Liszt and Wagner had all but declared obsolete.

1880s – Dvořák, Symphony No. 7 (1885)

Antonín Dvořák came up with the idea for the first movement of his Seventh Symphony after seeing a train of Czech men travelling to Prague to perform at the National Theatre.

Dvořák was inspired to write a serious intellectual work that would depict the drama of the national struggle for independence while being imbued with Czech character.

Antonín Dvořák, 1882

His most famous symphony is the Ninth Symphony, nicknamed the “New World.” But that popularity has eclipsed many of his other works, including the seventh. Musicologist Donald Tovey called his seventh “among the greatest and purest examples in this art-form since Beethoven.”

Dvořák’s seventh also contained an unspoken, extramusical argument: that Czech composers like him could use the symphony – widely seen as a primarily Austro-German art form – to express nationalist ideas and emotions.

Between the 1860s and 1880s, Tchaikovsky and Dvořák proved that nationalist identity wasn’t a limitation on the symphony. Still, a source of new vitality – a tradition Sibelius and Shostakovich would carry into the 20th century.

1890s – Mahler, Symphony No. 2 (1888–1894)

Mahler’s second symphony doesn’t close out the century so much as it kicks the door open to the next one.

Subtitled the “Resurrection”, it runs for nearly ninety minutes, demanding a massive orchestra, offstage brass, a soprano and alto soloist, and a full chorus that doesn’t enter until the final movement, where it sings a text written in part by Mahler himself.

Emil Orlík: Gustav Mahler, 1902

The symphony’s use of the human voice, its willingness to confront death and resurrection head-on as explicit textual subject matter, and its refusal to resolve neatly within Classical proportions all point away from the 19th century and squarely toward the next one.

That expanded sense of what a symphony could be – part autobiography, part spectacle, part spiritual reckoning – became the inheritance every 20th-century symphonist had to reckon with.

Conclusion

Line up all ten choices and a pattern appears that no single entry reveals on its own: the story of the 19th-century symphony is the story of composers answering their predecessors, one symphony at a time.

Beethoven answered Haydn and Mozart by making the form bigger and stranger. Berlioz answered Beethoven by making it explicitly personal. Brahms answered Beethoven, but it took him twenty years of honing his creative powers. Mahler wrote such long, complicated works that he seemed to answer everyone at once.

Sibelius, Shostakovich, and the rest of the 20th century’s symphonists inherited a form so thoroughly reinvented that “symphony” stopped meaning any one thing – and started meaning everything.

Carnival of the Animals & More: Animal Music Quiz

2026-11-04T18:25:05.587-08:00

by Maureen Buja October 30th, 2026

10 pieces of classical music that will 100% change your life

2026-11-04T18:13:42.115-08:00

3 January 2024, 18:45 | Updated: 3 January 2024, 21:31

10 pieces of classical music that will change your life (pictured: Romanian Athenaeum). Picture: Alamy

By Classic FM

@ClassicFM

Hold on to your hats – if you haven’t heard any of these musical works of genius, your life is about to be changed 10 times in a row.

Classical music can calm nerves, fire up the senses and spark creativity. It can also be uniquely life-affirming.

Here are the 10 major works we recommend you devote some time to. With the depths of their passion and beauty, we think they have the power to move everyone – with life never being quite the same afterwards.

J.S. Bach: St Matthew Passion
What is it?
It’s one of two ‘Passion’ oratorios that have survived since Bach died (he could’ve written up to five), but it’s also become one of his most celebrated pieces. The original title is Passio Domini nostri J.C. secundum Evangelistam Matthæum (the ‘J.C.’ stands for Jesus Christ, which is maybe a bit familiar for someone he hadn’t met… but we’ll let him off).

Why it will change your life:
If you thought that Baroque music mostly dealt with plinky-plinky harpsichords, the St Matthew Passion will change mind. There are biblical proclamations of impending apocalypse littered throughout, and for each of them, Bach works in some sort of crushing atonality or strange chord, as if he’s wincing with pain each time it happens. This is such a human experience, composed at a time when human experiences weren’t chief among the aims of most Baroque composer composers.
Read more: 10 of Bach’s all-time best pieces of music
Bach - St Matthew Passion BWV 244 - Van Veldhoven | Netherlands Bach Society
Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 6
What is it?
Tchaikovsky’s final symphony, nicknamed ‘Pathétique’. The premiere performance was given just nine days before the composer died.

Why it will change your life:
Tchaikovsky was surely one of the most personally troubled of the great composers – and this symphony was essentially the outpouring of many of his issues, in a way. Many initially thought it was a lengthy suicide note, others pointed to the composer’s torment over his suppressed sexuality, while some thought it was just a tragic, sad, glorious and indulgent artistic expression. But the reason it’ll stay with you forever is that all of these contexts work in their own way, but it never detracts from how magisterial the music itself is. It’s a lesson in the very best ways of expressing emotions through music.

Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 6, 'Pathetique' | Dresden Philharmonic & Marek Janowski
Mahler: Symphony No. 2
What is it?
Massive, that’s what it is. Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 (known as the ’Resurrection’) is a 90-minute attempt to put the whole nature of existence into a piece music. So pretty ambitious.

Why it will change your life:
If you think any bit of music over three minutes long is a bit indulgent and full of itself, this single piece will convince you that sometimes it’s completely worth spending an hour and a half on one musical concept – even if it is a huge concept. No other composer could’ve made it more entertaining (listen out for death shrieks!), or more rewarding. The epic final few minutes are a stupidly generous reward on their own, but getting there is half the fun.

Mahler - Symphony No. 2 'Auferstehung' - Mariss Jansons | Concertgebouworkest
Beethoven: Grosse Fuge
What is it?
One of the last pieces Beethoven wrote for string quartet, one of his celebrated ‘Late’ quartets. It’s a one-movement experiment in structure that was universally hated when it was first composed.

Why it will change your life:
It’s proof that not only can critics and audiences get it really, really wrong, but also that it’s all about interpretation. You can actually hear the struggle and the effort it must have taken to compose, which means it’s not always a relaxing listen, but few pieces in history have so nakedly shown how a composer can throw absolutely everything into a single work. And, in the end, it was hugely influential to serialist composers of the 20th century with none other than Igor Stravinsky proclaiming it a miracle of music. How about that for delayed gratification?

Beethoven: Grosse Fuge, Op. 133 (Danish String Quartet)
Mozart: Requiem
What is it?
The piece that Mozart wrote on his deathbed, in a furious fever. Well, if the movies are to be believed, anyway.

Why it will change your life:
From the opening Introitus, the mournful tone is set. It might just be us, but doesn’t it actually sound like Mozart is scared of death here? Aside from being spooky as anything, the Requiem is a haunting patchwork of things. Completed by one of Mozart’s pupils, Franz Süssmayr, it’s become a legendary mystery and the perfect way to end the story of one of history’s most celebrated geniuses – in other words, not end it all. What an enigma.

Mozart : Requiem (Orchestre national de France / James Gaffigan)
Monteverdi: Vespers
What is it?
It’s Baroque genius Claudio Monteverdi’s defining work, a gigantic noise that some argue bridged the gap between the Renaissance and the early Baroque periods.

Why it will change your life:
It makes you realise that just because something’s really old, it doesn’t mean it’s automatically boring, or simply lauded because it was ‘groundbreaking’. Make no mistake about it – Monteverdi’s Vespers are hugely entertaining on their own terms. For starters, it’s simply enormous in scale. If you want to be crude about it (and we do) then you could describe it as Monteverdi taking church music to the opera, with all the drama that implies. Trumpets, drums, massive choruses, florid vocal lines… this really is the greatest hits of the early Baroque.
Monteverdi's Vespers of 1610
Elgar: Cello Concerto
What is it?
The only cello concerto that Edward Elgar wrote, and one of the most famous concertos of all time.

Why it will change your life:
It’s proof that intense emotion can come from the most unlikely of people. We don’t want to get all mushy on you, but there’s something spectacularly English about how the ultimate stiff-upper-lipped curmudgeon, Edward Elgar, was able to convey his emotions in music rather than in words or actions. His private life was surprisingly tumultuous (that’s another story), and in pieces like the Cello Concerto it’s as if the gasket has blown and Elgar is finally able to let out all the pent-up emotion in a focused blast.
Cellist Sébastien Hurtaud plays Elgar Cello Concerto (3rd movement)
Wagner: The Ring Cycle
What is it?
It is everything.
Why it will change your life:
Realising for the first time that the world of opera could actually be this immersive is a very, very special feeling. Wagner’s whole four-opera cycle has a terrible reputation as simply ‘that exhausting long opera’ – but that perception couldn’t be further from the truth. The Ring Cycle is a fundamentally unhinged work of staggering genius, and the peak of operatic indulgence, excess and excellence. Ignore at your peril.
Metropolitan Opera Orchestra – Wagner: Ride of the Valkyries - Ring (Official Video)
Max Richter: Vivaldi: Recomposed
What is it?
A radical, beautiful re-invention of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons concertos, by modern indie-classical composer Max Richter.

Why it will change your life:
Listening to Vivaldi: Recomposed is like discovering an old jumper that you used to love has magically, miraculously lost all its bobbly bits and is actually at the height of fashion. What Richter manages to do so incredibly well is to subtly sneak in delightful additions, tweaks and reinventions to a classic you already know extremely well, and freshen it up not just for the modern era, but for the eras to come too.
Recomposed by Max Richter - Vivaldi - The Four Seasons, 1. Spring (Official Video)
Gorecki: Symphony No. 3
What is it?
Possibly the most emotionally draining piece of music ever written.

Why it will change your life:
There’s a reason Polish composer Henryck Górecki called his third symphony the Symphony of Sorrowful Songs. Each movement features a solo soprano singing texts inspired by war and separation, but it’s the second movement that really stands out. The text is taken from the scribblings on the wall of a Gestapo cell during the Second World War and, as you can imagine, it’s pretty harrowing stuff – but Górecki makes it sound so transcendental that it’s hard to believe it was written in such dire circumstances. He said himself that he wanted the soprano line “towering over the orchestra”, and it certainly does that.

Debussy - Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune

2026-11-04T18:04:10.659-08:00

Debussy's beautiful symphonic poem was first performed in 1894 – and it's since become one of the most popular pieces of all time. Here's how it came into being.

The enigmatic name of this piece comes from a poem by Stéphane Mallarmé – The Afternoon of a Faun. Claude Debussy originally intended to write a set of three pieces to include an Interlude and a Paraphrase finale.

But in the end, for reasons best known to himself, Debussy decided to combine all his thoughts on the poem to just one single movement. The composer was 32 years old when he wrote it and it was 18 years later that it was adapted into a ballet, when Vaslav Nijinsky danced to it in Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes production in Paris.

Photo: Edward Gooch/Getty

The music itself tells the tale of the mythical faun, playing his pipes alone in the woods. He is enchanted by nymphs and naiads and drifts off to sleep filled with colourful dreams. From the dreamy opening flute tune, the sleepy calm of an afternoon in the forest is evoked through smooth melodies and almost improvisatory passages.

This piece was a big turning point in music. Debussy stretched the traditional system of keys and tonalities to their limits. Leonard Bernstein, Boulez and many more great musicians have been inspired by Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune.

A costume design for 'L'après-midi d'un faune'. Picture: Hulton Archive/Getty

What makes Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune so ground-breaking?

It opens, famously, with a sinuous solo flute melody that conjures up all the languorous heat of a summer afternoon. This figure descends chromatically down an augmented fourth, or tritone (an unsettling interval that was branded 'the devil in music' during medieval times), before climbing back up – all the while refusing to settle in any key or tonal centre.

After Debussy's Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune, some composers felt there was nowhere else to go within traditional tonality and they began to experiment with more avant-garde styles of music. All this, and it sounds sumptuously wonderful, too.

Some music is best heard live!

2026-11-04T17:51:08.031-08:00

Listen to a timeless Classic

2026-11-03T17:06:08.007-08:00

Roberto Nicolsky

posted to
Yuja Wang Archives

Performing Prokofiev`s Sonata no. 6 at Teatro Municipal de Santiago, Chile, Octubre 14, 2018! 
Photo credit: ghamoz_vero

No photo description available.. No photo description available.

AN INTOXICATING LOVE

2026-11-01T19:22:54.106-08:00

An intoxicating love is a deeply euphoric, all-consuming romantic or infatuated state that mimics the high, cravings, and withdrawal symptoms of a chemical addiction.

US musician and author Ted Gioia argues in his excellent book Music: A Subversive History (2019): "At every stage in human history, music has been a catalyst for change, challenging conventions and conveying coded messages – or, not infrequently, delivering blunt, unambiguous ones. It has given voice to individuals and groups denied access to other platforms for expression. Pop music has often been dismissed as "lightweight" given its young audience, simple snappiness and mainstream status, but those elements are really where its strength is concealed. Pop songs don't originate themes of mental wellbeing, equality, liberty, activism – but they do transmit them to the broadest platforms possible".

Snap the radio on, zip to any station, and what are you likely to hear? Love songs. Songs of new love, songs of disappointed love, songs of grateful love, songs of crazy love. I still remember my time as a radio host in Davao City several years ago playing the Hits of the 60's, 70's and 80's. Nothing has changed. Times change, but through history the flow of love songs is a constant.

Plenty of people are surprised or even shocked to find an explicit love song in the bible - complete with erotic lyrics. But "Song of Songs" is exactly that. It shows no embarrassment about lovers. Consequently, intermittent attempts have been made to rule "Song of Songs" out of the bible. It's like making it "for adults only". Imagine, my dear reader, in 16th century Spain for instance, professor Fray Luis de Leon was dragged out of his classroom and taken to jail for four years. His crime? He translated "Song of Songs" into Spanish.

If you start reading "Song of Songs", you will find out that this book conveys a very different atmosphere from most modern love songs and pop music. Since love songs are always popular, many people approach "Song of Songs" with great expectations. However, readers often find the book much different from what they had expected. One is the poetic imagery. Second: "Song of Songs" is hard to follow. One part doesn't seem connected to the next.

Try to explore the "Song of Songs". One thing is for sure. You'll learn a lot about the love between God and His people.

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Email: doringklaus@gmail.com or follow me on Facebook, LinkedIn or X - Twitter or visit my www.germanexpatinthephilippines.blogspot.com or www.klausdoringsclassicalmusic.blogspot.com .

Filipinos and (Classical) Music

2026-11-01T19:08:44.517-08:00

by Klaus Döring

Filipino music in general was introduced to me by my wife Rossana. What does music really mean to Filipinos? It simply tells them where they've been and where they could go. It tells a story that everyone can appreciate and relate to, which is why it's a big part of every Filipino culture.

During the 1980s, Rossana was the lead dancer of the Manisan Cultural Dance Troupe. I got to know about gong music which can be divided into two types: the flat gong commonly known as gangsà and played by the groups in the Cordillera region and the bossed gongs played among the Islam and animist groups in the southern Philippines. The kulintang ensemble is the most advanced form of ensemble music with origins in the pre-colonial epoch of Philippine history and is a living tradition in southern parts of the country.

Very quickly, it pleased me another popular medium for light classical muse - the rondalla. Its repertoire consists mainly of native folk tunes, ballroom music as well as arrangements of classical pieces such as opera overtures. Bayani de Leon and Jerry Dadap have written more serious music for the rondalla.  Rondalla is a traditional string orchestra comprising two-string, mandolin-type instruments such as the banduria and laud; a guitar; a double bass; and often a drum for percussion. The rondalla has its origins in the Iberian rondalla tradition and is used to accompany several Hispanic-influenced song forms and dances.

Tinikling and Cariñosa inspired me more and more. The Tinikling is a dance from Leyte which involves two individual performers hitting bamboo poles, using them to beat, tap, and slide on the ground, in coordination with one or more dancers who step over and in between poles. It is one of the more iconic Philippine dances and is similar to other Southeast Asian bamboo dances. The Cariñosa (meaning "loving" or "affectionate one") is the national dance and is part of the María Clara suite of Philippine folk dances. It is notable for the use of a fan and handkerchief in amplifying romantic gestures expressed by the couple performing the traditional courtship dance. The dance is similar to the Mexican Jarabe Tapatío, and is related to the Kuracha, Amenudo, and Kuradang dances in the Visayas and Mindanao Area.

In the first few years of my life as an expat in the Philippines, it looked like I had forgotten about my classical music from Europe. I focused more and more on Himig ng Pilipinas - the musical performance arts in the Philippines or by Filipinos composed in various genres and styles. The compositions are often a mixture of different Asian, Spanish, Latin American, American, and indigenous influences.

Notable folk song composers include the National Artist for Music Lucio San Pedro, who composed the famous "Sa Ugoy ng Duyan" that recalls the loving touch of a mother to her child. Another composer, the National Artist for Music Antonino Buenaventura, is notable for notating folk songs and dances. Buenaventura composed the music for "Pandanggo sa Ilaw".

The leading figures of the first generation of Philippine composers were Nicanor Abelardo, Francisco Santiago, Aontonio Molina, and Juan Hernandez.

But one composer and his works fascinated me the most:  Francisco Buencamino. He belonged to a family of musicians. He was born in San Miguel de Mayumo, Bulacan, on November 5, 1883. In 1930, he founded the Academy of Music of Buencamino. His musical styles were Kundimans and Sarzuela.

Francisco first learnt music from his father. At age 12, he could play the organ. At 14, he was sent to study at the Liceo de Manila. There, he took up courses in composition and harmony under Marcelo Adonay. He also took up piano-forte courses under a Spanish music teacher. He did not finish his education as he became interested in the sarswela.  Some of the sarswelas he wrote are: "Marcela" (1904), "Si Tio Celo" (1904) and "Yayang " (1905). In 1908, the popularity of the sarswela started to wane because of American repression and the entry of silent movies. Francisco Buencamino then turned to composing kundimans.

For a time, Francisco Buencamino frequently acted on stage. He also collaborated on the plays written and produced by Aurelio Tolentino. One of his earliest compositions is "En el bello Oriente" (1909), which uses Jose Rizal's lyrics. "Ang Una Kong Pag-ibig", a popular kundiman, was inspired by his wife. In 1938, he composed an epic poem which won a prize from the Far Eastern University during one of the annual carnivals. His "Mayon Concerto" is considered his magnum opus. Begun in 1943 and finished in 1948, "Mayon Concerto" had its full rendition in February 1950 at the graduation recital of Rosario Buencamino at the Holy Ghost College. "Ang Larawan" (1943), also one of his most acclaimed works, is a composition based on a Balitaw tune. The orchestral piece, "Pizzicato Caprice" (1948) is a version of this composition. Many of his other compositions were lost during the Japanese Occupation, when he had to evacuate his family to Novaliches, Rizal.

I would say that the "Pizzicato Caprice" is my favorite. I was so lucky to experience it during an awesome performance with the Manila Symphony Orchestra.

In my opinion: outstanding groups include not only the Manila Symphony Orchestra, but also the Filipino Youth Symphony Orchestra, the U.P. Symphony Orchestra, the Manila Concert Orchestra, the Quezon City Philharmonic Orchestra, the Artists’ Guild of the Philippines, the Philippine Choral Society, the U.P. Madrigal Singers, the U.P. Concert Chorus among others.

These are extraordinary treasures of Filipino culture which one hears and experiences far too little about these days.

The music of my life started at the age of 6. During my first steps on the piano with Beethoven's "Für Elise", I remember my very first LP (Long Play) on my birthday gifts table: Serge Prokofieff's ' "Peter and the wolf".

In an autobiographical sketch, the Russian composer described the three chief qualities of his complex work as: a classical or rather classicist rendencityan emotional vein and grotesque element, which the composer detected as "fun, laughter, satire". "A symphonic tale for children '' awoke my dream of classical music.

In spite of this drastic sound-painting portrayal, the general effect produced is not that of a musical jest, but - thanks to Prokofieff's artistry and skill - one of singular poetry.

There are few musicians with such eloquence and improvisational skills as Sergei Prokofieff, the Russian composer of many different talents, some of which included the piano and keyboards. Born to a financially well-off family in 1891, Prokofieff’s first exposure to music was through his mother, who would spend two months a year learning the piano while also playing a few sonnets every evening. Prokofiff began learning the piano instantly, and became so proficient that he was then composing his first piano composition, under the watchful supervision of his mother. Before the age of 10, he had also shown interest in opera music and started work on his first opera, called The Giant.

In his early years, Prokofieff’s parents were adamant on providing him with theory lessons, so as to clarify his conceptual frameworks as far as the piano and composition went. However, they soon began having second thoughts about their young son pursuing a music career at such a delicate age, and therefore, decided to enroll him in the Saint Petersburg Conservatory. Here, he worked and learned the piano and other instruments under the auspices of renowned composers such as Alexander Winkler, Nikolai Tcherepnin and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. Before his father’s death in 1910, he had started performing in local clubs and other music venues like the St. Petersburg Evenings of Contemporary Music, performing some of his early Piano Sonatas such as Four Etudes for Piano, Op 2(1909). All through the early 1910s, Prokofieff had been experimenting with a wide variety of genres, one of which was ballet music. While he may have succeeded in a number of other music compositions, he always seems to have a hard time with ballet music, with the likes of Chout becoming subject to intense modifications in the 1920s.

Having received menial works in the 1930s due to the Great Depression, Prokofieff decided to move to Russia in 1936. The period post-1936 was a completely different time for Prokofieff, and set in motion some of his most impressive works. Bearing in mind the hostile reality of the time, most of the themes covered in his works such as his orchestral piece Russian Overture (1936) and War Sonatas embraced war-related topics and disregarded true musical passion. However, Prokofiev managed to retain his incredible ingenuity with compositions such as Peter and the Wolf, Alexander Nevsky and Romeo and Juliet, all of which were received well on an international scale. Some of these compositions were Sergei Prokofiev’s most valuable works, and are still widely performed today.

The war and post-war years saw the likes of some impressive compositions, such as War and Peace, The Ballet Cinderella and various violin sonatas, encompassing the true remarkability that Prokofieff deserves large-scale appraise for. It becomes important to realize the tremendous contributions this great artist made to the classical music world, despite the troubles he so often had to face.

Because of Prokofieff, my world of classical music first opened up to Russia. Yes, not to Germany or Austria. Not to (sorry Maestro!) Beethoven or Liszt, Mozart or whomever.  Suddenly, fell in love with Tschaikowsky. His first piano concerto in b-minor kept me speechless and full of tears at any stage play, I was blessed during my whole life.

The very first bars of this piano concerto are so distinctive that they will remain in the listener's memory forever. Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 is recognizable and catchy. Charismatic piano virtuoso Martha Argerich lends an elegant lightness to this impressive piece. Conducted by Charles Dutoit, Argerich performed with the Verbier Festival Orchestra at the Verbier Festival in 2014.

13 Facts About Johann Sebastian Bach

2026-10-30T18:33:00.461-07:00

by Emily E. Hogstad October 25th, 2026

Johann Sebastian Bach is a favourite composer for many musicians; his intricate, intellectual works are the musical equivalent of Holy Scripture.

Johann Sebastian Bach

But the person behind the music was decidedly human. He was an orphan and a father of twenty – a hothead who had issues with authority that landed him in jail – an entertainer at a coffee-house – and a genius who died largely unpublished and half-forgotten.

Here are thirteen facts that reveal the man behind the masterpieces.

1. Bach and Handel were born a month apart in the spring of 1685 – but they never met.

Balthasar Denner: George Frideric Handel, ca 1726–1728 (London: National Portrait Gallery)

George Frideric Handel was born in Halle on 23 February 1685, while Johann Sebastian Bach was born in Eisenach on 31 March 1685 – five weeks and a little over 100 miles apart.

Although both became giants of the Baroque era, their paths never crossed. Handel settled down in London, while Bach stayed put in Germany.

Bach wanted to meet Handel when the latter visited Halle, but the timing never worked out.

In another twist of fate, both composers were operated on by the same quack surgeon toward the end of their lives – more on that below.

2. Bach’s mother died in 1694, and his father died in 1695. Bach was nine years old.

Johann Ambrosius Bach, J.S. Bach’s father

Bach’s childhood ended abruptly. His mother, Maria Elisabeth, died in the spring of 1694, and his father, Johann Ambrosius, a town musician, followed less than a year later, early in 1695.

Fortunately, the suddenly orphaned Bach – the baby of the family – was taken in by his eldest brother, Johann Christoph, an organist in Ohrdruf.

Johann Christoph oversaw Johann Sebastian’s upbringing and musical education.

3. As a boy, he copied out music secretly, because paper was expensive.

Money was tight in his brother’s household, and manuscript paper and printed scores were sought-after luxuries.

According to one early biographer, the young Bach longed to study a prized collection of keyboard pieces his brother kept locked away. Finally, he smuggled it out and copied it over six months’ worth of moonlit nights.

4. Bach walked 280 miles on foot to see composer and organist Dieterich Buxtehude perform – and stayed for four months, upsetting his employer.

In 1705, when he turned twenty, Bach worked as an organist in the town of Arnstadt. He set out on foot for Lübeck – a 280-mile journey! – to hear his renowned colleague Dieterich Buxtehude.

Depiction of the Danish baroque composer Dieterich Buxtehude in the painting “The Musical Party” 1674 by Johannes Voorhout

He’d been granted a four-week leave, but he stayed about four months. When he finally returned, his employers were understandably furious. It wouldn’t be the last time he’d experience friction with his employers.

5. Bach’s first wife died while he was on a business trip.

Bach came from a close-knit family of professional musicians, so it is perhaps unsurprising that he married his second cousin Maria Barbara in 1707. The couple had seven children together.

In the summer of 1720, he followed his employer Prince Leopold to the spa town of Carlsbad. He returned to horrific news: Maria Barbara had died during his absence, and they’d been unable to wait to bury her.

Bach came home to find his wife gone and his surviving children motherless – a devastation from which the household recovered only slowly.

6. Bach had a set of twins.

The Bach Family © Oxford Bach Soloists

Bach had twenty (!) biological children over his two marriages. Among them were twins.

Maria Barbara gave birth to them in February 1713. They were named Johann Christoph and Maria Sophia.

The infant mortality rate of the era was high, and that risk only climbed with twins. Johann Christoph died the day he was born, and Maria Sophia died weeks later – just a few days before her father’s 28th birthday.

7. When trying to leave his job in Weimar, Bach was jailed for a month “for too stubbornly forcing the issue of his dismissal.”

Bach was obstinate. In 1717, eager to leave the Weimar court for a better position in Cöthen, he pressed his request for release so insistently that the duke had him arrested.

He spent nearly a month in detention, from early November to early December. The court records noted that he was confined “for too stubbornly forcing the issue of his dismissal.”

8. He wrote a cantata about a caffeine-addicted woman, for performance in a local coffee house. It has become known as the Coffee Cantata.

Bach never wrote an opera (he specialised in sacred vocal music), but the closest he came was his so-called Coffee Cantata, likely written around 1735.

In it, a young woman named Lieschen is scolded by her father for her caffeine habit and cheerfully refuses to give it up.

The piece also has a fun extramusical dimension: it was written for performance at Zimmermann’s coffee house in Leipzig, where Bach conducted a musical ensemble.

9. After struggling with his eyesight in his mid-sixties, he consented to an operation with John Taylor, a quack surgeon. He never recovered.

In his mid-sixties, Bach’s eyesight failed: a devastating development for a composer who relied on it to work and to support his younger wife and minor children.

In 1750, he agreed to be treated by John Taylor, a flamboyant travelling English oculist now widely regarded as a quack.

Taylor operated twice. The surgeries and recovery left Bach blind and sick. He died on 28 July 1750 at the age of 65.

Taylor would later operate on Handel – and fail to restore his eyesight, too.

10. Only about a dozen of Bach’s works were published during his lifetime.

Johann Sebastian Bach

Given his later reputation as the ultimate titan of the Baroque era, Bach published surprisingly little during his lifetime.

Only about a dozen of his works appeared in print, mainly collections of keyboard and organ works.

The vast majority of his music, including the great Passions and hundreds of cantatas, circulated only in manuscripts.

11. Around half of Bach’s works have been lost.

Because so much of Bach’s music remained unpublished, much of his output was lost.

In fact, scholars estimate that roughly half of everything Bach wrote has vanished.

After his death, his manuscripts were divided among his sons and pupils. Many were sold off, scattered, or destroyed over the following decades.

It is mind-boggling to think that the works we have today represent only a fraction of what he actually wrote down.

12. Felix Mendelssohn developed a fascination with Bach as a teenager because his great-aunt had studied with one of Bach’s sons. He helped mount a Bach revival in the 1820s.

Felix Mendelssohn’s great-aunt, an accomplished pianist named Sara Levy, had studied with Bach’s eldest son, Wilhelm Friedemann Bach.

Wilhelm Friedemann Bach

In 1824, she gave her prodigy nephew (and his equally talented sister Fanny) a copy of the St. Matthew Passion.

Felix spent years studying it. In 1829, when he was just twenty, he conducted a revival of the St. Matthew Passion in Berlin – its first major performance in decades.

From this point on, Bach’s place in the repertoire was secure.

13. Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in C major from the Well-Tempered Clavier is on the Voyager space probe’s Golden Record – meaning that Bach might be among the first composers that extraterrestrial life will hear.

In 1977, NASA launched two Voyager probes, each carrying a gold-plated record of sounds from Earth, including recordings of human speech, nature sounds, and music.

Among the musical selections is the Prelude and Fugue in C major from Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier.

He may well be among the very first composers any extraterrestrial listener ever hears. He’ll no doubt be popular on whatever planet his music lands on!

Conclusion

For someone who spent his entire life in Germany, Bach has covered an impressive distance since.

The stubborn organist who walked 280 miles to hear a concert is now regarded as the very bedrock of Western music.

And thanks to a golden record hurtling through interstellar space, he may yet become one of humanity’s first musical ambassadors to the aliens.

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How Family Connections Helped These Composers Find Their Wives

2026-10-30T18:18:33.503-07:00

by Emily E. Hogstad October 30th, 2026

Today, marrying a cousin is unusual, but throughout history it was hardly unheard of, especially in close-knit families where relatives often lived near one another. The musical world was especially interconnected, and several composers found love within their own extended families.

For Johann Sebastian Bach, Edvard Grieg, and Sergei Rachmaninoff, family connections ultimately led to marriages with cousins, with very different circumstances and consequences.

Other composers found themselves drawn to the sisters of women they’d already fallen in love with – and marrying them.

Here are some fascinating stories of composers whose wives were already part of their family or social circles.

Composers Who Married Their Cousin

Johann Sebastian Bach and Maria Barbara Bach, 1707

We don’t know when Johann Sebastian Bach met his first wife, Maria Barbara. However, they were second cousins, sharing the same great-grandfather, and the extended Bach family was closely knit, so they likely met through family.

The couple married in 1707, when both Johann and Maria Barbara were 22. They had seven children together, including the composers Wilhelm Friedemann Bach and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach.

A silhouette of Maria Barbara Bach

Their marriage ended tragically. In the summer of 1720, Johann went on a business trip, accompanying his employer, Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Köthen, to the Karlsbad spa. When he returned, Maria Barbara was dead and had already been buried. We don’t know what she died of.

We looked at what happened to all of Bach’s children with Maria Barbara: https://interlude.hk/what-happened-to-bachs-twenty-children/.

Edvard Grieg and Nina Hagerup, 1867

Edvard Grieg and Nina Hagerup’s mothers were sisters, so Edvard and Nina met each other young in their hometown of Bergen, Norway. In 1853, when Nina was eight years old, her family moved to Copenhagen, separating the two children.

A decade later, Edvard also moved to Copenhagen to study music. There, he began meeting Nina, who by then had become a talented soprano.

Edvard Grieg and Nina Hagerup Grieg

The two fell in love, and in late 1864, Edvard proposed. Their engagement lasted for nearly three years, and neither side of their family was happy about the match, as Grieg’s economic prospects were considered uncertain.

Still, they married anyway in 1867, and despite their rough patches, they became partners in both life and music until his death.

Sergei Rachmaninoff and Natalya Satina, 1902

Rachmaninoff was a musically precocious child. In 1885, when he was twelve, he moved in with his piano teacher, as was custom for serious students at the time.

However, four years later, after Rachmaninoff asked for more access to a piano to practice and compose and his teacher turned him down, he began looking for new lodgings.

Sergei Rachmaninoff and Natalia Satina

He decided to move in with the Satin family, his paternal aunt’s family. He became part of the household, even travelling with them to their private country estate in the summer of 1890. During that time, he became close to their daughter Natalya, who was also a pianist. He would eventually fall in love with her.

Rachmaninoff’s musical career kicked off in earnest during the 1890s, leading him to consider starting a family; in 1899, he and Natalya became engaged. It was a problematic match, as the Orthodox Church forbade cousins from marrying, and a dispensation from the Tsar was necessary.

Finally, in April 1902, after a three-year engagement, Rachmaninoff and Natalya decided to marry in a military barracks, because the priests there answered to military officials rather than the Church itself.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Constanze Weber, 1782

In 1777, 21-year-old Mozart left his hometown of Salzburg to look for work. He stopped in Mannheim and met the musical Weber family, whose four daughters were talented musicians.

Mozart eventually fell in love with one of them – the 17-year-old soprano Aloysia Weber – but she was uninterested in him.

Constanze Mozart

His path crossed with the Webers again in 1781. In the intervening years, the family had moved to Vienna for Aloysia’s singing career. Their patriarch had died, so to support themselves, they took in roomers – including Mozart.

While there, his affections transferred to Aloysia’s sister Constanze. Wolfgang and Constanze fell in love and married in August 1782. Despite the initial disapproval of their families, they enjoyed a happy marriage until his death.

As a young man, Joseph Haydn was hired to teach music to the family of Johann Keller, a wealthy Viennese wigmaker.

Haydn fell in love with one of Johann’s daughters, Theresia Keller. However, their romantic connection was immediately threatened by Joseph and Theresia’s difference in wealth (Haydn had not yet secured his position as a court composer), as well as her parents’ fierce Catholicism; they wanted Theresia to become a nun.

Maria Anna Keller

Obeying their wishes, Theresia entered a convent in 1755 and took her vows the following year. Haydn wrote an Organ Concerto in C major for the ceremony of her profession as Sister Josepha.

Five years later, after Haydn secured his first position and looked for a wife, he returned to the Kellers. Although he didn’t love her, he married Theresia’s older sister Maria Anna.

They discovered quickly that they were a bad match. Joseph famously wrote with scorn, “She doesn’t care a straw whether her husband is an artist or a cobbler.” In addition, Maria Anna was apparently unable to bear children, which Haydn held against her.

The Haydns never reconciled, and they lived apart until Maria Anna died in 1800.

Antonín Dvořák and Anna Čermáková, 1873 In the 1860s, up-and-coming musician Antonín Dvořák was struggling to pay his bills. He began giving piano lessons, and two of his students were two sisters from the Čermáková family: Josefína (born in 1849) and Anna (born in 1854).

Josefína became an actress and joined the Prague Provisional Theatre in 1862. Dvořák was in the orchestra and fell in love with her. However, she was uninterested in him and wanted to focus on her career (she eventually married Count Václav Robert of Kounice in 1877).

Anna Cermakova and Dvořák

Instead, Dvořák began dating her younger sister Anna, and he married her in November 1873.

Unlike Haydn’s, this marriage was warm. Anna turned into a force behind Dvořák’s career, pushing him to work in America for the money – without which we wouldn’t have masterpieces like the New World Symphony or the “American” string quartet.

Dvořák, Anna, and Josefina remained close (in fact, Dvořák was the best man at her wedding). When Josefina was dying of heart trouble in the 1890s, he wrote a tribute to her in his cello concerto, quoting one of her favourite songs of his. It was a love song not only to her but to the entire close-knit family.

Conclusion

These stories reveal how interconnected musicians’ personal and professional worlds could be. In several cases, family connections led composers to find their lifelong partners and, often, important musical collaborators and supporters.

The stories of the composers who married their love interests’ sisters are more varied, between Mozart and Dvořák’s happiness and Haydn’s unhappiness.

Their stories show that sometimes in classical music history, love emerged from the closest possible circles – and also that being part of the same family wasn’t necessarily a guarantee of a happy marriage.

TIFFANY is coming to Davao on February 12, 2027

2026-10-30T18:03:21.849-07:00

We heard you DAVAO. TIFFANY is coming to Davao on February 12, 2027 8pm at University of Southeastern Philippines(USEP) DAVAO City. 

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If You Love the “Great” Composers, You’ll Love These Women Composers Too

2026-10-30T17:58:22.399-07:00

by Emily E. Hogstad October 25th, 2026

Classical music history remembers Mendelssohn, Schumann, Liszt, Dvořák, Wagner, Vaughan Williams, and Stravinsky as “great composers”: men who helped create the orchestral repertoire for a century, between the 1840s and 1940s.

But women composers were also composing at the same time. They were writing symphonies, tone poems, concertos, operas, and overtures in the same styles, often studying with the same teachers. And yet their work didn’t enter the repertoire in the same way, despite its obvious quality.

Here are seven connections between the orchestral works of great men composers and great women composers.

Louise Farrenc’s Symphony No. 3 (1847)

Louise Farrenc was born in Paris in 1804.

One of her teachers was pianist Ignaz Moscheles, who taught Felix Mendelssohn and his sister Fanny.

Farrenc also studied with Anton Reicha, Hector Berlioz’s composition teacher – giving her an impressive resume all around.

Louise Farrenc

French composers of Farrenc’s generation were encouraged to focus their highest ambitions on writing theatre music and opera, not symphonies. Even Berlioz, arguably the greatest French composer of his generation, wrote only four, none of them a conventional symphony.

Farrenc wrote three. Her elegant third symphony is perhaps her best, with its dramatic G-minor opening movement and fairy-like scherzo, reminiscent of the writing in Mendelssohn’s overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream (at 25:15 in the video above).

Emilie Mayer was born in 1812 in Germany. A couple of years later, her mother died. Then, in 1840, her father died by suicide on the anniversary of her mother’s burial. He left Emilie enough money to live on, enabling her to do what she wanted with her life.

She had studied music as a young person and pursued it as a devoted amateur throughout her early adulthood. But after her father’s death, she chose to make a new start, throwing herself into studying music at a professional level.

Emilie Mayer

During this time, she studied with music theorist Adolph Bernhard Marx, who was close to the Mendelssohn family and a music critic and colleague of Robert Schumann’s.

Like many Germans of her generation, she was deeply inspired by drama and literature. She later wrote an overture to Faust in 1880, echoing Robert Schumann’s fascination with the great writer and his oratorio-like work Scenes from Goethe’s Faust.

Mayer’s fourth symphony embodies this appreciation for drama and psychological complexity; it’s especially noticeable in the first movement, with its growling trills and timpani rolls.

Augusta Holmès was born in 1847 in Paris to Irish parents. She was a musical child, but her gender kept her from enrolling at the Paris Conservatoire.

She became a fan of Liszt in 1861, when she was just thirteen. At 21, she travelled to Munich to see the premiere of Wagner’s Das Rheingold. While there, she met and befriended Franz Liszt, who was impressed by her work, and they began corresponding by letter.

Like Liszt, she gravitated toward big, bold tone poems over symphonies. Her symphonic poem Andromède follows the story of Andromeda, daughter of a king who is chained to a rock and sacrificed to the sea in the hope that the sea monster Cetus will stop ravaging the coastline. Holmès evokes the wind and waves in her tone poem, as well as the thrill of her eventual rescue.

She also wrote symphonic poems on nationalist themes, such as Irlande (Ireland) and Pologne (Poland), calling to mind Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsodies.

Amy Beach was born in 1867 in New Hampshire. She was an impressive child prodigy, starting to compose at the age of four. She became a piano virtuoso as a teenager and was encouraged to study in Europe to take her career to the next level, but she opted to stay in America.

At 18, she married a wealthy Boston doctor. It would have been insulting to him to make money as a performer while married, so she limited her performances to charity performances and began focusing on composing instead.

Amy Beach

In November 1892, two months after arriving in America to lead the National Conservatory of Music, composer Antonín Dvořák gave a controversial interview published in the Boston Post, claiming that women could be fine interpreters but not great creators. In December, Amy Beach wrote a rebuttal, citing dozens of great works written by women.

Shortly after this exchange, both composers soon embarked on the defining symphony of their careers.

In January 1893, Dvořák began writing his ninth symphony, later known as the New World; Beach attended the Boston premiere. She heard that Dvořák was clearly inspired by Black folk music and noted it, but, given her ancestry, she felt more drawn to use Gaelic folk music.

Within the year, she began writing her own folk-inspired symphony, which came to be known as the Gaelic Symphony. It demonstrated – pointedly – that Dvořák’s ideas about women’s inability to write music were wrong.

Ethel Smyth was born in London in 1858 and became famous for being a musician and a suffragette. Against her family’s wishes, she left England to study music in Germany as a young woman and eventually became a professional composer.

In 1877, she went to see Wagner conduct, later describing him as “an undersized man with a huge head, apparently in a towering rage from start to finish of the concert.”

Ethel Smyth

Despite that wry description, she took inspiration from Wagner while writing opera. In her creative life, she veered away from stereotypically feminine qualities and toward stereotypically masculine ones, specialising in big, bold writing for brass sections and large, loud orchestral writing.

This emotionally expressive, Wagnerian style was on full display in her 1906 opera The Wreckers.

Ina Boyle was born in Ireland in 1889. She began studying music at home with her governess, then took composition lessons in Dublin.

In 1923, she began studying with British composer Ralph Vaughan Williams. She took sea voyages to see him and also took lessons by correspondence. She kept those letters in a folder labelled “Letters from my beloved teacher, Dr Ralph Vaughan Williams O.M., from 1923 to 1938.”

Ina Boyle

She wrote her violin concerto between 1932 and 1933. Its soaring, yearning string lines call to mind her teacher’s celebrated 1910 work for string orchestra, Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis.

Boyle’s lessons with Vaughan Williams ended when World War II began. She remained in Ireland, isolated from peers, but continued composing daily: a purity of intention and love for the art that few other composers, “great” or not, can match. Grażyna Bacewicz was born in 1909 in Łódź, Poland, into a musical family. She learned to play piano and violin, and at thirteen, she began composing.

She became known for her violin playing and was named concertmaster of the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra in the 1930s.

She also kept composing, experimenting with the neoclassical style then in vogue. In 1932, she took composition lessons with Nadia Boulanger, the same teacher who had taught Igor Stravinsky, then famous for his own neoclassical works.

Grażyna Bacewicz

During World War II, she moved to Warsaw and performed in underground concerts there. In 1944, during the Warsaw Uprising, she fled to Lublin.

The politically restrictive environment in Poland in the mid-1940s was not conducive to aesthetic experimentation, and Bacewicz stuck close to the neoclassical style she’d first embraced in the 1930s.

Her 1948 Concerto for String Orchestra is fiercely confident, driven by propulsive rhythms that recall Stravinsky’s own carefully structured neoclassical works.

However, while Stravinsky’s neoclassicism can sometimes feel detached or ironic, Bacewicz’s approach ultimately comes across as more rooted and emotionally expressive.

Conclusion

All seven of these women created extraordinary work that should never have been dismissed or forgotten.

All of their achievements are remarkable. Farrenc wrote three symphonies in a genre the French establishment tended to dismiss, despite the symphony’s importance to music history generally. Beach not only publicly advocated for women composers but demonstrated their talent in her work. Boyle kept writing music after she was cut off from her teacher and everyone outside of Ireland.

Each of them took the same forms, the same influences, and the same historical moment, and blended those ingredients to make something distinct enough that their works still sound like their own. Listeners deserve to hear everything they did, regardless of whether historians, critics, and gatekeepers label them “great” or not.

Art is a matter of evolution, not revolution

2026-10-30T17:49:00.439-07:00

70 years ago, the world completely ignored the passing of one of the most creative and influential composers of the 20th century. Béla Bartók (1881–1945) originally hailed from the Hungarian town of Nagyszentmiklós, now Sînnicolau Mare in Romania, had died in a West Side Hospital in New York City. Throughout his life he was struggling with poor health and constant financial difficulties. His works were almost exclusively neglected—particularly so in his own country—and he was mercilessly ridiculed by the press. Bartók was exceedingly slight in stature, never weighing more than 116 pounds, and sometimes as little as 87. Journalists joked “he looked like a botany professor from a girls college.” Despite his small and fragile body, Bartók was endowed with an iron and uncompromising character. Mild-mannered, he had a keen and penetrating intellect that was interested in everything; science, foreign countries, unusual foods, literature, languages, and especially philology. He lived a simple and modest life, yet refused to ask for favors or engage in shameless self-promotion. The pride and integrity of his personality, however, is ever-present in his music. His personal friend, the pianist, teacher and composer Erno Balogh wrote, “It was part of the Bartók tragedy that not until immediately after his death did his popularity spread to every part of the world.”

Bartók received his initial musical instruction from his mother, with the family moving to Pressburg—currently Bratislava in Slovakia—to further the musical education of the highly talented son. Eventually, Bartók became a student at the Royal Academy of Music in Budapest, graduating in 1903. In collaboration with Zoltán Kodály, Bartók began collecting Hungarian folk music soon after leaving the academy. The joint publication, Hungarian Folk Songs for Voice and Piano appeared in print in 1906, and spawned extended musical and scientific research in the native musical expression of Slovakian, Rumanian and Turkish language groups. In all, Bartók published roughly 6000 folk songs in carefully annotated musical and scholarly editions. Most significantly, however, his study of folk music decidedly influenced his compositional style. By 1908, he had developed a personal style that merged folk influences and turn-of-the century art music styles. Using the piano as a percussion instrument, Bartók pushed the limits of dissonance and tonal ambiguity and infused them with irregular and sweeping natural rhythms.

Always interested in education, Bartók extensively discussed how peasant music can become an integral part of modern music. “We may,” Bartók writes, “take over a peasant melody unchanged or only slightly varied, write an accompaniment to it and possibly some opening and concluding phrases. Another method involves the composer not using a real peasant melody but inventing his own imitation. There is no true difference between this method and the one described above. Yet, there is a third way, when neither peasant melodies nor imitations of peasant melodies are used, but when the music is pervaded by the atmosphere of peasant music. In this case we may say he has completely absorbed the idiom of peasant music, which has become his musical mother tongue.” Bartók took his explanations to heart and produced works with pounding motoric rhythms that nevertheless breath the spirit of peasant culture. This compositional intensity and angularity of musical expression is maintained in the brutal pantomime The Miraculous Mandarin of 1919, and the two Violin Sonatas of 1921 and 1922, respectively, in which Bartók’s music approaches the peak of its chromatic intensity.

With war looming on the European Continent, Bartók and his wife Ditta reluctantly immigrated to the United States in 1940. They settled in New York City but found life rather difficult. Bartók’s mature musical language, which integrated folk idioms within strict contrapuntal forms, simply did not resonate with the American public. Since there was little interest in his music, the couple lived on money received from a meager research fellowship from Columbia University, and from charitable handouts from his friends and supporters. Concordantly, Bartók’s health gradually started to fail. For years he battled bouts of fever and exhaustion, but doctors were unable to diagnose the underlying medical condition. By the time he was diagnosed with leukemia in April 1944 it was too late for treatment. Bartók had stopped composing altogether when he received a commission from Serge Koussevitzky. The Concerto for Orchestra was premièred by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in December 1944, and quickly became Bartók’s most popular work. Subsequently, Yehudi Menuhin commissioned a Sonata for Solo Violin, and Bartók started work on his Piano Concerto No. 3 and his Viola Concerto. On 26 September 1945 he succumbed to leukemia, and only ten people attended the funeral. In the 1980’s, at the request of the Hungarian government and his surviving family, Bartók‘s remains were exhumed and transferred back to Budapest for burial.

The Passionate Stories of Composers Starstruck By Their Wives

2026-10-26T21:03:14.491-07:00

by Emily E. Hogstad

For some composers, falling in love was gradual; for others, it was like being struck by lightning.

A performance, a chance meeting, a dinner party, or even a single conversation could leave these men completely captivated – and sometimes they moved fast between fascination, courtship, and marriage.

What makes these stories especially fascinating is how often the women who captured their attention were great artists themselves. Actresses, singers, pianists, sculptors, and composers became not only their wives but also creative collaborators, muses, interpreters, and sometimes accomplished artists in their own right.

Here are some remarkable composer marriages that feature especially starstruck husbands.

Composers Who Married Women They Fell In Love With at First Sight

Hector Berlioz and Harriet Smithson, 1833

Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique, 1830

The most famous example of a composer falling in love at first sight is surely French composer Hector Berlioz.

In 1827, the 23-year-old composer watched Irish actress Harriet Smithson play Ophelia with an English-language touring theatre troupe. Her craft magnetised him – along with the rest of Paris.

Martinet rue du Coq St Honoré: Harriet Smithson as Ophelia in Hamlet, 1827–1833 (Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Musique)

He began sending her love letters in French (she didn’t – and couldn’t – answer), and even moved in across the street from her lodgings to monitor her comings and goings.

That spirit of unrequited obsession found its way into his 1830 Symphonie Fantastique, a programmatic symphony about a lovesick artist who descends into a drug-fueled reverie.

Hector Berlioz and Harriet Smithson

His obsession with Smithson inspired the use of a technique known as the idée fixe – a theme heard in various guises throughout the work, standing in for the idea of the beloved.

Understandably, Smithson initially stayed away from Berlioz for quite a while. But after some time had passed, and she attended a performance of the symphony, she became intrigued by the composer who had written such bold music about her. They began dating and eventually married in 1833.

Gustav Mahler and Alma Schindler, 1902

Mahler’s Adagietto from Symphony No. 5, 1901–1902

Gustav Mahler had a similar epiphany in early November 1901 upon meeting Alma Schindler, a 22-year-old aspiring composer at a Viennese dinner party. They got into a quick-witted sparring match about music and beauty.

Although he was nearly twice her age, his physical attraction to her was overwhelming. At this time, Mahler was arguably the most famous musician in Vienna, serving as the music director at the court opera, and he invited Alma and her family to visit him there the following day.

Alma and Gustav Mahler with their children

They’d met on 7 November 1901. Less than three weeks later, he was talking to her as if the question of their getting married was already settled.

They announced their engagement on 27 December and began sleeping together shortly afterwards. She became pregnant quickly, and they married on 9 March 1902.

Felix Mendelssohn and Cécile Jeanrenaud, 1837

Mendelssohn’s Paulus, 1836

Felix Mendelssohn’s love thunderbolt was less scandalous than Berlioz and Mahler’s – but no less impactful.

On 4 May 1836, while visiting Frankfurt, he stepped in to conduct a choir for a friend who had fallen ill. There he was introduced to soprano Cécile Jeanrenaud, the young unmarried daughter of a pastor.

Cécile Charlotte Sophie Mendelssohn Bartholdy (née Jeanrenaud, 1817–1853)

He was deeply taken with her and could not get her out of his mind. A couple of days later, he left Frankfurt for Düsseldorf to oversee the premiere of his oratorio Paulus. After that, he travelled to the Dutch seaside town of Scheveningen, preoccupied by thoughts of Cécile and weighing whether to return to Frankfurt.

On 7 June 1836, he did. Three months later, he proposed to her while on a picnic. She said yes, and they were married in March of 1837.

Composers Who Married a Prominent Artist

Robert Schumann and Clara Wieck, 1840

Robert Schumann’s Widmung, 1840

In 1828, 17-year-old Robert Schumann, newly arrived in Leipzig to study law, saw 8-year-old piano prodigy Clara Wieck perform at a house concert.

He was deeply impressed by what he saw – so much so that he ultimately gave up studying law and moved in with Clara’s father, Friedrich, to study piano with him.

He and Clara became friends in between her international tours, as he found his voice as a musician and ultimately composer. Eventually, they fell in love.

Robert and Clara Schumann, daguerreotype

Friedrich, however, fought against the match – ferociously. The family ended up in court. They finally achieved legal permission to wed, and on 12 September 1840, the day before her 21st birthday, they were married.

Clara went on to become one of the great pianists of the 19th century, integral to both Schumann’s creativity and the promotion of his work after he died in 1856.

Carl Nielsen and Anne Marie Brodersen, 1891

Nielsen’s Symphony No. 1, 1891–1892

On 2 March 1891, while Danish composer Carl Nielsen was studying in Paris, he met a sculptor and fellow Dane named Anne Marie Brodersen. He was intrigued by her from the start, writing in his diary that she was “really quite pretty.” They went out to the Moulin Rouge, where they danced together past two in the morning.

Anne Marie Carl-Nielsen working on a sculpture

Eighteen days later, they “considered themselves married.” They had a party celebrating their union on 10 April and made it legal on 10 May in Florence during a whirlwind Italian honeymoon.

Unlike many women artists of her generation, she continued working even after her marriage. She became one of the most prominent Danish sculptors of the early 20th century.

That career strained their relationship, and they endured several periods of separation. (Nielsen even had a child out of wedlock with another woman that she never found out about.) They ultimately reconciled…even if they never rediscovered the emotional intimacy they’d once enjoyed.

Richard Strauss and Pauline de Ahna, 1894

Strauss’s “Morgen”, 1894

Richard Strauss met soprano Pauline de Ahna in Munich in 1887. He was 23 – just over a year older than her – but despite his youth, he’d already won a position as music director of the Bavarian State Opera, and he began giving her vocal lessons.

They worked together professionally for years. In 1894, she was cast in the premiere of Strauss’s first opera, Guntram.

Pauline de Ahna

During one rehearsal that May, he corrected the tenor multiple times, as de Ahna grew increasingly irritated. Eventually she started screaming at Strauss that she wanted to be interrupted, too – and threw her vocal score at him before storming offstage. He excused himself to confer with her, then returned to the podium to announce that they were engaged.

Their marriage was long and happy. Although she retired from the operatic stage in 1897 after the birth of their only son, she continued performing his works, inspiring many of them, until 1948’s Four Last Songs.

Olivier Messiaen and Claire Delbos, 1932, and Yvonne Loriod, 1961

Messiaen’s Thème et variations, 1932

Over the course of his life, composer Olivier Messiaen married two great artists.

He met his first wife, violinist and composer Claire Delbos, in the 1920s while studying at the Paris Conservatoire. They became recital partners, fell in love, and married in 1932.

Her reproductive health suffered during the marriage, and she had a series of miscarriages; only their son Pascal, born in 1937, survived.

Claire Delbos and Olivier Messiaen in Neussargues-Moissac

In 1949, when she was 43, her recovery from a hysterectomy went wrong, resulting in a cerebral infection that in turn caused severe brain damage and amnesia. She lived the final ten years of her life in an institution.

In the early 1940s, Messiaen taught a talented pianist named Yvonne Loriod and even wrote works for her to play. Their intense creative relationship raised eyebrows and eventually evolved into something romantic – but, being devout Catholics, they remained celibate, even after Delbos’s institutionalisation. They only married in 1961, two years after Delbos’s death.

Yvonne Loriod and Olivier Messiaen

Loriod remained Messiaen’s primary inspiration and greatest interpreter until he died.

Conclusion

Regardless of what ultimately happened in their relationships, all these composers had early encounters with their wives that proved to be more than a fleeting attraction.

In many cases, the woman who initially captivated them became deeply intertwined with their creative lives. Harriet Smithson inspired one of the most famous musical portraits of romantic obsession; Clara Wieck became an essential interpreter of Robert Schumann’s music; Pauline de Ahna championed Richard Strauss’s works for decades; and Yvonne Loriod ultimately became Olivier Messiaen’s greatest interpreter.

Of course, love at first sight did not guarantee an uncomplicated marriage. Some of these relationships endured happily for decades, while others were marked by separation, infidelity, illness, or profound personal hardship.

But they all began with the same extraordinary initial experience: a composer encountering a talented woman who was impossible to forget.

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In Memory of the Past: Goethe’s ‘Erster Verlust’

2026-10-26T20:50:16.323-07:00

by Maureen Buja

Erster Verlust	First Loss

Ach wer bringt die schönen Tage,	Ah, who can bring back the beautiful days,
Jene Tage der ersten Liebe,	Those days of first love,
Ach wer bringt nur eine Stunde	Ah, who can bring back even one hour
Jener holden Zeit zurück!	Of that lovely time!

Einsam nähr’ ich meine Wunde	Lonely, I nurse my wound
Und mit stets erneuter Klage	And with ever-renewed lament
Traur’ ich um’s verlorne Glück.	I mourn for lost happiness.

Ach, wer bringt die schönen Tage,	Ah, who can bring back the beautiful days,
Jene holde Zeit zurück!	That lovely time!

Joseph Karl Stieler: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe at age 79, 1828 (Neue Pinakothek)

Johann von Goethe (1749–1832)’s poem entitled ‘Erster Verlust’ (First loss) was first written in 1785 for his Singspiel Die ungleichen Hausgenossen (The Unequal Housemates), intended to be an aria for the Baroness, in Act II. The play was never completed, sidetracked, perhaps, by Goethe’s plans for his upcoming Italy trip. Luckily, he salvaged the poem (and two others) and included them in his Schriften of 1789. For the Schriften printing, Goethe wrote stanzas 2 and 3 anew.

Because of its small size and simple expression, the poems became a favourite of many composers, with some 50 setting it to music. We will look at the song and its setting over the century from 1813 through 1919. In this 8-line poem, Goethe expresses that painful memory of what was lost when one’s first love is no longer your love. There’s no idea of death, but rather hints of decisions made, time lost, and a mourning for the past.

Carl Friedrich Zelter (1758–1832) was one of Goethe’s favourite composers and became the poet’s musical advisor. He was a detailed chronicler of musical events of his time, and his letters are a prime source of information about significant events, such as the famed 1812 meeting of Beethoven and Goethe. Organised by Bettina Brentano, the two men met in the Bohemian spa town of Teplitz. As expected, they did not agree with each other’s self-assessment: Beethoven thought the poet too loving of the court atmosphere, and Goethe thought the composer had ‘an absolutely uncontrolled personality’. Goethe was 63 years old and Beethoven a mere 42.

Zelter wrote over 200 lieder, 75 of them to texts by Goethe. He detailed his thoughts on lieder writing in a letter to the composer Carl Loewe: the text must take priority, the strophic song is to be preferred to ‘absolute through-composing’, and the accompaniment must stay in the background.

Goethe, for his part, had his musical demands, the primary of which was that the music should support the poet’s words. This led Zelter to write music that was plain and strophic, even when the textual manner was more emotional. The music serves the poet’s words, and we can understand why Goethe was so taken with him. Famously, Goethe preferred Zelter’s setting of the poem Erlkönig, rather than the more dramatic setting by Schubert that is so well known today.

The song was published in 1813 as part of Zelter’s collection of 48 sämmtliche Lieder, Balladen und Romanzen; the four-volume collection was in its second edition by 1816.

Carl Begas: Carl Friedrich Zelter, 1827 (Sing-Akademie zu Berlin)

Franz Schubert (1797–1828) picked up the text in 1815 and made it part of his Op. 5 collection, setting it in a precise and concise manner, and reserving his emotion for the last word of the 2nd stanza, ‘Wunde’ (wound). The minor-key setting is full of wistful memory and desire.

Wilhelm August Reider: Franz Schubert, 1875 after a 1825 watercolour (Vienna Museum)

Bohemian composer Václav Jan Křtitel Tomášek (1774–1850) led the musical world of Prague in the first half of the 19th century. He was the central point of the Mozart cult in Prague, and his fame spread through his lieder and piano compositions. Of his 63 lieder, 41 are settings of Goethe, and Goethe made a point of telling Tomášek in 1822 how much he approved of Tomášek’s work.

Tomášek met the 73-year-old poet in the Bohemian town now called Cheb, and after discussing music, poetry and minerals (Goethe had a famous rock collection), the poet encouraged the composer to play for him. Goethe gave him a book of poetry, and the 48-year-old composer played his music from memory. It was after Mignon’s Sehnsucht that the poet exclaimed, ‘you have understood the poem’, and then went on to say that he could not ‘understand how both Beethoven and Spohr could so entirely misinterpret it and treat it as though it were an aria and not a Lied.’

Tomášek’s setting is full of simple declarations, less full of melancholic regret than we find in other settings. There is still the emphasis on ‘Wunde’, but the setting of the first work of the first and last stanza’s first word, ‘Ach’ (Ah), that seems to carry the sharp despair.

Antonín Machek: Portrait of the Composer V. J. Tomášek, after 1816 (Prague: National Gallery)

Felix Mendelssohn’s setting in 1841, as part of his Op. 99 collection Sechs Gesänge, expands the setting enormously, setting the same lines multiple times. The impression of the setting is somehow of deeper regret. The contrasting music for the second verse again puts emphasis on the word ‘wound’. The song concludes with decoration on the word ‘holde’ (lovely), bringing the beloved back one more time.

Horace Vernet: Felix Mendelssohn, 1831

Austrian composer Hugo Wolf (1860–1903) set the poem in 1876, as part of his Op. 9 collection, which set the poetry of Lenau, Goethe, and V. Zuzner. Wolf started writing music to the texts of Goethe at age 15, starting with 3 songs for male chorus.

When he set Erster Verlust, he was following the model set for him already by Reichardt, Zelter, Tomášek and Mendelssohn. Although this early setting, created in 1875 when he was just 15, shows much skill, we’re still dealing with the composer’s juvenilia. It is nothing compared to the lieder where he would show his genius.

Hugo Wolf

Nicolai Medtner (1879–1951) published his op. 6 collection of 9 Goethe-Lieder between 1901and 1905. The majority of Medtner’s published songs are Russian, but Goethe was one of the most important German poets he set to music. Three of his Goethe collections resulted in him being awarded the Glinka Prize in 1909.

The lied was composed as a wedding present for his brother Emil and his bride Anna; however, the present had more than good wishes behind it. Nicolai had been forbidden marriage with Anna, and so his older brother Emil took his place; the marriage was never consummated. Eventually, Emil and Anna divorced, and then Nicolai and Anna were free to marry.

As a collection, it must be regarded as a wedding gift not to his brother but to his sweetheart, and a text such as Erster Verlust becomes particularly poignant. However, since his first lost love would eventually become his wife, this is one time when the story has a happy ending.

Nicolai Medtner

In his setting, Alban Berg (1885–1935) cuts off the last couplet of the poem, setting only the first two stanzas. The work was written in 1905 when he was just beginning as a composer. He worked with Arnold Schoenberg between 1904 and 1911 and was able to combine Schoenberg’s 12-tone technique with his own late-Romantic lyricism. He started with Schoenberg studying harmony, counterpoint, and music theory, and then, from 1907, composition. Even before studying with Schoenberg, he was a prolific composer, with some 80 lieder to his name. Schoenberg thought he was stuck in song, and over the years of study, made him work on his instrumental compositions.

Of all the Second Viennese School composers, he’s the one who has remained the most listenable. His operas remain in the repertoire.

The simplicity of this early song compared to what we know of his later works gives us true indication of what he learned from Schoenberg. Erster verlust was one of only three songs Berg wrote to a Goethe text, as he gradually started working with texts by more modern poets.

Alban Berg

Justus Hermann Wetzel (1879–1973) set Goethe’s text in 1919, as part of his Op. 3 Liederkreis collection. Over his long life, Wetzel composed over 600 songs of which fewer than 150 are still in the repertoire.

His style of clear melodic lines matched with an intense mood makes this song sound less like 1919 and more like 1819.

Erick Büttner: Justus Hermann Wetzel, 1930 (Berlin: Neue Natioanalgalerie)

Tracking the setting of this song for a century reveals an enormous amount about what composers read into the text and how tastes in lied writing circle around. Goethe’s insistence on the primacy of the text (as befitted him as the poet) could be seen as standing in the way of the composer’s need to create interpretations and filter for the material. Probably one of the most effective settings is Medtner’s, truly written for a lost love and given to the woman herself.

A composer takes his text and then decides what to emphasise (‘wunde’ or ‘Ach’) and how to place that emphasis. Realisation of the meaning of the text can happen in many ways. Not every composer wrote in a minor key, and not every composer read the poem the same way. A survey such as this gives us a deeper appreciation for the way certain composers (including Schubert) were able to find their way through such a seriously emotional path.

BodyMinded Thinking in the Performance of Music

2026-10-26T20:38:40.700-07:00

by Greg Holdaway

Musicians contribute so much to the personal and cultural well-being of the community and play music because they love it. Given that, it is a shame that for some, a career and/or long-term love of playing is associated with levels of stress and discomfort – sometimes a great deal of stress and discomfort. There are musicians who have become so injured as a consequence of their playing that they have been unable to continue with their beloved music making. Thankfully that is not everyone, but in the ranks of committed musicians, struggling with well-being while performing at their best is more common than you might realise.

That statement is supported by research into musicians’ wellbeing that is growing year by year1. As a result, physical and psychological struggles with playing, particularly high intensity playing, is being increasingly recognised as a professional problem that needs to be addressed.

This series of articles from BodyMinded in Australia aims to provide a practical guide to preventing and addressing playing related injury and stress, and in the process support development of musical potential at all levels of achievement.

If your focus is on performance, rather than dealing with injury, these articles will also provide support. Musicians move in order to make music, and as an embodied sense of how to cooperate with your own structure and your instrument takes hold, you will find your instrument becoming an integrated extension of the sense of yourself and the music will flow increasingly with ease, power and facility2.

And finally, after years of providing professional development training for music teachers, I’m aware of how deeply teachers take their responsibility for the well-being of their students. Creatively teaching safe body-use as a part of music lessons will help to prevent the kinds of difficulties that often arise when a musician becomes more serious and begins spending many more hours playing.

Treating the instrument as an extension of the self is common amongst long-term instrumentalists. I had a student in a workshop one day who, when I said “hello”, leant sideways to reply to me. Curious about that, I moved to the other side of the person and asked another question. Sure enough, he leant to the other side in order to answer! The next day he came to a musician’s class, with his instrument. A large tuba, which he sat with on his lap…

Let’s get started with a practical illustration. Many instrumentalists experience shoulder and neck stiffness or discomfort, or experience heaviness in the arms after playing for a while. Here is a simple question: where do your arms attach to your body? Take a moment to point or touch that part of your body. Did you point to the outside of your shoulders? This is most usual representation.

Now feel your collarbones, at the top front of your chest. Feel along towards the centre until you find the bump where the collarbone attaches to the breastbone. This is the only bony joint where the arm bones attach to the rest of the skeleton. You can feel this by using one hand to feel how your collarbone moves as you lift the other arm. Can you feel it? When your arm moves the whole shoulder girdle (collarbone and shoulder blade) are involved. The arms are suspended from the spine, via those shoulder and neck muscles that are sometimes so uncomfortable. The shoulder blades are embedded in muscles that mean they can move a whole lot; up, down, forward, back, always in support of and following the movements of the arm.

This means that when you raise or use your arms for any purpose, your shoulder girdle is involved. The collarbones and shoulder blades are arm bones! See what happens if you try to keep your shoulder girdle held still or back while moving your arms, and then compare that to letting the shoulders move with and in response to movements of your arms. Can you feel the difference?

Arm Shoulder Girdle Movement

Thinking about this a pianist comes to mind who complained of long-standing shoulder and arm discomfort while playing. Nothing had made a difference, and she had lived with that for a long time. After exploring how much her shoulder girdle can move the instruction became: “let your shoulders move when you bring your hands to the keyboard”. The result, so much relief she burst into tears.

This story illustrates how discomfort may be a consequence of simple misunderstanding about how things work. The BodyMinded process is to practise conscious cooperation with the way things work. This is sometimes stated as: Let everything move that needs to move in service of your activity.

Each article in this series will cover a specific example of BodyMinded thinking in practise, concluding with a general principle that applies to achieving and teaching good coordination as a musician. In this way I hope to assist you with your enjoyment and wellbeing in playing, and support those who are teaching others.

Four Fascinating Love Interests of Frederic Chopin

2026-10-25T20:25:37.459-07:00

by Emily E. Hogstad February 8th, 2026

Frédéric Chopin had one of the most famous love lives of the great composers due to his unconventional partnership with the great writer George Sand.

Maria Wodzińska: Frédéric Chopin, 1836 (Wasaw: National Museum)

From his teenage infatuation with soprano Konstancja Gładkowska to the turbulent affair with Sand, he had quite the run of bad luck in his romantic relationships.

Today, we’re looking at some of the remarkable women (and one man) who inspired romantic feelings in one of the Romantic Era’s most romantic composers.

Konstancja Gładkowska (1829-1830)

Konstancja Gładkowska

Konstancja Gładkowska was born to an apartment manager and his wife in Warsaw in 1810, a few months after Chopin.

She began studying voice at the Warsaw Conservatory in 1824. In her late teens, her father died, leading the Polish government to step in and pay for her musical education.

Historians believe that she met Chopin in the spring of 1829, when he developed an intense crush on her.

One Sunday morning, she glanced at him at church. He was so stunned by that glance that he found himself stumbling out the door. He ran into his family doctor outside, and he explained his clumsiness away by saying a dog ran between his legs. He immediately regretted the lie, bemoaning to a friend, “It is terrible to think what a lunatic I sometimes seem to be.”

In October 1829, he wrote a letter to his best friend (and possible crush) Tytus Woyciechowski:

“It is perhaps my misfortune that I have already found my ideal, whom I have served faithfully for six months, though without saying a word to her about my feelings; whom I dream of, who inspired the Adagio of my Concerto, and also this morning the little waltz that I am sending you. No one but you will know what it means.”

In the summer of 1830, Chopin visited Tytus Woyciechowski’s family estate in the countryside, but he cut that visit short to return to Warsaw to see Gładkowska’s operatic debut, which he was impressed by.

The following autumn, after putting his departure off, Chopin decided to leave Warsaw to pursue an international career. He gave a goodbye concert, and Gładkowska sang a Rossini aria at it.

The Rossini aria that Gładkowska sang at Chopin’s farewell concert

She also wrote a poem in his autograph book about how his Polish friends would miss him, and the two even exchanged rings. (However, there is no evidence that they were ever formally engaged.)

For a while, they corresponded, but they eventually lost touch.

In 1831, he wrote, “Her image is before my eyes! – it seems to me that I do not love her, and yet she does not leave my head.”

Gładkowska’s mother wasn’t thrilled about the idea of her daughter making a living on the stage, and eventually she gave up her singing career. In 1832, she married a well-off widower named Aleksander Józef Grabowski.

Chopin’s sister Izabella commented acidly about Gładkowska’s marriage: “I am as surprised as you that she could have been so insensitive. The palace was clearly more alluring to her.”

Before she died, she burned her correspondence with Chopin. She only found out about his intense crush on her when she was an elderly woman, and a caretaker read a Chopin biography to her.

Tytus Woyciechowski (ca. 1827–1830)

Tytus Woyciechowski

Tytus Woyciechowski was born two years before Chopin in present-day Lviv, Ukraine. At fourteen, he moved to Warsaw.

The following year, when Chopin was thirteen, Woyciechowski moved into the Chopin household as a boarding student.

He and Chopin became inseparable, studying with the same piano teacher and playing four hand piano together.

After Woyciechowski graduated, he left for his family’s estate in the Polish countryside.

But Chopin missed him and hero-worshipped him. In 1827, when he was seventeen, Chopin composed his Variations on “Là ci darem la mano”, a fantasy for piano and orchestra based on a theme from Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni. He asked Woyciechowski if he could dedicate it to him, and he said yes. (Chopin would later rearrange it for solo piano.)

Yunchan Lim – CHOPIN – Variations on “Là ci darem la mano,” op. 2

The variations ended up becoming the work that jump-started his career, inspiring Robert Schumann to write, “Hats off, gentlemen! A genius!”

Chopin went to visit Woyciechowski in the summer of 1830. That March, while planning the trip, Chopin wrote him:

“As always, even now, I carry your letters with me. How blissful it will be for me, having gone beyond the city walls in May, thinking about my approaching journey, to pull out a letter of yours and assure myself sincerely that you love me, or at least to gaze at the hand and the writing of him, whom only I am able to love!”

A couple of weeks later, he wrote an even more homoerotic passage:

“I will go and wash. Don’t kiss me now, because I haven’t yet washed. You? Even if I were to rub myself with Byzantine oils, you still wouldn’t kiss me, unless I compelled you to do so with magnetism. There is some sort of force in nature. Today you will dream that you’re kissing me. I have to pay you back for the nasty dream you brought me last night.”

They spent an idyllic time together, riding horses and partaking in archery together. Chopin later wrote:

“I tell you sincerely that it is pleasant to recall all of this. Your fields left in me some sort of longing; that birch under the windows just will not leave my memory. That crossbow! How romantic it all was! I remember that crossbow, with which you really wore me out – for all my sins.”

When Chopin decided to leave Warsaw to try his luck at an international career, he invited Woyciechowski to travel with him, and he accepted.

The two made it as far as Vienna before the November Uprising, which consisted of Poles fighting back against their Russian oppressors, began in Warsaw. Woyciechowski left Chopin to fight. The uprising eventually failed.

Chopin wrote to him:

“My dearest life! I have never missed you as I do now; I have no one to pour things out to, I have not you. One look from you after each concert would be more to me than all the praises of the journalists.”

They never saw each other again. Chopin lived his life in exile, while Woyciechowski went on to marry in 1838. He and his wife named their second child Fryderyk after Chopin.

Toward the end of his life, when he was dying of tuberculosis, Chopin wrote to Woyciechowski again, expressing a desire to see him. Unfortunately, a reunion never took place.

This may not have been a traditional love relationship, and we’ve lost Woyciechowski’s side of the correspondence, making it impossible to know what they truly felt for one another. But if Chopin had written what he wrote to Woyciechowski to a woman, even if they never formally dated, we’d likely classify her as a love interest, so we’re including him today.

Maria Wodzińska (1835–1837)

Maria Wodzińska, year 1840

Maria Wodzińska was born to a prominent Polish family in Warsaw in January 1819.

She entered Chopin’s circle when her two younger brothers began boarding with Chopin’s family while attending school (like Woyciechowski had).

The two families became good friends, and Chopin met her when she was a young girl. Even though he was nine years older, Chopin would run around and play alongside her.

However, he lost touch with them after the November Uprising of 1830. The family fled to Berlin, Dresden, and then Geneva, waiting for political tensions to cool.

While in Geneva, Wodzińska studied piano with John Field (the same composer who pioneered the piano nocturne, a genre that Chopin would later perfect), and also began studying art. She also composed.

In 1835, when she was sixteen, and Chopin was 25, he met her while traveling in Dresden. When he had to leave, he gifted her with the waltz that eventually was published posthumously as his Op. 69, No 1 in A-flat major.

Chopin Valse op 69 No 1 in A flat major. Valentina Lisitsav

The Wodzińska family kept in touch via letter and reconnected the following summer in the spa town of Marienbad, spending two months together at the same hotel.

During that summer, Wodzińska made a famous pencil and watercolour sketch of Chopin.

On September 9, 1836, he secretly proposed to her, and she accepted. However, due to her father’s disapproval, they kept their engagement secret.

They resumed their relationship by letter, but it was difficult for them to connect emotionally while dating long-distance. In the end, the relationship fizzled out within a year.

Wodzińska married a count in 1841 (interestingly, the son of Chopin’s godfather). However, the marriage was unhappy, and they divorced.

She remarried in 1848 to Władysław Orpiszewski, a leaseholder of her first husband’s estates. They had one child together, but he died at the age of three.

As for Chopin, he took the rejection hard, tying up letters from the family in a bow and labeling the stack “My sorrows.”

In 1837, he wrote his famous Funeral March, which eventually became the third movement of his second piano sonata. Some people connect the march to the failed love affair. George Sand (1838–1847)

Portrait of Frédéric Chopin and George Sand by Eugène Delacroix

While Chopin was having his heart broken, George Sand was busy breaking hearts.

Born Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin de Francueil in the summer of 1804, she married at the age of eighteen and had two children. However, she left her marriage in 1831.

She then had affairs with a number of talented men and began an overwhelmingly successful writing career. She thumbed her nose at traditional gender roles and became famous for her masculine wardrobe.

In the autumn of 1836, she reportedly asked Franz Liszt for an introduction to Chopin. Chopin is said to have asked Liszt afterwards, “Is she really a woman?”

It wasn’t the most promising of starts, but she couldn’t stop thinking about him.

In May 1838, she discreetly made inquiries about whether Chopin’s engagement to Wodzińska was well and truly over. When she found out it was, she approached him again.

Historians aren’t entirely sure how, but they became friends and then lovers. That winter, they took an untraditional honeymoon-like vacation to Majorca.

It wasn’t a particularly pleasant stay (the weather was bad and the townspeople were suspicious of them), but it was a creatively productive time, resulting in many of the 24 Preludes.

Chopin began spending the summers at Sand’s country house in Nohant, France. During the other months of the year, they each rented their own apartments in Paris, but still stayed near to one another.

Eventually, the two began drifting apart. Chopin’s health was deteriorating; Sand eventually became more of a caretaker mother figure than a lover.

She wrote a semi-autobiographical novel called Lucrezia Floriani about a strong woman caring for a self-absorbed neurotic invalid prince. It didn’t help their relationship. Then Chopin began siding with Sand’s daughter, Solange, in mother-daughter arguments, and Solange even developed a crush on him.

The situation simply grew too messy and complicated to continue. On July 28, 1847, Sand wrote to him:

“Goodbye, my friend. May you soon be cured of all your ills, as I hope that now you may be… If you are, I will offer thanks to God for this fantastic ending of a friendship which has, for nine years, absorbed both of us. Send me your news from time to time. It is useless to think that things can ever again be the same between us.”

They met for one last time in March 1848. Solange ended up becoming estranged from her mother, and it was Chopin who delivered the news that Solange had had a baby.

Chopin’s health deteriorated quickly, and there wasn’t time for him to pursue another relationship. He died a year later of tuberculosis at the age of 39. George Sand didn’t attend the funeral.

Conclusion

All four of these romantic relationships ended in a sad and quiet kind of way.

Maybe they were all doomed to, given Chopin’s introverted and prickly personality, as well as the constant chronic health struggles that made it difficult for him to sustain long-term relationships.

In the end, the most consequential love affair he’d ever have was with music.

Quiet Classical Music for Winter Hygge Listening

2026-10-23T18:42:18.612-07:00

by Emily E. Hogstad October 20th, 2026

Winter listening sometimes calls for a different kind of classical music.

During this time of year, many listeners gravitate toward pieces that are quiet and emotionally contained: music that can exist comfortably alongside candlelight, reading, or reflection.

The Danes and Norwegians have a term for the feeling: hygge, a cosy, contented mood associated with comfort, warmth, and quiet conviviality.

Scandinavian composers have long excelled at expressing hygge-related moods. Shaped by dark winters, a strong tradition of domestic music-making, and cultural attitudes that value restraint over excess, many Nordic composers wrote works ideally suited to the season.

Today we’re looking at eight works of classical music by Scandinavian composers that fit winter and the hygge aesthetic. Together, they make a playlist of quiet classical music perfect for cosy winter evenings by the fire.

Edvard Grieg (1843–1907) is remembered as Norway’s most famous composer.

Although he is probably best remembered for larger-scale works like his piano concerto and his Peer Gynt Suite, he also poured his heart into composing small-scale, hygge-friendly music.

His Lyric Pieces for solo piano, written in multiple books over decades, function almost like a musical diary.

The “Arietta,” the first piece of the Op. 12 set, is disarmingly simple – a few lovely, hushed, plaintive phrases that seem to circle themselves.

His “Notturno,” composed much later, employs richer harmonies but comes across as equally restrained.

Together, these works reflect Grieg’s lifelong love of music meant to be played at home, especially during long winters.

Carl Nielsen – “A Little Slow Waltz” from Humoresque-Bagatelles, Op. 11, No. 3

Georg Lindstrøm: Carl Nielsen carte de visite, ca 1908

Carl Nielsen (1865–1931) is best known for his symphonies and their muscular energy, but his smaller piano works reveal a very different side of his personality.

In the 1890s, as he established himself as a leading Danish modernist, he also wrote his Humoresque-Bagatelles, a collection of simple, child-friendly piano pieces.

Born into a peasant family of passionate folk musicians, Nielsen always appreciated informal, small-scale musical performances held at home.

“A Little Slow Waltz” from the Humoresque-Bagatelles feels informal and conversational, like a piano waltz played at home on a winter afternoon.

Agathe Backer-Grøndahl – Norske folkeviser og folkedanse, Op. 30, No. 1

Agathe Backer Grøndahl, c. 1870

Norwegian pianist and composer Agathe Backer-Grøndahl (1847–1907) was a near contemporary of Edvard Grieg.

Like him, she enjoyed an international reputation and pursued a passion for integrating Norwegian folksong into her compositions. However, unlike him, she had to balance her career with pregnancy and motherhood – constraints that contributed to her unfair obscurity today.

The first movement of this piano suite – whose title can be translated as “Norwegian folk songs and folk dances” – is a quiet, proud, even poignant celebration of Norwegian folksong.

Jean Sibelius – “Nocturne” from Belshazzar’s Feast Suite, Op. 51

Jean Sibelius, 1923

Much of the music of Finnish composer Jean Sibelius (1865–1957) is defined by its sense of stillness. He spent much of his career composing in his isolated country home in the snowy fields and forests outside of Helsinki.

The Nocturne from his incidental music Belshazzar’s Feast Suite is orchestral, but its emotional scale is surprisingly intimate. Rather than advancing any narrative, it creates a stunning pause and sense of suspension with its muted colours and wintry flute solo.

Elfrida Andrée – Yuletide ReverieElfrida Andrée (1841–1929) led a life of public firsts: Sweden’s first female cathedral organist, a tireless advocate for women’s rights, and a prolific composer across genres.

Given her public achievements, one might expect her music to be larger than life, and it could be, but she also excelled at writing introverted and introspective music.

Her solo piano piece “Yuletide Reverie” sidesteps overt festivity. Instead, it offers a sense of nostalgia and quiet contemplation of the season: perfect for cosy hygge nights.

Ida Moberg – “Stillness” from Sunrise Orchestral Suite

Ida Moberg

Finnish composer Ida Moberg (1859–1947) built a career largely outside the musical mainstream.

The daughter of an instrument maker, she began her career as a singer. After a vocal injury, she transitioned to piano, conducting, and composition. She even studied under Jean Sibelius in the 1890s.

Although she never secured a foothold as a professional composer and relied on teaching to support herself, she continued composing throughout her life.

“Stillness,” from her Sunrise Orchestral Suite (1909), is remarkable for its breathtaking restraint. It is scored solely for strings, giving it a hushed, gossamer quality.

Despite the forces involved, the music remains remarkably delicate. It is perfect listening for any cosy winter evening.

Wilhelm Stenhammar – Two Sentimental Romances for Violin, Op. 28, No. 1

Wilhelm Stenhammar, c. 1916

Swedish composer Wilhelm Stenhammar (1871–1927) was one of Sweden’s most important pianists during his lifetime. He also conducted and composed and was deeply inspired by Sibelius.

Between 1906 and 1922, he led the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, where he championed and premiered important new works by Scandinavian composers. The orchestra is still active today.

The first of his two Sentimental Romances is tender without ever – despite its name – coming close to indulgence, unfolding gently at an unhurried pace. It is lovely and nostalgic music, perfect for an introvert’s winter playlist.

Conclusion

For listeners seeking classical music that feels comforting without ever becoming background noise, these eight quiet works by Scandinavian composers offer a compelling starting point.

They are the perfect soundtrack for evenings spent under a blanket beside a gently crackling fire, written by men and women who were all experts at making the most of the season.

Together, they demonstrate a Scandinavian approach to quiet classical music, emphasising modest forms and emotional restraint over flash and spectacle.

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Antonio Vivaldi (Died on 28 July 1741) Seasons of Genius

2026-10-23T18:29:54.998-07:00

by Georg Predota July 28th, 2025

Antonio Vivaldi (1678–1741), known as the “Red Priest” due to his fiery hair and brief priestly career, stands as one of the most influential composers of the Baroque era. The most original and influential Italian composer of his generation, Vivaldi laid the foundations for the mature Baroque concerto.

Antonio Vivaldi

Vivaldi’s life was marked by innovation, resilience, and a relentless pursuit of musical expression as he contributed to musical style, violin technique, the practice of orchestration, and to orchestral programme music. His vibrant compositions, entrepreneurial spirit, and complex personal life shaped a legacy that continues to resonate in concert halls worldwide. Early Life and Venetian Roots

Antonio Vivaldi was born on 4 March 1678 in the city of Venice, a city pulsating with cultural and musical vitality. His father, a professional violinist, likely introduced him to the violin, fostering his early musical development. Antonio’s fragile health at birth, possibly due to bronchial asthma, necessitated an emergency baptism. As Michael Talbot writes, “Vivaldi’s asthma, while a hindrance, never curtailed his ambition or his ability to undertake arduous journeys.”

Venice was a hub of commerce and art, and the city’s vibrant musical culture included opera houses and churches. By 1696, Antonio was performing as a violinist at St. Mark’s, and his training for priesthood culminated in ordination in 1703.

However, Vivaldi’s health and growing musical commitments led him to abandon saying Mass by 1706, a decision he later attributed to his asthma. Karl Heller suggests, “Vivaldi’s withdrawal from priestly duties was likely pragmatic, allowing him to focus on music, though he maintained a veneer of piety.

The Ospedale della Pietà and Pedagogical Innovation

Vivaldi received his appointment at the Ospedale della Pietà, a Venetian institution for orphaned and abandoned girls, in 1703. This position, which he held intermittently until 1740, was pivotal in shaping his compositional output. The Ospedale was not merely a charitable institution but a renowned musical academy where girls received rigorous training, and Vivaldi’s duties included teaching, composing, and directing performances.

Ospeddale della Pietà

The Ospedale’s concerts attracted Venetian elites and foreign visitors, elevating Vivaldi’s reputation. As Jane L. Baldauf-Berdes observes, “The Ospedale provided Vivaldi with a unique laboratory for musical experimentation, allowing him to develop his distinctive concerto style.”

Vivaldi’s pedagogical approach was innovative, as it emphasised technical precision and expressive freedom, all tailored to the all-female ensemble. His teaching methods fostered a generation of skilled female musicians, and the environment allowed Vivaldi to experiment with instrumentation, incorporating unusual instruments into his concerto compositions. The Concerto and The Four Seasons

Vivaldi’s most enduring contribution to music is his development of the Baroque concerto, particularly the solo concerto form. His L’estro armonico (Op. 3), a collection of twelve concertos, revolutionised the genre with its three-movement structure and dynamic interplay between soloist and ensemble. Published in Amsterdam, the collection gained international acclaim.

Of course, his Four Seasons, part of a different collection, is Vivaldi’s most iconic work. Each concerto, accompanied by descriptive sonnets, vividly depicts seasonal imagery through music techniques. A scholar writes, “The Four Seasons transcends mere program music, blending technical virtuosity with poetic narrative.”

Vivaldi’s plaque on Chiesa della Pieta

Vivaldi’s concertos, numbering over 500, demonstrate his versatility and prolific output. He composed for diverse instruments, from violin to bassoon, and his ritornello form, a recurring orchestral theme interspersed with solo episodes, became a hallmark of the Baroque concerto.

Susan McClary argues, “Vivaldi’s concertos embody the Baroque ideal of contrast and unity, creating a dialogue between individual expression and collective harmony.”

Opera and Entrepreneurial Ventures

Beyond the composition of various concertos, Vivaldi was a prominent figure in Venetian opera, composing nearly 50 works and managing productions as an impresario. His operatic career began with Ottone in villa (1713) and included works like Orlando furioso (1727). Vivaldi collaborated with his father in navigating the competitive and financially risky world of opera production.

Reinhard Strohm notes, “Vivaldi’s operas, while less celebrated today, were central to his career, reflecting his ability to adapt to the tastes of Venetian audiences.” His entrepreneurial spirit also extended to publishing, with a number of collections showcasing his market savvy.

Vivaldi travelled to cities like Verona and Mantua, often accompanied by the singer Anna Girò, a rumoured romantic partner. His travels greatly expanded his influence but also sparked controversy, as he faced censure from the Church for conduct unbecoming of a priest. Be that as it may, Vivaldi’s defiance of ecclesiastical norms clearly reflected the priority of artistic freedom over clerical duty.

Antonio Vivaldi: Orlando furioso, “Sol da te, mio dolce amore” Play

Later Years and Legacy

In 1740, seeking new opportunities, Vivaldi left Venice for Vienna, hoping to secure patronage from Emperor Charles VI. However, the emperor’s death shortly after Vivaldi’s arrival left him without support. Struggling financially, Vivaldi died in Vienna on 28 July 1741, and he was buried in a pauper’s grave.

In the immediate aftermath of his passing, Vivaldi’s music fell into relative obscurity, overshadowed by the emerging Classical style. His prolific output was largely neglected, with manuscripts scattered across Europe or lost. However, the early 19th century saw a gradual rediscovery, sparked by the Bach revival, as scholars noted Johann Sebastian Bach’s transcriptions of Vivaldi’s concertos, which highlighted their structural ingenuity and expressive vitality.

Bach’s transcription of Vivaldi (BWV 596)

By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, musicologists like Arnold Schering and performers like Fritz Kreisler began championing Vivaldi’s works, particularly his concertos, for their rhythmic energy and innovative use of solo instruments within the concerto grosso form. This resurgence culminated in the 20th-century “Vivaldi Renaissance,” driven by the rediscovery of manuscripts, such as those found in Turin in the 1920s.

Vivaldi Today

Today, Vivaldi’s legacy is firmly entrenched in both academic study and popular culture, with The Four Seasons serving as a cornerstone of the Baroque repertoire and a cultural touchstone. His influence extends beyond classical music, inspiring adaptations in film, television, and even popular music, while his innovative approach to programmatic music continues to captivate audiences.

Modern scholarship, such as the work of Michael Talbot and Susan Orlando, emphasises Vivaldi’s role in shaping the concerto form and his impact on the development of virtuosic violin techniques. Institutions like the Istituto Italiano Antonio Vivaldi and ongoing cataloguing efforts, such as the Ryom-Verzeichnis, underscore his enduring significance, ensuring that his works remain accessible to performers and researchers.

Antonio Vivaldi’s genius lies in his ability to weave vibrant musical narratives that capture the exuberance of Baroque Venice while transcending time. His innovative concertos blend technical virtuosity with evocative imagery, transforming notes into vivid depictions of nature and human emotion. His relentless creativity and entrepreneurial spirit reshaped the musical landscape, influencing contemporaries like Bach and leaving a legacy that resonates in modern performances.

In the words of Michael Talbot, “Vivaldi’s genius was to make the ordinary extraordinary!” Despite personal challenges, including chronic illness and ecclesiastical scrutiny, Vivaldi’s fiery spirit burns brightly, ensuring his place as a timeless luminary in the pantheon of Western music.

Klaus Döring's Classical Music/Klaus Döring's Klassische Musik

Vienna Meets Tokyo 70 Years of Music, Friendship and Tradition

Vienna Philharmonic Japan Tour 1956

A Musical Friendship Begins

A Jewel Box of Sound

A Second Home in Tokyo

Friendship Beyond the Stage

The Heart of the Harmony

Opening Doors

A Living Tradition

In Touch With Unsuk Chin

Who or what are the most significant influences on your musical life and career as a composer?

What have been the greatest challenges of your career so far?

What are the special challenges and pleasures of working on a commissioned piece?

What are the special challenges and pleasures of working with particular musicians, singers, ensembles or orchestras?

Of which works are you most proud?

How would you characterise your compositional language?

How do you work?

What advice would you give to young or aspiring composers?

What do you feel needs to be done to grow classical music’s audiences?

What is the one thing in the music industry we’re not talking about but you think we should be?

What do you enjoy doing most?

How Conductors Explain Conducting

Comparing 5 conductors VERY different openings of Beethoven 5th Symphony (& why they chose that)

Simon Rattle | What Does A Conductor Actually Do?

Simon Rattle on Herbert von Karajan

Breaking down orchestra conducting gestures to show you what they mean

Excerpts of Beethoven’s 9 rehearsal and performance by Herbert von Karajan (1977)

Self-conducted Live Performance of “Le Sacre du Printemps”

Schubert Facts: 13 Things You Didn’t Know About the Great Composer

1. Schubert was the twelfth of fourteen children. He grew up close to his brother Ferdinand – who would go on to claim credit for some of Schubert’s music.

2. Schubert composed “Erlkönig” at 17 or 18. It became one of the most famous songs ever written for piano and voice.

Schuber

3. Schubert never held a traditional full-time job past his mid-twenties. Instead, he relied on intermittent teaching and the generosity of friends and family.

4. Schubert was so close to his friend Franz von Schober that they referred to themselves using a mashup name: “Schobert.”

Schubert’s Alfonso und Estrella

5. Schubert was only around five feet tall, making him one of the shortest of the great composers.

6. He never married and had no known long-term romantic partner – but did frequent brothels.

7. Schubert abandoned his eighth symphony in 1822, after writing just two movements. He never explained why, and the work wasn’t performed until decades after his death.

Schubert’s Symphony No. 8

8. Only one public concert of Schubert’s work was given during his lifetime.

9. His friends often gathered to hear his new songs and chamber music; these gatherings became known as “Schubertiades.” They included food, drink, dancing, and performances by Schubert himself.

10. He was arrested in early 1820 because the Austrian secret police, alarmed by the aftermath of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, were aggressively investigating groups of young people and activists.

11. While composing songs, he set poems by his own friends, not just famous poets.

12. We don’t know exactly what Schubert died of. He had syphilis, but it seems likely that another kind of infection actually killed him.

13. Much of Schubert’s music was published or premiered only after his death.

Schubert’s Symphony No. 9

Herbert Blomstedt (1927–2026) Obituary: Farewell, Legend

The Great Unknown: Count Wassenaer

The Best Symphony of Each Decade of the 1800s

1800s – Beethoven, Symphony No. 3, “Eroica” (1803–1804)

1810s – Beethoven, Symphony No. 7 (1811–1812)

1820s – Beethoven, Symphony No. 9 (1822–1824)

1830s – Berlioz, Symphonie Fantastique (1830)

1840s – Mendelssohn, Symphony No. 3, “Scottish” (1829–1842)

1850s – Schumann, Symphony No. 3, “Rhenish” (1850)

1860s – Tchaikovsky, Symphony No. 1, “Winter Dreams” (1866–1868)

1870s – Brahms, Symphony No. 1 (1854–1876) Play

1880s – Dvořák, Symphony No. 7 (1885)

1890s – Mahler, Symphony No. 2 (1888–1894)

Conclusion

Carnival of the Animals & More: Animal Music Quiz

10 pieces of classical music that will 100% change your life

J.S. Bach: St Matthew Passion

Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 6

Mahler: Symphony No. 2

Beethoven: Grosse Fuge

Mozart: Requiem

Monteverdi: Vespers

Elgar: Cello Concerto

Wagner: The Ring Cycle

Max Richter: Vivaldi: Recomposed

Gorecki: Symphony No. 3

Debussy - Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune

What makes Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune so ground-breaking?

Some music is best heard live!

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AN INTOXICATING LOVE

Filipinos and (Classical) Music

13 Facts About Johann Sebastian Bach

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Yuja Wang Archives