Fernando Sor and Félicité Hullin

Fernando Sor

Variations on a Theme by Mozart, Op. 9 (1823)

Towards the end of a highly successful performing and publishing career, the great Spanish guitarist Fernando Sor (1778-1839) — also known as Joseph Fernando Macari Sors, Josep Ferran Sorts I Muntades, Ferran Sor, Ferdinand Sor and Ferdinando Sor — vented his dissatisfaction with the general lack of musicianship in the French capital in a series of caustic, yet humorous titles and dedications. His Op. 35 published in Paris in 1828 sports the title “24 Extraordinarily Easy Exercises”. In his preface, Sor writes, “several people have found that my 24 Lessons for Beginners — his Op. 31 — required a somewhat too rapid progress, and that they were aimed at enabling the student to acquire a great talent; and that such an aim was not suitable for those who aim only to acquire a moderate ability, and who, unable to give great assiduity to studying, are content to accompany themselves and to play some agreeable pieces”. The set of six Bagatelles, Op. 43 is entitled “My Annoyances”, and the compositions are dedicated to “Whoever wants them”. Most famous, perhaps are the titles for Sor’s Op. 45 and Op. 48; “Let’s see if this is it”, and “Is this it?” The respective dedications read; “short and easy pieces in stages, which aim to lead to what has generally been agreed are difficulties. Composed and dedicated to the person with the least patience”. In his Op. 51, first published in Paris in 1832 he majestically proclaimed “At last!” Sor’s final words on the subject are found in the preface to his Op. 59, in which he attacks those “who have degraded the guitar by ignorance and routine, and have mutilated fine works by fashioning guitar arrangements that follow bad principles”. The latest research suggests, that Sor’s scorn was directed at the followers of Matteo Carcassi and Ferdinando Carulli, who had produced numerous unusual yet highly popular guitar arrangements. However, it seems that the ferocity of his musical attacks also masked some kind of frustration in his personal life. Once we take a closer look, we quickly discover that the source of Sor’s irritation was his recent separation from his wife, the celebrated ballerina and choreographer Félicité Hullin.
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Pablo de Sarasate and Marie Lefébure-Wély

Pablo de Sarasate

Les Adieux, Op. 9

Jean-Delphin Alard’s motivation for uttering the immortal words “marry your violin, my son, never a woman” to his most famous charge, the teenage violinist Pablo de Sarasate, might have been twofold. For one, he was rather unhappily married to the daughter of Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume, the most illustrious member of a prominent French family of violinmakers. The reason for his unhappiness, however, had little to do with Miss Vuillaume herself; he simply preferred the company of men. However, to project a veneer of respectability at his place of work — he held the position of professor of violin at the Parisian Conversatoire from 1843 to1875 — he felt compelled to marry a woman! As such, his joy and fulfillment in life was intimately bound to his fine collection of violins, including among others, the Antonio & Girolamo Amati of 1603, the famed Messiah Stradivarius of 1716, and the Alard Guarneri del Gesú of 1742. Secondly, he clearly recognized the exceptional talent of his Spanish student Pablo de Sarasate, who had made his way to Paris at the tender age of 12, and simply sought to protect him from repeating his own mistakes. However, Alard did not dish out his professional and paternal advice without provocation! But let us start from the beginning.
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Isaac Albéniz and Rosina Jordana

Isaac Albéniz

Suite espanola No. 1, Op. 47 (1886)

Iberia (1906): Book 1

Iberia (1906): Book 2

Iberia (1906): Book 3

Iberia (1906): Book 4

In April 1883, Rosina Jordana Lagarriga — daughter of the industrious businessman S. Simon Jordana, who lived and operated in the Catalonian capital of Barcelona — went to a local music store to look for sheet music by the sensational young pianist Isaac Albéniz. Rosina was slender and tall, with sad black eyes and a distinctively protruding nose, and according to her friends, moved as gracefully as a gazelle. Yet at the same time, she had a finely tuned intellect, and a calm and confident demeanor that reflected the strength of her character. While trying to get her bearings, she approached a young man — immaculately and elegantly dressed and sporting an exquisitely manicured moustache — and asked if he could direct her to any of Albéniz’s music. With a broad smile—honed by countless amorous conquests of adoring piano groupies — the young man replied that he could do one better, and gave her an autographed picture of himself. He also invited Rosina to visit his piano studio, and within a week she was taking piano lessons. We are almost certain, however, that Rosina initially rejected all romantic advances. In fact, she might have been the first woman ever to tell the famous pianist to get lost! Not accustomed to these kinds of rejections, Albéniz did the only sensible thing his tormented brain could think of, and he asked for her hand in marriage. And so it came to pass, that a mere two months after that faithful encounter in a music shop, the couple was engaged to be married. The celebrity press quickly reported that the famous pianist was engaged to a beautiful and rich senorita from Barcelona — pretty and discreet, as they put it — and the couple wed on 23 June 1883 at the church of Marc de Déu de la Mercè, in the Gothic quarters of Barcelona.
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Antonio de Cabezón and Louisa Nuñez de Mocos

Antonio de Cabezón

Tiento XXV de sexto tono

Pavana Italiana

credit : http://leiter.wordpress.com/

The immediate consequence of a rather messy political game of conspiracy and intrigue involving his own mother saw Charles V ascend to the throne of both Castile and Aragon in 1516. Once his paternal grandfather Maximilian died in 1519, Charles V also inherited the Habsburg lands of Austria, and eventually went on to be crowned Holy Roman Emperor. In order to strengthen his political position on the Iberian Peninsula, Charles V married Isabella of Portugal in 1525. Isabella was not only extremely intelligent and highly educated; she also was exceedingly bored with matters of church and state. As such, she quickly began to organize and shape the cultural and musical environment at the court, which included the establishment of a royal chapel. For the position of organist at the chapel, Isabella appointed Antonio de Cabezón, the most prominent Iberian keyboard performer and composer of his time.
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Don Carlo Gesualdo and Eleonora d’Este

Carlo Gesualdo

GESUALDO: Tenebrae Responsories for Maundy Thursday (1611)

The brutal slaughter of Maria d’Avalos and her lover Don Fabrizio Carafa at the hands of Don Carlo Gesualdo was not exclusively motivated by jealousy. In fact, Italian noblemen during the later stages of the Renaissance were essentially duty-bound to kill their unfaithful wives. These types of honor killings were hardly ever prosecuted and never went to trial. However, it was the shocking brutality of these murders that triggered, or rather exacerbated Don Gesualdo’s rapid descent into mental illness. Consumed by guilt and hoping to atone for his actions, Gesualdo built a monastery that housed an elaborate chapel. Furthermore, he commissioned a large oil painting that depicted — for everybody to see — the corpses of Maria, her lover and the dead child, flanked by the wicked uncle Don Giulio and himself. Yet, within a couple short years, Gesualdo was once again part of an arranged marriage.
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Carlo Gesualdo and Donna Maria d’Avalos

Carlo Gesualdo

Madrigals, Book 6 (1611)

The third act of William Shakespeare’s tragic play “Othello” contains the ominous words “O, beware, my lord, of jealousy! It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on”. As we all know, Othello did not heed these words and unceremoniously kills his innocent wife Desdemona. Written in 1603 and set in the city of Venice, Shakespeare might easily have taken his inspiration from a contemporary scandal involving the Italian nobleman Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa and Count of Conza, who lived between 1566 and 1613. The Gesualdo family had acquired the principality of Venosa, then part of the Kingdom of Naples, in the middle of the 16th Century. Since Carlo was the second son, the running of the principality fell upon his older brother Luigi. As such, Carlo was free to indulge his passion for music. His musical talents were discovered at an early age, and he soon took lessons from Scipione Stella, Ascanio Mayone and Ettorre de la Marra. By his early teens he had become an accomplished lutenist, singer and virtuoso harpsichordist. With no official responsibilities and plenty of time on his hands, Carlo not only liberally tickled the keys, he also engaged in ample sexual experimentations involving both genders. However, with the unexpected death of his older brother in 1584, it suddenly fell upon him to administer the estate. Even more importantly, he had to produce an heir in order to prevent the estate from reverting to the Papacy.
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Richard Strauss and Pauline Maria de Ahna

Richard Strauss

Guntram, Op. 25, TrV 168: Prelude ( 1893 )

4 Lieder, Op. 27, TrV 170 (1894) No.2 Cacilie

Ein Heldenleben (A Hero’s Life), Op. 40, TrV 190 (1898)

Symphonia domestica, Op. 53, TrV 209 (1903)

After sampling the sexual exploitations by some members of the Viennese Strauss family, it might be time to restore our faith in humanity—especially with Valentine’s Day around the corner—by taking a look at a different Strauss, namely Richard from Munich. As a celebrated international conductor, Richard Strauss enjoyed an impressive female following, particularly in the gallery of heroines that he brought to the stage as a composer. Yet by the time of his 37th birthday he was still a bachelor with no scandalous love affairs to his name. And so it came as a complete surprise when Richard proposed to his former student and operatic soprano Pauline Maria de Ahna in the middle of a turbulent rehearsal for his opera “Guntram” in 1894. Apparently, his student Heinrich Zeller was unable to master the insanely taxing vocal part and Strauss had to repeatedly interrupt the rehearsal. Then came the time for Pauline’s scene in Act III, which she knew well. In spite of this, she did not feel sure and envied Zeller because he had been given so many chances of repeating. Suddenly she stopped singing and asked Richard, to whom she had been secretly engaged since March 1894, why he was not interrupting her. Richard replied, that she knew her part well. Pauline retorted, “but I want to be interrupted” and threw the piano score at Richard’s head, but to the delight of the orchestra it landed on the desk of the second violinist. Having thus made her point, she stormed off the stage and locked herself in the dressing room, with Richard hurriedly following her. Once Richard returned to rehearsal the orchestral musicians enquired as to what kind of reprimand he had in mind for the temperamental soprano, to which Richard replied, “I am going to marry her”! And so he did, with the wedding taking place in a small chapel adjacent to the castle in Marquartstein on 10 September 1894.
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Johann Strauss II, Henriette Angelika Diettrich “Lily”, Henrietta “Jetty” Treffz and Adele Deutsch

Johann Strauss II

Eine Nacht in Venedig (A Night in Venice) (1883)

Kaiser Walzer (Emperor Waltz), Op. 437 (1889)

Aufs Korn, Op. 478 (1898)

Psychoanalytical models suggest that a human being, emotionally responding to the loss of a loved one, undergoes a process of grieving that involves various stages. The first two stages, so we are told, involve denial and anger. As it happens, the death of his beloved wife “Jetty” Treffz on 8 April 1878 elicited a textbook response from Johann Strauss Junior. Initially, he refused to believe that she was dead, and did not even attend her funeral, which had to be organized by his younger brother Eduard. Once denial turned to anger, which seemingly happened in a matter of minutes, the female population of Vienna bore the brunt of his rage. At least, the profits of the local bordellos skyrocketed over the next couple of weeks!
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Johann Strauss II, Olga Smirnitskaya and Henrietta “Jetty” Treffz

Johann Strauss II

Abschied von St. Petersburg (1858)

An der schonen, blauen Donau (The Beautiful Blue Danube), Op. 314 (1867)

Die Fledermaus (1874)

I am not entirely sure who coined the saying “like father, like son”, but they certainly could have had Johann Strauss the father, and Johann Strauss the son in mind. Like any good son, junior tried to outdo his father in all aspects of life, particularly in music and sexual promiscuity. And like any good father, senior desperately tried to prevent his son from duplicating his own mistakes. That’s probably the reason senior insisted that his son — despite displaying remarkable musical skills at an early age — become a banker. But with senior Strauss frequently out of town to regale the European countryside with his musical and sexual prowess, junior secretly took violin lessons. Once senior left the family to have his trousers mended by the seamstress Emilie Trampusch, junior quickly begun to study music in earnest, and by the tender age of 19 established his own dance orchestra, competing directly with the band of his father. The “new Strauss” mesmerized Viennese audiences, and in a blatant repeat of history, Vienna’s female population would swoon at the mere mention of his name. Once his father passed away, junior merged both orchestras, and took the show on the road. His annual summer pilgrimages to Russia were highly successful, however, his popularity with the ladies soon got him into trouble. On more than one occasion, jealous husbands challenged him to duels, and once he even had to seek refuge in the Austrian Embassy, barely escaping a double-barrel shotgun gently inviting him to marry a young Russian maid. Regardless, during his first Russian tour, he passionately fell in love with the young Russian aristocrat Olga Smirnitskaya. The wedding dress was selected, bells were ringing and the honeymoon bed extensively used, yet junior Strauss had somehow forgotten to get permission from Olga’s parents. Not surprisingly, the aristocratic Russians told the Austrian commoner to get lost. Olga quickly fell in line with her parents, and a dejected junior Strauss composed his doleful
Abschied von St. Petersburg (Farewell from St. Petersburg).

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Johann Strauss and Maria Anna Streim

Johann Strauss

Täuberlin-Walzer, Op. 1

Kettenbrücken-Walzer, Op. 4

“Homage to Queen Victoria of Great Britain”, Op. 103 (1838)

“Radetzky March”, Op. 228 (1848)

One would be hard pressed not to agree with the assessment of a contemporary music critic, who described the Viennese Waltz as a direct expression of sensuality. Originally clergymen and the aristocracy condemned the waltz, which evolved from the rustic “Ländler” in the middle of the 18th century. They primarily objected to the close bodily contact between dancers. Eyewitnesses report, “the men dancers held up the dresses of their partners very high so that they should not trail and be stepped on, wrapped themselves both tightly in the covering, bringing their bodies as closely together as possible, and thus whirling about went on in the most indecent positions”. This vertical expression of horizontal desire, which reflected the pleasure-seeking and carefree spirit of imperial Vienna, was eagerly practiced in the great dancehalls of the city. And members of the Strauss family gleefully provided the musical background, which gaily sent the Viennese population into throbbing gyrations.
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