MUSICIANS AND MATRIMONY.

Otago Witness, Issue 1975, 26 September 1889, Page 32

MUSICIANS AND MATRIMONY.

Bacon tells us that " the best works and those of greatest merit for the public have proceeded from unmarried or childless men." Tiiat seems to be only partially true of the great composers, some of whom have been " very much married." The great Sebastian Bach was twice wed, and had a united family of no fewer than 20 children. He was the very model of a paterfamilias, fond of home, and hardly ever absent from his own fireside. He was never outside his native country, and the appointments which he held during bis lifetime were all in towns, only separated from each other by a short distance. His second wife appears to have been of great service to him in his professional work. She both sang and played, and she had, besides, a beautiful hand for copying music, and constantly helped her husband in the laborious work of writing out his compositions. He gave her lessons on the harpischord frequently, and wrote a good deal of music for her to play.

Mozart's reasons for marrying, though quaintly put, are unanswerable — viz., because he had no one to take care of his linen ; because he could not live like the fast joung men around him ; and lastly, because he was in love. He married when he was 26 and his bride 18. He passionately loved his wife to the end, and the last words he wrote were to her — " The hour strikes. Farewell Iwe shall meet again."

Haydn married on a salary of little more than £20. His choice fell first on the youngest daughter of a wig-maker, with whom he had fallen in love while giving her lessons. This daughter, however, took the veil, and the father, anxious to keep Haydn in the family, persuaded him to marry another daughter, three years his senior. He did so, and laid the foundation of unutterable domestic misery. The wife proved to be everything that was bad, and cared not a straw whether her husband was an artist or a shoemaker. A separation was the inevitable lesult.

Handel was one of the few great composers who remained unmarried, and he seems to have been almost insensible to female charms. He never showed the least inclination for the cares and joys of doaestic life, and apart from his relatives, the one to whom he was most attached was his secretary. Mr Smith. On one occasion he tried for an organ apoointment, but when he learned that the successful candidate must marry the daughter of the retiring organist he fled from the contest with all possible speed. Beethoven on the very threshold of his

cdreer Was met by poverty and disease, and these accompanying him through life probably kept thoughts of marriagain the background. Yet he was not without passing fancies for women. The Countess Guicciardi he spoke of at one time .as his " immortal beloved," and to her he dedicated the famous soog " Adelaide." The dream of Chopin's life was union with Madame Sand, but unfortunately for him marriage found no place in the peculiar system of morals advocated by that eminent novelist. Madame Sand declared matrimony to be a enare to a man, and a delusion to a woman, and accordingly Chopin was met with a refusal. After this, as he says himself, "All the cords that bound me to life are broken." His health visibly declined, and not long after his disappointment he breathed his last.

Mendelssohn fell in love very early, but having reason to mistrust himself, he decided to test his affection for the lady by a lengthened absence from her society. He came through the trial eatisfactorily, and shortly after he was married to his first and only love. His relations vith his wife were all along tender and satisfactory, although, curiously, she is hardly ever mentioned in any of his published letters.

Wagner married an actress while he was yet a young man, but she had little sympathy with his work and aims, and after a time he separated from her. He next married a daughter of Liszt, who appreciated his genius, and with her he lived a truly happy and peaceful life.

As for Liszt, from the period when he had attained the mature age of 15, and fell in love with Miss Garella, till he was far on in years, his biography is plentifully speckled with fair names.

.Berlioz, the eminent French composer, wrote : " Oh, that I could find her, the Juliet, the Ophelia that my heart calls to, that I could drink in the intoxication of mingled joy and sadness that only true love knows ! Could I but rest in her arms one autnnm evening, rocked by the north wind on some wild heath, and sleeping my last, sad sleep 1 " In a few years after these gushing lines were written, he arranged a separation from his wife, bis former divinity, and left her to die in misery and solitude !