The Love Affairs of Great Musicians Volume I Part 3

Anna Magdalena Wulken was the daughter of the court trumpeter in the ducal band at Weissenfels. She was twenty-one years old while Bach was thirty-six. They were betrothed as early as September, 1721, and together stood sponsor to the child of the prince's cellar-clerk. The wedding took place at Bach's own house.

The new wife was very musical, a gifted singer and a devoted student.

She made the Bach home a little musical circle. It is evident that she kept up her singing, for October 28, 1730, he wrote of his family, "They are one and all born musicians, and I can a.s.sure you that I can already form a concert, both vocal and instrumental, of my own family, particularly as my present wife sings a very clear soprano and my eldest daughter joins in bravely."

Soon after the marriage Sebastian and Anna started to keep a musical book together. Her name appears in her own hand, then her husband's cheery note that it was "_Anti-Calvinismus_ and _Anti-Melancholicus_."

In this book and another begun in 1725 are compositions by himself and other men, copied in the handwritings of both husband and wife. There are arias written apparently for Anna Magdalena, and when in an unusually domestic humour he wrote in a song, "Edifying Reflections of a Smoker" in D minor, she transposed it up to G minor in her own hand--doubtless that she might sing it to him while he puffed contentment in uxorious ease. Later on is a wedding-poem, gallantly beginning,

"Irh Diener, werthe Jungfer Braut Viel Glucke zur heutgen Freude!"

and exclaiming that at the sight of her in her garland and wedding-garb the heart laughs out in rapture;--and what wonder that lips and breast overflow with joy. There are rules he wrote out for her instruction in thorough-ba.s.s with a note that others must be taught orally, and there is a love-song for soprano, which he must have written for her, to judge from the words, "Willst du dein Herz mir schenken." Upton declares this song to have been written during and for their first courtship. A portrait of this ideal wife was painted by Cristofori and pa.s.sed into the keeping of her stepson, Karl Philipp Emanuel Bach, but alas, it is lost while so many a less interesting face is repeated in endless pictures.

Twenty-eight years after her marriage this faithful woman stood by her husband's side in his blindness and through the two operations by the English surgeon in Leipzig. How must she have rejoiced when on July 18, 1750, he suddenly found that he could see and endure with delight the blessed sunshine! How her heart must have sunk when a few hours later he was stricken with apoplexy and a high fever that gave him only ten more days of life! At his death-bed stood his wife, his daughters, his youngest son, a pupil, and a son-in-law. An old chorale of his was, as Spitta says, "floating in his soul, and he wanted to complete and perfect it." The original name had been, "When we are in the highest need," but he changed the name by dictation now to "Before thy throne with this I come" (_Vor deiner Thron tret ich hiemit_). The preacher said he had "fallen calmly and blessedly asleep in G.o.d," and he was buried in St. Thomas' churchyard; but later the grave was lost sight of, and his bones are now as unhonoured as his memory is revered.

It is a dismal task to write the epilogue to the beautiful life and death of this father of music. The woman who had made his life so happy and aided him with hand and voice and heart,--what had she done to deserve the dingy aftermath of her fidelity?

Bach left no will, and his children seized his ma.n.u.scripts; what little money remained from his salary of 87 thalers a year (13 or $65) they divided with the widow, now fifty years old. Her husband's salary was continued half a year longer, but the sons all went away to other towns, some of them to considerable success. The mother and three daughters were left to shift for themselves. Two years later they must sell a few musical remains and the town must aid them out of its funds.

In the winter ten years after her husband's death, on Feb. 27, 1760, Anna Magdalena died, an alms-woman. Her only mourners were her daughters and a fourth of the public school children, who were forced by the custom of the day to follow to the grave the body of the very poor. In 1801 Bach's daughter Regina was still living, a "good old woman," who would have starved had there not been a public subscription, to which Beethoven contributed the proceeds of a composition.

Gradually the name and fame of Johann Sebastian Bach were obliterated almost from man's memory. Half a century of oblivion was followed by the great revival and the apotheosis of his genius. In that apotheosis some radiance must always be vouchsafed the sweet memory of her to whom he owed so much of his life's delight and his art's inspiration, to whom also he dedicated his life and his music--Anna Magdalena.

CHAPTER IX.

PAPA AND MAMMA HAYDN

"Such music by such a n.i.g.g.e.r!" exclaimed one prince. Another called him a Moor. And two others could not endure him at all. He was undersized and slender as well; and his legs were so very short that they hardly reached the ground. His nose was long and beaked and disfigured, with nostrils of different shape, and he was undershot like a bulldog, and unusually pitted with smallpox even for those ante-vaccination days, when it was the ordinary thing to show the marks of this plague. He always wore a wig, too; beginning when he was a child of six, "for the sake of cleanliness"! and continuing to the day of his death, even when wigs were out of style.

This does not read like the portrait of a man particularly successful in his love affairs. It does not certainly read like a description of the hero of a novel written by The d.u.c.h.ess or even by Miss Jane Austen. Yet this is the picture of a man plentifully beloved, large-minded but strangely naf; a revolutionist of childlike directness.

Everybody knows the story of the early life of Joseph Haydn, one of the twelve children of a journeyman wheelwright, and throughout his youth a shuttlec.o.c.k of ill treatment and contempt.

Love seems to have reached his heart at a late day but with compensating suddenness. It is nearly incredible that a man whose after life was so heart-busy should not have felt the tender pa.s.sion till he was nearly thirty, but stranger things have happened, and the anecdote given by his friend Griesinger of his wild agitation when at the age of twenty-seven he was accompanying a young countess, and her neckerchief became disarranged for a moment, would seem to indicate a remarkably unsophisticated nature.

A year later he found himself somewhat relieved of the burden of poverty that had always hampered him, and he remembered him of the two daughters of a Viennese wig-maker named Keller. Keller had frequently been kind to Haydn, and the younger daughter seems to have inspired him with an ardent love, but she took the veil. Elise Polko has worked up an elaborate fiction on this affair with her usual saccharinity. When the convent closed the younger Keller from the world, her father ingeniously suggested to Haydn that he might marry the elder sister.

As Louis Nohl says, "Whatever may have been the reason, grat.i.tude, ignorance, helplessness in practical matters, or wish to have a wife at once--whatever may have been the motive, he married, and sorely suffered for it."

Anna Keller was older than Haydn, and the family religiousness that led the younger daughter to enter the convent, led Anna to contribute more of money to the Church, of food and society to the churchmen, and of her husband's compositions to the choir, than even so pious a Catholic as Haydn could afford or endure.

An account of the married life of these two is given by Haydn's friend Carpani, which incidentally brings up a bit of literary thievery of unusual quaintness. Carpani wrote his "Le Haydine" in the form of letters from Vienna; they were published in Milan. Some time after one Marie Henri Beyle published in Paris what purported to be an original series of "Letters written from Vienna." He published these under the pen name of L.A.C. Bombet. Carpani exposed the theft, but a little later the imperturbable Beyle published a second edition of his work under the name De Stendhal. An English translation from the French work is commonly seen, though never with credit to Carpani. Carpani, in his account of the home life of the Haydns, says they were happy for a honeymoon.

"But soon the caprices of Mrs. Anna turned the knot to a chain, the bliss to torment, and affairs went so far that, after suffering many years, this new Socrates ended by separating from his Xantippe. Mrs.

Anna was not pretty, nor yet ugly. Her manners were immaculate, but she had a wooden head, and when she had fixed on a caprice, there was no way to change it. The woman loved her husband but was not congenial. An excess of religious piety badly directed came to disturb this happy harmony. Mrs. Anna wanted the house always full of priests, to whom she furnished good dinners, suppers, and luncheons. Haydn was a bit economical; but rather for cause than desire. At this time he had hardly enough to live on discreetly, and he began to look with evil eye on this endless procession of holy gra.s.shoppers (_locuste_) who ravaged his larder. Nor was it appropriate to the house of a studious man, this ceaseless clatter of a numerous, genial, and lazy society; therefore, solidly religious as he was, he could not enjoy these sacred repasts and he had to close the door of the refectory. After that the deluge (_inde irae_). Mrs. Anna had a religious brother. Haydn couldn't keep him from visiting his sister.

"Monks are like cherries; if you lift one from the basket, ten come along with it. Haydn's convent was not depopulated. Nor did the demands decrease. Every now and then Mrs. Anna had a new request; to-day a responsory, to-morrow a motet, the day after a ma.s.s, then hymns, then psalms, then antiphons; and all _gratis_. If her husband declined to write them, there appeared on the scene the great confederates of capricious women; the effects of hysteria, spleen (_gli insulti di stomaco_), spasms; then shrieks, then criminations, weepings, quarrels, and bad humour unceasing. Haydn ended with having to appease the woman, to lose his point, and pay the doctor and the druggist to boot. He had always drouth in his purse and despair in his mind. It is a true miracle that a genius in such a contrast could create the wonderful works that all the world knows.

"It was at this time that, seeking solace in friendship, he contracted that bond of sentiment which lasted till death with Boselli, a singer in the service of Prince Esterhazy. This friendship, rousing jealous suspicions in the mind of Mrs. Anna, ended by rendering her unendurable.

The hostile fates willed that no fruit should be borne of Haydn's marriage." [On this point Haydn once opened his heart to Griesinger, saying: "My wife was incapable of bearing children, and therefore I was less indifferent to the charms of other womankind."] "Lacking its most solid link, the marital chain could not stand such shocks, and grew fatally weaker. The pair ceased to live together, and only that sacramental knot remained indissoluble and strong, which Haydn had contracted at the age of twenty-seven. Mrs. Anna lived to seventy years on a sufficient pension which her husband faithfully paid, and she died in 1800. These vicissitudes in great part explain why Haydn, though he earned much, could not for a long while put aside a penny and make himself a little ease."

It is not a pretty picture that Carpani draws of this home life, and Anna is made out to be far from a lovable creature. She is compared to the patron saint of shrews, Xantippe. But even Xantippe had her side of the story to tell; and with all possible admiration for that man Socrates, of such G.o.dlike wisdom and such great heart, it must be remembered that Socrates had many habits which would not only cause ostracism from society to-day, but would have tried the temper of even such a wife as the meek Griselda of Chaucer's poem.

We constantly meet these husbands who are seemingly rich in geniality and yet are mysteriously unhappy at home. It is the custom of the acquaintances of these fellows to put all the blame on the wife. But there is a distinct type of mind which always enjoys dining abroad and appreciates a few herbs in a stranger's house more than a stalled ox at home. These people are gentle and genial and tender only out-of-doors.

You might call them extra-mural saints.

I have a strong suspicion that Haydn, who was so dear and good a soul that he was commonly called "Papa" by his friends and disciples, was one of the souls that shrivel up inside the house. In any case he can never be forgiven for publishing his domestic miseries as he did. He talked inexcusably to his friends about his wife; he complained everywhere of her extravagances and of her quarrelsomeness. When Griesinger wished to make Haydn's wife a present, Haydn forbade him, saying:

"She does not deserve anything! It is little matter to her whether her husband is an artist or a cobbler."

As he pa.s.sed in front of a picture of her once, he seized the violinist Baillot by the arm, and pointing to the picture said, "That is my wife.

Many a time she has maddened me."

In 1792 he wrote to his mistress from London:--"My wife, the infernal beast" (_bestia infernale_--Pohl translates this _hollische Bestie_) "has written so much stuff that I had to tell her I would not come to the house any more; which has brought her again to her senses."

This was thirty-two years after his marriage, and a year later he writes again:

"My wife is ailing most of the time and is always in the same miserable temper, but I do not let it distress me any longer. There will sometime be an end of this torment."

Louis Nohl speaks of this as written in a gentle and almost sorrowful tone! As his biographers find gentleness in such writing, it is easy to see why Mrs. Haydn has had few defenders.

Heaven forbid that I should be considered as throwing all the blame for the unhappiness upon the husband. Anna Keller had a remarkably long and sharp tongue whose power she did not neglect; she once complained to her husband that there was not money enough in the house to bury him in case he died suddenly. He pointed to a series of canons which he had written and framed. When he was in London revelling in his triumph, she sent him a letter in which she asked him for money enough to buy a certain little house she had set her heart on, navely adding that it was just a cosy size for a widow.

Haydn bought it later for himself, and lived in it several years as a widower. Carpani in his thirteenth letter draws a pleasant picture of Haydn's life with his mistress Boselli, and incidentally describes how various composers composed: Gluck with his piano in a summer meadow and the bottled sunshine of Champagne on each side; Sarti in a dark room at night with a funereal lamp pendant from the ceiling; Salieri in the streets eating sweets; Paer while joking with his friends, gossiping on a thousand things, scolding his servants, quarrelling with his wife and children and petting his dog; Cimarosa in the midst of noisy friends; Sacchini with his sweetheart at his side and his kittens playing on the floor about him; Paesiello in bed; Zingarelli after reading the holy fathers or a cla.s.sic; Anfossi in the midst of roast capons, steaming sausages, gammons of bacon and ragouts.

"But Haydn, like Newton, alone and obscure, voyaged the skies in his chair; on his finger the ring of Frederick like the invisible ring of Angelica. When he returned among mortals, Boselli and his friends divided his time. For thirty years he led this life, _monotona ma dolcissima_, not knowing his growing fame nor dreaming of leaving Eisenstadt, save when he mused on Italy. Then Boselli died and he began to feel the ennui (_le noje_) of a void in his days. It was then that he went to London."

This mistress of Haydn's, whom Carpani and Fetis call Boselli and whom Dies calls Pulcelli, is now generally called Polzelli, following the spelling in Haydn's own handwriting. The pleasant legend Carpani gives of Haydn's life with this woman, undisturbed by ambition until her death, is as much upset by later writers as is the spelling of her name.

Pohl, closely followed by Haydn's recent biographer, Schmidt, describes Luigia Polzelli as a Neapolitan who was nineteen when she was engaged to sing at the theatre of the Prince Esterhazy. She was the wife of Anton Polzelli, an insignificant and sickly violinist, with whom she was apparently not in love. Luigia is pictured--doubtless by guesswork--as not beautiful, but of a pleasing appearance, showing the indications of her Italian birth in "her small slim face, her dark complexion, her black eyes, her chestnut-coloured hair; her body of medium height and elegant form."

"To this woman," says Schmidt, "Haydn fetched his own deep and lasting sorrow. Polzelli was in the same position as he: she lived unhappily with her spouse. Whether she honestly returned Haydn's love cannot be known. Facts hint that she often abused and took advantage of his good nature. But for all that she beautified his life, so often joyless, by the tenderness which she awoke in him; and the woman who throughout twenty years could do that, deserved well of the man whose friend she was; and she earns our consideration and sympathy besides. From London the master wrote her the tenderest letters. Both, as their correspondence shows, only postponed their union, till the day when 'four eyes shall be closed,'

"Yet when finally both were free, Time had worked his almighty influence; Haydn had grown gray; outwardly as well as spiritually an estrangement had widened between them, and of their once so dear a desire there is no more word. Yet Haydn never ceased to provide for his friend, as well as to care for the education and the success of her sons. The elder, Pietro, Haydn's favourite, on whom he hung with his whole heart, died early." [Pohl quotes many allusions to him in Haydn's letters.] "The younger, Anton, who was reported without proper foundation to be Haydn's natural son, later became musical director of the prince's chapel, but then gave up music and turned farmer, finally dying of the plague in sad circ.u.mstances."

Pohl is somewhat fuller upon this alliance than Schmidt, who, in fact, merely condenses and paraphrases him. He says that Polzelli's maiden name was Moreschi [which, being interpreted, is "Moor," a name once given to Haydn]; she was a mezzo-soprano, who played secondary roles in the operas. She earned the same salary as her husband, 465 gulden a year. The letters Haydn wrote her were always in Italian, and in one of them he wishes her better roles, and "a good master who will take the same interest as thy Haydn." Haydn had come to her for sympathy, since, as Pohl says and we have seen, "thanks to his wife he had h.e.l.l at home"

[_die Holle im House_].

When increasing fame took Haydn by the hand and led him away to royal triumphs in London, he did not take jealousy along with his other luggage. He seems to have heard that his place was promptly filled in Polzelli's heart, but with all his geniality, he could write of the rumoured rival as "this man, whose name I do not know, but who is to be so happy as to possess thee." Then there was a recrudescence of the old ardour:

"Oh, dear, dear Polzelli, thou lingerest always in my heart; never, never shall I forget thee (_O cara Polzelli, tu mi stai sempre nel core, mal, mal scordeo di te_)."

When some one in London told him that Polzelli had sold the piano he had given her, he could not believe it, and only wrote her, "See how they tease me about you" (_vedi come mi seccano per via di te_). Still less will he believe that she has spoken ill of him, and he writes:

"May G.o.d bless thee, and forgive thee everything, for I know that love speaks in thee. Be careful for thy good name, I beg thee, and think often of thy Haydn, who cherishes and tenderly loves thee and to thee will always be true."