The Love Affairs of Great Musicians Volume I Part 6

Chrysander tries to prove that this Vittoria was no other than the famous singer, Vittoria Tesi, "a contralto of masculine strength," as one listener describes her voice. She was very dramatic, and made her chief success in men's roles, singing ba.s.s songs transposed an octave higher. She was born at Florence in 1690, and would have been seventeen years old when Handel's "Roderigo" was produced there in 1707. That she should be capable of so ardent a love at that age need hardly be mentioned when we remember that Romeo's Juliet was only twelve at the time of her immortal amour. Love _a l'Italienne_ is precocious.

Wild stories are told of the escapades of this brilliant singer, whom Handel never brought to London among all his importations--and with good reason, if she had once pursued him as legend tells. No stranger account is given than that of Doctor Burney, who describes her peculiar method of escaping the proposals of a certain n.o.bleman who implored her to marry him. She had no prejudices against the n.o.bleman, but strong prejudices against marriage. Finally, to quiet her lover's conscientious appeals, she went out into the street and bribed the first labouring man she met with fifty ducats to marry her. Her new husband sped from dumbfounded delight to amazed regret, for he found that with her money she bought only his name and a marriage doc.u.ment, as a final answer to the count when next he came whimpering of conventional marriage.

In London Handel reigned as never musician reigned before or since. He is still reigning to the lasting detriment of English musical independence.

He was a lordly man in his day was Handel; and dared to cut that terrible Dean Swift, whose love affairs are perhaps the chief riddle of all amorous chronicle. Dean Swift is said to have said: "I admire Handel princ.i.p.ally because he conceals his petticoat peccadillos with such perfection." This statement may be taken as only a proof either that the dean had so tangled a career of his own that he could not see any other man's straight; or that Handel was really more of a flirt than tradition makes him out.

Rockstro said that Handel was engaged more than once; once to the aforementioned Vittoria Tesi--this in spite of the tradition that woman proposed and man disposed; and later to two other women. Rockstro bases this last doubtless on the account given in that strangely named book, "Anecdotes of Handel and J.C. Smith, with compositions by J.C. Smith."

This was published anonymously in London, in 1799, but it is known to have been written by Dr. William c.o.xe. Smith _(ne_ Schmidt) was Handel's secretary and a.s.sistant. He was something of a composer himself, and on his death-bed advised his widow to consult Doctor c.o.xe in every emergency; whereupon, to simplify matters and have the counsellor handy, in due time she married him.

Doctor c.o.xe indignantly denies Hawkins' statement that Handel lacked social affection; he says that two rich pupils loved him. The first would have married him, but her mother said she should never marry a fiddler. After the mother's death, the father implied that all obstacles were now removed, but too late. He never saw the girl again, and she fell into a decline, which soon terminated her existence. The second woman was a personage of high estate, and offered to marry Handel if he would give up his career. But when he declined, she also declined, and died after the fashion of the eighteenth century.

In his will Handel left money to two cousins, also to two widows, and one other woman.

He brought many singers to London for his operas, and their romances would fill ten volumes. There is the famous tenor, Beard, for instance, the creator of "Samson." He created Samsonian scandal by marrying Lady Henrietta Herbert, the only daughter of the Earl of Waldegrave; she died fourteen years later, and he built her a fine monument. Six years later he married the daughter of a harlequin.

Then there was the singer Senesino, and Farinelli, whose heart and brain were real though his voice was artificial. He became finally a sort of vocal prime minister to Spain. To start one of these romances of singers would be like throwing a match in a fireworks factory.

CHAPTER XI.

GLUCK THE DOMESTIC, ROUSSEAU THE CONFESSOR, AND THE AMIABLE PICCINNI

While Handel was in London at the height of his autocracy, he was visited by a composer named Gluck, whom we think of to-day as a revolutionist in music, and a man of the utmost historical importance.

To the lordly Handel, however, he was more or less contemptible, and people who know nothing else of either genius, know that Handel said, "Gluck understood about as much counterpoint as my cook."

Gluck did not make a success on his London visit, and began to criticise both his own work and contemporary schools of opera, with a thoroughness that resulted in a determination to "reform it altogether." From London he went to Vienna in 1748, and there he was soon a figure of importance, moving in the best families, and entertained at the best homes. Among the homes in which he was most cordially received, was that of the rich banker and wholesale merchant, Joseph Pergin, who had a large business with Holland. Both daughters of the house were, according to Reissman's not particularly novel expression, "pa.s.sionately fond of music." Gluck was soon made thoroughly at home there.

"Soon also he was bound in most intimate affection to the elder daughter, Maria Anne. She reciprocated the feelings, and the mother gave her consent to the betrothal. Gluck dared to deem the year 1749, in which this change took place, the happiest of his life; but it also turned out to be his saddest, for the father refused his consent. This man, haughty with his wealth, rejected the honoured artist, since he was only a musician, and since, besides, his art offered no sufficient promise or surety for the proper support of a young woman. The lovers accepted the separation thus enforced, with patience, promising themselves that it should not be for long, and that they would preserve unbroken fidelity."

Gluck was called to Rome the next year, and there he had the news that the stern father was dead. Accordingly, as soon as he could release himself from his engagements, he hastened back to Vienna--as Schmid puts it--"_auf dem Flugeln der Liebe nach Wien zuruck_" On the 15th of September, he was married to his Maria Anne, "with whom to his death he dwelt in the happiest wedlock, and who went with him on his triumphal journeys four years later." In 1754 the Pope knighted him; made him Cavaliere, and henceforth this once poverty-smitten street fiddler and strolling singer was known as Ritter von Gluck, the friend and protege of his countrywoman, Marie Antoinette.

No children were born to the couple, but they took into their home a niece, and Gluck's wife devoted much of her time to the poor.

"He left his wife the chief heir. He even left it to her pleasure whether his brothers and sisters should have anything or not, and said in his will, 'Since the fundamental principle of every testament is the appointment of an heir, I hereby appoint my dear wife, M. Anne von Gluck, _nee_ Pergin, as my sole and exclusive heir; and that no doubts may arise, as to whether the silver and other personal property be mine or my wife's, I hereby also declare all the silver and other valuables to be the sole property of my wife, and consequently not included in my previous bequests,'"

None of the letters of Gluck, that I have been able to find, concern his married life, though many of them are in existence concerning his operatic warfare.

Burney met him in 1773 in Paris, where he was living with his wife and niece. In 1775, on his way back home from Paris, he stopped off at Strasburg to meet the poet Klopstock. D.F. Strauss quotes a description by a merchant of Karlsruhe of this scene: "Old Gluck sang and played, _con amore_, many pa.s.sages from the 'Messiah' set to music by himself; his wife accompanying him in a few other pieces." On the 15th of November, 1787, when Gluck was seventy-three years old, he was at his home in Vienna under doctor's care. After dinner, it was his custom to take coffee out-of-doors, in the free, fresh air and the golden sunlight, where he used to have his piano placed when he would compose.

Two old friends from Paris had dined with him, and they were soon to leave. Frau von Gluck left the guests for a moment, to order the carriage. While she was gone, one of the guests declined the liqueur set before him. Now Gluck was always addicted to looking upon the champagne when it was yellow; in fact, he used always to have a bottle at each wing of his piano, when he composed, and was wont to end his compositions, his bottles, and his sobriety in one grand _Fine_. But now he was forbidden to take wine, for fear of heating his blood.

On this day, however, he pretended to be angry at his guest for refusing the choice liqueur. In a burlesque rage, he seized the gla.s.s, drained it at a gulp, and jokingly begged the guests not to tell his wife. She came back to the room to say that the carriage was ready. Frau von Gluck and the guests left him for half an hour, and he bade them a cheerful farewell. Fifteen minutes later his third stroke of apoplexy attacked him, and his horrified wife returning found him unconscious. In a few hours he was dead. This wife, with whom he lived so congenially, and whose money gave him even more luxury than his operatic success could have procured,--indeed, the very house he died in she had bought for eleven thousand florins,--outlived him less than three years, dying March 12, 1800, at the age of seventy-one. She was buried near him, and her tomb, built by her nephew, has the following epitaph:

"Here rests in peace, near her husband, Maria Anne, Edle von Gluck, born Pergin. She was a good Christian, and without ostentation a mother to the poor. She was loved and cherished by all who knew her."

ROUSSEAU THE CONFESSOR

During the fierce battles Gluck fought in Paris, one of his most ardent partisans was Jean Jacques Rousseau, who was a musician in a small way, wrote songs, an enormously successful opera, "Le Devin du Village," and other musical works, besides making an attempt to reform musical notation, and writing a dictionary of music. The world, however, does not accept him as a musician but as a writer, and his numerous and curious love affairs are told in so much detail in his immortal "Confessions," that I cannot attempt to treat them here. Vandam, in his book on "Great Amours," dissects Rousseau's heart ruthlessly. For his ability to do this, he must thank Rousseau most, for the unequalled frankness of his own biography, Francis Greble, dissecting "Rousseau's first love," has neatly dubbed him "the Great High Priest of those who kiss and tell."

THE AMIABLE PICCINNI

In this same war of operatic schools and composers which raged in Paris upon the reforms of Gluck, the Italian composer Piccinni was haled to the front as an unwilling opponent of Gluck.

The world is needlessly cruel to those who happen to interfere in any way with the favourites of posterity, and Piccinni's name is a byword in the history of music. We hear much of the unscrupulous opposition that his partisans made to the reforms of Gluck, but we should also take into consideration the unscrupulous opposition that the partisans of Gluck made to the prosperity and honest endeavours of Piccinni, a man of no mean talent, whose misfortune and not whose fault it was, that he was not a genius of the first order.

But we are not concerned here with the history of music, only with the intimate history of musicians. Piccinni's domestic life was so beautiful, that it makes it all the more pitiable that he should have been dragged w.i.l.l.y-nilly into a contest for which he had neither inclination nor ability. Piccinni fell in love with a pupil, like him an Italian, Vicenza Sibilla. When he was twenty-eight he married her. His biographer Ginguene says: "She joined to the charms of her s.e.x, a most beautiful and touching voice. All that happy disposition, a.s.siduous study under so good a master could accomplish, especially when teacher and pupil loved each other pa.s.sionately, and were equally impa.s.sioned for the art, which one taught, and the other learned, it is all that which you must imagine, to get an idea of the talent of Mme. Piccinni.

He did not wish her to go on the stage, where everything promised her the greatest success and the most brilliant fortune; but at home almost every evening, at the private concerts, or, as the Italians say, in all the 'academies' where one is glad to be invited, she sang only her husband's music. She rendered it with the true spirit of the master; and I have it from him, that he never heard his works, especially his 'Cara Cecchina' sung with such perfect art, and what would put it above art, so much soul, and expression, as by his wife."

In 1773 Piccinni found himself suddenly deprived of the fickle support of the Roman public. Worst of all, it was his own pupil and protege, Anfossi, who supplanted him. The tender-hearted Piccinni, like Palestrina, was so overcome with this humiliation, that he fell ill, and kept his bed for several months. Two years later, the Prince of Brunswick's younger brother went to Naples to visit him, and there he happened upon a domestic scene which gives us a pretty notion of Piccinni's home life.

"He surprised Piccinni in the midst of his family, and was amazed at the tableau. Piccinni was rocking the cradle of his youngest child, born that same year; another of his children tugged at his coat to make him tip over the cradle; the mother revelling in the spectacle. She fled in dismay at seeing the stranger, who stood at the door, enjoying the scene himself. The young prince made himself known, begged pardon for his indiscretion, and said with feeling, 'I am charmed to see that so great a man has so much simplicity, and that the author of "The Good Daughter"

[one of his most successful operas] can be so good a father.'"

The next year, 1776, Piccinni was called to Paris as an unwilling conscript in the musical revolution, which was raging no less fiercely than the American Revolution of the same time. It was a bitter December day when Piccinni arrived in Paris with his wife, and his eldest daughter, aged eighteen. "Devoted to his art, foreign to all intrigue, to all ambition, to the morals, tastes, customs, and language of the country, Piccinni lived in his family circle, and devoted himself quietly to his work, in oblivion of the efforts that the Gluckists made to thwart the success, and even to prevent the representation, of his work. It must be said that Gluck himself stooped to be the instigator of these intrigues."

In spite of all, the day came for the presentation of Piccinni's opera, "Roland," and the family broke into tears when he went to the theatre.

He alone was calm in the midst of this desolation, rea.s.sured his wife, and departed with his friends. He returned home in a triumph, which was perhaps greater than the work deserved, but certainly not greater than so good a man merited.

Piccinni was large-hearted enough to cherish no malice against either of his rivals, Sacchini or Gluck. When Sacchini died, Piccinni delivered the funeral oration, and when, a year later, Gluck died in Vienna, Piccinni made a vain effort to organise a fitting memorial festival.

He remained upon the field of battle, and the victory for the time must be granted him, in spite of certain defeats. Then the French Revolution broke out, and he lost his favour with the public, and the friendship of the aristocracy became a danger to his very life. He went to Naples, where he found some success, and was well received by the court. But everything seemed now to conspire against him. The Republicans of Paris had driven him to Italy, into the arms of the aristocracy there; whereupon, in 1792, his daughter married a French Republican. This brought him into such disgrace with the Italian court that he did not dare leave his house, and fell into neglect and poverty.

In 1798 he made his way back to Paris, and there his reunited family gave little operas, sung by his wife and daughters. Here "one heard with pleasure always new airs taken from his Italian operas, sung by Mme.

Piccinni, with a voice that age had rendered more grave and less light, without making it less beautiful or touching, and with a method as wise as it was learned, and well opposed to these pretentious displays, these eternal embroideries which disfigure Italian song to-day, and which Piccinni never admitted into his school, but which he always detested."

So says Ginguene of the theories of Piccinni, which are not, as we see, so opposed to the theories of Gluck as we are sometimes urged to believe. In the course of time Napoleon took up Piccinni, but he was too old to revive under this new favour, and Ginguene has this last picture of him:

"It was in this state that he had the courage to give a concert at his home. The small number of amateurs who gathered there will long remember the impression of that which one may call the last song of the swan.

They were profoundly moved to hear Mme. Piccinni sing with due expression the beautiful air from 'Zendia,' _Lasciami, o ciel pietoso_!

composed in all the vigour of youth, by this ill.u.s.trious man, now old and unfortunate. He accompanied it now with a languishing hand, but with eyes relighted by this beautiful production of his genius. They will not forget the admirable 'Sommeil d'Atys,' nor the trio from 'Iphigenia in Aulis' executed, as it had been in Naples, by the mother and the two daughters, grouped behind a husband and father who seemed, in accompanying them, to be reborn in the touching accord of those voices, so tender and so dear, and to feel again some spark of that fire which had animated him when he produced those sublime works."

Poor old Piccinni died in 1800 at the age of seventy-two, and his tomb said that he was "_Cher aux Arts et a l'Amitie_." He left to his widow and six children no property but the memory of his genius. Madame Piccinni was given a pension, but she proudly declined to accept it purely as a charity, and asked that four pupils of the Conservatoire be a.s.signed to her for instruction, which was done. Piccinni left two sons; the younger had some success as an opera writer, and the elder had a natural son, who was quite successful as a composer of operas.

Of the other partic.i.p.ants in the Gluck-Piccinni feud there is not much to say. Sacchini was a man of notoriously luxurious and voluptuous life, but I do not find that he married. Salieri--whom Gluck a.s.sisted in the most generous manner, even to the extent of having one of Salieri's operas produced under his own name, and declaring the true author when it was a success--was married, and had many daughters, who lavished upon him much affection. Mehul was befriended by a Doctor Gastoldi, and married a daughter of his benefactor. They had no children, but adopted a nephew.

It may be well here, while we are in the midst of opera composers, to take a glance at some of the predecessors of these men, beginning with the first of all opera composers, who, in his declaration of what opera should be and do, very curiously foreshadowed almost the exact words of Gluck and Wagner, revolutionists, who were really reactionists.

CHAPTER XII.

A FEW TUNESTERS OF FRANCE AND ITALY--PERI, MONTEVERDE, ET AL.