Facing Alexander Scriabin (Died on April 27, 1915)

 by Hermione Lai  April 27th, 2026

In all my years of playing the piano, there is only one composer whose music I consider terrifying. And that composer is Alexander Scriabin. In his early sonatas, there are still gestures to hold on to, but as you move further along, all familiarity disappears.

Alexander Scriabin

Chords become alien, textures are all over the place, and the music doesn’t breathe in regular phrases. It’s almost like getting seriously lost. How can you communicate something that can’t be grasped?

No Place to Hide

The harmonic language expresses colours and metaphysical visions, not really something you can handle in the practice room. And I can’t even imagine having to memorise the music. I’ve heard it said that pianists need a kind of vulnerability to perform his music, as it is impossible to hide behind structure or tradition.

I think it’s time I confront my demon. So, to commemorate Scriabin’s death on 27 April 1915, let’s have a quick guide to his 10 piano sonatas. Mind you, I’ll try to stay away from too many technical descriptions, and I am immensely grateful to Simon Nicholls for his 1996 notes accompanying Marc-André Hamelin’s interpretations.  

Between Prayer and Despair

Scriabin’s first attempt at a piano sonata was written at the age of fourteen, while he was at the Cadet Corps in Moscow. This turned out to be his Sonata-Fantasy in G-sharp minor of 1886, a work that was never published. So let’s forget about this work and move straight to his Sonata No. 1 in F minor, Op. 6, published seven years later in 1893.

Josef Lhevinne

Scriabin had been trying to compete with the unbelievable virtuosity of his classmate Josef Lhevinne, and he injured his right arm and hand. Doctors told him that he would never recover. Thus, this first sonata, as Scriabin calls it, was a cry against fate and against God.

That cry is heard in the opening measures of the movement, which at times almost sounds like Brahms. Doubts and prayers appear in the second movement in a musical language influenced by César Franck.

The Rondo movement sounds like the finale, but that place is taken by a seriously gloomy Funeral March. It all sounds like Scriabin is trying to find his bearings in a late-Romantic language, throwing in snippets of Chopin, Schumann, and Modest Mussorgsky.   

Nature Transformed

Alexander Scriabin

It took Scriabin the better part of five years to write and publish his Sonata No. 2, Op. 19. The piece unfolds in two movements, and the composer told us what to expect in a short programme note.

“The first part evokes the calm of the night by the seashore in the South; in the development we hear the sombre agitation of the depths. The section in E Major represents the tender moonlight which comes after the first dark of night. The second movement, presto, shows the stormy agitation of the vast expanse of ocean.”

This sonata is one of Scriabin’s most famous works, and it is technically approachable. It certainly helps that in the opening movement, the exposition, development, and recapitulation all start with the same music.

Scriabin’s style has changed in comparison to his first sonata, as the piano writing is much more delicate, almost in the style of Chopin. There are plenty of polyrhythms in the opening movement, while the finale features endless streams of triplets against a marching rhythm.   

A Soul’s Journey

Scriabin’s Sonata No. 3 was composed between 1897 and 1898, around the time he married the young pianist Vera Ivanovna Isaakovich. Initially, he is said to have called the finished work “Gothic,” like the impression of a ruined castle.

Several years later, he or his second wife, Tatyana Schloezer, came up with a different description and nickname, namely “States of Being.” And in this description, all four movements represent a story of a soul’s strife, from being free and untamed to reaching the abyss of nothingness.

A clever person once said that composers who issue programmes for their music often live to regret it, and that seems pretty apt in this case. The music, however, has once again advanced in style. All movements are closely linked to each other in a cyclic treatment reminiscent of Liszt.

Hints of Wagner’s Tristan float through parts of the closing movement, which really does not have a happy ending. There is plenty of counterpoint and a seemingly symphonic conception underneath it all.  

From Desire to Radiance

As Scriabin went through a turbulent personal period, his musical language was transforming as well. His Sonata No. 4, issued as Op. 30 in 1903, is headed by a poem describing a flight to a distant star.

Thinly veiled in transparent cloud
A star shines softly, far and lonely.
How beautiful! The azure secret
Of its radiance beckons, lulls me…
Vehement desire, sensual, insane, sweet…
Now! Joyfully I fly upward toward you,
Freely I take wing.
Mad dance, godlike play…
I draw near in my longing…
Drink you in, sea of light, you light of my own self…

In this shortest of his sonatas, Scriabin uses cyclic themes throughout the 2-movement work. We find unusual harmonies and plenty of “Tristan” references in the opening introduction.

The second movement, which follows without a break, features plenty of new sounds. The first-movement theme returns in a jubilant manner and in an explosion of overwhelming joy. Compared to the sombre finales of the first three sonatas, this one is full of light and ecstasy.   

Ecstasy Unleashed

Scriabin’s Sonata No. 5 was written shortly after his orchestral “Poem of Ecstasy” in 1907. Apparently, he wrote this sonata in only a couple of days as his musical style had evolved once more.

The “Poem of Ecstasy” features a lengthy poetic introduction, describing in rather sexual terms the release from the unconscious mind.

I call you to life, mysterious forces!
Drowned in the obscure depths
of the creative spirit, timid
Embryos of life, to you I bring audacity!

I am not sure we could call it a transitional work, but the music relates directly and clearly to the tonal system, yet many features already point to his late style. We are certainly treated to a contrast between ecstatic fast themes and languid slow ones.

We find cyclic links between sections, and this sonata might be the most difficult among this group. Some parts are downright unpianistic, but we do find some of Scriabin’s most creative harmonic writing, nevertheless.   Play

Fear and Shadows

After Scriabin completed “Prometheus,” he set to work on his Sonata No. 6, Op. 62.

There is no programme, and Scriabin never played it in public. He considered it frightening, dark, mysterious, and dangerous.

The music is disturbing, switching between playful and fleeting, and within this concentrated mysteriousness, tonality has almost disappeared. One might practically call this sonata atonal.

In addition, a transformation of the piano sound had taken place. We find monolithic chords, fluttering airborne impulses, and what has been called an arching theme of boundless sensuality.

There is plenty of febrile hyperactivity that exceeds the range of the keyboard, and it gives the impression of a dream. This sonata remains obscure, and you won’t see it much on concert programmes.   

White Mass

Scriabin at the piano

With the 7th Sonata of 1911, actually finished before the No. 6, we are squarely in the grasp of the composer’s Messianic pretensions. Subtitled “White Mass,” it features wondrous sonorities, extreme dissonances, and a number of themes related to heavenly exorcism.

Scriabin set out to create a prophetic atmosphere; just listen to the opening fanfares and the lightning flickering across the score. Chiming bells present a motif of invocation, and arpeggios drift like clouds of incense.

It all, predictably, ends in a mighty climax, a light flutter of trills and a polyrhythmic ascension after a chord that spans 5 octaves. Many consider this sonata Scriabin’s crowning achievement.

Scriabin loved to play this sonata in public, but the reactions were rather cold. There are just too many technical difficulties, and the harmonic structure and rhythm tend to be a great challenge to pianists.   

Quietest Storm

The Sonata No. 8 turns out to be the quietest of the set. Actually, it was the last sonata to be finished in 1913, and Scriabin spoke enthusiastically of it. But it is the longest and most complex of all Scriabin’s works.

Apparently, Scriabin thought of its form as a quasi-geometrical organisation that bridges the visible natural world with the invisible artistic realm. He also thought himself superior to Bach in terms of contrapuntal writing.

We do find plenty of counterpoint and less dissonance as the entire sonata exudes a static mood. This is possibly what Scriabin had in mind when he called parts “at perfect peace.”

Horribly difficult to perform, on par with the 5th and 7th Sonatas, but it has a much more mature personality. The material for this sonata is summed up in a final dance, and then everything just dissolves.   

Black Mass

In terms of popularity, the Sonata No. 9, subtitled “Black Mass”, is by far the most frequently performed of the set. That subtitle actually comes from an admirer, who described the atmosphere as Satanic.

The work dates from 1912, and it is one of the more approachable sonatas, both in terms of technical demand and in understanding the composer’s mystic ideals. Opening dissonances and repeated notes reach a nightmarish first climax.

The lyrical second subject appears in various seductive guises and turns into a grotesque march. The music becomes more intoxicating by the minute, and the coda evokes the cackle of the devil. Yet, it all ends in subdued quietness, or as A.E. Hull calls it “molecular vertigo.”

Into the Light

In his final sonata, Scriabin returns to the harmony of nature. Sonata No. 10 is bright and sunny, and much less dissonant. It was written on his country estate. The serene opening finishes with luminous trills in a blazing vision of light.

There are plenty of fluttering chords and joyous screams, and Scriabin thought he was on the brink of great new developments. Surprisingly, this sonata is more tonal and features more exposed tonal chords.

Scriabin died in 1915, but he was convinced that “the masses need to be shaken up, in order to purify the human organisation.” I wonder what he might have thought of World War I and the Russian Revolution.

After looking at and listening to the 10 sonatas by Scriabin, my fear of his music will probably never completely go away. It’s like stepping into quicksand, with no anchors for fingers or the mind. And maybe that’s the point; you’ll just have to let go and lunge into the music headfirst.

Which Composers Were Gay? (And How Do We Know?)

 by Emily E. Hogstad  May 15th, 2024

The history of classical music spans centuries. Over that time, society has had very different ideas about sexual identities (when they verbalized them at all). It goes without saying that it’s unfair to look back in time and breezily apply our modern definition of words like gay, lesbian, bisexual, and the like to historical figures.

And yet. Looking at the historical record, it is clear that many great composers had emotionally and/or physically intimate relationships that didn’t fit into a traditional heterosexual mold, and it feels safe to categorize many of them as falling under the LGBTQ+ umbrella.

So here is a list of 27 composers who may have been queer, gay, or otherwise non-heterosexual.

© wfmt.com

Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632-1687)   

Lully was an Italian-born composer who worked at the extravagant court of Louis XIV. He was a renowned violinist, guitarist, and even dancer.

Lully had romantic relationships with both men and women. He and his wife had six children, and he had a mistress. But he also was attracted to men and became involved with a page at Versailles.

Same-sex relationships were grudgingly permitted at the Palace, as Louis’s brother Philippe, Duke of Orléans, openly preferred the company of men. But Lully’s affair did cause the King to distance himself from him, and the page was imprisoned.

Arcangelo Corelli (1653-1713)  

Arcangelo Corelli was famous for his groundbreaking violin technique, as well as his hugely influential compositions.

In 1683 Corelli met a violinist named Matteo Fornari, and the two were inseparable for nearly twenty years.

One of their mutual composer friends actually dedicated two trio sonatas to the couple, and Fornari oversaw the publication of Corelli’s work after Corelli’s death.

George Frideric Handel (1685-1759)   

Handel was one of the best-known composers of the Baroque era, especially famous for his smash-hit oratorios like The Messiah.

Some modern-day musicologists consider him to be LGBTQ+. However, unlike with some composers who never officially came out, we don’t have any record at all of who he might have had a relationship with. It’s possible that he was asexual – or merely deeply preoccupied with his work.

Franz Schubert (1797-1828) 

Schubert was an incredibly prolific composer of piano sonatas, chamber works, and symphonies. When he was alive, he labored away in sickness, poverty, and obscurity. He was only fully appreciated after his death.

In 1989, musicologist Maynard Solomon advanced a theory that Schubert was not straight. The very idea caused a tumult.

However, Solomon might have had a point. Schubert wrote heated affectionate letters to several male friends, roomed with likely-queer friend and poet-collaborator Johann Mayrhofer, and spent most of his time in bohemian, male-centric social circles.

But the most recent research suggests that his queerness is not as clear-cut as with other composers.

Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849)  

Chopin’s moody, melancholy music for piano has resonated with audiences for generations.

Chopin famously had a romantic relationship with authoress George Sand in the late 1830s and early 1840s. She was famous for challenging gender roles and assumptions about sexuality; she dressed like a man and had romantic relationships with both men and women.

Tytus Woyciechowski © Wikipedia

However, the fact that Chopin dated George Sand doesn’t erase the fact that he also wrote passionate letters to several male friends, including the Polish activist Titus Woyciechowski, who boarded with the Chopin family as a young man.

Chopin wrote to him about kissing him and about “dirty” or “nasty” dreams that Woyciechowski inspired. For his part, Woyciechoewski named one of his children after Chopin.

If nothing else, the two clearly had a very deep emotional connection, and there’s certainly a homoerotic element to it.

Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921)     

Saint-Saëns was one of the most famous figures in nineteenth-century French music and one of the most impressive musical child prodigies who ever lived.

When he was 40, he married a 19-year-old woman named Marie-Laure Truffot. They had two sons who died young. After their deaths, he walked out and never talked to his wife again.

He often disappeared for weeks at a time, giving no indication where he’d been afterward. He spent winters in Algeria, a haven for European gay men. He also dressed up in women’s clothes and gave satirical operatic performances in drag in his apartment.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) 

Tchaikovsky wrote some of the most beloved Romantic Era masterworks of all time, and many have wondered if his death from cholera (reported to be caused by drinking an unboiled cup of water) was actually a kind of forced suicide to atone for his homosexuality.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and Yosif Kotek

We don’t have enough evidence to endorse the forced suicide theory, but it is very clear that Tchaikovsky was very gay. Many letters exist to his brother Modest in which he shares his various dramatic infatuations and encounters with men he’s attracted to.

After his marriage, instead of going on a honeymoon, he had a nervous breakdown and fled to Switzerland. He wrote his violin concerto while recovering…and initially wanted to dedicate it to his infatuation, the queer violinist Yosif Kotek. (He eventually decided not to.)

“When he caresses me with his hand when he lies with his head on my chest and I play with his hair and secretly kiss it, when for hours on end I hold his hand in my own and tire in the battle against the urge to fall at his feet and kiss these little feet, passion rages with me with unimaginable force, my voice shakes like that of a youth, and I speak some kind of nonsense,” he wrote to his brother.

Adela Maddison (1862-1929)   

As a young woman, British composer Adela Maddison married and had two children.

In the 1890s she fell in love with the music of Gabriel Fauré and began studying with him. She left her husband and children to study in Paris, and she may have had a romantic relationship with Fauré.

She later moved to Berlin and began a relationship with a woman named Martha Mundt, editor of a socialist journal. Historians believe that they had a lesbian relationship.

Siegfried Wagner (1869-1930)   

Siegfried Wagner was the son of Richard Wagner. His father died when he was young and he spent much of his life overshadowed by his mother’s strong personality.

Siegfried Wagner in 1896 © Wikipedia

His first love was gay English composer Clement Harris. While they went on a long ocean voyage, he sketched out his tone poem Sehnsucht (“Longing”). The relationship didn’t last and Harris died young. But Wagner kept a picture of Harris for the rest of his life.

Wagner used his position of power at the Bayreuth Festival to attract queer men. Fearing scandal, when he was forty-five, his mother convinced him to marry a seventeen-year-old Englishwoman named Winifred Klindworth. They had four children between 1917 and 1920.

Winifred turned out to be one of Hitler’s best friends, and after her husband’s death, helped to cement a cultural connotation between Richard Wagner and anti-Semitism that has lasted into the present day.

Reynaldo Hahn (1874-1947)

French composer Reynaldo Hahn had warm feelings of friendship for several female superstars of the French Belle Epoque, extraordinary women like Cléo de Mérode and Liane de Pougy (who he bluntly told upon her marriage: “Goodbye Lianon. I hate married people”).

However, he was romantically attracted to men and had a relationship with Proust for two years. (This despite the fact that he was scornful of homosexuality in his private letters.) The two collaborated on the work Portraits de peintres together.

Later in life, his partner was an actor and singer named Guy Ferrant.

Dame Ethel Smyth (1858-1944)   

English composer Ethel Smyth was always open about her many female crushes, an intense infatuation with Brahms’s married friend Elisabeth von Herzogenberg, and her adoration for poet Henry B. Brewster. She famously wrote to him, “I wonder why it is so much easier for me to love my own sex more passionately than yours.”

Smyth became a fixture in the British suffrage movement of the early twentieth century…and even, late in life, fell in love with Virginia Woolf!

Karol Szymanowski (1882-1937)   

Composer Karol Szymanowski was so gay that he wrote a two-volume homoerotic novel called Efebos.

Pianist Arthur Rubinstein later remembered witnessing Szymanowski’s frank discussion of his sexual awakening: “Karol had changed; I had already begun to be aware of it before the war when a wealthy friend and admirer of his invited him twice to visit Sicily. After his return, he raved about Sicily, especially Taormina. ‘There,’ he said, ‘I saw a few young men bathing who could be models for Antinous. I couldn’t take my eyes off them.’ Now he was a confirmed homosexual. He told me all this with burning eyes.”

His third symphony, subtitled Song of the Night, is viewed as particularly homoerotic.

Lord Berners (1883-1950) 

Lord Berners was an eccentric English composer, author, painter, and gentleman who was also gay.

In 1932 he fell in love with a daredevil eccentric named Robert Heber-Percy, and the two lived together at Lord Berners’s estate for decades…even, for a few years, with Heber-Percy’s wife and daughter.

Charles Tomlinson Griffes (1884-1920)  

Charles Tomlinson Griffes was an American composer who studied in Berlin and, to pay the bills, worked as a teacher in Tarrytown, New York.

Although his sister destroyed some of his papers, surviving diaries written in German candidly discuss his gay life.

In Berlin, he had a relationship with a student named Emil Joèl. After he returned to America, he had a long-term relationship with a married New York City policeman named John Meyer.

Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji (1892-1988)   

Sorabji is a fascinating figure: a wealthy English composer of Indian descent who was intensely private. He was one of the most prolific composers of his generation.

In 1920, while wrestling with his identity, he contacted sexuality expert Havelock Ellis, who helped him come to terms with his queerness. Sorabji dedicated his seventh piano concerto to him.

In the mid-1950s he settled down with Reginald Norman Best, the son of his mother’s friend. Sorabji called him “one of the two people on earth most precious to me”, and the couple’s ashes are buried together.

Henriëtte Bosmans (1895-1952)   

Henriëtte Bosmans was a Dutch pianist and composer who, despite her bisexuality and Jewish ancestry, survived the Nazi occupation.

Henriëtte Bosmans and Frieda Belinfante

She had a relationship with lesbian cellist Frieda Belinfante in the 1920s and wrote works for her.

She later became engaged to a violinist named Francis Koene, but he died before their marriage.

Her last major relationship was with a singer named Noémie Pérugia, who inspired compositions.

Henry Cowell (1897-1965)   

Henry Cowell was an exceptionally inventive American composer, but his career was interrupted by queer scandal.

In 1936 Cowell was arrested for having a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old boy. He made a full confession and was sentenced to fifteen years in prison.

Ultimately, thanks to good behavior and testimonials from his family and respected musicians, he got out four years later.

The prison experience was traumatic and seemed to suppress his earlier radical musical tendencies.

He married ethnomusicologist Sidney Robertson Cowell in 1941. She also helped to promote his musical legacy.

Francis Poulenc (1899-1963)   relationships with men.

He sent a score of his work Concert champêtre to his lover, painter Richard Chanlaire, inscribed, “You have changed my life, you are the sunshine of my thirty years, a reason for living and working.”

He tried to marry his friend Raymonde Linossier, but she turned him down and then died in her early thirties, which devastated him. In 1946, a brief relationship with a woman named Fréderique Lebedeff led to a daughter.

Aaron Copland (1900-1990)  

Aaron Copland single-handedly created a quintessentially American sound in works like Appalachian Spring, Rodeo, and Fanfare for the Common Man.

He kept his personal life intensely private, but those in the know were aware he had a series of younger boyfriends, usually artistically accomplished.

His deepest connection seems to have been with violin prodigy and photographer Victor Kraft. When Kraft later married and had a son, Copland became his godfather. He left a large amount of money for his godson in his will.

Samuel Barber (1910-1981)   

The prodigiously talented composer Samuel Barber was studying at the Curtis Institute of Music when he met fellow student Gian Carlo Menotti, who was a year younger than him.

Samuel Barber and Gian Carlo Menotti © samuelbarberfilm.com

The two soon became inseparable. They bought a house together in Westchester County in New York, dubbing it Capricorn. It featured separate studios and a shared living and entertaining space.

They lived there together for forty years. When it was sold in 1973, Menotti decamped to Europe.

Gian Carlo Menotti (1911-2007)   

Menotti was a talented composer in his own right, as well as a librettist and playwright. Although not many of his works are played today, his opera Amahl and the Night Visitors remains a Christmas classic.

Over the decades, his romantic interest wandered, to Barber’s displeasure and even humiliation.

In 1974, he began dating the much younger actor Francis Phelan. Presumably, to camouflage the true nature of the relationship, Menotti adopted Phelan as his son.

That said, Menotti still cared for Barber and was at his bedside when he died in 1981.

John Cage (1912-1992)   

In the mid-1930s, experimental avant-garde composer John Cage met artist Xenia Kashevaroff. They married quickly and were together for ten years.

However, before his marriage, Cage had had same-sex relationships, and after his divorce, he returned to them.

He began dating choreographer Merce Cunningham, who became a creative collaborator as well as his life partner.

Benjamin Britten (1913-1976)  

British composer Benjamin Britten was aware of his queerness as a young man and spoke about it to poet W. H. Auden, who encouraged him to embrace it.

Soon afterward, he met a tenor named Peter Pears. He was entranced. From that time on, the two spent their lives in a constant creative and romantic conversation.

In 1974, two years before his death, Britten wrote to Pears, “My darling heart (perhaps an unfortunate phrase, but I can’t use any other) … I do love you so terribly, not only glorious you, but your singing. … What have I done to deserve such an artist and man to write for? … I love you, I love you, I love you.”

Remarkably, upon Britten’s death, Queen Elizabeth II sent a letter of condolence to Pears.

David Diamond (1915-2005)   

American composer David Diamond began his career as a violin prodigy.

He knew he was gay from an early age and never hid it.

He also had a tremendous temper. “I was a highly emotional young man, very honest in my behavior, and I would say things in public that would cause a scene between me and, for instance, a conductor,” he said.

His career hit a high point in the 1940s and 1950s but as modernism became more popular, he was eclipsed. Some also attribute the fading of his career to homophobia — others to his temper that made conductors disinclined to champion his work.

Lou Harrison (1917-2003)   

Lou Harrison realized he was gay when he was in high school, and came out to his family in 1934.

In 1947 he had a nervous breakdown in New York City, in part from dealing with the homophobia of his colleagues. Fellow queer composer John Cage helped him find the mental health care he needed.

After getting back on his feet, Harrison moved to the West Coast and met his lifelong partner William Colvig, an electrician and amateur musician, in San Francisco in 1967.

Colvig helped him build a set of percussion instruments they called the “American gamelan.”

Harrison stayed with Colvig throughout the latter’s struggle with dementia and was at his bedside when he died.

Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990)   

Leonard Bernstein is sometimes thought of as bisexual, given that he married actress Felicia Montealegre and had three children with her.

However, Montealegre thought differently. She wrote to him before their marriage, “You are a homosexual and may never change. I am willing to accept you as you are…”

His West Side Story colleague Arthur Laurents agreed with the terminology, calling Bernstein “a gay man who got married. He wasn’t conflicted about his sexual orientation at all. He was just gay.”

Pauline Oliveros (1932-2016)   

Composer and accordionist Pauline Oliveros was openly lesbian. She had a romantic relationship with performance artist Linda Montano.

Conclusion

Some people believe it’s unfair to label composers who never publicly “came out” as a particular queer identity.

But keeping quiet about the people they loved does history a disservice, too. It makes generations of classical music seem straighter than it really is, especially since so much history was suppressed due to prejudice. Everyone interested in music history deserves to know what the historical record shows or suggests.

Hopefully seeing how many people in classical music history were or may have been LGBTQ+ will help people to have a fuller understanding of music history, and maybe even of themselves and the queer people in their own lives.

The Most Memorable Composer Christmases: Mahler, Rachmaninoff, and More

by Emily E. Hogsta

Everyone approaches the winter holidays differently: some people feel excitement, while others feel dread. It can be a season of celebration, crushing loneliness, and everything in between.

The great composers also experienced a wide variety of Christmas celebrations. Today, we’re looking at five memorable Christmases from the lives of five great composers. (Read Part 1 here: The Most Memorable Composer Christmases: Chopin, Schumann, and More)

Mahler’s Devastating Breakup – 1884

Gustav Mahler

In mid-1883, 23-year-old Gustav Mahler took a job conducting opera at the Königliches Theater in Kassel, Germany.

While there, he began working with 25-year-old coloratura soprano Johanna Richter and fell in love with her. It was his first intense love affair.

We are not sure if Richter reciprocated Mahler’s feelings quite as intensely; only one letter from her survives.

In 1884, he began composing for her, writing lyrics based on folksongs and setting them to music. He called the resulting song cycle Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, or Songs of a Wayfarer. His December 1884 was absorbed by the project.   

Despite his passion for Richter, the couple was ultimately doomed.

He spent New Year’s Eve of 1884 with her and wrote to a friend about the experience:

I spent yesterday evening alone with her, both of us silently awaiting the arrival of the new year.

Her thoughts did not linger over the present, and when the clock struck midnight, and tears gushed from her eyes, I felt terrible that I, I was not allowed to dry them.

She went into the adjacent room and stood for a moment in silence at the window, and when she returned, silently weeping, a sense of inexpressible anguish had arisen between us like an everlasting partition wall, and there was nothing I could do but press her hand and leave.

As I came outside, the bells were ringing, and the solemn chorale could be heard from the tower.

Although the relationship didn’t work out, Mahler did reuse ideas from Songs of a Wayfarer in his first symphony, which he composed between 1887 and 1888. He wasn’t about to let his holiday heartbreak go to waste!

Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel Is Disappointed by the Christmas Singing of Papal Singers – 1839

Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel

Felix Mendelssohn and his sister Fanny Mendelssohn were two of the most talented child prodigies in the history of music. They remained close for their entire lives.

Felix, however, was encouraged to pursue a musical career, while Fanny’s musical accomplishments were viewed as mere feminine adornments. (Luckily, her husband understood her talent and encouraged her music-making.)

Long story short, Felix got support that she never did, and in 1830, when Fanny was 24, and Felix was 21, the family sent him on a ten-month trip to Italy…without Fanny. The trip was formative, and Fanny was fascinated by the stories of his travels.   

Happily, Fanny got to go eventually. Between 1839 and 1840, Fanny, her husband, and her baby son Sebastian took their own trip to Italy, following in Felix’s footsteps.

On 1 January 1840, she wrote to her brother, sharing some observations about musical life in Rome:

We’re enjoying a pleasant life here. We have a comfortable, sunny apartment and thus far have enjoyed the nicest weather almost continuously. And since we’re in no particular hurry, we’ve been viewing the attractions of Rome at our leisure, little by little.

It’s only in the realm of music, however, that I haven’t experienced anything edifying since I’ve been in Italy.

I heard the Papal singers 3 times – once in the Sistine Chapel on the first Sunday in Advent, once in the same place on Christmas Eve, and once in St. Peter’s basilica on Christmas day – and have to report that I was astounded that the performances were far from perfect.

Right now, they seem to lack good voices and sing completely out of tune…

One can’t part with one’s trained conceptions so easily.

Church music in Germany, performed with a chorus consisting of a few hundred singers and a suitably large orchestra, assaults both the ear and the memory in such a way that, in comparison, the pair of singers here seemed quite thin in the wide expanses of St. Peter’s.

With respect to the music, a few passages stood out as particularly beautiful. On Christmas Eve, for instance, after the parts had dragged on separately for a long time, there was a lively, 4-part fugal passage in A-minor that was very nice.

I later discovered that it began precisely at the moment when the Pope entered the chapel, and I didn’t know it at the time because women, unfortunately, are placed in a section behind a grille from which they cannot see anything.

This section is far away, and in addition, the air is darkened by the smoke from candles and incense.

On the other hand, I could at least occasionally see the officials on Christmas day in St. Peter’s very well, and found them quite splendid and amusing.

We naturally had a Christmas tree, because of Sebastian, and constructed it out of cypress, myrtle, and orange branches. The branches were very lovely, but it wasn’t the best-looking tree, and Sebastian and I attempted to outdo each other the entire day in feeling homesick.

Johannes Brahms Surprises Clara Schumann – 1865

Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms

Johannes Brahms and Robert Schumann’s wife, virtuoso pianist Clara Schumann, stayed close friends until the end of their lives.

They never had a traditional romance, but they loved each other deeply, and over their decades-long relationship, Brahms spent many holidays with Clara and her children.

At Christmas 1865, Johannes was 32, and Clara was 46. Both had busy performing careers that necessitated frequent travel, and Clara assumed that she wouldn’t be seeing Johannes for the holidays.   

She sent him a traveling bag as a Christmas gift. With the gift, she included a letter talking about her daughter Julie, who had recently been ill.

She wrote, “Thank heaven we have fairly good news of Julie. She has got over the danger of typhoid, but it will be a long time before she has completely recovered.”

The family was worried about Julie’s health, and they didn’t even bother lighting candles on the tree that year.

But then the door opened – and Brahms appeared! He had made a seven-hour journey to Düsseldorf to surprise the family and check in on Julie himself.

Clara wrote in her diary that she was “very pleased and excited.”

Read our article about Christmas with Brahms.

Rachmaninoff Flees Russia – 1917

Kubey-Rembrandt Studios: Sergei Rachmaninoff, 1921

The Russian Revolution began in February 1917, leading to Tsar Nicholas II’s abdication in March and a provisional government taking power.

During that year’s October Revolution, a Bolshevik insurrection overthrew the provisional government. Once the Bolsheviks took power, a broader civil war broke out.

The conflict impacted Rachmaninoff’s life deeply. In the spring of 1917, he returned from touring to find that his estate had been seized by the Social Revolutionary Party. He departed, disgusted, and vowed never to return.

He and his family moved to Moscow. As tensions rose throughout the fall, he made edits to his first piano concerto with the sound of bullets flying in the background.   

During this tense time, he received an invitation to give a series of recitals in Scandinavia. He accepted because it would give him and his family an excuse to flee the country.

On 22 December 1917, the Rachmaninoffs got on a train in St. Petersburg, crowded with terrified passengers who feared arrest. Fortunately, the officials who met them were kind.

The following day, they arrived at the Finnish border. To get across it, Rachmaninoff, his wife, and two daughters had to travel in an open peasant sleigh during a blizzard.

They arrived in Stockholm on Christmas Eve. Exhausted, the family stayed in their hotel.

After escaping Russia, Rachmaninoff would go on to a celebrated performing career, but he would compose less and less. Later in his life, he would remark, “I left behind my desire to compose: losing my country, I lost myself also.”

Leonard Bernstein Conducts the Historic Berlin Wall Concert – 1989

Leonard Bernstein

In November 1989, the Berlin Wall was taken down, signaling the demise of the so-called Iron Curtain that had hung across Europe for a generation.

Conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein helped to organise a performance at the present-day Konzerthaus Berlin. This venue had been burned out during World War II but was reconstructed in the late 1970s and early 1980s, opening just a few years before this concert.

Musicians from all around the world participated, including men and women from Leningrad, Dresden, New York, London, and Paris.

Together on Christmas Day 1989, they performed a concert celebrating the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Bernstein programmed Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and changed the Ode to Joy to the Ode to Freedom.

It was broadcast all over the world and became one of the most famous orchestral performances of the twentieth century, seen live by around 100 million viewers. How’s that for a memorable Christmas?

Frédéric Chopin and George Sand: The Real Story Behind Their Relationship

 by Emily E. Hogstad  November 15th, 2023

It’s one of the most romanticized love affairs in music history: dashing cross-dressing woman novelist George Sand becomes obsessed with, and then seduces, the sickly consumptive pianist-composer Frédéric Chopin.

But how much of this story is real, and how much of it is just mythologizing?

Today we are looking at the real story behind the love affair between George Sand and Frédéric Chopin.

George Sand’s Childhood and Marriage

George Sand

Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin de Francueil was born on 1 July 1804 in Paris.

As a girl, she lived with her grandmother at the family manor house in Nohant, roughly three hundred kilometers from Paris.

In 1821, her grandmother died, and Aurore inherited the manor. The house at Nohant became a home base for her throughout her life.

In 1822, at the age of eighteen, Dupin married a man named Casimir Dudevant, whose biggest accomplishment in life ended up being George Sand’s ex.

They had two children together: a son named Maurice in 1823 and a daughter named Solange in 1828. (That said, Solange’s paternity is questioned.)

After almost a decade, the marriage deteriorated. Mrs. Dudevant left her husband in 1831 and, scandalously, began seeing other men. In 1835, she separated from him legally and took custody of her two young children.

George Sand’s Writing Career

In her twenties, the former Mrs. Dudevant embarked on romantic relationships with a wide variety of accomplished artistic men, including novelist Jules Sandeau, writer Prosper Mérimée, dramatist Alfred du Musset, and others. (She also developed intense romantic feelings for actress Marie Dorval. The two would remain friends for the rest of their lives.)

The former Mrs. Dudevant’s writing career began in the early 1830s, when she began collaborating on stories with her lover Jules Sandeau. They signed their joint efforts “Jules Sand.”

It quickly became obvious that she was a very talented writer. In 1832, at the age of twenty-eight, she wrote a novel on her own and published it under the pseudonym George Sand.

It wasn’t long before this divorced mother of two was one of the most respected authors in Europe. Her work was actually more popular in England than either Hugo’s or Balzac’s!

As her career progressed, she didn’t restrict herself to just novels: she also wrote literary criticism, theatrical works, political commentary (she was a socialist), and more.

The Meeting of George Sand and Frédéric Chopin

Josef Danhauser: Franz Liszt Fantasizing at the Piano

Apparently, Sand was intrigued by Chopin even before they met. It is believed she encouraged their mutual friend Franz Liszt to arrange an introduction.

On 24 October 1836, in the salon of fellow author (and Liszt’s mistress) Marie d’Agoult, George Sand and Frédéric Chopin met each other for the first time.

Chopin was initially repulsed by Sand, reportedly asking Liszt, “Is she really a woman?”

Despite this rocky first impression, Sand still remained intrigued by him.

It seems they were not close before 1838. In May of that year, she asked a mutual friend in a letter if he was still engaged (at one point, he had been betrothed to his former pupil Maria Wodzińska). If so, Sand wrote, she would back off. However, it turns out that the relationship with Wodzińska was well and truly over.

It’s unclear exactly how, but eventually Chopin and Sand became friends, and then lovers.  

Their Trip to Majorca

To celebrate their new partnership, Sand planned a trip to Majorca, Spain, over the winter of 1838. She was hopeful that the change in climate would help Chopin’s declining health.

The trip started off on a high note. “The sky is like turquoise, the sea is like emeralds, the air as in Heaven,” he wrote in a letter.

Chopin ended up composing some of his best-known works in Majorca, including his 24 Preludes. The work tied most closely to this place in time is undoubtedly the Raindrop Prelude, said to be inspired by the rain dripping off the eaves of their lodgings.    

The trip became a struggle when, as the Raindrop Prelude suggests, the winter weather turned damp. Instead of improving, his health deteriorated. The couple’s gloomy accommodations didn’t help matters: they had sought refuge in a deserted monastery in Valldemossa.

Soon Catholic locals began viewing the unmarried divorcée and her invalid partner with suspicion. The couple’s reputation grew even worse when rumors spread that Chopin’s cough would spread communicable disease. In the end, the locals grew so impossible to work with that Sand was eventually forced to lug a handcart to the capital city of Palma just to load up on basic supplies.

Their nightmare came to an end ten weeks after they arrived, but unfortunately their return voyage to Barcelona occurred during rough seas, and Chopin suffered from seasickness on the way home.

Life in France

Portrait of Frédéric Chopin and George Sand by Eugène Delacroix

A much more agreeable destination turned out to be Sand’s country home in Nohant. Chopin and Sand settled into a schedule of spending half the year in Nohant and the other half in Paris (albeit in separate apartments).

Although they never officially moved in together full-time, in 1842, they did take the step of renting adjacent apartments.

Chopin ended up writing many great works at Nohant. Today the home is a museum.     

The Breakup

So why did these two titans of the Romantic Era break up?

One blow was Sand’s novel Lucrezia Floriani, which starred a sickly Eastern European prince being cared for by Lucrezia, the protagonist. The Polish Chopin grew increasingly resentful of this particular creative choice, feeling that his health troubles had become nothing but grist for Sand’s creative mill.

A second blow came when Chopin sided with Sand’s daughter, Solange, in various fierce mother-daughter arguments. Sand interpreted Chopin’s loyalty to Solange as his being in love with her. It didn’t help matters that Sand’s other child, Maurice, didn’t like Chopin, either.

Ultimately, after almost a decade together, the two great artists split up for good.

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.”

Backlash to the Breakup

Sand herself predicted the backlash that would come: “His own particular circle will, I know, take a very different view [of the breakup],” she wrote. “He will be looked upon as a victim, and the general opinion will find it pleasanter to believe that I, in spite of my age, have got rid of him in order to take another lover…” Her predictions about public opinion turned out to be cannily accurate.

It’s also noteworthy that their relationship is often boiled down – wrongly – as one between nurse and caretaker. In his own writings, Liszt, for whatever reason, enjoyed emphasizing Chopin’s weakness and medical troubles, and therefore Sand’s role as his patient helper. However, Sand seemed to chafe against the idea. The relationship was simply more complex than that. She wrote of the Majorca disaster, “It was quite enough for me to handle, going alone to a foreign country with two children…without taking on an additional emotional burden and a medical responsibility.”

Sand and Chopin’s Final Meeting

Both Chopin and Sand left accounts of their final meeting. Comparing them is fascinating.

“I saw him again briefly in March 1848,” Sand wrote in her autobiography. “I clasped his trembling, icy hand. I wanted to talk to him; he vanished. It was my turn to say he no longer loved me.”

Chopin, on the other hand, wrote a longer account in a March 1848 letter to Solange: “Yesterday… I met your Mother in the doorway of the vestibule….” He asked whether Sand had any news about Solange, and let Sand know that Solange had had a baby, since mother and daughter weren’t on good terms at the time. He “bowed and went downstairs.” Then he decided he had more to say, so he asked a servant to bring her to him again. They talked some more. “She asked me how I am; I replied that I am well, and asked the concierge to open the door.”

Chopin died a little more than a year later. Sand opted not to attend his funeral. She lived many more years and wrote many more books.

Despite that tragic end to their love affair – or maybe because of it – George Sand and Frédéric Chopin remain one of the most iconic couples of the Romantic Era.