Hélène Jourdan-Morhange: The Great Violinist Who Ravel Loved

 by Emily E. Hogstad  February 11th, 2026

The name Hélène Jourdan-Morhange may be obscure today, but she was the dedicatee of a handful of the most beloved violin works in the repertoire. She was also a muse, interpreter, and chronicler of a golden era of French music.

Today we’re looking at the life and career of Hélène Jourdan-Morhange: her early education, the tragedies that shattered her life, her profoundly influential friendships with Ravel and other composers, and her groundbreaking later work as a writer and radio producer.

Childhood and Early Music Studies

Hélène Jourdan-Morhange

Hélène Morhange was born on 30 January 1888.

She began playing the violin as a young child. She was prodigiously gifted, entering the Paris Conservatoire in 1898 at the age of ten.

Among her fellow students was legendary pianist Alfred Cortot.

From the age of thirteen, her teacher was Édouard Nadaud, who taught at the Conservatoire between 1900 and 1924.

In 1906, she won the Conservatoire’s first prize in violin. She was just eighteen years old.

Performing in Parisian Salons

Left to right: Luc-Albert Moreau, Jourdan-Morhange, Madeleine Grey, Germaine Malançon, and Maurice Ravel (1925)

As a young woman, she played in some of Paris’s most famous salons.

These private performances advertised musicians’ abilities to fellow artists and wealthy patrons.

Eugènie Murat

One famous salon that Morhange played at belonged to Princess Eugènie Murat, an eccentric, wealthy woman whose sapphic tendencies during her widowhood were well-known.

Like many in her social set, Princess Murat delighted in using powerful drugs like hashish and cocaine. According to one legend, she rented a submarine so she could partake in private.

Winnaretta Singer

Morhange was also a regular at the salon of Princess Edmond de Polignac, an American heiress with the maiden name of Winnaretta Singer.

A lesbian herself, Princess Polignac entered into a friendly lavender marriage with the gay Prince Edmond de Polignac.

After their marriage, she used her money and her newfound social status to entertain – and seduce – the cream of musical Parisian society.

Thanks to these women, Morhange was on the front lines of Parisian art, literature, and music from an early age.

Marriage and War

Hélène Jourdan-Morhange and her husband Jacques Jean Raoul Jourdan

In 1913, at the age of twenty-five, Morhange married painter Jacques Jean Raoul Jourdan. (Interestingly, she hyphenated her surname, instead of changing it entirely…a somewhat unusual choice in the 1910s.)

The summer of the following year, World War I began, and he left to fight.

He died in March 1916 at the Battle of Verdun, one of the longest battles of the war.

Jourdan-Morhange was devastated, and his violent loss would haunt her for years.

During the war, she partnered with pianist Juliette Meerowitch, a student of Cortot’s who was well-known for championing the work of Erik Satie.

Their friendship became deeply meaningful. She began processing the death of her husband and the trauma of the war by talking to Meerowitch and playing with her.

Befriending Ravel  

Another important new friend was Maurice Ravel. She met him after performing Ravel’s piano trio, a piece that he had rushed to finish before the war began, fearing he wouldn’t survive the conflict. (In fact, he was so convinced that he was about to die that he dryly referred to the trio as being “posthumous.”) He was deeply impressed by her playing and musicianship.

Hélène Jourdan-Morhange (on the left) with Maurice Ravel

When he was working on his orchestral showpiece La Valse, he wrote her a letter asking a question about how he should orchestrate a particular part.

Tragically, in 1920, two years after the end of the war, Jourdan-Morhange’s recital partner, Juliette Meerowitch, died suddenly while touring in Brussels.

After this second great loss, coming so close on the heels of the loss of her husband, Jourdan-Morhange began spending more time with Ravel. At the time, Ravel was also in mourning after the death of his beloved mother, so he understood her grief. And of course, both musicians were grappling with the loss of many of their friends in the war.

It’s no surprise that they ended up becoming good friends and colleagues. There are rumours that Ravel thought about marrying her, but there’s no evidence they ever embarked on a romantic relationship.

Inspiring Ravel

Portrait of Hélène Jourdan-Morhange by her husband Jacques

Around this time, Ravel was asked to write a piece to honour Claude Debussy, who had died of cancer in the closing months of the war.

He began the work in 1920 but continued working on it over the following two years.

In 1922, Jourdan-Morhange premiered the resulting piece: Ravel’s Sonata for Violin and Cello, sometimes known as his Duo, with cellist Maurice Maréchal.

Ravel’s Sonata for Violin and Cello   

He also began his G-major violin sonata.

Historian Jillian C. Rogers has an intriguing theory about these and other Ravel works in her 2021 book Resonant Recoveries: French Music and Trauma Between the World Wars. She believes that the repetitive, flowing rhythms that became integral to Ravel’s musical language originated, in part, from a desire to provide music to his friends that was soothing to practice. Those flowing, repetitive rhythms are in full evidence in the violin sonata.

The sonata took five years to finish, only finally coming to fruition in 1927.

Unfortunately, by that time, Jourdan-Morhange couldn’t premiere it. She was enduring yet another tragedy: chronic pain that no doctor could diagnose, which was keeping her from playing the violin.

It has been theorised that this pain might have originated from arthritis, rheumatism, or an overuse injury.

But whatever the cause, it was severe and long-lasting enough to permanently remove her from the concert stage.

She was forced to make do with accepting the work’s official dedication. Violinist Georges Enescu ended up premiering it, with Ravel on the piano.   

Ravel’s Death

After finishing the violin sonata, Ravel did not have many good years left in him.

In October 1932, he was in a taxi accident that appears to have caused or triggered neurological issues.

(Some historians have suggested that he had Pick’s disease, an incurable early-onset dementia similar to Alzheimer’s.)

By 1937, he could no longer compose. He complained bitterly to his friends and colleagues: he could hear music in his head, but could no longer write it down. He told Jourdan-Morhange that he was frustrated because he felt he had so much left to give the world musically.

Maurice Ravel

Although it was difficult to see her dear friend in such pain, Jourdan-Morhange spent as much time as she could with him in his final illness.

She later spoke about the long walks they took together in nature. He could identify birds with ease based on their songs, but hearing music at concerts became extremely difficult and even traumatic for him.

His condition worsened. After a failed exploratory brain surgery, Ravel died in December 1937.

A Second Marriage and a New Career

After twenty years of living with painter Luc-Albert Moreau, Jourdan-Morhange married him in 1946.

During the interwar period, while living with Moreau, Jourdan-Morhange had become very close to author Colette, who lived nearby.

Colette encouraged Jourdan-Morhange that even if she could no longer play the violin, she could at least write about music.

So in addition to teaching, Jourdan-Morhange began writing, submitting reviews and reminiscences to a variety of different French journals.

After World War II ended, she also began producing radio programs for RDF (Radiodiffusion française).

Partnership with Perlemuter

Vlado Perlemuter

In 1950, she produced and co-hosted a radio series with pianist Vlado Perlemuter, who had studied Ravel’s entire piano output with the composer in his early twenties.

During the radio shows, Perlemuter would play the works, and he and Jourdan-Morhange would both talk about what interpretive ideas Ravel had in mind.

Perlemuter playing Ravel’s Toccata from Le tombeau de Couperin   

The transcriptions and translations of these programs were later published as Ravel According to Ravel. They serve as an important window into his famously exacting ideas.

In the late 1940s, Jourdan-Morhange became one of the founding members of the Maurice Ravel Foundation, which sought to memorialise his life and career.

She once wrote of Ravel, “His friends and those close to him looked for him in his work, sometimes remembering him in a rhythm, an unpredictable harmony, the fleeting memory of a look, a tender expression, where their lost friend was wholly revealed to them.”

Remembering Her Musical Colleagues

Hélène Jourdan-Morhange

Her memories of Ravel and the other great composers whose works she inspired and championed contain valuable insights.

During the radio program with Perlemuter, she said:

“So Ravel used to say everything that had to be done, but above all…what was not to be done. No worldly kindness restrained him when he was giving his opinion… Having worked on the Sonata, the Duo and the Trio with Ravel when I was a violinist, I recognise in Perlemuter’s interpretations all the idiosyncrasies, all Ravel’s wishes: exaggerated swells, crescendi which explode in anger, turns which die on a clear note, the gentle friction of affectionate cats…and in all this fantasy, strict time in expression and rigour even in rubato.”

Of course, Ravel wasn’t the only composer she knew well. She wrote down a couple of evocative memories about composer Gabriel Fauré, too:

“It would be difficult for me to describe his special wishes in the way that I could with Ravel. Just one directive stands out, and very strongly so: play in time without slowing, without even taking time to ‘prepare’ those voluptuous harmonies that the slightest hesitation might underline for the audience’s ears… Fauré, completely kind as he was, could be terribly direct with those who struck him as snobbish – most usually fashionable ladies.”

However, when it came to the music of French composer Pierre Boulez, she was puzzled. In 1950, she wrote in a review:

“It’s difficult for me to follow Pierre Boulez, because I admit I was so bored by his 30-to-35-minute-long sonata that I forbid myself from talking about it… I don’t understand. I am one of those listeners who demand from music what the Greek philosophers called a ‘moral force.’ It was Aristotle who saw people’s faces relax and their expressions lighten when a performance was beautiful… Well, the audience the other evening didn’t radiate goodness; rather, it was boiling.”

Conclusion

Hélène Jourdan-Morhange died on 15 May 1961. She was 73 years old.

Much is still left to rediscover about her life and career, as well as the profound influence she had on Ravel and the other Parisian composers who surrounded them both.

But even with the sketchy biographical information we have about her today, it is clear that she was a major force in French classical music between the wars. She should be remembered and celebrated more often.

7 Classical Pieces That Were Secret Love Letters

 by Emily E. Hogstad  February 13th, 2026

Love stories in classical music aren’t always written with words; sometimes they’re written in music.

Many composers have turned to music when emotions were too intense for letters or speech to express.

In fact, some of the most iconic pieces in the repertoire began as deeply personal love letters, whether hopeful, obsessive, nostalgic, or even forbidden.

Today we’re looking at seven unforgettable works of classical music that were written as love letters, ranging from Berlioz’s feverish Symphonie fantastique to Janáček’s volatile Intimate Letters.

Together, they reveal how love and romantic obsession have shaped classical music.  In 1827, Berlioz became infatuated with Irish actress Harriet Smithson after seeing her perform the role of Ophelia in Hamlet.

She didn’t speak French, and he didn’t speak English, and she – understandably – ignored his repeated requests to meet.

Consequently, the lovelorn Berlioz channeled his unrequited passion into his Symphonie fantastique.

Harriet Smithson

Over the course of five imaginative movements, the symphony’s autobiographical hero experiences a variety of love-induced (and drug-induced) visions.

The dreamy “idée fixe” melody in the opening movement represents the beloved.

In the second movement, that theme is transformed into a waltz at a ball, where she appears, then vanishes.

Next, a peaceful rural scene is disturbed by his doubt about her love.

Opium-fueled nightmares of murdering his beloved and being executed follow, culminating in a macabre “Witches’ Sabbath” where the beloved’s theme returns in a grotesque manner.

This emotionally charged fantasy was Berlioz’s way of immortalising his love and despair.

Six years later, in October 1833, Hector Berlioz ended up marrying Harriet Smithson. The marriage was a nightmare, but that’s a story for another day.

In the late 1830s, composer Robert Schumann was in love with virtuoso pianist Clara Wieck.

Separated by Clara’s disapproving father, Robert poured his emotions into a piano piece called Ruines in early 1836.

Later he added two movements to the piece, creating a new work to help fundraise for a Beethoven monument in Bonn, Germany. It became known as the Fantasie.

But although the outside world might have seen it as a work written to pay tribute to Beethoven, it was still meant to be a love letter. In a March 1838 letter to Clara, Schumann confessed that the Fantasie contained “perhaps the most impassioned music I have ever written.”

Clara Wieck Schumann

Schumann even embedded a secret message in the music. In the quiet coda of the first movement, he quotes a phrase from Beethoven’s “An die ferne Geliebte” (“To the Distant Beloved”) – “Nimm sie hin denn, diese Lieder” (“Take then these songs, beloved”).

We went into detail about how Robert Schumann’s Fantasie is a love letter to Clara  .

The Siegfried Idyll was composed as an intimate musical love letter to Richard Wagner’s second wife, Cosima.

On Christmas morning, 1870, the day after her 33rd birthday, Cosima awoke in their villa to the sound of music rising up the stairs.

Wagner had assembled a 13-player ensemble on the staircase to surprise her with this sweet and tender piece.

The Siegfried Idyll incorporates themes from Wagner’s opera Siegfried (the year before, they had named their infant son Siegfried) and a German lullaby that was meaningful to their family.

Cosima recounted waking to “such music!… Richard came into my room with the children and offered me the score of the symphonic birthday poem. I was in tears.”

Cosima and Richard Wagner

This piece was initially meant to be a private message of love. Only later did financial need cause Wagner to publish it, in 1878.

Even today, the Siegfried Idyll remains a touching musical portrait of marital love and domestic bliss.

Edward Elgar – Salut d’Amour (“Liebesgruß”), Op. 12 (1888)   

Elgar wrote this piece as an engagement present to his fiancée, Caroline Alice Roberts, in the summer of 1888.

Alice was a poet and had given Elgar a poem she wrote (“The Wind at Dawn”) as a token of love. Elgar responded in kind with this musical greeting of love.

Alice Roberts and Edward Elgar

He originally titled it “Liebesgruß” (“Love’s Greeting”) and dedicated it “à Carice” – a contraction of Caroline Alice.

They would later name their daughter “Carice.”

“Salut d’Amour” is imbued with the gentle charm of a love letter, featuring a singing melody, warm harmonies, and a sweet violin line.

Elgar’s publisher later used the French title Salut d’Amour to appeal to the commercial market, but its true origin remains that private exchange between two lovers.

Johannes Brahms – Intermezzo in A-major, Op. 118, No. 2 (1893)   

By 1893, Brahms was in his sixties, and his musical soulmate Clara Schumann had been a widow for nearly four decades.

Both were feeling their age, especially Clara, who was thirteen years his senior.

Brahms’s set of Six Pieces for Piano, Op.118 was published with a dedication to Clara.

Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms

The A-major Intermezzo (marked Andante teneramente, or “tenderly”) is often seen as Brahms’s musical love note to her…and maybe a kind of thank-you note, as well as a goodbye.

Its gently arching melody and warm harmonies exude a truly pungent, poignant mix of love and nostalgia.

Alban Berg – Lyric Suite (1926)   

For decades, the Lyric Suite was admired as an abstract, modernist masterpiece.

Only in the 1970s did musicologists discover that Berg had actually woven a hidden romantic narrative into the work.

Hanna Fuchs-Robettin © The Guardian

Through the use of cyphers and musical quotes, the Lyric Suite became Berg’s private love letter to his married lover, Hanna Fuchs-Robettin.

He subtitled several movements with suggestive indications: “amoroso” (lovingly), “appassionato” (passionately), “estatico” (ecstatically), and “delirando” (deliriously).

He also embedded both his and Hanna’s initials as musical notes (A–B-flat for “Alban Berg” and B-natural–F for “Hanna Fuchs”) throughout the score.

He even slipped in the famous “Tristan chord” from Wagner’s opera Tristan und Isolde (the quintessential musical symbol of adulterous love) as a reference to their circumstances.

In the final movement, marked Adagio appassionato, Berg quoted a clandestine message: a melody from Zemlinsky’s Lyric Symphony that set the words “Du bist mein eigen” (“You are my own”) – explicitly tying the music to the idea of the lovers’ union.

In short, this is among the most carefully crafted works in the history of classical music, taking on two seemingly opposed identities simultaneously: an expressive atonal string quartet and a secret love letter.

Leoš Janáček – String Quartet No. 2 “Intimate Letters” (1928)   

In his sixties, composer Leoš Janáček fell in love with Kamila Stösslová, a married mother who was nearly forty years his junior. Over the last decade of his life, he sent her over seven hundred letters.

This quartet, which Janáček nicknamed “Intimate Letters”, was inspired by his love for her: a love that is, from a modern perspective, deeply uncomfortable to ponder.

Kamila Stösslová in 1917

Among the unsettling words he wrote to her: “Our life is going to be in this piece… I composed the first movement as my impression when I saw you for the first time… It will be beautiful, strange, unrestrained, inspired… this piece was written in fire.”

The first movement’s surging motif depicts his first glimpse of Kamila (“the chilling mystery of an encounter”), while later movements reference a tender shared moment. Janáček even imagines having a love child with her.

The third movement he called one of the “Love Letters”, and the finale ends in “great longing and fulfilment.”

As disturbing as its backstory may be when seen through a modern lens, Janáček’s “Intimate Letters” quartet is still remarkable for its emotional expressivity and autobiographical inspiration.

Conclusion

From Berlioz’s hallucinatory visions to Janáček’s fevered late-in-life obsession, these love letters in music reveal just how vulnerable composers can be when writing under the influence of romantic and erotic obsession.

Each work distills a private emotion into something listeners can still feel generations later, whether it’s Schumann’s yearning, Wagner’s domestic warmth, or Berg’s encoded passion.

If you want to understand the emotions behind some of classical music’s most famous works, these seven musical love letters are a great place to start!

The Most Passionate Composer Love Letters of All Time, Part 1

 by Emily E. Hogstad  February 5th, 2026

Artists and composers are famous for their wild love lives. Turns out, their love letters are just as fascinating as you’d expect.

Today, we’re looking at love letters from ten composers, including Mozart being very saucy on a business trip, Brahms pining over Clara Schumann, and Haydn making a shocking confession to his mistress.

Joseph Haydn, 1791

Joseph Haydn

In these two love letters to his mistress, singer Luigia Polzelli, Haydn writes about her husband’s fatal illness…and longs for “four eyes [to] be closed”, a reference to his hope that his own wife will die, too!

London, 14th March 1791

Most esteemed Polzelli,

I am very sorry for you in your present circumstances, and I hope that your poor husband will die at any moment; you did well to put him in the hospital, to keep him alive…

London, 4th August 1791

Dear Polzelli!

…As far as your husband is concerned, I tell you that Providence has done well to liberate you from this heavy yoke, and for him, too, it is better to be in another world than to remain useless in this one. The poor man has suffered enough. Dear Polzelli, perhaps, perhaps the time will come, when we both so often dreamt of, when four eyes shall be closed. Two are closed, but the other two – enough of all this, it shall be as God wills.

Learn more about why Haydn hated his wife so much.

Ludwig van Beethoven, 1812

Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, finished in 1812   

In 1812, Beethoven wrote an impassioned love letter to an unknown woman. This letter has come to be known as the letter to the Immortal Beloved.

Beethoven in 1803

Though still in bed, my thoughts go out to you, my Immortal Beloved, now and then joyfully, then sadly, waiting to learn whether or not fate will hear us – I can live only wholly with you or not at all – Yes, I am resolved to wander so long away from you until I can fly to your arms and say that I am really at home with you, and can send my soul enwrapped in you into the land of spirits – Yes, unhappily it must be so – You will be the more contained since you know my fidelity to you. No one else can ever possess my heart – never – never – Oh God, why must one be parted from one whom one so loves. And yet my life in V is now a wretched life – Your love makes me at once the happiest and the unhappiest of men – At my age I need a steady, quiet life – can that be so in our connection? My angel, I have just been told that the mail coach goes every day – therefore I must close at once so that you may receive the letter at once – Be calm, only by a calm consideration of our existence can we achieve our purpose to live together – Be calm – love me – today – yesterday – what tearful longings for you – you – you – my life – my all – farewell. Oh continue to love me – never misjudge the most faithful heart of your beloved. ever thine, ever mine, ever ours…

Read more about Who was the Immortal Beloved?

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, 1783

Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail overture   

Here’s a suggestive love letter from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to his wife Constanze, written in 1783 when he was about to return home to Vienna after overseeing a production of his opera Die Entführung aus dem Serail in Prague.

On June 1st I’ll sleep in Prague, and on the 4th – the 4th? – I’ll be sleeping with my dear little wife; – Spruce up your sweet little nest because my little rascal here really deserves it, he has been very well behaved, but now he’s itching to possess your sweet [word erased by some unknown hand]. Just imagine that little sneak, while I am writing, he has secretly crept up on the table and now looks at me questioningly; but I, without much ado, give him a little slap – but now he is even more [word erased by some unknown hand]; well, he is almost out of control, the scoundrel.

Find out what life was like with the Mozarts in the 1780s.

Hector Berlioz, 1832

Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique   

Berlioz wrote this letter to actress Harriet Smithson, a woman whom he had been obsessed over and stalking for years, for whom he had composed the Symphonie fantastique and Lélio. He was begging her to return his letter:

Harriet Smithson in Romeo and Juliet

If you do not desire my death, in the name of pity (I dare not say of love) let me know when I can see you. I cry mercy, pardon on my knees, between my sobs!!! Oh, wretch that I am, I did not think I deserved all that I suffer, but I bless the blows that come from your hand, await your reply like the sentence of my judge.

Learn more about the insane love story between Hector and Harriet.

Franz Liszt, 1834

Liszt’s Liebestraum No. 3  

In 1834, Franz Liszt wrote this to his new mistress, Countess Marie d’Agoult:

Marie d’Agoult in 1861

My heart overflows with emotion and joy! I do not know what heavenly languor, what infinite pleasure, permeates it and burns me up. It is as if I had never loved!!! Tell me whence these uncanny disturbances spring, these inexpressible foretastes of delight, these divine tremors of love. Oh! All this can only spring from you, sister, angel, woman, Marie! All this can only be, is surely nothing less than a gentle ray streaming from your fiery soul, or else some secret poignant teardrop which you have long since left in my breast.

Learn more about the passionate nature of Liszt and Marie d’Agoult’s early relationship.

Robert Schumann, 1837

Robert Schumann

In December 1837, composer Robert Schumann was in love with virtuoso pianist Clara Wieck. They’d gotten engaged a few months earlier and were doing their best to navigate their relationship, given that Clara’s father didn’t approve of their romance.

New Year’s Eve, 1837, after 11 p.m.

I have been sitting here for a whole hour. Indeed, I meant to spend the whole evening writing to you, but no words would come. Sit down beside me now, slip your arm round me, and let us gaze peacefully, blissfully, into each other’s eyes…

How happy we are, Clara! Let us kneel together, Clara, my Clara, so close that I can touch you, in this solemn hour.

On the morning of the 1st, 1838.

What a heavenly morning! All the bells are ringing; the sky is so golden and blue and clear – and before me lies your letter. I send you my first kiss, beloved.

Learn more about the brutal court case between Robert, Clara, and her father.

Johannes Brahms, 1858

Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 1, Movement 2 (he once told Clara this was a portrait of her)    

Brahms had complicated feelings for his mentor and dear friend Clara Wieck Schumann.

In 1858, her husband Robert had died two years earlier, and Clara was on tour in the Netherlands to make money to support her family. Brahms came to her home in Düsseldorf, in part to help watch her children. He wrote to her during her tour:

My beloved friend,

Night has come on again, and it is already late, but I can do nothing but think of you and am constantly looking at your dear letter and portrait. What have you done to me? Can’t you remove the spell you have cast over me? …

How are you? I did not want to ask you to write, but do so long for letters from you. Besides, I know only too well how you are – you are holding your head up. So just write me a word or two occasionally, and I shall be happy – just a friendly greeting to say that you are keeping well and that you will be back in 14, 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 days!…

Do cheer me with writing me a few lines. I want them so badly, but above all, I want you.

Brahms and the Schumanns

Learn more about the friendship and love triangle between Robert, Clara, and Johannes.

Richard Wagner, 1863

Richard Wagner and Cosima Wagner

Richard Wagner and Cosima Wagner’s marriage became one of the most influential in music history. However, the relationship had an inauspicious start. Richard wrote this letter to his mistress Maria Volkl shortly after first declaring his love to Cosima (!):

Now, my darling, prepare the house for my return, so that I can relax there in comfort, as I very much long to do… And plenty of perfume: buy the best bottles, so that it smells really sweet. Heavens! How I’m looking forward to relaxing with you again at last. (I hope the pink drawers are ready, too???) – Yes, indeed! Just be nice and gentle, I deserve to be well looked after for a change.

Gustav Mahler

During their engagement, Gustav Mahler wrote this letter to his fiancée Alma, to let her know she must decide between becoming his wife or pursuing her passion for composing music.

Almschi, I beg you, read this letter carefully. Our relationship must not degenerate into a mere flirt. Before we speak again, we must have clarified everything, you must know what I demand and expect of you, and what I can give in return – what you must be for me. You must “renounce” (your word) everything superficial and conventional, all vanity and outward show (concerning your individuality and your work) – you must surrender yourself to me unconditionally… in return you must wish for nothing except my love! And what that is, Alma, I cannot tell you – I have already spoken too much about it. But let me tell you just this: for someone I love the way I would love you if you were to become my wife, I can forfeit all my life and all my happiness.

Learn more about the beautiful Alma Schindler’s background, her marriage to Gustav, and why he wrote this letter.

Jean Sibelius, 1891   

Sibelius wrote this letter to his fiancée Aino in early January 1891:

My own Aino darling,

Thank you for your letter and your Christmas cards. Your relatives have all been very kind to me. Please give them my respects and thank them most warmly, won’t you. But it is you who loves me more than anyone else has done, and I want you to be sure that I love you and belong to you with all my heart. Every time you write to me, I discover some new aspect of your personality. It makes me feel as if you are a store of treasures to which only I have the key, and you can imagine how proud I am to own it. You are so natural and sincere, which I like. When in the future we have a home of our own and are together alone, we must never be anything other than wholly ourselves, natural, tender towards each other, and devoted. I think and hope that you will be content with me in this respect. It is perhaps unmanly to say so, but you know, Aino, that I have always wanted to be caressed and have always missed its absence. At home, I was the only one who was demonstrative, and this in spite of the fact that I was basically very shy. But up to now, only you have caressed me, and perhaps you have thought it tiresome of me to ask you often to do this, my darling. This could well have remained unwritten, but as I am writing as quickly as I am thinking (hence my superb handwriting!), and this came into my head, it can just as well go into the letter. I sometimes cannot believe that a person like you loves me, for you are a wonderful woman.

Aino and Jean Sibelius