Life of Chopin: The Controversial Chopin Biography by Liszt

by Emily E. Hogstad, Interlude

A Mysterious Envelope Arrives.

On 14 November 1849, Ludwika Jędrzejewicz opened an envelope.

Ludwika Chopin Jędrzejewicz

Ludwika Jędrzejewicz was having a bad month. Her marriage was in shambles because she had left Poland to be at her brother Frédéric Chopin’s deathbed.

She had just attended his final illness and funeral and was going through his papers and other personal effects.

She was even preparing to smuggle his heart in a cognac bottle underneath her coat so it could be buried in Poland.

It turns out that the envelope had been sent by no one other than Franz Liszt.

Inside was a questionnaire full of various inquiries about Chopin’s life. Liszt wanted the answers because he was interested in writing a book about Chopin’s life.

On top of the inconsiderate timing, Liszt had included personal questions about her brother’s love life, such as his multi-year liaison with authoress George Sand.

It is believed that the gesture irritated her – or at the least overwhelmed her. She didn’t know what to do with the envelope, so she gave it to Jane Stirling, the wealthy woman who had been serving as Chopin’s concert agent and secretary and who had subsidised Jędrzejewicz’s travels and Chopin’s large funeral.

The fastidious Jane Stirling returned Liszt’s questionnaire to him, but she brushed over some facts in the process. Ultimately, Liszt never used Stirling’s answers.

The First Liszt/Chopin Meetings

Franz Liszt in 1870

Franz Liszt had known Chopin for many years.

We don’t know when exactly they met, but in December 1831, Chopin wrote a letter to his best friend back in Poland suggesting that he had met Liszt. Liszt would have been twenty and Chopin almost twenty-two at the time.

A few months later, Liszt was in the audience for Chopin’s Parisian debut, which happened at the Salle Pleyel in February 1832.

“We remember his first appearance in the salons of Pleyel, where the most enthusiastic and redoubled applause seemed scarcely sufficient to express our enchantment for the genius which had revealed new phases of poetic feeling and made such happy yet bold innovations in the form of musical art,” Liszt wrote years later in his biography. 

Frédéric Chopin

The two young men became friends and eventually near-neighbours, living a few blocks apart.

They also made a splash performing together in Paris. (Their debut as a duo happened in 1833 at a benefit concert for the bankrupt Harriet Smithson, the actress who Hector Berlioz had written his Symphonie Fantastique and who had since become his fiancée.)

However, they went through their rough patches, too. In 1835, Liszt asked Chopin if he could borrow his apartment while Chopin was away. Chopin agreed. When he returned home, he found out that Liszt had used it for an amorous encounter with the great pianist Camille Marie Pleyel, who had just separated from her husband on account of her infidelities.

On a professional note, there was a certain amount of jealousy, too. Chopin once wrote to a friend, “I should like to rob [Liszt] of the way he plays my studies.” However, he also protested against the way that Liszt added improvisatory elements to a performance of one of his nocturnes. Chopin was so upset that Liszt had to apologise. 

Liszt and Chopin’s Romantic Interests

Portrait of Marie d’Agoult by Henri Lehmann, 1843

In 1836, Liszt and his lover, the Countess Marie d’Agoult, hosted a party that would prove fateful to Chopin.

The countess was a great fan of Chopin and extended an invitation to him. She also invited another friend, the radical writer Aurore Dupin, better known by her pen name George Sand, who was arguably the most popular writer in Europe.

Although Chopin was initially put off by the strong-willed Sand, the two eventually fell in love and were a couple for ten years.

Not long after Chopin and Sand paired up, Liszt and the Countess Marie d’Agoult had a protracted and acrimonious breakup.

His next long-term partner was a woman named Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein, an unhappily married noblewoman who fell in love with Liszt and remained his partner for forty years. Sayn-Wittgenstein was an extremely prolific author and letter writer, and she encouraged Liszt to also focus on writing, both prose and music.

The Origins of the Chopin Biography

Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein

It is believed that after Chopin’s death, Liszt and Sayn-Wittgenstein worked together on the manuscript of the Chopin biography.

The biography began appearing in installments in La France Musicale in 1851.

It turns out that the book was a bit of a disaster. The worshipful Jane Stirling, for one, wasn’t satisfied with how Liszt had described her former boss’s musicianship.

Meanwhile, his Polish friends and family were upset that a non-Pole had published a biography before them, gotten the subtleties of Chopin’s Polish identity wrong, and sucked up all the oxygen in the room when it came to the subject of a Chopin biography. It would be difficult, they believed, for a work by one of them to be taken more seriously than one by Franz Liszt, the internationally renowned musical celebrity…and they were probably right.

George Sand offered her measured thoughts about Liszt’s biography of her ex: “a little exuberant in style but filled with good things and very beautiful pages,” she allowed.

In 1879, Liszt and Sayn-Wittgenstein returned to the project, creating an even longer version, this time, with additional emphasis on Polish politics and identity.

Sayn-Wittgenstein was apparently the driver behind many of the changes, and unfortunately the changes – and her turgid writing style generally – has proven to be unpopular with modern scholars and historians. 

The Biography’s Legacy

Life of Chopin by Franz Liszt

Of course, given Liszt’s fame, some of the facts in his biography were distributed in other later biographies.

One of the ideas that gained traction was Chopin’s perceived aristocratic nature.

For instance, it was reported in Liszt’s book that Chopin’s education had been financed by Prince Radziwill (it had not been) and that the friends who he spent the most time with were members of the Polish aristocracy (they were not).

Conclusion

Today, the historians brave enough to wade into the messy, complicated subject of Liszt’s Chopin biography generally believe that while the biography is a helpful document for understanding how Liszt and his Parisian contemporaries viewed Chopin, there’s much about it that’s misleading or even flat-out wrong.

That said, as long as you keep all of that in mind, it’s definitely worth a read, as the English translation has long been in the public domain. So why don’t you download a copy and see what you think?

Six Women In Brahms’s Life

by Emily E. Hogstadt, Interlude

Johannes Brahms had trouble with women. He objectified most of them, thought of them as either Madonnas or whores, and heartily agreed with prevailing social attitudes that they should concentrate on Kinder, Küche, Kirche (Children, Kitchen, Church), to quote a phrase that was common during his lifetime.

Johannes Brahms, c. 1885

And yet, despite his best efforts to stay free from emotional attachments to women, over the course of his life, he had deeply meaningful relationships with several of them.

Today, we’re looking at six of the women he was closest to and how they impacted his life, work, and music.

Christiane Nissen Brahms (1789-1865)

Christiane Nissen Brahms

Christiane Nissen was born to a tailor in Hamburg, Germany, in 1789.

She began working as a seamstress when she was just thirteen. During her twenties, she worked as a servant before returning to seamstress. Eventually, she moved in with her sister and brother-in-law and helped to run their shop, where they sold sewing notions.

To make some extra money, the family took in a lodger. He was a musician by the name of Johann Jakob Brahms. Eight days into his stay, he proposed to Christiane.

The proposal was surprising, to say the least. He was 24, she was 41. But she accepted, and they were married soon afterward, on 9 June 1830. They would have three children together: Elise, Johannes, and Fritz.

Brahms biographer Jan Swafford describes Christiane as “small, sickly, gimpy from a short leg, plain of face though she had enchanting blue eyes.” But she was a talented cook and housekeeper, and Johannes loved her deeply.

Unfortunately, her marriage deteriorated by the 1860s; the age difference and other issues caught up with the couple, and they separated. She died in 1865 after having a stroke.

Clara Wieck Schumann (1819-1896)

Robert and Clara Schumann

Clara Wieck Schumann was born to Friedrich Wieck, a piano teacher and music store owner, and his wife, singer Mariane.

Wieck was determined to make his daughter into a prodigy pianist as a kind of walking advertisement for his methods. He got very lucky: Clara became one of the most celebrated piano prodigies of her era.

As a teenager, she fell in love with one of her father’s students, Robert Schumann. Despite her father’s protestations, she married him in 1840.

On 1 October 1853, Clara and Robert met a 20-year-old Johannes Brahms, who nervously visited their home to network. The Schumanns were immediately taken by the music of this young genius from Hamburg. They invited Brahms to stay for a few weeks.

Robert Schumann believed him to be the future of music, and he wrote an article saying as much that was distributed in a magazine called the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik.

Brahms was starstruck by Robert’s faith in him…and, awkwardly, found himself falling in love with Clara.

Unfortunately, Robert Schumann’s mental health, never good, deteriorated drastically over the next few months. He attempted suicide in February 1854 and agreed to be admitted into an asylum. He would never return home.

After Robert’s departure, Brahms stayed to comfort Clara – who was pregnant at the time – and help with the children. Robert died in the summer of 1856.

We don’t know exactly what conversations Brahms had with Clara during this time. We do know that the idea of being in a marriage where his wife would out-earn him was unappealing, and Clara didn’t want any more children. Ultimately, they decided not to marry.

However, they stayed close friends for the rest of their lives, and neither of them married anyone else.

Elise Brahms Grund (1831-1892)

Elise was the eldest child of Johann Jakob and Christiane Brahms, born in February 1831, eight months after her parents’ wedding.

She suffered from headaches and was often bedridden with chronic pain. Because of her health issues, combined with the sexist mores of the time, she wasn’t able to get a good education. Christiane’s purportedly affectionate nickname for her was “the fat dumb peasant.” Her little brother Johannes, however, loved her.

In the 1860s, her parents split, although they never formally divorced. Elise’s mother was her ally in the household. The rift in the household deepened after Johann Jakob refused to pay for their expenses.

Unfortunately for Elise, her mother died suddenly of a stroke in 1865. Her father remarried. The situation left her vulnerable, and she ended up renting a room from friends, being subsidised by Johannes.

In 1871, when she was forty, she married a widowed watchmaker named Christian Grund, who was twenty years her senior. Johannes urged her not to, believing she was too naive and inexperienced to be a successful wife and mother. He even offered to pay for her room and board at a convent. (Clara Schumann, on the other hand, perhaps remembering how her father had once disapproved of her marriage to Robert, urged Johannes to support his sister.)

Happily, Johannes’s doubts were misplaced, and the marriage was happy. The two even had a child together, but unfortunately, the baby died a few days after it was born.

Her husband died in 1888 and she died in 1892. The letters Johannes had written to her were all returned to him after her death. Interestingly, although Brahms burned most other correspondences, he couldn’t bring himself to burn Elise’s.

Agathe von Siebold Schütte (1835-1909)

Agathe von Siebold Schütte

In July 1858, two years after the death of Robert Schumann, Brahms went to the town of Göttingen to visit friends and conduct the local women’s chorus. Clara Schumann, her composer brother, and five of her children also came with her.

During the trip, he befriended one of the sopranos in the chorus, a young woman named Agathe von Siebold. She had lovely dark hair, an attractive figure, and a playful sense of humour. She was also an amateur composer.

Their friend group stayed out late into the summer evenings, laughing and playing games, and Brahms and Agathe soon started flirting. However, he gave away to her that he still had Clara on a pedestal, telling Agathe at one point that he had to also walk with Clara occasionally so she wouldn’t get jealous.

He was right: Clara was so upset when she caught Brahms and Agathe embracing that she abruptly cut the vacation short.

After New Year’s, her family politely encouraged Brahms to propose, so that there would be no risk to their daughter’s reputation. He obliged, but they didn’t set a date for the wedding.

Unfortunately, simultaneously, Brahms experienced the relative failure of his first piano concerto. He claimed he could never face a wife after enduring any similar professional failures.

He wrote Agathe a rather appalling letter with the lines, “I love you! I must see you again! But I must not wear fetters!” Agathe interpreted this as shorthand for “Be my mistress, but not my wife.” She replied by sending her engagement ring back to him. The marriage was off.

She never forgot the relationship. In fact, later in life, she wrote a novel inspired by it. As for his part, Brahms included a theme made out of the letters of Agathe’s name in several musical works, including his second string sextett. 

Julie Schumann (1845-1872)

Julie Schumann

Julie Schumann was Robert and Clara Schumann’s third child. She had been seven years old when her father left home for the asylum and Johannes Brahms moved in to help her mother.

Unfortunately, Julie’s health was poor. She traveled to stay with family friends in more southern climates, hoping to grow stronger.

During one of those trips, she met an Italian count, who fell in love with her. In 1869, she married him.

Johannes Brahms served as witness. Little did Julie know that doing so was torture. He’d fallen in love with her, but, given the complicated dynamics at play, he hadn’t verbalised his love fast enough – and now she was lost to him forever.

Johannes Brahms: Alto Rhapsody 

He had confusing romantic feelings for Julie that he never really verbalised, instead choosing to write them into his Alto Rhapsody.

He wrote to his publisher, “Here I’ve written a bridal song for the Schumann countess – but I wrote it with anger, with wrath! What do you expect!”

Clara Schumann had feared that childbearing would weaken Julie, and tragically, her fears were well-founded. She had two children, her health weakened, and she died of tuberculosis in Paris in 1872 when pregnant with her third.

Learn more about what happened to the Schumann children.

Elisabeth von Stockhausen Herzogenberg (1847-1892)

Elisabeth and Heinrich von Herzogenberg

Elisabeth von Stockhausen was born in 1847. She was a musical child from a musical family (her father had studied piano with Chopin), and in the winter of 1863-64, she began taking piano lessons from Johannes Brahms. He found her very attractive and was so unnerved by her that he passed her to a colleague to teach.

Elisabeth met Heinrich von Herzogenberg in 1865, and they married the following year. After she was married, Brahms grew less afraid of her and felt freer to befriend her and her husband properly.

The couple moved to Graz before settling in Leipzig in 1872 and then Berlin in 1885. Heinrich taught music; Elisabeth maintained a cheerful household and charming correspondence; and both played piano and composed. Here are some of her pieces:

Elisabeth von Herzogenberg: 8 Clavierstücke 

To their devastation, they were unable to have children, so their musical friends became their family. Brahms became an especially treasured friend.

He was deeply impressed by Elisabeth’s musical opinion and began sending her work to get her feedback. “You should know and believe that you are among the few persons whom one holds so dear that one cannot tell them so,” he wrote to her.

The couple’s health was not great, and in 1891, they went to the Italian town of Sanremo, where Elisabeth died in 1892 when she was just forty-four years old.

Brahms wrote to her grief-stricken husband: “It is vain to attempt any expression of the feelings that absorb me so completely. You know how unutterably I myself suffer from the loss of your beloved wife and can gauge accordingly my emotions in thinking of you, who were associated with her by the closest possible human ties.”

He dedicated his Rhapsodies, op. 79 to her.

Seven Works Dedicated to Robert Schumann

 by Emily E. Hogstad  January 8th, 2025

Robert Schumann was one of the leading figures of classical music’s Romantic Era. His music – by turns tempestuous and ecstatic and always heartfelt – made a huge impression not only on audiences but on his fellow composers, too.

Today, we’re looking at seven works that Robert Schumann’s friends and colleagues wrote as tributes to him and his genius.

Josef Kriehuber: Robert Schumann, 1839

Frédéric Chopin: Ballade No. 2 (1836-39) 

Frédéric Chopin and Robert Schumann had a bit of an awkward relationship. Schumann raved about Chopin’s music in his music journalism, but Chopin seems to have had a cooler opinion about Schumann’s work.

They met twice. The first time was in 1835 when Chopin was passing through Leipzig after visiting his parents. Schumann wrote about the encounter with great enthusiasm in his diary, but if Chopin ever recorded his impressions of the meeting, such an account hasn’t survived.

Frédéric Chopin

The second and final time was in 1836. Schumann tried initiating the meeting via letter but got no response. Then, one day, he arrived home to find Chopin waiting at his doorstep! They played music for one another, and Robert’s soon-to-be-wife Clara Wieck joined them.

After the visit, Schumann dedicated his Kreisleriana to Chopin, calling him “my friend” on the dedication page. Chopin reciprocated by dedicating this Ballade to Schumann…but was much more formal, dedicating it to “Mr. Robert Schumann,” and (perhaps pointedly) making no mention of friendship.

William Sterndale Bennett: Fantaisie, Op.16 (1837) 

William Sterndale Bennett was a British pianist, composer, and conductor who was born in 1816.

He began composing at an early age, and several big names in European music were very impressed by him. Felix Mendelssohn invited the young man to Leipzig, where he met Robert Schumann. All three men deeply admired each other’s work.

William Sterndale Bennett

In 1837, the year he turned twenty-one, Bennett began teaching at the Royal Academy of Music in London. He also wrote this four-movement “Fantaisie” for solo piano and dedicated it to his friend and mentor Robert Schumann.

Clara Wieck Schumann: 3 Romances, Op.11 (1839) 

Robert Schumann admired many composers, but the one he loved the most was his girlfriend and later wife, Clara Wieck Schumann, who he married in September 1840, a day before her twenty-first birthday.

Andreas Staub: Clara Wieck, 1839

Their courtship was stormy. Her father disapproved of the match and went to court to try to prevent it. There were periods of time when the two were separated against their wills or when Clara was away concertising in the capitals of Europe. But they always found their way back to each other.

It is tempting to read her longing for Robert into these three-yearning works for solo piano that she dedicated to him in 1839, the year before their marriage.

Ignaz Moscheles: Cello Sonata No. 2 (1850-51) 

Ignaz Moscheles was born in 1794 in Prague. He was a talented pianist and composer, and was one of the earliest champions of the music of Beethoven.

As a young man, he made sensational impressions on audiences touring through Europe. One of the listeners particularly affected by his piano playing was none other than Robert Schumann.

Ignaz Moscheles

Moscheles enjoyed a great friendship with the Mendelssohn family due to their Jewish heritage, passion for music, and Moscheles’s acknowledgement of Mendelssohn’s genius. Moscheles and the Mendelssohns were also friends with the Schumanns. (Moscheles even played a three-harpsichord concerto with Clara Schumann once – an unusual sight in the mid-nineteenth century!)

Given their overlapping friendships, it makes sense that Moscheles dedicated this charming Romantic cello sonata to Robert Schumann.

Woldemar Bargiel: Piano Trio No. 1 (1851) 

German composer Woldemar Bargiel’s origin story was complicated.

Bargiel’s mother Mariane Tromlitz was a professional singer. In 1816, she married a demanding piano teacher named Friederich Wieck and had five children with him, among them a prodigy pianist named Clara.

In 1824, unable to endure her marriage any longer, Mariane divorced Wieck and (awkwardly) married Wieck’s best friend Adolphe Bargiel instead. She eventually had three more children with Adolphe, including Woldemar.

Woldemar Bargiel

It worked out well for the young and musical Woldemar to have a brilliant half-sister pianist nine years his senior. She gave career advice and provided him introductions to giants like Mendelssohn and Schumann. Their social circle suggested that he study at the Leipzig Conservatory, which he did between the ages of eighteen and twenty.

In 1848, he moved to Berlin to pursue his career there. This piano trio was written in 1851 and was unpublished for five years until Robert and Clara Schumann worked their connections so that it could be printed. In gratitude, he dedicated it to Robert.

Franz Liszt: Piano Sonata in B-minor (1852-53) 

Clara Wieck Schumann and Franz Liszt had a rocky professional relationship. It started out positively. When she was a young girl, she was awed by his virtuosity, and for his part, Liszt found her compositions impressive, “especially for a woman,” as he reported to his partner, Marie d’Agoult.

Franz Hanfstaengl: Franz Liszt, 1858

But as the years went on, Clara became more and more leery of his brash style and willingness to depart from the score.

An all-out feud erupted in 1848 when Liszt called Robert Schumann’s Piano Quintet “typically Leipzig”, which insulted Clara. But Robert smoothed things over, to Clara’s irritation; in her artistic maturity, she didn’t want anything to do with Liszt’s style of music-making.

In 1854, Liszt published this piano sonata and dedicated it to Robert Schumann. Not surprisingly, Clara had a strong reaction, writing in her journal:

Today, Liszt sent me a Sonata dedicated to Robert and some more pieces, together with a polite note. But those pieces are so creepy! Brahms played them to me and I felt really miserable … This is only blind noise – no more healthy thoughts, everything is confused, one cannot see any clear harmonies! And, what is more, I still have to thank him now – this is really awful.

Despite her disgust, Liszt cheerfully retained his admiration for her music and her playing.

Clara Wieck Schumann: Variationen über ein Thema von Robert Schumann, Op.20 (1853) 

It’s fitting that the final work on this list is another one of Clara’s.

This set of variations on a theme originally composed by Robert was written as his 41st birthday present. She wrote it in less than a week.

In this work, Clara includes references to multiple pieces of music by her husband, herself, and Felix Mendelssohn (who had died young and unexpectedly a few years before).

Eduard Magnus: Mendelssohn, 1846

It was one of the last musical projects they shared. Over the winter, Robert’s mental health deteriorated. In February 1854, he nearly died by suicide after jumping off a bridge into the Rhine River. It was determined that he needed to go to an asylum for his own safety. He died in the asylum in 1856. Clara would only be allowed to see him once more, shortly before his passing.

To comfort her, Johannes Brahms wrote his own variations for Clara based on this work after Robert had been institutionalised. It may not be dedicated to Robert officially, but it certainly was dedicated to him in spirit, so here it is as a bonus. We wrote about it here.

15 Pieces of Classical Music About Trees

by Emily E. Hogstad, Interlude

No matter how many of us end up moving into towns and cities, human beings are still irresistibly drawn to forests, woodlands, and trees.

Classical composers are no exception. In fact, a huge percentage of them were great nature lovers (Beethoven, for one, often composed in his head during his walks), and many of them went so far as to write music inspired by forests.

Forest under bright sunlight © Flux AI Image Generator

Today, we’re looking at fifteen pieces of classical music about trees. Put on your hiking boots and join us!

Francesco Geminiani: La foresta incantata (1754)  

Italian composer Francesco Geminiani lived from 1687 to 1762. He helped to popularise the Italian style of violin playing abroad, most famously in London.

He was widely admired during his lifetime, being considered the equal of composers like Handel and Corelli, but for whatever reason, he has fallen out of favour today.

In 1754, he wrote a pantomime ballet called La foresta incantata (“The Enchanted Forest”).

Franz Schubert: Der Lindenbaum from Winterreise (1827)

Winterreise (“Winter Journey”) is a series of twenty-four songs for voice and piano.

These two dozen songs are narrated by a man who, when he hears of his beloved’s betrothal to another, goes on a wintertime journey to escape the memory of her.

Der Lindenbaum (“The Linden Tree”) is the fifth song of the cycle. In it, the narrator notices a linden tree as he travels. It serves as a reminder of happier days, during which he used to sit under one and enjoy his day.

As he passes, the linden tree seems to call out to him. However, he doesn’t turn back. Instead, he leaves the tree and all the memories it represents and keeps travelling forward into an uncertain, unsettled future.

Vincent d’Indy: La Forêt Enchantée (1878) 

French composer Vincent d’Indy wrote La Forêt Enchantée in 1878 when he was just twenty-seven years old.

At the time, Wagner was a major influence on the young composer (as he was to many young composers), and you can really hear that influence here.

In this piece, d’Indy follows the story of a knight named Harald, who visits an enchanted forest and meets seductive elves. In the finale, he drinks from an enchanted forest lake and falls into a deep sleep.

Franz Liszt: Waldesrauschen (1862-63) 

In the early 1860s, pianist and composer Franz Liszt wrote two concert etudes. The first is called Waldesrauschen, or “Forest Murmurs.”

This piece uses the piano to imitate the sound of breezes blowing through trees. Those breezes begin very quietly with a marking of vivace, or “in a lively manner.” Eventually, the work and the wind become loud and passionate. 

Johann Strauss II: Tales from the Vienna Woods (1868)

One of the most famous parts of Vienna is its woods, found just outside the city. It’s a sizable woods: almost thirty miles long and between twelve to eighteen miles wide.

Julius Schmid: Beethoven’s Walk in Nature

Schubert and Beethoven often found creative inspiration in those woods, and so did Johann Strauss II.

In 1868, he wrote one of his famous waltzes (which is actually an arrangement of multiple waltzes) and called it Tales from the Vienna Woods.

It was inspired by the dances of the rural citizens. To imitate folk instruments, Strauss employed a zither.

Alexander Glazunov: The Forest (1887)

Russian composer Alexander Glazunov wrote an orchestral fantasy called The Forest at the age of twenty-two.

He wrote an entire program for it, describing in exacting detail what he’d seen in his mind’s eye: daybreak, birds chirping, the appearance of nymphs, a hunting party, and finally, more bird calls.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: The Forest of Fir Trees in Winter from The Nutcracker (1892) 

Every ballet lover knows the story of The Nutcracker. A little girl named Clara receives an enchanted nutcracker doll on Christmas Eve. In the middle of the night, Clara visits the doll while the rest of the household is asleep – and magical events transpire.

After witnessing a battle between gingerbread soldiers and mice, Clara is astonished to see the nutcracker turn into a handsome prince.

The ballet’s first act ends when the prince leads her into a forest as snow falls. This stunning music by Tchaikovsky accompanies their journey.

Edward MacDowell: To an Old White Pine from New England Idyls (1896) 

In 1896, American composer Edward MacDowell and his wife moved into a farmhouse in the New Hampshire countryside.

MacDowell was deeply inspired by his New England surroundings. In 1902, he wrote a series of ten piano miniatures depicting various natural phenomena and history, including “An Old Garden” and “From Puritan Days.”

The seventh in the set of ten is called “To an Old White Pine.” There is a brief poem at the top of the score:

A giant of an ancient race
He stands, a stubborn sentinel
O’er swaying, gentle forest trees
That whisper at his feet.

John Ireland: The Almond Trees (1913)

John Ireland was an English composer born in 1879. He began his musical studies with piano and organ, then became interested in composition in the late 1890s.

The Almond Trees is a slender, evocative, meandering work with a real Impressionist tinge.

Jean Sibelius: The Trees (1914)

Finnish composer Jean Sibelius may be best-known for his symphonies, but his piano music is worth checking out, too.

One of the loveliest examples is The Trees, a collection of five sensitive pieces for solo piano.

Each movement is named after a particular species of tree: When the Rowan Blossoms, The Solitary Pine, The Aspen, The Birch and The Spruce.

Ottorino Respighi: The Pines of Rome (1924) 

The Pines of Rome is an orchestral tone poem in four movements, and possibly the most famous example of tree-inspired classical music.

The pines at the Villa Borghese

Each of the four movements portrays pines in a particular location in Rome: The Pines of the Villa Borghese, Pines Near a Catacomb, The Pines of the Janiculum, and The Pines of the Appian Way.

The piece moves backwards in time in a striking way. The first movement portrays children playing in twentieth-century Rome, but with each movement, Respighi goes further back in time, and by the end, he’s depicting a legion of Roman soldiers marching down the tree-lined Appian Way.

Arnold Bax: The Tale the Pine Trees Knew (1931) 

While listening to the ominous opening measures to Arnold Bax’s tone poem The Tale the Pine Trees Knew, one wonders what dark events these trees have witnessed.

We’re left to speculate since Bax didn’t leave a concrete program.

However, he did at least mention that the work was inspired by visits to Norway and Scotland. He wrote:

This work is concerned solely with the abstract mood of these places, and the pine trees’ tale must be taken purely as a generic one. Certainly, I had no specific coniferous story to relate.

Igor Stravinsky: Dumbarton Oaks (1937-38) 

In the late 1930s, American diplomat and philanthropist Robert Woods Bliss and his wife Mildred Barnes Bliss gave themselves quite the anniversary gift: they commissioned a work by Igor Stravinsky!

Stravinsky answered the call by writing this attractive neoclassical concerto for chamber orchestra.

It was named after Dumbarton Oaks, the Bliss’s massive estate in Georgetown, Washington, DC.

If the name sounds familiar to you, it might be because a few years later, in 1944, the Dumbarton Oaks Conference was held at the estate. Participants came out of the conference with proposals for the establishment of what ultimately became the United Nations.

L’arbre des songes by Henri Dutilleux (1983-85) 

French composer Henri Dutilleux wrote L’arbre des songes (or “The Tree of Dreams”) in the mid-1980s. It’s a four-movement violin concerto that was dedicated to violinist Isaac Stern.

Dutilleux described it like this:

All in all the piece grows somewhat like a tree, for the constant multiplication and renewal of its branches is the lyrical essence of the tree. This symbolic image, as well as the notion of a seasonal cycle, inspired my choice of ‘L’arbre des songes’ as the title of the piece.

Treesong by John Williams (2001) 

American composer John Williams also took inspiration from trees when writing this violin concerto.

He found himself drawn to a particular tree at the Boston Public Garden: in his words, “a beautiful specimen of the Chinese dawn redwood, or metasequoia.”

This species of tree was once thought to have gone extinct. Fortunately, however, some modern-day examples were discovered, thereby saving the species and enabling modern humans to enjoy them.

Later, Williams met Dr. Shiu-Ying Hu, a botanist from Harvard. While they were walking in the Arnold Arboretum, she pointed out the oldest metasequoia and told the story of how she planted it in the 1940s.

“I was thunderstruck by this coincidence, and when I told her of ‘my’ metasequoia in the Public Garden, she informed me that the younger tree I loved so much was also one of her children,” Williams wrote.

The awe and human warmth of this realisation, along with Williams’s love for these trees, colours TreeSong.

Conclusion

From John Williams’s portrait of redwoods to Geminiani’s portrait of an enchanted forest, it’s clear that composers from every generation have enjoyed branching out by writing tree-inspired music, and there will surely be more tree-inspired music to come!

Which of these works best evokes the magic of trees? Have we missed any of your favourites? Let us know!