The History of the String Quartet: From Witty Conversation to Political Statement

 

It began as an outgrowth of four-part sonatas and took generations of experimentation before anyone grasped its potential.

Today we’re looking at how the string quartet evolved from an instrumental experiment to one of the foundational genres of classical music history.

The Pre-History of the String Quartet: Allegri and Scarlatti

Caldwell: Gregorio Allegri (ca, 1740)

The first music written for two violins, viola, and bass viol appeared in 1650: the Sinfonia for Strings, composed by Italian composer Gregorio Allegri (c. 1582–1652).

Although 20th-century historians dubbed it the first string quartet, it wasn’t what we think of today as a string quartet – i.e., it wasn’t in sonata form, and it didn’t employ any thematic development.

We got closer when, in the final decade of his life, Alessandro Scarlatti (1660–1725) wrote a set of four works for two violins, viola, and cello.

But instead of calling this collection of instruments a “string quartet,” Scarlatti dubbed them “four-part sonatas.”

The first “real” string quartet would have to wait a few more decades to be born. Its father was Joseph Haydn.

Joseph Haydn – String Quartet, Op. 33, No. 2, “The Joke” (1781)  

The string quartet solidified as a genre almost by accident.

In the 1750s, composer Joseph Haydn (1732–1809) was hired by a baron named Karl Joseph von Fürnberg to write music for an informal chamber music ensemble that included the baron’s steward, a priest, a local cellist, and Haydn himself.

The challenge hooked Haydn. Even after accepting a job with the noble Hungarian Esterházy family in 1761, he kept writing string quartets. In fact, his Op. 1, published in the mid-1760s, was actually a set of six string quartets.

Over the years, Haydn continued developing the form, eventually standardising it into a witty four-movement work – a sonata-form opening movement, a minuet (which in his Op. 33 he provocatively relabeled “Scherzo”), a slow movement, and a lively finale.

Over time, he made another important innovation: the idea that these four very different instruments could also be equal partners.

Haydn’s Op. 33, No. 2 string quartet – nicknamed his “Joke” – demonstrates these advances with real panache. The quartet’s nickname comes from the fact that in the final movement, the players trip over several false endings before arriving at the real one.

With Haydn’s Op. 33 quartets, the genre began to find its own voice.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – String Quartet No. 19 in C major, K. 465, “Dissonance” (1785)    

Haydn’s musical influence was profound.

Inspired by Haydn’s Op. 33, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) set out to write a set of six string quartets specifically as a tribute to Haydn’s.

They had no commissioner, and Mozart took his time, treating them like a passion project and comparing their publication to sending children out into the world. This Haydn tribute helped cement the genre’s conventions.

It also, in the case of the final quartet of the six, helped to break them. The final quartet in the set earned the nickname “Dissonance” because its opening two minutes feature an eerie, ghostly chromaticism.

That beginning also foreshadows a uniting idea of the entire piece: Mozart playing with the tension between A and A-flat.

Haydn was delighted that Mozart had taken up the baton of quartet writing. After hearing the quartets, he is said to have told Mozart’s father that Wolfgang was “the greatest composer known to me, either in person or by name.”

Ludwig van Beethoven – String Quartet No. 7 in F major, Op. 59, No. 1, “Razumovsky” (1806)   

Ludwig van Beethoven – String Quartet No. 14 in C-sharp minor, Op. 131 (1826)   lay

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827) began his revolutionary run of quartets in Haydn and Mozart’s shadows.

His first six, written as he mastered the genre, show flickers of originality, but his seventh was the true musical earthquake.

For starters, a performance clocks in at around forty minutes: nearly twice the length of a standard Haydn quartet.

Julius Schmid: Beethoven’s Walk in Nature

Beethoven was moving away from the model of domestic, aristocratic music-making pioneered by Haydn, envisioning something with symphonic ambitions that would require the expertise of professional players to do it justice.

He continued expanding his vision. By his fourteenth quartet – written in 1826, the year before his death – his ambitions had become truly revolutionary. This work is seven movements long, played without a break as one movement moves into the next.

With his fourteenth quartet, Beethoven signalled that the genre’s conventions were not fixed: the string quartet was deeply personal, and composers could have free rein in deciding how to write one.  

Although a generation younger than Beethoven, Franz Schubert (1797–1828) was mortally ill by 1824, having contracted syphilis two years earlier.

He channelled his thoughts and emotions about his illness into his fourteenth string quartet, nicknamed “Death and the Maiden” after his own 1817 song “Der Tod und das Mädchen,” which he used as the basis for the second movement’s variations.

The quartet is searingly personal, and Schubert never published it. There was certainly no guarantee that it would ever be preserved after his death.

But against the odds, it survived, teaching later composers how to showcase and express their own emotional vulnerability.   

Johannes Brahms (1833–1897) was born six years after Beethoven’s death. More than any other composer, he felt pressure to be the master’s musical heir. In fact, he took around twenty years to write his first symphony because Beethoven felt like “a giant marching behind” him.

Given Beethoven’s contribution to the string quartet genre, Brahms felt similarly about quartet writing as he did symphony writing. He destroyed an unknown number of his early string quartets and published only two in 1873, the year he turned forty.

Because of his perfectionism, all his surviving quartets, including his third from 1875, are obsessively, rigorously crafted.

He didn’t want to step too far away from Beethoven’s example; he treasured his Austro-Germanic musical inheritance deeply. He believed in the ability of the genre – at this point nearly 125 years old – to remain relevant in late 19th-century musical life.

With this quartet, Brahms proved that a smart composer could still bring life and beauty from the form, helping to set the table for the quartet genre to enjoy another century-plus of life.

Claude Debussy – String Quartet in G minor, Op. 10 (1893)    

 Of course of his career, Claude Debussy (1862–1918) only wrote a single quartet.

Unlike Brahms, Debussy was not particularly attached to musical Austro-Germanic history or convention.

Accordingly, he used cyclic form, a type of musical structure in which a single melodic cell returns throughout multiple movements of a work. Cyclic form adds an inner cohesion that can otherwise be difficult to achieve.

He also used harmony in a new way, employing unusual chords in unusual orders, creating less of a traditional narrative than in Beethoven and Brahms, and more of a long, interesting wash of sound.

Debussy is quoted as saying, “Any sounds in any combination and in any succession are henceforth free to be used…” This quartet is dazzling evidence of that approach.    

Béla Bartók (1881–1946) continued Debussy’s drift away from the Austro-Germanic musical legacy. In fact, Bartók’s fourth string quartet is, after Beethoven’s Op. 131, the most structurally radical work on this list.

It is built as a kind of musical palindrome; the first and fifth movements share thematic material, the second and fourth movements share thematic material, and then the central movement stands alone.

Bartók also looked to folk music for inspiration, using irregular dance rhythms and folk scales.

To give the quartet’s musical language a spiky edge, Bartók asked his players to use “snap pizzicatos,” plucking the string hard so that, on the rebound, it snaps back onto the instrument’s wooden fingerboard.  

In his deeply personal Eighth String Quartet, Shostakovich reinvented the Schubertian idea of the string quartet as a diary entry.

It was written over the course of three days in July 1960, a tribute to (in the words of its official dedication) “the victims of fascism and the war.”

But it also seems Shostakovich included himself in that group, since in the quartet he used his musical “signature.” This signature is built from the German names for the notes D, Es (E-flat), C, and H (B natural) – spelling out “D. SCH,” short for Dmitri SCHostakowitsch.

Dmitri Shostakovich

This pattern recurs in several of his most personal, meaningful works, as well as in all five movements of this quartet, recalling Debussy’s embrace of cyclic form.

Historians and listeners have debated the combined meaning of the dedication, the D-S-C-H signature, the political situation in the post-Stalin Soviet Union, and Shostakovich’s mental health around this time. Those debates will continue, but one fact beyond debate is the quartet’s emotional impact.

Haydn could never have foreseen his genial string quartet evolving into this: a way to encode private heartbreaking emotions inside a very public piece of music.        

Different Trains embraces 20th-century technology, relying on recorded tape snippets to augment the string parts.

In the work, Reich wrestles with the intersection of global and personal. Reich was a Jewish boy who travelled by train in America in the early 1940s. In adulthood, he realised that at the same time, other Jewish boys on another continent had been travelling by train, too – on their way to Nazi death camps. This work explores where their stories rhyme and diverge.

Different Trains won the 1989 Grammy for Best Contemporary Classical Composition. Like so many great string quartets before it, it expanded listeners’ ideas of what the music could do: addressing both political matters and deeply felt personal emotions while also using new technology to tell people’s stories and evoke emotion.

Conclusion

Taken together, these works tell the story of how the string quartet developed: how Haydn invented it; how Mozart and Brahms refined it; how Schubert and Shostakovich made it deeply personal; and how Beethoven, Bartók, Debussy, and Reich revolutionised it.

The string quartet has inspired some of the most inventive, intellectual, intimate classical music ever written – and composers are still writing for it today.

Twenty Trivia Questions About Classical Music

 by Emily E. Hogstad  March 25th, 2024

Need some trivia questions about classical music? We’ve got you covered!

Today we’re looking at the history of classical music for trivia inspiration. Learn about everything from a composer who murdered his wife, to a Venetian orchestra of talented orphans, to forbidden love affairs, a deaf composer at the premiere of his groundbreaking symphony, and hypnotherapy that inspired a piano concerto.

© classicalregister.com

Without further ado, here are our twenty trivia questions from classical music history:

Which composer from Bingen is also known as a saint?

Hildegard of Bingen!

Hildegard of Bingen was born around 1098 in present-day Germany. She started having visions at an early age and joined a Benedictine monastery as a child.

Around 1150 she composed a famous sacred music drama called Ordo Virtutum, or Order of the Virtues.

Hildegard of Bingen wasn’t just a composer. She also wrote theological works based on her visions, as well as scientific and medical texts.

Some modern popes have referred to her as a saint.   

Which composer murdered his first wife and was never punished for it?

Carlo Gesualdo!

In 1586, when he was twenty, Gesualdo married his first cousin, Donna Maria d’Avalos. They had one son.

Four years later, Gesualdo came home and discovered his wife in bed with another man. Gesualdo killed both his wife and her lover with a gun and sword.

The authorities decided he had not committed a crime.   

Which composer died after striking his foot with a staff he used while conducting?

Jean-Baptiste Lully!

Italian composer Jean-Baptiste Lully was both a dancer and musician.

He got a job in the court of Louis XIV. In 1687, to celebrate Louis’s recovery from surgery, he conducted a performance of his Te Deum.

He conducted by pounding a staff on the floor. In the process, he accidentally hit his foot. Gangrene developed and he refused to amputate because he still wanted to be able to dance.

Lully died on 22 March 1687 of his injuries.   

Which composer had seven kids with his second cousin, and thirteen kids with his second wife?

Johann Sebastian Bach!

In 1707, Johann Sebastian Bach married his second cousin, Maria Barbara Bach.

She died tragically and unexpectedly in July 1720.

The following year, Bach married an accomplished young singer named Anna Magdalena. She was twenty and he was thirty-six.

They had thirteen children together. Their youngest child, a daughter named Regina Susanna, was only eight years old when he died.   

Which composer wrote music for virtuoso orchestra of women who had been abandoned as babies?

Antonio Vivaldi!

He was a teacher at a facility known as the Ospedale della Pietà, which took care of orphaned or abandoned children.

As children, the most musically talented girls were chosen to perform in the figlie di coro, or daughters of the choir. They would both sing and play instruments.

Vivaldi wrote many of his works for them.   

Which composer had a dream that the devil played violin for him – and then woke up and wrote it down?

Giuseppe Tartini!

Giuseppe Tartini wrote in Jérôme Lalande’s Voyage d’un François en Italie:

One night, in the year 1713 I dreamed I had made a pact with the devil for my soul. Everything went as I wished: my new servant anticipated my every desire. Among other things, I gave him my violin to see if he could play. How great was my astonishment on hearing a sonata so wonderful and so beautiful, played with such great art and intelligence, as I had never even conceived in my boldest flights of fantasy. I felt enraptured, transported, enchanted: my breath failed me, and I awoke. I immediately grasped my violin in order to retain, in part at least, the impression of my dream.

Even so, Tartini insisted that the work was not nearly as impressive as the one he’d dreamed.   

Which composer was fired by an archbishop and kicked on the behind?

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart!

In 1781, Mozart was aiming to ingratiate himself with Emperor Joseph II, while still remaining employed with Prince-Archbishop Hieronymus Colloredo in his hometown of Salzburg.

Unfortunately, Colloredo kept Mozart from making lucrative appearances, and acrimony grew between them.

Mozart tried to resign, but Colloredo refused to accept the resignation.

Meanwhile, Mozart’s father was horrified at his son’s behavior and was encouraging him to make nice with the archbishop.

The following month, Colloredo finally accepted the resignation…but not before having his steward kick Mozart on the behind.

Mozart decided to make a go at freelancing in Vienna. The decision would change his life and career and music forever.   

Which composer was also one of the best swordsmen in Europe?

Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges!

Bologne was the illegitimate son of a white planter named Georges and an enslaved Black woman named Nanon.

When he was seven, he was brought to France to be educated. At thirteen, he enrolled in a fencing academy. He soon proved to be a talented student.

A fencing master derided him by labeling him an “upstart mulatto.” Bologne beat that fencing master in a match, to the intense pride of his father.

Bologne also studied music as a teenager and became a great violinist and composer as an adult.    

Which composer had his skull stolen out of his coffin?

Joseph Haydn!

Haydn died in 1809 in Vienna and was buried. Soon after, the gravedigger was bribed by two men named Joseph Carl Rosenbaum and Johann Nepomuk Peter.

They wanted to examine Haydn’s skull because they were interested in phrenology, the pseudo-science then in vogue of associating character traits or talents with physical features.

Haydn’s skull ended up in Rosenbaum’s possession, and a series of darkly zany misadventures occurred.

Haydn’s skull and body were only reunited in the twentieth century, when a descendent of Haydn’s employer built a tomb for him.  

Which composer went deaf and had to be turned around to see the audience at the premiere of his ninth symphony?

Ludwig van Beethoven!

Beethoven was only in his mid-twenties in the 1790s when he first started noticing that his hearing was deteriorating.

By the time of the premiere of his ninth symphony in 1824, he had been completely deaf for a decade.

After the work’s first performance was over, he didn’t realize how the audience was applauding, and so singer Caroline Unger turned him around so he could see.  

Which composer and pianist were kept from marrying by the pianist’s father?

Robert Schumann and Clara Wieck!

Clara Wieck was born in 1819 and her music teacher father was insistent on molding her into a great musician.

Between his strict teaching regimen, his daughter’s astonishing inborn talent, and a little luck, Clara became one of the greatest pianists in Europe.

Another older piano student named Robert Schumann was rooming with the Wiecks. To Wieck’s horror, Robert and Clara fell in love. Robert proposed when she was eighteen, and she accepted.

Robert and Clara actually went to court to bypass Wieck. The court battle was bruising, but they were married in September 1840, the day before Clara’s 21st birthday.

Their love affair has since become one of the best-known love stories in the history of classical music.

Which composer and violinist did people think had made a deal with the devil?

Niccolò Paganini!

The violin has always had a bit of a demonic connotation (see the Devil’s Trill sonata!). This may have started because portable violin-like instruments were popular in dances during the Renaissance and had connections with physical love.

Violinist Niccolò Paganini was born in Italy in 1782, and he was so good at playing the instrument that audiences struggled to believe his talent had a natural explanation.

His appearance contributed to the myth. He was pale and vampiric, and looked like a cadaver.

He was also said to be a dangerous womanizer, which didn’t help his reputation!  

Which composer almost carried out a mass shooting – but didn’t because he was a composer?

Hector Berlioz!

Berlioz was a promising young composer when he became involved with pianist Marie Moke, sometimes known as Camille Moke. They became engaged when she was nineteen.

Berlioz traveled to Italy to compose. While there, he got news that she’d broken off the engagement and married an heir to a major piano making business by the name Camille Pleyel. (Yep: two Camilles in one marriage!)

Berlioz was so infuriated that he got on a carriage to go to Paris, carrying two pistols. He intended to shoot Moke, her mother, and then himself.

However, his rage eventually abated, and he decided not to go through with his violent plan, in part due to the music that the world would lose out on if he’d kill himself at the start of his career.

Beyond a doubt, it’s one of the most disturbing stories in classical music history.   

Which composer fell in love with Clara Schumann…but never married her?

Johannes Brahms!

Brahms was only twenty years old when he came to visit Robert and Clara Schumann in the autumn of 1853.

Both Robert and Clara were hugely impressed by the young man and took him under their wings. Robert even wrote a famous article in which he hailed Brahms as the savior of music.

In February 1854, Robert’s mental health issues came to a head, and he went to an asylum for treatment, leaving behind a distraught pregnant Clara and seven other young children.

Brahms tried to help Clara how he could, and, awkwardly, fell in love with her.

For a variety of reasons, even after Robert’s death, they never married. But they continued to love each other deeply and inspire one another creatively until Clara died in 1896.   

Which composer died after getting cholera from drinking unboiled water?

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky!

Tchaikovsky was feeling uncharacteristically optimistic after writing and premiering his famous sixth symphony – also known as the Pathetique – in October 1893.

However, his life was cut short just a few days later, when he went to a restaurant and drank a glass of unboiled water. There was a cholera outbreak in St. Petersburg at the time. Tchaikovsky came down with cholera and after an illness of just a few days’ duration, died.

Rumors have circulated that Tchaikovsky’s death was suicide or forced suicide. The New Grove Dictionary of Music reports, “We do not know how Tchaikovsky died. We may never find out.”  

Which composer and pianist had to get hypnotherapy to cure his writer’s block?

Sergei Rachmaninoff!

In 1897 composer Sergei Rachmaninoff suffered a humiliating premiere of his first symphony. The conductor may have been drunk, and the critics panned the work.

For three years, he couldn’t compose a thing, and he sank into a deep depression. After months of this, his aunt suggested that he seek help from a mental health professional, which he did.

He began working with a doctor named Nikolai Dahl, seeing him daily for four months in early 1900. He was composing again by the summer.

His next big work is perhaps his most famous – his second piano concerto. He dedicated the work to Dahl in appreciation.   

Which composer once claimed he only ate white food?

Erik Satie!

Satie wrote in his book, the amusingly titled Memoirs of an Amnesiac:

My only nourishment consists of food that is white: eggs, sugar, grated bones, the fat of dead animals, veal, salt, coconuts, chicken cooked in white water, fruit-mould, rice, turnips, camphorated sausages, pastry, cheese (white varieties), cotton salad, and certain kinds of fish (without their skin). I boil my wine and drink it cold mixed with the juice of the Fuchsia. I am a hearty eater, but never speak while eating, for fear of strangling.

This portion of the memoir is somewhat satirical, but it’s unclear exactly how much he was exaggerating.   

Which composer left his first wife, who later shot herself?

Claude Debussy!

Debussy met and married his first wife, Lilly Texier, in 1899.

Within four years, Debussy had grown bored of her. She wasn’t a sparkling intellect, and he felt she was too dull. She also never gave birth to a child, which disappointed Debussy.

Debussy’s solution to his marital troubles was to have an affair with a glamorous married singer named Emma Bardac.

The day before their fifth wedding anniversary, Lilly shot herself at the Place de la Concorde. She didn’t die, but the dramatic gesture didn’t save their marriage.

Debussy would eventually divorce Lilly and marry Bardac  .

Which composer never married and had a houseful of Siamese cats?

Maurice Ravel!

The perpetually single composer lived in a magical house called Belvedere outside Paris. Instead of a wife or lover or children, he filled Belvedere with various mechanical trinkets, Siamese cats, and music.

In his opera L’enfant et les sortilèges Ravel wrote an aria called Duo miaulé, or Meowed Duet. This work was clearly inspired by his cats.   

Which American composer died of a brain tumor in his late thirties?

George Gershwin!

In the mid-1930s, at the height of his creative powers, Gershwin began complaining about headaches, stomach aches, and other symptoms.

In 1937, while soloing with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, he had a brief seizure, followed by an olfactory hallucination of burning rubber.

He began deteriorating mentally, rubbing chocolate on his body and trying to shove a man out of a car. Doctors labeled him a hysteric.

However, when he went to the hospital for the last time, it was clear to doctors something was physically wrong. Gershwin was diagnosed with a brain tumor and died on the operating table   .

Conclusion

Classical music trivia is full of facts about generations of musicians and performers. We hope you enjoyed these twenty, and that they’re a good jumping off point to learn more!

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

Why D-Flat Major Should Be One of Our Favorite Keys

 by Janet Horvath

“What? D-Flat Major?” Most string players wail, “that’s a key signature with FIVE FLATS!”

I don’t blame them. It’s so much more difficult to play in tune on string instruments without the resonance of the open strings.

Pianists, though, will be elated. They get to play on all of the black keys. Numerous composers have used D-flat major to depict lush, dreamy sounds, and to explore the richness and depth of expression imaginable in this key.

Perhaps you know that many composers associated specific emotions with certain keys. The key of E-flat major is a case in point, a key that is considered heroic. Think Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 The Eroica, Strauss’ Ein Heldenleben, a Hero’s Life, and dozens of string quartets and symphonies by Haydn, Sibelius, Elgar, Dvořák, Mozart, Bruckner, Shostakovich, Mahler.

Frédéric Chopin © Getty Image

One of the most famous piece for piano in D-flat is the Chopin Prelude Op. 28 No. 15 “Raindrop.” Chopin did not ascribe the name to this prelude. It begins hushed and pensive, and the affecting melody leaves us in a subdued mood. It turns suspenseful, becoming more chordal and powerful. The right hand continues the inexorable rhythm and generates the feeling of inevitability with its repeated and steady A-flats that seem to imitate raindrops. But the opening melodic line returns reassuring us, and the piece resolves peacefully. Whatever you imagine when you hear it, there is no denying the emotions generated.

Jean Sibelius

Romance in D-flat is an exquisite piece by Sibelius. Upon first hearing, you might think it’s a work of Chopin and I wouldn’t blame you. It’s amorous with flourishes and emotions you would associate with Chopin. Sibelius is not necessarily known as a solo piano composer. Ten pieces make up Sibelius’ Opus 24, composed between 1895 and 1903, and they are stunning. Diverging from his huge symphonic works puzzled Sibelius’ children too who asked him why he wrote these solo piano works, he responded, “In order for you to have bread and butter.”    

Sergei Prokofiev © Esoterica Art Agency 2018

Written in 1901 as a birthday gift, the D-flat major Romance has been published and performed separately. The Andantino opens with a two-bar chordal introduction in the right hand with a lyrical cello-like melody entering in the left hand. It’s gorgeous. The middle section becomes vibrant and agitated with octaves and chords marked with accents on each note, and the instruction, “forte crescendo possible.” A cadenza with rapid notes, is breathtakingly dramatic. The magnificent resonance achieved in this piece is due in part to the pianist flying all over the black keys.

Prokofiev Piano Concerto No. 1, Op. 10 was composed in 1911, and is dedicated to the Russian composer, pianist, and conductor, the “dreaded Tcherepnin” with whom Prokofiev worked at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. Although the piano concerto is only fifteen minutes long, in one movement, Prokofiev marked eleven distinct sections of varying tempos and disposition. From charm to the grotesque, every mood is depicted. The piece begins as it ends with an expansive, yearning, and deliberate theme in D-flat major with heart-thumping punctuation in the timpani. Electrifying octaves in the piano bring the piece to a finish.

Gabriel Fauré

Gabriel Fauré Cantique de Jean Racine, Op. 11 is a work for mixed chorus and piano or organ, with lyrics by the 17th-century poet Racine. A version for strings and harp is breathtaking. The text “Verbe égal au Très-Haut” or Word One with the Highest, is from a Latin hymn “O Light of Light” attributed to the fourth century bishop of Milan, St. Ambrose. The refined and sublime piece hints at the music of the Requiem Fauré composed later in life. Only 20 years old when he composed this piece, we are assured of his position as one of the greatest composers of French choral music when we hear the Cantique. A dazzling lilting melody opens the piece. The chorus enters with the lowest voices first and gradually expands to include the higher voices. After another interlude of the instruments alone, Fauré continues this technique and we experience a ravishing series of colors, dynamics, and textures, enhanced by the resounding key of D-flat.

Antonín Dvořák

Dvořák Scherzo Capriccioso Op.66 B.131, is an orchestral work composed in 1883. The D-flat major key allows the composer to explore not only the Czech folk music we usually expect but a more dark, opaque, and restless mood. Featuring a full complement of instruments such as the harp, triangle, English horn, and bass clarinet, Dvořák achieves a brilliant variety of tone colors and wondrous melodies, his forte. The English horn solo is especially poignant.

Amy Beach © Amybeach.org

Some composers actually see colors when he or she hears certain keys or pitches, a condition called synesthesia, in other words the perception of one sense through another. Amy Beach was one of these composers and D-flat major, for Beach, represented the color violet, traditionally associated with wealth, royalty, and the divine. The first section of her 1925 work Canticle of the Sun a cantata for chorus, soloists, and orchestra Op. 123, sets a thirteenth century text by St. Francis of Assisi. The piece begins Lento con Maesta, with the feelings of searching, of hesitancy, and then bursts into the key of D-flat major—the strong D-flat major chord used on the word “God” imbuing the word with wonder and veneration. The use of the key here is powerful as well as opulent.

I’m convinced and I hope you are too. D-flat major should be considered one of our favorite keys!