CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I. THE OVERTURE

II. THE ANCIENTS

III. THE MEN OF FLANDERS

IV. ORLAND DI LASSUS AND HIS REGINA

V. HENRY AND FRANCES PURCELL

VI. THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF STRADELLA

VII. GIOVANNI AND LUCREZIA PALESTRINA

VIII. BACH, THE PATRIARCH

IX. PAPA AND MAMMA HAYDN

X. THE MAGNIFICENT BACHELOR

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

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

XIII. MOZART

XIV. BEETHOVEN: THE GREAT BUMBLEBEE

XV. VON WEBER--THE RAKE REFORMED

XVI. THE FELICITIES OF MENDELSSOHN

XVII. THE NOCTURNES OF CHOPIN

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PRINCESS LICHTENSTEIN (Frontispiece)

DAPHNE

HELOISE

MARY STUART

ORLAND DI LASSUS (Roland de Lattre)

HENRY PURCELL

JOHN SEBASTIAN BACH

MORNING PRAYER IN THE FAMILY OF SEBASTIAN BACH

JOSEPH HAYDN

MRS. BILLINGTON

GEORG FRIEDRICH HANDEL

CHRISTOPH WILLIBALD VON GLUCK

JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU

NICOLA PICCINNI

JEAN BAPTISTE DE LULLY

WOLFGANG MOZART

MOZART, AT VIENNA, PLAYING HIS OPERA "DON JUAN" FOR THE FIRST TIME

LUDWIG VON BEETHOVEN

BETTINA BRENTANO VON ARNIM

COUNTESS THERESE VON BRUNSWICK

CARL MARIA VON WEBER

FELIX MENDELSSOHN

FREDERICK CHOPIN

GEORGE SAND

COUNTESS POTOCKA

THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF GREAT MUSICIANS

VOLUME I.

CHAPTER I.

THE OVERTURE

Musicians as lovers! The very phrase evokes and parades a pageant of
amours! The thousand heartaches; the fingers clutching hungrily at keys
that might be other fingers; the fiddler with his eyelids clenched while
he dreams that the violin, against his cheek is the satin cheek of "the
inexpressive She;" the singer with a cry in every note; the moonlit
youth with the mandolin tinkling his serenade to an ivied window; the
dead-marches; the nocturnes; the amorous waltzes; the duets; the trills
and trinkets of flirtatious scherzi; the laughing roulades; the discords
melted into concord as solitude into the arms of reunion--these are
music's very own.

So capable of love and its expression is music, indeed, that you almost
wonder if any but musicians have ever truly loved, or loving have
expressed. And yet--! Round every corner there lurks an "and yet." And
if you only continue your march, or your reading, you always reach that
corner.

Your first thought would be, that a good musician m