Author: David Hackett

Musical fashions can be as fickle as authoritarian regimes, especially if you’re a composer. One moment your name is everywhere, everyone wants a piece of you and you are feted as an integral symbol of the zeitgeist. Then a coup d’etat swings by and switches government, and suddenly you’re out in the cold …

You can love or loathe Richard Wagner. But you can never overstate his monumental influence. Few other western artists have left such a profound impression upon their age. He revolutionized operatic norms, opened up new realms of harmonic possibility and, most strikingly, fused music, dance …

Although a musical giant of mid-nineteenth century France, Jacques Offenbach was surprisingly tiny in person. A spindly, bird-like figure, seldom weighing more than forty-five kilograms, he was “the least imposing man in appearance one could imagine” according to an American music critic …

Whenever we talk about the tragedy of an artist being cut off in their prime, we might spare a particular thought for poor Julius Reubke. He was cut off almost before he had got started. So brief was his time on earth that he made the likes of Schubert, Mozart and Chopin look like venerable old men by comparison …

Regarded by many as the greatest female composer of the nineteenth century, Emilie Mayer was also one of the most fortunate. Helped in no small part by a generous family inheritance, as well as a stoical aversion to marriage, she was able to carve out a life and career largely on her own terms. “She claimed music as her life’s calling,” …

In late nineteenth century France it was generally agreed that Charles Gounod was the living embodiment of French music. After that he divided opinion to a surprising degree. One half of the country thought him an operatic genius on a par with Verdi and Wagner. The other half considered him a conservative reactionary …

When he was twelve years old, Hector Berlioz fell passionately in love with a girl six years his senior. Her name was Estelle – “tall, graceful, with large, grave, questioning eyes that yet could smile,” he fondly recalled, “hair worthy to ornament the helmet of Achilles, and feet – I will not say Andalusian, but pure Parisian …

Few figures in nineteenth century classical music have divided opinion as Franz Liszt did. It seemed you either revered or ridiculed him, and quite often for the same reasons. And yet you couldn’t ignore him. In the 1850s, he was probably the most important composer in Europe. He was certainly one of the most innovative …

Once regarded as the doyen of Danish music, Niels Gade was a man who always seemed to know how to make the best of himself and his circumstances. Reliable, hard-working, even-tempered and adaptable, he was popular with almost everyone who knew him – “the clever, good-natured Niels Gade” …

Despite his status as one of Europe’s best-loved and most iconic opera composers, Giuseppe Verdi also had a reputation for being the kind of man you did not mess with. It was a side to him his various collaborators – impresarios, librettists, singers or publishers – would all come to accept over time …