Author: David Hackett

In the spring of 1826 Franz Schubert was experiencing a serious slump. He was in low spirits, short of money and most worryingly, struggling to write any music. In desperation he made one of his sporadic attempts to find steady employment, applying for a musical directorship at the …

Largely overlooked today, Maria Agate Szymanowska was one of the most celebrated concert pianists of 1820s Europe. A personable and charming woman, her impressive list of professional contacts reads like a Who’s Who of famous early nineteenth …

Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony manages to do what no symphony had previously managed: to transcend musical boundaries. With its intricate psychological layers and allusive sidetracks, it is like a “construction of mirrors, reflecting and refracting the values, hopes, and fears of those who seek to understand and explain it,” according to Beethoven biographer, Nicholas Cook.

Felix Mendelssohn may well have been one of the most naturally gifted musicians who ever lived. As a young man, he wasn’t far short of astonishing. Aside from the striking preciousness of his youthful compositions (he was even younger than Mozart …

Franz Schubert had a habit of not finishing symphonies. In the last decade of his life alone, he started six and completed just one. The other five were left abandoned, sometimes mid-phrase, and in various states of dereliction – a sketched-out movement here, a few scribbled notes there …

It begins delicately enough: a unison C, reverberating softly across the strings, oboes, clarinets and bassoons. It swells to a forte before dissipating itself in a short fragment of melody. Silence, followed by a brief answering phrase in the violins. The whole passage repeats itself … 

In the 1820s and 30s, Luigi Cherubini was the notoriously short-tempered, officious director of the Paris Conservatoire, an institution he ran with the rigour of a crack SAS unit. Punctuality, order and discipline were all sacrosanct to him. He once physically chased a young student, a certain Hector Berlioz …

There was little ideology behind Hummel’s art – he was not the sort to make sweeping political or philosophical statements. He would not tear up a dedication page in a fit of rage, offer short shrift to any performer who complained his music was too difficult to play, or throw hard-boiled eggs at …

In middle age, Beethoven’s musical ideas were growing ever more expansive – rather like his pianos, in fact. He had a way of getting through the latter with almost indecent haste. His old friend and protégé Ferdinand Ries noted Beethoven’s penchant for accidentally damaging …

When the celebrated French pianist and composer, Marie Kiené Bigot de Morogues, began to suffer serious health issues in her early thirties, there were whispers throughout Paris that it was sadly inevitable: that women were physically and temperamentally suspect and not designed to take on demanding …