Amazon Prime has wonderful documentaries on the life and works of the masters of western classical music – Beethoven, Chopin, and Haydn.
Volatile talent
Beethoven is the classical troubled genius who composed most of his acclaimed pieces of western classical music after he went deaf. He suffered internally but compensated for it with an almost arrogant external persona. His work is defined by showmanship and musical flourishes that are often inscrutable and to put it bluntly not always harmonious or melodious. The self-isolation imposed by his deafness and Vienna’s class barriers held-back Beethoven from finding the love of his life.
Pragmatic performer
There was no such issue for fellow Austrian of older vintage, Haydn. A prolific composer and lover, he displayed very little ego. Haydn, employed by an Austro-Hungarian prince for the large part of his career, played it safe. He did not quite have the subtlety of Mozart or the flourish of Beethoven, but they recognized him as a mentor. Having been a choir singer himself, Haydn’s music was sonorous, wholesome, and inclusive. It was easy to reproduce and conducive to group arrangements. And that made him a wealthy man.
While not playing for his employer, Haydn sold many of his compositions across Europe. But he himself didn’t travel very much beyond Austria-Hungary until he was in his sixties. In the late 1790s, he performed very successfully in London and hobnobbed with royalty. He died at 77, a ripe old age for the times. Later records show that he had composed sophisticated pieces just for himself.
Eclectic journey
Chopin was perhaps the most interesting of the three trailblazers of western classical music. Born in Warsaw to a French father and Polish mother, he was a teenage prodigy, who based himself in Paris. Shy and ridden with TB, he never quite felt like an insider in Paris. When he landed in the city, he found it muddy and infested with venereal disease. Paris also had a proliferation of flamboyant pianists.
While Chopin’s work was applauded, he could never quite achieve the public acclaim of a Franz Liszt. Despite his father having been a French teacher, Chopin himself spoke in halting French and remained the perpetual outsider – not that he had fully belonged to Poland either. The pressures of keeping up appearances meant that he spent more than he earned. Music tuitions kept him afloat. Political turbulence in Europe prevented his family from joining him regularly – most correspondences was through letters.
And love was proving hard to come by – for an unhealthy and unhealthy immigrant. But then, suddenly, Chopin hit it off with French novelist George Sands. She was a woman far ahead of her times. Having separated from her husband with whom she had had two children, she achieved success on her own terms. Sands had a string of male and female lovers including Chopin. For a time, she provided Chopin a home and semblance of family which allowed him to compose some of his best works. Chopin’s music was subtle and soft – the kind you can wake up to on a cool winter morning. He wove melodious tapestries from his infrequent joy and regular sadness.
Poetic tragedy
Yet for all his struggles, Chopin was quite opinionated. He called the Scottish an ‘ugly people’ but considered their cows to be magnificent. He didn’t think much of the music scene in Dresden and Prague.
After a prolonged struggle with TB, Chopin died at just age 39. It is poetic justice that his heart is buried in Poland – perhaps it had never left his motherland.
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