The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 — Story, Setting & Ideas

Anecdote as Argument

Hughes builds his portraits through vivid, often comic anecdotes rather than systematic analysis. The Bellini story, for instance, hinges on an opera glass, a balcony, and a judge who refuses a 'poor cymbal player.' When success arrives, the parents relent, but Bellini coolly replies he is 'wedded to his art.' The punch line—'This conclusion of the romance reminds one of Handel—a thing which Bellini very rarely does'—shows Hughes's method: he uses a small tale to encapsulate character, then undercuts it with a dry historical comparison. Readers should watch for these abrupt tonal shifts, which separate Hughes from more earnest biographers.

The Composer's Own Voice

Hughes frequently lets his subjects speak directly. In the Verdi section, he quotes the composer's first-person account of illness, debt, and the 'fifty ecus' needed for rent. This passage—'I lived at that time in a small and modest apartment'—is one of the few moments where the narrative slows to a personal, almost diaristic pace. The effect is to ground Verdi's later triumphs in a specific, material struggle. Hughes does not editorialize here; he simply presents the quotation and moves on. For a first reading, these embedded testimonies offer a counterweight to Hughes's own sardonic voice, and they reward attention as the most direct evidence of how these musicians understood their own lives.

Structure and Selection

The volume's table of contents reveals a deliberate architecture: after chapters on Liszt, Wagner, and Tchaikovsky, Hughes includes 'The Heart of a Violinist' and 'An Omnibus Chapter,' then closes with Schumann and Clara Wieck. The 'Omnibus Chapter' suggests a compendium of shorter sketches—Bellini, Verdi, Rossini, and others appear there. This structure means that a reader moving straight through will encounter extended treatments first, then a series of briefer, more anecdotal entries. Hughes does not claim completeness; he warns that Liszt's letters alone 'make up four volumes.' Instead, he selects episodes that illustrate a recurring theme: the tension between artistic ambition and romantic entanglement.

Tone and Its Limits

Hughes's tone is consistently knowing and slightly cynical. He refers to Liszt's 'industriously amorous' life and calls Bellini 'that great treasurer for the hand-organists.' Yet the excerpts also show restraint: when Verdi's children and wife appear, the irony recedes. The reader should note that Hughes's judgments are based on the sources he cites—letters, memoirs, and earlier biographies—but the excerpts do not reveal how he handles conflicting accounts. The book is a product of its era (1903), and its assumptions about gender and romance are embedded in the prose. A first-time reader might usefully compare Hughes's treatment of male composers with the brief appearance of Clara Wieck, whose story is reserved for the final chapter.

Because Hughes arranges his material as a series of self-contained vignettes, the volume can be entered at any chapter. The Liszt and Wagner sections establish the book's characteristic blend of anecdote and epigram; the later 'Omnibus Chapter' offers a sampler of shorter lives. Readers interested in how Hughes handles a single composer's full arc might start with Verdi, whose quoted testimony provides the most sustained first-person voice in the excerpts.

Reading Hughes’ portraits of Liszt and Wagner stirred something quiet in me—those tangled loves behind the melodies we hum without thinking. It left me wondering how restraint might shape a life differently than passion does. I kept circling back to Mozart’s own contradictions, the blend of buoyancy and loneliness. Life of Mozart — Key Ideas to Explore touches that same nerve, gently, the way old letters sometimes do.