leckmichimarsch1782

[leckmichimarsch1782]

Debussy’s Disastrous Love Life

the most important thing to state first is that there will be no bawdy puns where i joke about debussys name and make it sound naughty, that being said:

when i said in my last post that debussy’s romantic life was a literal soap opera, i really meant it, except the only reason this might not be in a soap opera is because some parts may not be suitable for cable television, not that anyone’s watching anymore anyway.

i promise im just reading all of this off wikipedia so it really is true this time, the last story may have been somewhat apocryphal but i really hope not 

ok well let me first paint you a picture of paris around the turn of the century and shortly after.  it had a very palpable aesthetic, you had your cafes, and your quirky cool bohemians hanging out at the cafes like hippies over fifty years before that even became a thing, and art nouveau was starting to gain traction which was real pretty looking, and you had cholera if you didnt boil your water before drinking it (unless you wanna go tchaikovsky and say “im depressed anyway, fuck it”)  erik satie fit into this picture by playing his atmospheric almost melancholic gnossiennes to slip through the conversations and create that quintissential turn of the century parisian vibe.

debussy fit into this picture as a homewrecker i guess.  first he met a woman called gabrielle around the time he met satie and they started living together in the summer of 1893, and he basically cheated on her with a singer named therese roger like only a year after they moved in together.  their engagement was promptly called off, and debussy lost friends as a consequence.  eventually he set his sight on gabrielle’s friend lilly though, and dumped gabrielle for lilly.  debussy even threatened to kill himself if lilly didn’t accept him.  wasn’t he so dreamy?  debussy really watched the office, saw kelly on screen for a minute, then said “i wanna be like her.”  lilly did accept debussy’s affections though, and they got married around 1899.

then he cheated on her too.

this time it happened almost five years into their relationship (which i guess is improvement?).  apparently he didn’t think she was smart enough, or that she had the right sensitivity for music, so he had already become a bit indifferent towards his current girlfriend i guess.  he then happened to meet the mother of one of his piano students, one emma bardac, an intriguing, sophisticated singer who was very sharp in conversation and was also the wife of a prominent banker (but still had plenty of extramarital relationships).  instant fireworks.

debussy convinced lilly to stay at her home alone for a while, and immediately after left the city with emma on a steamy forbidden clandestine elopement to the north of france.  now, i know debussy cheated on multiple women, and as you’ll soon see, kinda drove his previous girlfriend lilly to do something she’d really regret, but easily his worst moral crime was taking a significant other to the north of france when he had no reason at all not to go to the south instead.  honestly, who goes to the part of france that has english weather??   when the part of france that’s by fucking italy and spain is just right there, beckoning you to pristine romantic mediterranean sandy beaches?  i don’t care if he wrote la mer or prelude to the afternoon of a fawn or even pelleas and melisande, claude debussy had horrible taste.

anyway, on the 11th of august 1904, debussy wrote to lilly, not telling her there was another woman, but simply that their marriage was off.  in debussy’s defence, he didn’t know that the following would happen, but still could have avoided it by just being good to his significant others: two months later, lilly attempted to shoot herself fatally by firing a revolver shot into her chest.  fortunately, she lived, but shit really hit the fan after that.  the entire story came to public light, embroiling both claude and emma in a deep scandal that resulted in emma being disowned by her parents, divorced from her husband, even more of debussy’s friends disowning him, including messager, dukas, and though he and ravel were never very close, their relationship grew sour when ravel joined other past friends of debussy in creating a public fund to raise money for lilly.

basically everyone in paris was pissed at both claude and emma, so they left for england for a while then eventually came back and chilled there. 

that’s kind of it for all the drama, they just married, had a daughter then died pretty much.

there’s really no moral to the story besides maybe don’t cheat on people?

another thing to probably mention is that this kind of stuff with regard to composers probably shouldn’t affect our enjoyment of their work.  sure, wagner was an awful person for more reasons than just antisemitism, and his wife (liszt’s daughter) cosima *blech* was pretty gross too, but the liebestod from tristan almost made me cry and i’m not ashamed to admit it.  beethoven basically drove his nephew to attempt suicide but we’re not really going to pretend his quartets aren’t bangers.  mozart-  no mozart never did anything wrong, actually, if i could kick it with the composers of my choice, mozart and haydn would be pretty high on my list.

the point is, though, just because a composer did something nasty doesn’t mean we can’t still love their music.  except for chris brown, who is objectively awful

peace.

[leckmichimarsch1782]

Real Liszt Story

i love me some juicy gossip about some composers so lets do the one who’s making me question my self worth as a musician momentarily,, I promise to do debussy’s soap opera love life really soon though, anyway I saw this little anecdote on a reasonably well designed site so i’m just going to be rational and assume it’s 100% true.

liszt was the absolute concert hall chad of the 1830′s (fuck thalberg his contributions to piano technique and music in general are nowhere near as numerous or cool as liszt’s.  he did only one thing i like which was delivering one of the shadiest lines i’ve ever heard.  people kept asking him when he was going to go against liszt in a public piano duel and he answered “i don’t play with accompaniment” lmfao)

some people say liszt was the first rock star, but at his concerts, he didn’t dive into the crowd.  ladies dove onto HIM.  according to classical music legend, liszt’s concerts were so crazy that men would scream like goats having full-bodied orgasms from the musical climaxes, and women ripped their clothes off exposing their bare tiddies in public. if you have any doubts about this, im just going off of what everyone else makes his concerts sounds like.  the point is, being an 1830′s sex icon meant many probable instances of boinking.  but one day, liszt boinked a crazy person.

lola montez was a very interesting woman.  im just talking out of my ass, in reality she had no talent in any capacity, for dancing or music, but still found success by having sex with all the right people.  kings, notable celebrities of the time, and yes, liszt, who used his contacts to secure her a role in an opera, which was a catastrophe as her singing was utter shit.  apparently they had a john/yoko relationship where the brilliant musician tolerated his girlfriends horrible singing because he saw the value in her as a person, and at the end of the day, that’s all that really matters.  but while there is a case to be made for yoko ono having talent in other areas, lola montez was probably talentless in all regards.

one of her most infamous moments was at a dancing tour of hers for gold miners in australia where she actually, according to historian Michael Cannon, “[raised] her skirts so high that the audience could see she wore no underclothing at all.”  After a bad review of one particular show, she literally attacked the editor responsible with a whip.  and at yet another show, she practically got booed off the stage after insulting the whole audience because of a few hecklers. she seriously did have a habit of firing pistols to frighten her boyfriends, and did in fact routinely attack people with whips too i guess.  wasn’t she so dreamy?

in 1842 liszt and lola got a room somewhere and did what people in the 1800s apparently thought was as bad as murder if you weren’t married, and lola promptly fell asleep afterwards.  liszt, aware that she’d brought a pistol, and likely deciding then that he should take his chance to get out of there, quietly left the hotel room, went downstairs, and stopped for only a moment at the desk of the concierge.  aware also of lola’s raging temper he drew a bundle of cash from his pocket and gave it to the hotel “for the damages that were to ensue” before getting the hell out of there.

when lola woke up she went actually ape shit and fucking smashed and shot at every piece of furniture in the entire room.

then she chased liszt all the way across europe to bonn in germany, but they would up breaking up all the same.

so, since liszt and her split up.... it’s a happy ending i guess?

anyway hope you enjoyed, next i plan to cover debussy’s scandalous romantic life, and probably satie’s weird habits too

ciao