Plenty of composers enjoyed happy love lives.
Think of Edvard Grieg, whose marriage to his cousin Nina Hagerup, though not without its challenges, was marked by deep affection and artistic collaboration. Then there was Benjamin Britten, whose long-term partnership with the tenor Peter Pears was stable, creatively fulfilling and, let's face it, pioneering.
Then come those whose love lives were as tempestuous as their music— figures like Chopin, Schumann, and Wagner, for whom romance meant passion and turmoil in equal measure.
Some, meanwhile, seemed largely indifferent to matters of the heart.
But there is another, more tragic group: composers for whom love brought sorrow rather than solace. Whether rejected by those they adored, trapped in joyless marriages, or consumed by jealousy, these artists found in love not comfort, but anguish—and sometimes despair.
So, wiping back a tear and consigning the farewell letter to the bin, we present six composers who ensured wretched love lives.
Composers with terrible love lives
1. Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)
The Problem: They just weren't good together
Joseph Haydn was married for 30 years, but not to the person whom he’d have preferred. As a young man, the Austrian composer fell madly in love with Therese Keller, the daughter of a Viennese wig-maker, but his would-be parents-in-law had other plans – Therese was sent to a nunnery, leaving Joseph to marry her older sister, Maria Anna, instead.
Duly wed in 1860, the two were at loggerheads from almost day one. The marriage was childless, both had affairs – she with the painter Ludwig Guttenbrunn, he with the soprano Luigia Polzelli – and gossip about their feuding became standard fare. Several years after Haydn and Maria Anna had died, the Swedish composer Berwald reported that ‘They say in Vienna that Haydn’s rather unhappy and childless marriage is the reason why he composed so much.’
2. Franz Schubert (1797-1828)
The Problem: Love's young dream was foiled by poverty
Like Haydn, Franz Schubert (1797-1828) also fell in love with a Therese, but in the then-teenage composer’s case, his hopes of wedlock were shattered not by the will of her parents, but by his own penury. Yes, a law at the time prohibited marriage if the man could not prove his financial wherewithal to support a family.
Later in his short life, Schubert became smitten with one of his pupils, Countess Caroline Esterházy, but she, it would seem, had little interest in her skint, short, puffy-faced admirer, despite his obvious talents. He, then, had to turn elsewhere for pleasure. Whether or not the syphilis that brought about his death at just 31 was the result of regular visits to prostitutes is not known.
3. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-93)
The Problem: Tchaikovsky's was a love that dared not speak its name
Tchaikovsky’s love life was deeply complicated by his homosexuality, which he struggled to reconcile within the strict conformism of 19th-century Russian society.
In 1877, Tchaikovsky married Antonina Milyukova, one of his students, in an ill-fated attempt to conform to societal norms. The marriage quickly collapsed, driving the composer to a nervous breakdown. Once again, thoughj, from great pain came great art: Tchaikovsky's final completed symphony, Symphony No. 6 (known as the 'Pathétique') is often seen as a deeply personal expression of his inner turmoil and unfulfilled desires.
4. Alexander Zemlinsky (1871-1942)
The Problem: A good old case of unrequited love
In 1900, Alexander Zemlinsky (1871-1942, pictured top) became besotted with his piano student, the mesmerisingly beautiful Alma Schindler (later known as Alma Mahler – a hint of what's to come). She, in return, described him as a ‘chinless, toothless, unwashed gnome’. Nonetheless, she also found him strangely fascinating and a relationship of sorts developed between them, though by all accounts it remained unconsummated.
Hovering in the background, meanwhile, was one Gustav Mahler, who eventually made his move. Zemlinsky was devastated when Mahler and Alma married in 1902, and evidently had still not got over it by 1923, when he wrote his Lyric Symphony, a work telling about the woes of unrequited love.
Three more composers who endured painful love lives
5. Leos Janáček (1854-1928)
The Problem: A broken heart. Followed by a musical purple patch. Silver linings, eh?
If unrequited love can be painful, it can also be productive. When Leos Janáček fell for Kamila Stösslová, it inspired some of his greatest music: his String Quartet No. 2 ('Intimate Letters') and his three operas Katya Kabanova, The Cunning Little Vixen and The Makropoulos Case.
Love also turned him into a fervent correspondent: the married composer wrote over 700 letters to Stösslová, who was also married, 37 years his junior and had no great interest in art or in reciprocating his feelings. Janáček was undeterred. ‘Oh Kamila, it is hard to calm myself,’ he wrote, ‘but the fire that you’ve set alight in me is necessary. Let it burn, let it flame.’
6. Ethel Smyth (1858-1944)
The Problem: Unrequited love, but a rich friendship
Virginia Woolf remembered clearly the first time she saw Ethel Smyth: ‘Bustling down the gangway at the Wigmore Hall, in tweeds and spats, a little cock’s feather in your felt, and a general look of angry energy, so that I said, “That’s Ethel Smyth!”’
That was in 1919 but they didn’t properly meet until 1930. The British composer, by then in her 70s, fell in love with the novelist. ‘I don’t think I have ever cared for anyone more profoundly and it is I think because of her genius,’ she wrote in her diary. Woolf didn’t feel the same, but the pair became and remained friends, a relationship that was by turns fiery, inspiring and frustrating.
7. Carlo Gesualdo (1566-1613)
The Problem: He couldn't keep a lid on his jealousy... with disastrous results
Love turned truly disastrous in the case of the Italian composer Don Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa. When he was 24, Gesualdo returned to his castle to discover his wife, Maria d’Avalos, in bed with her lover. He brutally stabbed, slashed and shot the pair, ensuring they were both dead.
Despite undoubtedly being responsible for double murder, Gesualdo’s noble status protected him from prosecution. He was, however, plagued by guilt for the rest of his life. Rumours of witchcraft and sadomasochism surrounded him, but he went on to compose music that was extraordinary in its harmonic daring. Most distinctively, his six books of beautiful, ethereal and sometimes otherworldly madrigals. Have a listen below - it's quite extraordinary stuff.
Truly, a terrible love life. But one that, as with the other composers we've covered, resulted in great art.
All pics: Getty Images
