Читать книгу The Love Affairs of Great Musicians - Hughes Rupert - Страница 16

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While Händel was in London at the height of his autocracy, he was visited by a composer named Gluck, whom we think of to-day as a revolutionist in music, and a man of the utmost historical importance. To the lordly Händel, however, he was more or less contemptible, and people who know nothing else of either genius, know that Händel said, "Gluck understood about as much counterpoint as my cook."

Gluck did not make a success on his London visit, and began to criticise both his own work and contemporary schools of opera, with a thoroughness that resulted in a determination to "reform it altogether." From London he went to Vienna in 1748, and there he was soon a figure of importance, moving in the best families, and entertained at the best homes. Among the homes in which he was most cordially received, was that of the rich banker and wholesale merchant, Joseph Pergin, who had a large business with Holland. Both daughters of the house were, according to Reissman's not particularly novel expression, "passionately fond of music." Gluck was soon made thoroughly at home there.

"Soon also he was bound in most intimate affection to the elder daughter, Maria Anne. She reciprocated the feelings, and the mother gave her consent to the betrothal. Gluck dared to deem the year 1749, in which this change took place, the happiest of his life; but it also turned out to be his saddest, for the father refused his consent. This man, haughty with his wealth, rejected the honoured artist, since he was only a musician, and since, besides, his art offered no sufficient promise or surety for the proper support of a young woman. The lovers accepted the separation thus enforced, with patience, promising themselves that it should not be for long, and that they would preserve unbroken fidelity."

Gluck was called to Rome the next year, and there he had the news that the stern father was dead. Accordingly, as soon as he could release himself from his engagements, he hastened back to Vienna—as Schmid puts it—"auf dem Flügeln der Liebe nach Wien zurück" On the 15th of September, he was married to his Maria Anne, "with whom to his death he dwelt in the happiest wedlock, and who went with him on his triumphal journeys four years later." In 1754 the Pope knighted him; made him Cavaliere, and henceforth this once poverty-smitten street fiddler and strolling singer was known as Ritter von Gluck, the friend and protégé of his countrywoman, Marie Antoinette.

No children were born to the couple, but they took into their home a niece, and Gluck's wife devoted much of her time to the poor.

"He left his wife the chief heir. He even left it to her pleasure whether his brothers and sisters should have anything or not, and said in his will, 'Since the fundamental principle of every testament is the appointment of an heir, I hereby appoint my dear wife, M. Anne von Gluck, née Pergin, as my sole and exclusive heir; and that no doubts may arise, as to whether the silver and other personal property be mine or my wife's, I hereby also declare all the silver and other valuables to be the sole property of my wife, and consequently not included in my previous bequests,'"

None of the letters of Gluck, that I have been able to find, concern his married life, though many of them are in existence concerning his operatic warfare.

Burney met him in 1773 in Paris, where he was living with his wife and niece. In 1775, on his way back home from Paris, he stopped off at Strasburg to meet the poet Klopstock. D.F. Strauss quotes a description by a merchant of Karlsruhe of this scene: "Old Gluck sang and played, con amore, many passages from the 'Messiah' set to music by himself; his wife accompanying him in a few other pieces." On the 15th of November, 1787, when Gluck was seventy-three years old, he was at his home in Vienna under doctor's care. After dinner, it was his custom to take coffee out-of-doors, in the free, fresh air and the golden sunlight, where he used to have his piano placed when he would compose. Two old friends from Paris had dined with him, and they were soon to leave. Frau von Gluck left the guests for a moment, to order the carriage. While she was gone, one of the guests declined the liqueur set before him. Now Gluck was always addicted to looking upon the champagne when it was yellow; in fact, he used always to have a bottle at each wing of his piano, when he composed, and was wont to end his compositions, his bottles, and his sobriety in one grand Fine. But now he was forbidden to take wine, for fear of heating his blood.

On this day, however, he pretended to be angry at his guest for refusing the choice liqueur. In a burlesque rage, he seized the glass, drained it at a gulp, and jokingly begged the guests not to tell his wife. She came back to the room to say that the carriage was ready. Frau von Gluck and the guests left him for half an hour, and he bade them a cheerful farewell. Fifteen minutes later his third stroke of apoplexy attacked him, and his horrified wife returning found him unconscious. In a few hours he was dead. This wife, with whom he lived so congenially, and whose money gave him even more luxury than his operatic success could have procured—indeed, the very house he died in she had bought for eleven thousand florins—outlived him less than three years, dying March 12, 1800, at the age of seventy-one. She was buried near him, and her tomb, built by her nephew, has the following epitaph:

"Here rests in peace, near her husband, Maria Anne, Edle von Gluck, born Pergin. She was a good Christian, and without ostentation a mother to the poor. She was loved and cherished by all who knew her."