Nearly every composer has something to say about the subject, not least because they so often turned their own turbulent love lives into music
Eyes meet, sparks fly – and the music plays. From the troubadours who wandered France in the 12th and 13th centuries singing about courtly love to the starry instrumentalists recording love-themed recital albums in our time, from Arne’s comic ballad opera Love in a Village (a hit in its day) to Zemlinsky’s breakup orchestral work Die Seejungfrau, love has, one way or another, been one of the universal, timeless themes explored in western art music. Opera almost wouldn’t exist were it not for people falling in love with the wrong characters or for insatiable passion that drives them to extreme ends. Safe to say that in art as in life, love truly is all around.
We’re not talking about the love of friends, family or even nature – although there are plenty of pieces that explore those too – but romantic love, whether that’s the big, swept-off-your-feet kind or something quieter but no less strong. The sort of love that propels the dramas of Wagner’s Monteverdi’s or Verdi’s . Or the love that’s spurred countless songs, from, or Poldowski’s or Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s . Perhaps it’s the kind immortalised in musical miniatures such as Liszt’s (Love’s Dream) and Kreisler’s (Love’s Joy). Or that turned into allegory by Palestrina in his motets, expressing the pleasures of earthly love via ‘the divine love of Christ and his spouse, the Soul’. Nearly every composer has something to say about the subject, not least because they so often turned their own turbulent love lives into music. No wonder there’s music that speaks to every step of a romantic relationship.
