Shall we blame all this to music, and if so, shall we say that music has atoned sufficiently in the devotion of Wagner and his second wife to each other, and their lofty theories of art?  And in any case, how shall we explain the influence of music in the life of Wagner’s rival for supremacy, Johannes Brahms, a confirmed bachelor; or his other contemporary, Tschaikovski, who, after a normal love affair with a singer, Desiree Artot, who jilted him, eventually married a girl by whom he seemed to have been deeply loved, without feeling any return?  He claimed to have explained to the enamoured girl that he would marry her if she wished, but that he could not love her.  On these terms she accepted him, and the bridegroom endured all the agonies of heart ordinarily ascribed to bartered brides.  A burlesque honeymoon of a week was soon followed by a separation.  Tschaikovski regarded his wife with a horror bordering on insanity, finding what little consolation life had for him in the devotion of a widow, who furnished him liberally with funds and admiration, with an affection which, for lack of better information, we can only call, for lack of a better word, Platonic.

There are other musicians whose private affairs I need not repeat here, and yet others’ that I have not poked into.  There is no lack of curious entanglements, especially in the matter of the men and women who have played upon the human voice, but we have surely collected enough material for forming a judgment, especially when we have turned an additional glance upon the life of one other composer.

Now, the influence of music might be modified beyond recognition by the fact that one of the lovers might not be musical; but surely, when both man and woman are professional musicians, there can be no doubt of the governing power of music.  In recent musical history there is one eminent composer who married a woman also prominent in music.  In fact, Clara Wieck has been called the most eminent woman who ever took up music as a profession.  It would be hard to deny Robert Schumann a place among the major gods of creative art.  Every one knows how he began to love Clara, and she him, when he was first leaving his teens and she entering her fame as an eleven-year-old prodigy.  Their fidelity through the storm and stress of their courtship, their lifelong sympathy and collaboration in conserving a humanly perfect home, and in achieving a dual immortality, both as lovers and as musicians—­these certainly indicate music as a solidifying and enriching force in society.

And now, finally, in the procession that has filed past you, you have seen almost every imaginable form of love and lover, of husband and Lothario, or woman-hater.  There have been cool-blooded bachelors like Haendel, Schubert, and Brahms; there have been passionate pilgrims like Chopin, Beethoven, and Liszt, who loved many women, and married none.  There have been the home-keeping breeders of children, and contentment,