A composer on the wrong side of the law...
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David Hackett3 min read|3. May 2023
This is part 1 of 3 in a series by David Hackett about composers who ran afoul of the authorities.
When the boss takes your resignation very badly
J.S. Bach (1685 - 1750) may not be the first composer we associate with breaking the law. But the great Baroque maestro was not a man who liked being messed with. At times his fiery temper could land him in trouble with his superiors.
In 1717, frustrated at not receiving a long-awaited promotion from his employer, the Duke of Saxe-Weimar (having watched the duke's incompetent son be given the post instead), Bach decided to resign from his position.
But in the 1700s, ordinary court musicians were not supposed to have any say in such matters. Even worse was Bach's defiant insistence that he really was leaving. The duke had his hot-headed kapellmeister thrown into the nearest jail instead, as if to give him time to think it over.
He was unaware that he was facing one of the foremost, but also most stubborn, musical geniuses of the 1700s. Bach, who was happy to have a break from his usual duties, took prison life surprisingly lightly and even wrote some organ preludes from his cell. After a month the embittered duke had had enough. He ordered Bach released and reluctantly dismissed him.
Scruffy vagrant
It is perhaps less surprising that Ludwig van Beethoven (1770 - 1827) once had his own clash with the authorities. It happened after he had lost his way during one of his long afternoon walks and ended up in an unfamiliar town as darkness fell. Beethoven, who was never a man of much social awareness, tried to get his bearings by peering alarmingly into windows, which provoked enough shock and screaming from the local residents that a policeman eventually had to be summoned. Beethoven was jailed for vagrancy, despite his vigorous protests. The officer on duty complained to his superior: "We have arrested someone who will not leave us in peace. He keeps shouting that he is Beethoven; but he is a tramp, has no hat, an old coat ... nothing that can identify him."
The misunderstanding was finally cleared up after one of Beethoven's friends turned up to vouch for the scruffy composer. The police were probably relieved not to have to see him again.
When the get-rich-quick plan goes down the drain
Before he became the pioneering creator of early German Romantic operas such as Der Freischütz and Euryanthe, Carl Maria von Weber (1786 - 1826) had a surprisingly colourful and unruly youth. He drank and flirted and lived far beyond his means.
Weber was already deeply in debt when he worked at the court of Duke Ludwig of Württemberg in his early twenties. But it only got worse when he managed to lose a large sum of money that the duke had entrusted to him. In a desperate attempt to recover the money he became involved in an illegal scheme to sell military exemptions on behalf of his employer. The fraud was discovered, and Weber was arrested while attending an opera rehearsal. After a short spell in prison he was fined, expelled from Württemberg and told not to come back any time soon.
The whole episode was so embarrassing for Weber that he decided to lead a more sober and orderly life from then on. He kept his word. A little over a year later he had his first great success with two clarinet concertos, and after that there was no turning back.
To read more from David Hackett, go to www.musicbytheyear.com.