This is one of the very first books on the subject that features, among other interesting love stories, a revelation of the exact identity of Beethoven's "Immortal Beloved"; the letters of Liszt to his princess; letters of Chopin long supposed to have been burned, as well as diaries and letters gathered by an intimate friend for a biography whose completion was prevented by death; the publication of a vast amount of Wagneriana; the appearance of a full life of Tschaikovski by his brother, with complete elucidation of much that had been suppressed; a detailed account of the whole progress of Clara Schumann's beautiful love story, down to the day of the marriage; and numberless fugitive paragraphs throwing new light on affairs more or less unknown or misunderstood.
Volume 1:
The Overture
The Ancients
The Men of Flanders
Orland Di Lassus and His Regina
Henry and Frances Purcell
The Strange Adventures of Stradella
Giovanni and Lucrezia Palestrina
Bach, the Patriarch
Papa and Mamma Haydn
The Magnificent Bachelor
Gluck the Domestic, Rousseau the Confessor, and the Amiable Piccinni
A Few Tunesters of France and Italy – Peri, Monteverde, et al.
Mozart
Beethoven: the Great Bumblebee
Von Weber – the Rake Reformed
The Felicities of Mendelssohn
The Nocturnes of Chopin
Volume 2:
Franz Liszt
Richard Wagner
Tschaikovski, the Woman-Dreader
The Heart of a Violinist
An Omnibus Chapter
Robert Schumann and Clara Wieck
Musicians as Lovers