# Top Twenty Bachelor Composers of Serious Music



## regenmusic (Oct 23, 2014)

I wonder if we will find a quality that links them. 

Beethoven
Brahms
Satie
Ravel

Some of these I am not sure about:
Moussorgsky 

Bachelorette
Hildegaard


----------



## Fabulin (Jun 10, 2019)

I doubt you will find any pattern at all. Nonetheless, here is a few that come to mind:

G.F. Händel, Pyotr Tchaikovsky (obviously)

Charles-Valentin Alkan
Anton Bruckner
Wilhelm Peterson-Berger
Emilie Mayer
Mozart's son

Really not that many, considering that I checked my home list of ca. 150 composers.

Maybe the pattern is that those many of those without family had their work forgotten, and do not figure in history at all.


----------



## Josquin13 (Nov 7, 2017)

Franz Schubert
Frederic Chopin

Who both died young, of course. Schubert may have been gay.

Antonio Vivaldi


----------



## flamencosketches (Jan 4, 2019)

Josquin13 said:


> Franz Schubert
> Frederic Chopin
> 
> Who both died young, of course. Schubert may have been gay.
> ...


Chopin was all but married to George Sand for some years, though of course never officially and it was quite a tumultuous relationship. Not sure whether or not that disqualifies him.

Francis Poulenc I believe never married, & was gay.


----------



## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

Tchaikovsky was married for a time, albeit disastrously. If applying bachelorhood in the strictest sense of the word I'm not sure if the term should apply to any unmarried composers who were involved in long-term romantic relationships (Britten, Liszt etc.).


----------



## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Josquin13 said:


> Schubert may have been gay.


Interesting. Perhaps I am remembering it wrongly but I thought the conventional history has him visiting ladies of easy virtue and falling inappropriately in love? What's the evidence for his being gay?

Given how many contemporary composers are gay it always seemed to me that there must be a bigger number than we know of gay composers in earlier times.


----------



## BachIsBest (Feb 17, 2018)

Enthusiast said:


> Interesting. Perhaps I am remembering it wrongly but I thought the conventional history has him visiting ladies of easy virtue and falling inappropriately in love? What's the evidence for his being gay?
> 
> Given how many contemporary composers are gay it always seemed to me that there must be a bigger number than we know of gay composers in earlier times.


I'm pretty sure there are just more gay folks these days than there used to be. Specifically on Schubert, considering his known activities with less reputable women and attempt to marry out of genuine love (although he never accumulated the financial means and therefore never married) I can't imagine him being gay.


----------



## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

FYI. This is an interesting, salacious read:


----------

