The sex life of Victoria and Albert

Currently in the news, sensational accounts of the relationship between Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.  So he kept making her pregnant so he could "manipulate" her and further his own ambitions ?  in the days before birth control, most people had huge families, even if they couldn't afford to keep them well, an accusation that cannot be lodged against the Queen and her husband, who came from the princely line of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. The House of Hannover had lucked out in 1714, when George became King of England.  Victoria and Albert weren't so far apart, socially.  Being the only surviving issue of a family not known for statesmanlike virtue, she could have been in a vulnerable position.  Albert made Victoria as much as she made him.  Without his visionary ideals, the Victorian Age might not have become so associated with the cultural values so central to German intellectuals of the era.  How much worse off we'd be had Victoria married a gammon ?

As for their sex life, they both enjoyed themselves without restraint. When told she shouldn't have more children, her response was heartfelt. "Am I no more to have fun in bed"?  As for thre notion that post natal depression proves anything, that's nonsense. It can happen to anyone.  In any case, it is an insult to Victoria to suggest that Victoria was too stupid to have her own mind. Lie our present Queen, she was no pushover : she read and understood what her governments presented her with. She refused, for example, to outlaw sex between women. It wasn't because she thought women were asexual but rather that she couldn't imagine getting it off without a man.  So let's stuff these ideas of Victoria as victim.  Millions of women  are abused and mistreated. These are the women who need our support, in the real world beyond TV and media sensationalism.  Insult Victoria, and you're insulting all women who have managed against the odds.

Apropos Victoria and Albert, I'm looking forward to Prom 40 on 16th August, marking the 200th anniversary of Queen Victoria's birth. Ádám Fischer conducts The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in  Mendelssohn, Piano Concerto no 1 in G minor (Stephen Hough) and Symphony no 3 "The Scottish", with Arthur Sullivan's suite on Victoria and Merrie England and a set of songs by Prince Albert himself (Alessandro Fisher, tenor).   G&S for the crowds,  but Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha as an insight into the private world of Victoria and Albert.  Incidentally, Victoria and Clara Schumann  were both born the same year.  Both of them had numerous children, and were reasonably happy (Robert and Cara kept sex diaries). And both of them were pioneers, created careers almost without precedent.

Feminist radical : Schubert and Wolfgang Rihm - Prégardien, Andrés Orozco-Estrada

Very interesting programme from Andrés Orozco-Estrada and Hr-sinfonieorchester Frankfurt - Schubert and Wolfgang Rihm.  Schubert Symphony no 2 and the Unvollende, with Rihm's Das Rot song cyle and six songs from Schwanengesang.  Listen HERE.  Perhaps not so unusual, though if you consider that Rihm was setting the poems of  Karoline von Günderrode 1780-1806). Von Günderrode was one of the earliest Romantic poets who adapted the revolutionary ethic of the period to develop what we'd now recognize as radical feminist ideas.  Her poems and letters were written a whole generation before the Brontë sisters : indeed she was long dead before they were even born.  

Though poor, background was aristoctratic and intellectual. Learning was her escape from the mundane restraints of women in society at that time.  Like so many thinkers of her time she was fascinated by the  margins of Europe - the "East" and the far north west, Nordic lands and Scotland representing uncivilized freedom where the unconscious could operate without convention. She also made the most of the passion of the time for writing literary letters which dealt with intellectual concepts.   These sorts of letters weren't just personal, but were discusssed in salons and sometimes published in book form. A useful outlet for women, whose chances of being taken seriously were limited. Uncowed, she wrote “Masculinity and femininity, as they are usually understood, are obstacles to humanity.”  In a letter to Gunda von Brentano she writes: “I’ve often had the unfeminine desire to throw myself into the wild chaos of battle and die. Why didn’t I turn out to be a man! I have no feeling for feminine virtues, for a woman’s happiness. Only that which is wild, great, shining appeals to me. There is an unfortunate but unalterable imbalance in my soul; and it will and must remain so, since I am a woman and have desires like a man without a man’s strength. That’s why I’m so vacillating and so out of harmony with myself….” (read more here and here) 

In Das Rot : Sechs Gedichte der Karoline von Günderrode, from 1990, Wolfgang Rihm addresses the epigrammatic nature of the texts, letting the poet speak for herself.   The first song "Hochrot" comprises just eight lines:

Du innig Roth,

Bis an den Tod 

Soll meine Lieb 

Dir gleichen,

Soll nimmer bleichen, 

Bis an den Tod,

Du glühende Roth, 

Soll sie Dir gleichen. 

(You, inward red dawn, until death should my life be like you, never fading,you glowing Redness , ever true.)

Thus the minimal piano line (Ulrich Eisenlohr) and restrained declamation in the voice part. A short pause before the last line, which rises high up the scale. Clear traces of the influence of Rihm's teacher, Wilhelm Rihm, and specifically of Killmayer's Hölderlin-Zyklusen. Making the connection between Hölderlin and Von Günderrode is valid. Both were way ahead of their time, more in tune with ours, in many ways. The text for the  second song "Ist alles stumm und leer" is strophic, Günderrode employing images like scents, distant sounds, fragile flowers.  But in the last verse, something wilder emegeges.Prégardien's voices lowers, grows richer.  "Phönix der Lieblichkeit,
Dich trägt dein Fittig weit
Hin zu der Sonne Strahl,
Ach was ist dir zumal
Mein einsam Leid!" (Phoenix of loveliness, your wings carry you far up towards the sun)  Thoughnthe phoenix might ignore the observer, it is an inspiration, for the phoenix flies into flames and is reborn.

"Des Knaben Morgengruß" and "Des Knaben Abendsgruß" are mirror images. Both employ similar images but for different purposes, which Righm reflects by settingbthe first with plangent spareness, the second more forcefully. Again, clear Killmayer influences in the ardent near-staccato rhythms.  Thus we're prepared for the wild intensity of "An Creuzer". The redness of dawn becomes the glowing redness of sunset, before it's annihilated in darkness.  Rihm's setting is jagged, reflecting the dissonant image in the text : the piano 's last notes dark and foreboding.  And so to the strange last song.

Liebst du das Dunkel 

auigter Nächte
Graut dir der Morgen 

Starrst du ins Spätrot
Seufzest beim Mahle 

Stößest den Becher
Weg von den Lippen 

Liebst du nicht Jagdlust 

Reizet dich Ruhm  nicht
Schlachtengetümmel 

Welken dir Blumen
Schneller am Busen 

Als sie sonst welkten
Drängt sich das Blut dir
Pochend zum Herzen. 

(Do you love darkness (ambiguity). Longing for a feast but pushing  the wineglass away, passion so strong it wilts flowers and ends in death.).  

Günderrode's life seemed full of contradiction : breaking away from conventional role models, yet not finding resolution.  She fell in love with a man she could not marry, and killed herself, aged only 26. One wonders if she would have been happy even if she had married? Perhaps for a Romantic, turbulence and tragedy make better art.  The Schubert Heine songs with which this interesting concert ended continued the mood of irony.  Günderrode would have been (just) old enough to be Schubert's mother but she is in some ways the predecessor of some of his poets like Schulze and Mayrhofer.  So it was good hearing Rihm's settings of her work with Schubert's orchestral work.

Prostitute as Cultural Warrior

花影恨(Fa Yin-hun) (1917-1939) was the flower name of  Zhu Xiu shen (朱秀珍) (Chu Sau Chun)
orphaned young, forced by poverty to work in tea houses and/or brothels in Shek Tong Shui, the historic quarter of Hong Kong, where tea houses, theatres and restuarants were centred. The women sang and told stories : prostitution being only one form of entertainment.  The area is now ultratrendy. Although brotels were banned in 1931, laws don't stop people doing.things. Fa was kept for a while by a patron, but didn't lose her ties with the other women. In 1937, the Japanese invaded China, taking Shanghai and later Guangzhou (Canton). Fa Yin-hun decided to contribute to the war effort and refugee aid by organizing 58 other songstresses in a singing competition, raising money from their clients. Shame on those men who couldn't do it themselves !  On 20th November 1939, Fa attended an opera where Ma Tse Tsang starred. He was an iconic figure who transformed Cantonese opera and culture : idolized by many to this day.  Please read more about him a, his wife Hung Sin Nui and his worthy successor Sun Ma Tse Tsang on this site, using the search facility. That night, Fa went home and sent her maid out to get midnight snacks, which people often do. When the maid came back, she found Fa dying from ingesting opium.  Taken to Queen Mary Hospital - then the most modern and advanced hospital in the region - she died, aged only 22. Why did Fa take her life ? She had prestige from her fund raising efforts, and had talent and good looks. In her suicide note, she wrote of despiar. Whatever she could or could not have achieved the circumstances of her situation stacked the odds against her.  

Fa's grave is situated on a hillside, facing northwest, towards the Pearl River and Guangzhou. To this day, it's still swept and visited. Once there was a vase inscibed with words from her famous song 塘西名姬 (Tong Sai Min Ji - Song of the Western district (Shek Tong Shui)  Her story, and that of the many other women in her profession has inspired novels,TV shows and films, including Stanley Kwan's Rouge (1988) about which I've written here.  Please also read about Su Xiao Xiao (So Siu Siu, 蘇小小) who lived in the fifth century AD , another child sold into entertainment, whose talent and moral fibre has inspired poets and artists ever since. See my piece "First and Greatest Traviata of them all" HERE. Below, two useful clips. The first which has English subtitles, describes the area and times, with Fa Yin-hun's song sung by a male singer. The second has the song in orchestrated form, with lots of photos of her life.