From Bellini to the Bosphorus: The Musical World of the 6th Duke of Devonshire

In this richly woven essay, Emre Aracı invites his readers on a lyrical journey through the forgotten musical affinities of William Cavendish, 6th Duke of Devonshire—a nobleman of exquisite taste, European inclinations, and a quiet yet profound love for music. Drawing upon evocative historical vignettes, the essay uncovers the Duke’s enduring admiration for Rossini and Bellini, his presence at the London premiere of "I Puritani", and his encounters with composers on both sides of the Channel and even the Bosphorus. Through the memoirs of Ferdinand Hiller and archival accounts from Paris, London, and Istanbul, Aracı resurrects a world where Italian opera resounded through English drawing rooms, where a snuffbox marked a noble friendship, and where a Turkish caique once floated into the heart of Chatsworth. With an eye for detail and a deep sensitivity to music’s power to transcend borders, this essay becomes a meditation on memory, elegance, and the echoes of harmony that continue to haunt the salons and gardens of a vanished age.

Chatsworth House (photo © Emre Aracı)

The name of the German composer, conductor, pianist and author Ferdinand Hiller (1811–1885) is little known today beyond the circles of music historians. And yet, this native of Frankfurt was a figure of no small significance—an artist whose life reads almost like a reference volume to the Romantic musical epoch of the nineteenth century, so intimately was he acquainted with the era’s towering geniuses. Hiller gave his first public performance at the tender age of ten, performing a piano concerto by Mozart. He soon struck up a close friendship with Felix Mendelssohn, his senior by two years, who advised him to study under Johann Nepomuk Hummel in Weimar. It was there, in that small Thuringian town, that Hiller met Goethe, no less, and in 1827 accompanied Hummel on a journey to Vienna, where they paid a solemn visit to the dying Beethoven. In accordance with the custom of the day, Hiller did not forgo the melancholic ritual of snipping a lock of the great man’s hair as a memento. Many years later, that very lock would inspire a most curious modern odyssey of its own, chronicled in Russell Martin’s book Beethoven’s Hair (2001) and subsequently in several documentary films.

Ferdinand Hiller

Whilst in Vienna, Hiller and Hummel also attended a memorable performance of Winterreise, at which Schubert’s baritone companion Johann Michael Vogl was accompanied at the piano by the composer himself. Hiller would recall that his teacher, Hummel, was moved to tears during the recital. In 1828, Hiller took up residence in Paris for a period of seven years, forming friendships with Berlioz, Chopin, and Liszt. Chopin, in fact, dedicated his Three Nocturnes, Op. 15, published in 1834, to Hiller. Encouraged by such luminaries as Cherubini, Halévy, Meyerbeer and Rossini, Hiller’s path led him eventually to Leipzig, where he became conductor of the Gewandhaus Orchestra for the 1843–44 season. It was Hiller who stood at the podium in Dresden on 4 December 1845 to conduct the premiere of Schumann’s Piano Concerto in A minor, with Clara Schumann as soloist—a work the composer had dedicated to him. And it was again Hiller who lent his assistance to Wagner in the preparations for the inaugural performance of Tannhäuser, first staged in Dresden on 19 October of that same year.

In time, Hiller would commit to print his recollections of Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Rossini, and these memoirs too would assume their place within the annals of musical literature. It was in September of 1855—while the Crimean War still raged and Sevastopol had only just fallen—that Hiller encountered Rossini in the picturesque seaside town of Trouville, on the Normandy coast of France.

Trouville by Claude Monet

During their stay, Hiller took meticulous notes of the reminiscences Rossini shared with him, and these charming recollections began to appear as weekly instalments in various musical journals of the time. Among them was the Dwight’s Journal of Music, published in Boston, which devoted space to these intimate conversations between the two maestros. Both men, accompanied by their wives, were lodging at Trouville’s famed Casino-Salon. I had long associated Trouville with the shimmering canvases of Monet and with Marcel Proust’s habitual pilgrimages to this coastal haven, yet I confess I had no inkling that Rossini, too, had once summered there. I now understand better why one of Trouville’s streets bears the name Rue Rossini.

Rossini in 1865, (photo Etienne Carjat)

Rossini had come to Trouville in July of that year, upon the advice of his Paris physician, to take the sea air, and remained until the end of September. His meetings with Hiller took place between the 2nd and the 19th of that month. In the final instalment of their conversations, published in the 2 February 1856 issue of the journal, Rossini, for reasons unknown, recounted to Hiller his rather unexpected acquaintance with one of England’s most illustrious and affluent noble families—the Dukes of Devonshire.

It was in 1823, en route to London, that Rossini, then residing in Milan, was introduced to the Duke by a mutual acquaintance. Such was the serendipitous nature of musical and social encounters in that gilded age. “The friend who had arranged to visit the Duke”, Rossini began, “simply refused to go without me, despite the fact that I was not attired in a manner befitting the drawing room of an English nobleman”. And so the story unfolded. “But the Duke, who was an ardent devotee of music, disarmed me with his graciousness. We dined together, and afterwards I sang for him—two or three songs”.

At this, Hiller could not resist questioning the propriety of singing immediately after such a meal. “Ah yes”, replied Rossini, “but I must confess that never have I sung with greater enthusiasm or abandon than I did after that splendid repast”. The Duke, evidently charmed, went further still. He furnished Rossini with letters of introduction to influential circles in London—documents that would smooth the composer’s path in the English capital.

William Spencer Cavendish, 6th Duke of Devonshire
by Thomas Lawrence

Some twenty years later, Rossini happened upon the very same Duke once more—this time in the market square of Bologna. The Duke recognised him at once, approached him warmly, and shook his hand. True to his word, he paid Rossini a visit at his residence a few days later, presenting him with an elegant snuffbox as a token of their renewed acquaintance. Yet it was not the value of the gift that most impressed the composer, but the Duke’s enduring kindness and gracious spirit. This unusually warm friendship was with none other than William Spencer Cavendish, 6th Duke of Devonshire (1790–1858), known within his family as “the Bachelor Duke”, having never married. A man of exquisite taste, the Duke was as devoted to the arts as he was to his role as a collector. He was deeply versed in painting and sculpture, and built up an extensive library composed of rare volumes acquired with connoisseurial care.

When he inherited the dukedom in 1811 at the age of twenty-one—upon the death of his father—he came into possession of eight grand houses, among them castles, palaces and country estates. The jewel in the crown, however, was undoubtedly Chatsworth House in Derbyshire: a Baroque palace in all but name, situated in the heart of the verdant Peak District, and boasting no fewer than 175 rooms. Though called a “house”, it had more in common with a miniature Versailles. The Duke, profoundly devoted to the estate, would later commission a neoclassical wing to be added to the structure and even authored its first official Handbook.

Chatsworth House in Derbyshire (William Cowen, 1828)

An ardent lover of flowers and gardens, the Duke entrusted his visionary head gardener, Joseph Paxton, with the creation of a monumental glasshouse—regrettably no longer extant. This innovative structure would go on to inspire Paxton’s masterpiece, the Crystal Palace, built to house the Great Exhibition of 1851 in Hyde Park. It was in that very palace that, some sixteen years later, Sultan Abdülaziz of the Ottoman Empire, during his visit to London in 1867, would hear a choral ode, Inno Turco, composed by Luigi Arditi and sung in the original Turkish language by a British choir of 1,600 voices—an astonishing meeting of East and West beneath vaulted glass and iron.

The Bachelor Duke’s affinity for contemporary music is most clearly articulated in the Handbook he penned for Chatsworth—a lengthy and affectionate epistle, addressed in tone and spirit to his sister, Harriet Leveson-Gower, Countess Granville. In describing the stately music room of the palace, the Duke fondly recalled how, in former days, it had echoed with the sounds of many a ball and festive occasion. But now, he noted with evident satisfaction, his own orchestra performed in that same room a far more serious repertoire.

The Duke implored his sister to imagine hearing A Midsummer Night’s Dream resounding from the mantelpiece, as though Mendelssohn himself were present. Considering that Mendelssohn had composed the overture to that work in 1826, later completing it as a full incidental suite in 1842, and that the Duke’s Handbook was penned in 1844, A Midsummer Night’s Dream must indeed have struck contemporaries at Chatsworth as thoroughly modern—if not daringly so.

The ballroom at Devonshire House on Piccadilly in London

The Duke’s orchestra, it seems, gave regular performances, with programmes he often selected personally. Contemporary newspapers confirm these musical soirées, some of which were held not at Chatsworth, but at Devonshire House, his London residence which once looked out over Green Park. Alas, today only its wrought-iron gates, bearing the family crest, survive—a forlorn relic of what was once a house of splendour. In those days, the great salons of Devonshire House would be lit by lamps and candles, and all Piccadilly would find itself brought to a glittering halt as carriages of the nobility lined the avenue. One such evening was that of 13 May 1825, when the Duke hosted his second grand concert. As reported in Volume VII (p. 302) of The Quarterly Musical Magazine and Review, the performance featured a certain “Master Litz” at the piano—none other than the 14-year-old Franz Liszt—whose precocious artistry had already begun to astound London society. The evening concluded with the rousing finale from Rossini’s Il Tancredi, rounding off what must surely have been a most enchanting occasion.

Vincenzo Bellini by Pietro Lucchini

In truth, the Duke of Devonshire harboured a particular fondness for Italian opera, and it was widely known that his favourite composer was none other than Vincenzo Bellini. Indeed, on 21 May 1835, as Bellini’s final opera I Puritani received its London premiere at the King’s Theatre, the Duke—celebrating his forty-fifth birthday that very day—chose to mark the occasion not with fanfare, but by attending the performance of the new work.

He would return to hear the opera again four days later and subsequently instructed his private pianist, Charles Coote, to rehearse excerpts from I Puritani with frequency. Among those gracing the premiere was the celebrated Italian soprano Giulia Grisi, who sang the role of Elvira and was also a regular guest at Devonshire House. As John Rosselli notes in his biography The Life of Bellini (Cambridge University Press, 1996), the Duke encountered the composer often during his frequent sojourns to Paris and counted himself among Bellini’s staunchest patrons. When Bellini travelled to London in the summer of 1833, the Duke again extended his hospitality. Yet, unlike Rossini, Bellini found London a somewhat desolate and melancholic place and felt acutely isolated during his stay. That the Duke held the composer in genuine esteem is further evidenced by his commissioning of a bust of Bellini from Jean-Pierre Dantan (1800–1869)—a piece which remains at Chatsworth to this day.

The 6th Duke of Devonshire was also renowned for his tireless travels across the European continent. There seemed scarcely a place in Europe he had not visited. In 1826, he represented the United Kingdom at the coronation of his friend Tsar Nicholas I in Moscow. And in March of 1839, he arrived in Constantinople, where he was granted an audience with Sultan Mahmud II.

Giuseppe Donizetti by Luigi Gobbi, 1834

While English newspapers reported that the Duke had arrived in Constantinople via Malta aboard the paddle steamer Acheron, accompanied by British officers sent to train the Ottoman navy, there was a degree of scepticism surrounding the effectiveness of their mission. It was generally assumed that the Duke would depart once he had seen the principal sights, and that the officers, left behind, would soon find themselves neglected and disheartened. The English Chronicle and Whitehall Evening Post of 28 March 1839 offered a wry observation on Giuseppe Donizetti—elder brother of the celebrated composer Gaetano Donizetti—describing him, resplendent in “two enormous epaulettes”, as “the gentleman who teaches the Sultan’s musical subjects to make a noise on wind instruments, and drown all harmony in the thunder of big drums”. Given his well-known passion for music, the 6th Duke must surely have encountered Donizetti during his sojourn in the city—or, at the very least, have heard the band under his direction, which regularly performed potpourris from the operas of Rossini and Bellini.

When the Duke departed from Constantinople, he took with him the three-oared caique in which he had once glided along the Bosphorus—according to some accounts, a gift from Sultan Mahmud II—and had it installed in the Painted Hall, one of the most splendid rooms of Chatsworth. In his Handbook, he wrote: “In the caique I have reposed on the Bosphorus, and never shall it have the indignity of floating on inferior waters”. It was in pursuit of that story—and of the caique itself—that I found myself spending a night amid the heavenly surroundings of Chatsworth. Alas, the boat had, for reasons unknown, been removed from its place only a few years earlier.

The Turkish caique in Chatsworth's Painted Hall (image © Emre Aracı)

That evening as the tourists cleared the gardens and the stars began to appear, an enormous open-air cinema screen was erected on the lawn at Chatsworth, upon which Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story was shown. From its perch atop the Cascade—completed in 1696—the 18th-century temple looked on in silence, like a private opera box beneath the stars, bearing witness to the scene below. And yet, one could almost imagine that from within that temple, echoes from the music room still lingered—Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream faintly audible in the night air. For such a vision, such an atmosphere, could only have belonged to a dream; a dream from Brideshead...

Emre Aracı’s article was originally published in Turkish under the title ‘Rossini, Bellini ve Devonshire Dükü’ in the October 2022 issue (No. 192) of Andante.

Link to the original article in Turkish

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