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[in French]

Interpreting Chopin (Composer versus Interpreter)

by Angela Lear

Chopin’s music has always posed a challenge to pianists. His music has retained a universal popularity and continues to be performed worldwide. Recordings of his piano music probably amount to thousands, so Chopin is apparently ‘well-represented’ – but important aspects governing the performances of his compositions have yet to be addressed.

To gain insight into Chopin’s unique musical language and stylistic practices it is essential for the interpreter to comprehend as far as possible his expressed intentions. Our knowledge and appreciation of this most elusive and innovative of composers is greatly enriched by the combined study of not only his original manuscripts and related source material (i.e. draft scores, early editions and annotated scores), but also the many statements made by his associates, friends and pupils who knew his playing and teaching principles. In addition to the considerable amount of general correspondence, reviews and reports of his concerts are revealing, although not always laudatory — especially from avid supporters of the ‘sledge-hammer school’ (Chopin’s description of pianists applying excessive force to the piano). It is also necessary to familiarise ourselves with Polish folk-music and the historical development of the Polonaise, Rondo, Krakowiak, Oberek and Mazur.

Most of us concert pianists lead very busy lives so it is reasonable to ask whether or not it is really necessary to undertake the time-consuming task of such studies. To answer that question, one so often addressed to me, I would like to cite a single example of the wide disparities that exist between Chopin’s performance directions and the interpretative approach many pianists commonly adopt when playing his famous ‘Black Keys’ Study in Gb major, Op. 10 No. 5.^*

We are familiar with performances of this remarkable Study executed in brilliant bravura style — Allegro con brio/Presto with highly-charged forte dynamics, heavily accented and liberally pedalled — to suit the desired virtuosic display. This approach is, however, in direct opposition to Chopin’s original score markings and his concept of its interpretation. His score markings were actually given as leggierissimo e legatissimo (extremely light and delicate with a very smooth effect), carefully balanced against an unpedalled staccato l.h. accompaniment. The exaggerated dynamics and ‘express train’ tempo markings imposed on this Study are not to be found in the original manuscripts and so we have, regrettably, arrived at an opposing concept to that of the composer! To achieve the delicate lightness of touch required by Chopin is far more demanding technically, especially on the large concert grand pianos of today. A tonal refinement easier to ignore than achieve! There is also the problem of maintaining the tempo to include the double-octaves that descend in a final flourish of triplets. No slowing down of pace is indicated here, but it becomes inevitable when the overall tempo is taken too fast. Double-octaves being more difficult to play technically at a faster tempo than single notes! Presto metronome markings applied to this Study in editions are not from Chopin.

Where score markings are correctly stated in editions his compositions still unfortunately fall prey to all manner of facilitating alterations in performance, perpetuated by generations of pianistic ‘tradition’ and trends. Regrettably the variety of erroneous ‘revisions’ imposed on Chopin’s scores from those who arrogantly seek to remould his music into versions that suit their purposes better are often praised. The facilitating options of ‘personalised interpretation’ with ‘flexibility of expression’ — to the extent that originally written score directions are all but eclipsed — are too often defended. A carte blanche or ‘free for all’ when interpreting Chopin is often actively encouraged on the misguided premise that pretentious sentimentality and histrionic (mis)interpretations actually ‘improve’ his compositions. To perceive Chopin as the archetypal Romantic languishing in a violet-scented mist of indecision about his scores is a misconception borne of spurious legend.

Chopin had very definite views on strict adherence to his score details: "Chopin could not bear anyone to interfere with the text of his works. The slightest modification was a gross error for which he would not pardon even his closest friends, not even his fervent admirer Liszt. The composer considered these alterations as a veritable act of sacrilege". (Reported by Marmontel) [Chopin: ‘Pianist and Teacher’ by Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger] Chopin occasionally pencilled an altered dynamic or variant into the scores of pupils during lessons but it was only his prerogative as the composer-pianist to make any such alterations. On the subject of the sentimentalise/Romantic approach, we know that he shunned all forms of excess or exaggeration and was never a Romantic composer in the Lisztian or Byronic sense. Chopin’s unique musical language and aesthetic belongs to earlier forms of art-music and Classicism. He revered the music of Bach and Mozart above all other composers — the significance of which should not be underestimated when playing Chopin.

It is vital from an artistic and aesthetic standpoint that interpreters allow absolute priority to score directions and remain within the ‘guidelines’ marked on the texts by the composer. These provide our most fundamental link with his intentions. To clarify these ‘guidelines’, albeit simplistically, I refer to score indications/performance directions that form the basis of all interpretations: e.g. that sotto voce and pianissimo/piano markings are not substituted for a ‘preferred’ mezzo piano/mezzo forte/forte, or broad largo/lento tempos exchanged for the faster pace of an Allegretto etc. Chopin was also strict about the observance of his precise phrase/slur markings and agogic signs, whilst pedalling ‘remains a study for life’, as he said, and requires constant consideration. “He plays legato and piano with the pedals and not with his hands!”, was one of Chopin’s many censures.

Chopin’s preferred piano was the ‘silvery thin-toned’ French Pleyel. Having played two of Chopin’s Pleyel pianos, it is evident that the sustaining pedal could be held through harmonic changes without sacrificing the clarity of the notes. Where he indicates extended pedal markings to create a veiled and magical effect, we have to apply some caution on the resonant full-toned concert grand pianos of today if we are to avoid creating an amorphous mass of sound.

Within the wide variety of musical terminology and signs that form our score instructions the expressive scope is comprehensive. It is evident from his manuscripts at least that Chopin left nothing to doubt for his copyists and editors, crossing out his rejected score details with thick webs of diagonal lines that render it impossible to decipher previously written details. In the words of Arthur Hedley, “He hesitated long before attaching a final indication of tempo or expression, so that no pianist has the right to treat these things as a simple matter of personal preference”. To further avoid misunderstanding Chopin would write a message on his score for the engraver to clarify his precise intentions. All of which proved no guarantee against errors from copyists and editors. An example can be found in the first C major Study from Op.10 where original ms copies show only two bars to be played forte - but most editions indicate forte throughout with accents added to the r.h. figurations. Chopin also wrote diminuendos for the re-entry of the main ‘theme’ and at the closing measures. These diminuendos are often shown in editions, but are replaced with crescendos instead by most interpreters. The technical difficulties of playing the widely extended r.h. arpeggios in this Study are certainly facilitated if played relentlessly forte with unwritten sforzando bass octaves on a concert grand piano. But the question arises — is it what Chopin would have wanted? For those who consider that the composer knew best how his music should be performed, the answer is clear. A composers’ manuscript is not merely a piece of graph paper on which we can plot our own design.

There exists the ever-present predilection to sacrifice the ultimate realisation of Chopin’s art to personal whim. Wayward performances displaying an obvious ambivalence towards the text are often claimed as ‘great’ or even ‘definitive interpretations’ either for commercial purposes or from obvious misunderstandings of his music. ‘Virtuosic’ displays of meaningless digital dexterity and the flashiness of excessively fast tempos, hard-hitting aggressively exaggerated dynamics and uncontrolled tempo deviations that debase and trivialise his music have become the facile recipes for many accepted Chopin interpretations. This is not only seriously misleading to the public and untruthful but commits a grave disservice to the composer. The true art of Chopin playing presents a challenge that needs to be thoroughly reviewed and reassessed.

"Simplicity is everything... After having played immense quantities of notes, and more notes, then simplicity emerges with all its charm, like Art’s final seal. It is no easy matter."
Chopin.

(From a statement made by Chopin to his pupil Friedrike Streicher-Muller, who studied with the composer from October 1839 to March 1841 and was the dedicatee of his Allegro de Concert, Op.46).

Great music should surely ennoble the spirit, create a moving experience and provide a lasting impression to reflect upon after the final notes have been played. To allow the composer to be revealed through the re-creation of his music must be the ultimate aim of an interpreter.

^*Volume 6 features a performance of the complete Studies, Op. 10 & Op. 25, on disc one. Disc two is presented as an illustrated discussion on each Study.

© Angela Lear <angelalear.co.uk">adminangelalear.co.uk> — www.angelalear.co.uk (used with permission by the Classical Composers Database)

The list of compostions below was derived from Robert Poliquin’s website http://www.uquebec.ca/, and is used here with his permission.

Frederick Chopin

by Dr. David C.F. Wright

Chopin is not a great composer. In fact, he is very limited. He has often been portrayed as the delightful, dashing, handsome young man of the keyboard and as a perfect gentleman. Nothing could be further from the truth He was an extreme dandy, a narcissist, a man with an outrageous temper, psychological problems, personality disorder and an overwhelming hatred of Jews.

It is always said that Wagner was anti-Semitic and hated the Jews. As I have indicated in my essay on Wagner, his real problem was with Meyerbeer who was a Jew. In time of serious financial and other troubles Meyerbeer was an indefatigable help to Wagner and, latterly, Wagner resented being beholden to this Jew. Yes, Wagner was racist.

But Chopin was far worse. Meyerbeer heard Chopin play some of his own mazurkas but he was playing them in four time and not three time. When Meyerbeer pointed this out Chopin flew into a rage and stormed out like a spoilt schoolgirl. In fact his effeminism was another of Chopin’s weaknesses.

He met many famous musicians of his time including Rossini, Hummel, Auber and the most talented keyboard composer of the age, the great Frederich Wilhelm Kalkbrenner. And, of course, there was Meyerbeer.

As with Wagner, Chopin admired Meyerbeer at first. He attended his opera Robert Le Diable in 1831 and was very impressed by it, but soon resented its composer. Chopin knew that he could never write an opera or anything on a grand scale and, of course, he never did. The same can be said of Schubert. Both Chopin and Schubert were very limited composers. Chopin was a miniaturist and people like Meyerbeer unintentionally diminished him. Chopin “took” a theme from this opera and put it in his Grand Duo in E for cello and piano.

The other problems were that Chopin only had a two track mind, music and pretty women. He hated Liszt because Liszt was a great philosopher and an intellectual. Chopin was not. Chopin’s letters to Delphina Potocka include unfair and vitriolic attacks upon Liszt. One of Chopin’s mistresses, George Sand, had dedicated one of her Lettres d’un Voyageur to Meyerbeer and Chopin s jealousy was roused adding fuel to his unnecessary hatred.

Chopin is claimed to be the inventor of romantic piano music but he invented, or extended, salon music, music suitable for the drawing room or reception room of a large house where pretty young women showing a lot of cleavage would fawn over him. His ghastly tinkly music at the top of the piano was, in fact, a move towards the pretty young things who would swoon at this young dandy at the piano. Salon music such as the waltzes, nocturnes and mazurkas, with a few exceptions, are inconsequential pieces.

In April 1849 he reluctantly went to the opening night of Meyerbeer’s opera La Prophete determined that he was not going to like it. As expected, he said it was disgusting. Meyerbeer knew of Chopin’s loathing for him and for all Jews, but six months later paid his sincere respects at Chopin’s funeral.

Nicholas Chopin was born on 15 April 1771 and came from Lorraine. He went to Warsaw in 1787–8 to pursue a career in commerce. At this time Poland and indeed Europe were in the throes of turmoil and insurrection. He acquired a post with a noble family named Laczynskis in Prussian-held Warsaw. He taught languages, played the violin and flute and taught from the writings of Voltaire. At he age of 31 he moved to another post in Zelazowa Wola on the Skarbek estate where the Count had fled to escape his creditors. Here he was to be the tutor to the Count’s children and here he met Juanita Krzyzanowska the housekeeper. She was 24. Nicholas was 35. They married on 2 June 1806 in the Roman Catholic church of Brochow. It was considered that for the son of a wheelwright and a foreigner to marry a gentlewoman was injudicious.

In April 1807 Justina had a baby girl, Louisa, and on 22 February 1810 Frederick was born. On the baptismal certificate Nicholas is described as a Frenchman. So is Frederick, French or Polish?

In October 1810 the Chopin family moved back to Warsaw. Napoleon’s armies had driven out the occupying Austrians. Nicholas had a teaching post at the Warsaw Lyceum. Justina gave birth to two more daughters namely Isabel in July 1811 and Emily born in November 1812. To help with finances she told in student boarders.

Tsar Alexander I was declared king of Poland. Russia, along with Austria and Prussia had been allowed to keep conquered Polish territory at the Congress of Vienna.

Frederick began piano lessons with Albert Zywny when he was only six. This teacher was gaunt, unkempt and reeked of tobacco and had a penchant for wearing yellow stained with tobacco. His students made fun of him constantly Chopin was encouraged to go to bed with wooden wedges between his fingers to improve finger extensions.

Chopin was keen on improvising and Zywny noted down his efforts and Nicholas helped write them out. In 1817 Chopin had written a Polonaise in G minor dedicated to one of the young Skarbek countesses. He already had a roving eye even at eight years of age! The local press enthused about this musical gift and the praise was out of proportion since acclaim is often given to really insignificant events and people. But things took off and Chopin was invited to play at grand functions and adored looking at beautiful women in dazzling gowns particularly the low-cut ones.

He was called a second Mozart and he was a gifted pianist. When he was eight he played a piano concerto by the Czech composer, Adalbert Gyrowetz. Young Frederick sat at the piano in a velvet jacket and shorts and knee high white stockings. He was already a dandy.

The Chopin family were now held in high esteem. In 1818 the Tsarina visited Warsaw and Chopin had to recite for her and play two polonaises which he had especially composed for her.

But the boy was unpredictable, moody, often morose and given to temper and violence. He met his match in bad behaviour with the Grand Duke Constantine to whom he had to play the piano to drive away ducal evil spirits. His moodiness made him a manic depressive and this is shown in some of his music. The obvious example is the Fantasie-Polonaise Op 61, a simply dreadful work of stops and starts, mood swings, lack of form and incoherence and the work of a sick mind. Liszt hated it. One famous and revered pianist said that every printed copy of this work was the waste of a tree! For about a hundred years critics and musicians dismissed it but that had the effect of people coming to its rescue and some calling it a masterpiece!

Chopin was both a child prodigy and a celebrity.

He now took lessons from Joseph Elsner, a man of greater ability than Zywny, who was a composer of some 27 operas. He taught Chopin composition and counterpoint. In 1823 Frederick appeared at a concert now dressed as a man and received dazzling reviews performing a concerto by Hummel.

To Chopin’s credit he took to school and education like a duck to water. He was a commendable student. He was both a normal boy and adolescent. He threw snowballs, skated, played with other boys in the playground and was often very untidy with his school uniform. He loved to play pranks and he liked girls!

In 1825 Chopin attended a performance of Rossini’s The Barber of Seville, which he greatly admired. His sister, Louisa, composed a piano mazurka which Frederick enthused about as if it were a masterpiece. He enjoyed Weber’s Der Freischutz and was very upset at the composer’s unexpected death in London in 1826. He inveigled himself into the drawing-rooms of Warsaw society to play for them. He was ill in 1826 with swollen glands which a doctor put down to catarrh whereas, knowing his life style, it was probably due to something else. And this was his final year at school. He went for a rest-cure which bored him immensely until he met a pretty Czech girl who was a waitress. Her father had been killed in a factory accident and Chopin decided to be her knight in shining armour. Other reports said that the girl was a Polish housemaid.

Back in Warsaw a doctor prescribed him laxatives. He did not return to school. He enrolled in the Conservatoire to study under Elsner.

The following year Emily was taken ill and died of consumption shortly afterwards on 10 April 1827. She was fourteen.

Chopin was composing and some of his early works have late opus numbers but that is a vast study for this brief essay. Having enjoyed Mozart’s Don Giovanni he began work on an orchestral work and his Opus two became his Variations on La ci darem la mano for piano and orchestra. This was Opus 2 and yet that year he wrote a Mazurka in A minor, Opus 68 no. 2 and a Nocturne in E minor, Op. 72 no. 1.

As to his orchestration it is inadequate and that is the case each time he employed the orchestra. In the two piano concertos the orchestra have walk on parts.

In 1828 he wrote his Piano Sonata no. 1 in C minor, Opus 4, which is not regarded highly by many pianists, but it has a lot to commend it.

Chopin had the wanderlust and wanted to travel. He did not like Berlin or the Germans but he heard a great deal of music including operas by Spontini, Cimarosa, George Onslow and Weber. He heard the music of Handel, but he spent most of his time looking at women in their distinguished outfits and sparkling jewellery. But Polish women were far more beautiful. He became very jealous of Mendlessohn, who was only a year older than him and, of course, he was a Jew! Mendlessohn was, at that time, greatly admired and enjoying great acclaim. And he was a Jew! That irritated Chopin. He composed a Piano Trio in G minor, Opus 8, a Grand Fantasy on Polish Airs for piano and orchestra (how any composer could describe his work in his given title as grand, I do not know) and the Krakowiak in F, Opus 14 for piano and orchestra. The hint of nostalgia in these pieces may have to do with the fact that the Russians still had control of Warsaw.

After graduation, Chopin went abroad again and was impressed with Vienna. He went to concerts and wanted to met people so that he could arrange concerts. Elsner had given him letters of recommendation. He had the distinction of meeting Carl Czerny and Lachner, who is sadly only remembered as being a friend of Schubert but was a far, far better composer. He met Kreutzer, who had known Beethoven. He went to the opera and saw Boïeldieu’s La Dame Blanche, Rossini’s La Cenerentola, Méhul’s Joseph, and Meyerbeer’s Il Crocatio, about which, as you might expect, he had something to say.

Lacking experience of playing with an orchestra created many problems, and the orchestra hated his orchestration of the Mozart variations and took the parts away to correct them. The orchestration of the Krakowiak was so bad that it ended up being a piano solo!

Nonetheless, Chopin made his professional debut on 11 August 1829 in Vienna. Opinion was divided about Chopin’s playing. Many thought it too delicate and effeminate and this criticism may apply to some of his music. It is the dreaminess and the salon style of what is inconsequential music much of it in three time that links him with banal composers like Johann Strauss. This must be largely due to his obsession with women. From the age of seven he had been mesmerised by female sexuality. When he was fourteen he wrote that he was in love with a young girl from the convent school and secretly tried to meet her many times. He even had a go-between, a Jewish boy, called Leibush, and Chopin paid him. That the intended romance came to nothing Chopin blamed on the Jewish boy. After all, no girl would spurn him and he would not spurn any pretty girl. One girl was Countess Alexadrine de Moriolles and another was Emily Elsner daughter of his teacher. To Alex he dedicated his Rondo a la Mazurka Opus 5 and for Emily he copied out some of his works in her own notebooks.

Chopin believed and wrote that love was not made in heaven but in bed. It has been rightly said that a lot of his piano music has no depth and spends a lot of time at the top of the piano so that Chopin could look at the cleavages of pretty young women sitting in the front row.

In 1828 Countess Pruszak found that her governess was pregnant and that she had conceived while Chopin was house guest. She accused Frederick of this, such was his reputation. Eventually the real seducer owned up and Chopin was exonerated.

But Chopin then found himself attracted to a fellow male, Titus Woyciechowski, who was a few years older and taller. And Chopin loved him. Titus was so different. He was athletic and Frederick very gentle. But Titus was a normal man and later sought the company of young ladies at court Chopin wrote to Titus, “Give me your friend a kiss, my dearest.” And, on another occasion, he wrote to Titus, “I would kiss you heartily on the lips, if you’d let me.”

He would send letters to Titus tied with pretty ribbon. Titus was painfully embarrassed. Chopin was depressed on his return to Warsaw. For a man to write to another man like this and tie the letters up in pretty ribbons is more than suggestive.

But, after a while, Chopin met up with Constance Gladkowska again. She was a pretty young thing with blue eyes and blond hair and a good mezzo voice. When he heard her sing that was it. He found out all he could about her. Chopin wrote to Titus, “I have found love for the first time.”

He watched her from afar. Perhaps he even stalked her. He desired her sexually and fantasised about her. Love was made in bed. He went to her concerts but was deterred when Russian soldiers paid her compliments backstage.

In Vienna there was Leopoldine Blahetka who gave Chopin some of her own compositions. Before this he had been insulting about her playing but now she was an angel. But not for long.

Chopin scholars believe that the slow movement of his Piano Concerto no 2 in F minor, Opus 21, is a portrait of Constance. There is no doubt that it is both the loveliest and probably the best piece Chopin ever wrote. It is also thought that the Waltz in D flat Opus 70 number 3 was inspired by her. He also wrote that piece in 1829–30 which shows the craziness of his opus numbers.

He was invited to the country house of Prince Radziwill. Chopin jumped at the chance because there were two pretty young princesses there. Eliza asked Chopin to pose for her while she drew him and the younger princess, Wanda, did not cease from practising Chopin’s Alla Polacce for cello and piano, Opus 3, which he wrote for the family. He relished holding and guiding her hands over the keys in her practise just as Elgar had with violin practise with Isabel Fitton.

Chopin was working on his second piano concerto which became known as the Piano Concerto no. 1 in E minor.

But he was depressed. He liked night life and was always tired . He wrote to his family pleading with them to love him. He was still desiring Constance and yet wrote to Titus, “You are the only one I love.” They holidayed on Titus’s farm almost two hundred miles from Warsaw.

On 11 October 1830 at the National Theatre, Soliva conducted the orchestra with Chopin playing his E minor piano concerto, which was heard in two sections as was the custom of the day. After the allegro, Panna Wolkowa sang with the choir and after an interval Chopin played the last two movements of his concerto. After another interval, Constance appeared clad in virginal white with flowers in her hair and she sang the recitative and cavatine from Rossini’s The Lady of the Lake. The concert then heard the Grand Fantasy on Polish Airs. Chopin and Constance went for a walk afterwards and they exchanged make shift rings but that was all.

Within weeks Chopin left the area and Constance wrote to him.

The time for change has come
And follow your destiny you must
But wherever you are
In Poland you will be loved.

As soon as Frederick had left Warsaw in November 1830, Constance began to see a gentleman of some standing and married him. Isabel was cynical. “Constance has married money and to have a palace,” she said bitchily. Chopin was fleeing from this disastrous love affair and the uprising in Warsaw where an attempt had been made on Viceroy Constantin’s life.

In Germany, Chopin had many invitations and at Dresden met someone whom he wanted to be his soul mate. In the house of the Polish Countess Komar he met her married daughter Countess Delphina Potocka, who was estranged from her husband and very beautiful. Chopin was travelling with Titus at this time. Chopin had a terrible altercation with a banker who he referred to as a dog-flaying Jew. The travellers went to Prague and on to Vienna where he visually raped all the pretty Viennese girls and ate strudel incessantly.

This is stated in one of his letters.

Poland was now partitioned and insurrection broke out. Poles flocked to Vienna to escape the killings. Titus wanted to return to Poland as his land was close to the Russian border. He left, and Chopin, in utter distress, flung himself on his bed and wept. He was alone. He was homesick and he wrote to a school friend about his love for Constance. Concerts were sparse.

Chopin felt unwanted.

But although his pianist skills were admired by some, Chopin was vicious about other pianists including those more skilled than he was. He was damming about the Jews. He wrote about a violinist called Herz who was to play his own work based on Polish airs. Chopin talked of the abuse of Polish music and at the hands of a Jew! And he missed Titus! And there was Constance in someone else’s bed when she should have been in his.

But Paris was the answer. It was one of the cities of culture and so in September 1831 Chopin went there. This was great. Pretty girls passed men by in the streets with seductive and flirtatious smiles. Street sellers sold the dirty books of the time such as The Art of Making Lovers and Keeping Them, The Secret Love Lives of Priests and so on. There were demonstrations against authority and as in the days of Marie Antoniette, people stood up in the streets and read or told stories of the sexual activities of princes, princesses and other people of noble birth. There were expressions of sympathy for defeated Poland and abuse of their enemies. Chopin wrote that Paris was the city of greatest splendour and the greatest filth. But many Poles lived in Paris including Countess Delphina Potocka.

There was composers and musicians such as Ferdinando Paer, Cherubini, Hummel, Auber, Kalkbrenner and, of course, Meyerbeer the Jew.

Friedrich Wilhelm Kalbrenner was the greatest pianist of the day and a fine composer. After living for some years in London he settled in Paris in 1824 where he played and taught. Those who were jealous of him called him conceited and insufferable. However, there are composers who are pompous, arrogant and insufferable. Kalkbrenner’s work on piano playing and technique was the standard text book. When Chopin heard Kalkbrenner play he realised how brilliant he was and how sub standard he was. That is why he begged him for lessons and wrote home for the money to pay for them.

In 1832 at the Salle Pleyel Chopin played his Piano Concerto no. 2 in F minor without an orchestra. He took on students… mainly pretty girls and young women, and arrogantly said that “the pupils of Kalkbrenner, Moscheles and Liszt now come to me.”

His concerts at such places as the British Embassy did not receive press reviews.

He stole John Field’s concept of the nocturne and pretended it was his creation. When Chopin heard Field play he was highly critical and conceited saying that Field had a sickroom talent.

In 1832 things changed and he enjoyed a measure of success and financial stability. His Four Mazurkas Opus 6 were dedicated to the young Countess Pauline Plater. I doubt the dedication would have been made if she were old and ugly. His sister Louisa married Joseph Kalasanty Jedrzejewicz in Brochow.

Chopin wanted a woman permanently. There are unconfirmed stories of his gropings and other indiscretions and advances.

Countess Delphina was born in 1807 and had married a lecherous fellow. In six years of marriage she had five children all of whom died. She had met Chopin in Dresden, and, in Paris, had embarked on a series of one night stands and other relationships. She was known as the greatest sinner of them all. She played the piano and was quite attractive and had large breasts. She was alluring and a good time girl and not adverse to vulgarity. She and Chopin had an affair and his letters to her are explicit. He wrote of kissing her hard in very private places and how he was glad that she adored his cock and balls. He wrote that this part of his anatomy were the source of all his artistic achievements. Such is the pornographic content of these letters that some Chopin admirers dismiss them as forgeries.

Chopin was often called Fritz and he wrote to Delphina, whom he called Phindela, this verse

Loving you is my favourite occupation
Bed is better than inspiration
I long for your lovely tits
So says your faithful Fritz.

Chopin was not popular with everyone. It was regularly commented that wherever he went he took melancholy with him. He played the slow movement of the F minor concerto in a concert conducted by Hector Berlioz, which included Berlioz’s finest work Harold in Italy. Berlioz’s highly competent orchestration showed up Chopin’s gross inadequacy in this department. Like Benjamin Britten, Chopin was unpredictable, insincere and used and, indeed, abused people and changed his attitude to suit the occasion. Chopin lambasted Liszt as a strange fellow who covets other peoples things like a cat desires cream. The pot was calling the kettle black. And yet Chopin dedicated his Study in E flat, Opus 10 no. 11 to his “friend” Liszt.

In 1835 he stayed at a villa which he rented at Enghien joining in the fashionable ritual of taking the waters. But it was so he could be near Delphina. He became friends with Count Thun because he had daughters! The younger one, Josephine, known as Jusa, was taken with him. She devotedly copied Chopin’s Waltz in A flat, Op. 34 no. 1 into her notebook. His parents had visited him from Warsaw. And Countess Wodzinski came to the country with her two lively young daughters and that enthused Chopin. And the older daughter Marie was a pianist and Chopin took every opportunity to guide her hands over the keys. He had known her as a nine year old in Warsaw and now she was a stunning beauty of sixteen with flashing seductive eyes. It is thought that Chopin’s Waltz in D flat Op 69 no 1 is dedicated to her.

Chopin visited Leipzig where he met up with Mendlessohn and Robert Schumann and the fifteen year old daughter of Friedrich Wieck, Clara. Chopin did not like Schumann. He wrote, “I dread Schumann’s reviews as a Jew does the Cross!” He could never resist a jibe at Jews.

Schumann was a sad case. Mental illness was inherent in his family. Many of the things he did were the product of his illness and some of his music is substandard. His value judgments are also suspect. There is the famous remark which he apparently made after hearing Chopin’s Opus 2 Mozart variations, “Hats off, gentlemen! A genius!”

Neither Schumann nor Chopin were a genius. But both wrote some fine music. Chopin went back to Paris. He was asked to look after Wodzinska’s wayward son, Anthony, but his attention was concentrated on Constance yet, apparently, he was still in love with Delphina although she was sleeping with everyone. She was now giving music lessons to dashing young men but I doubt if the men were primarily interested in sharps and flats.

In the summer of 1836 he left for Poland. He was unwell and wanted a companion to look after him and love him. It was time to consider marriage.

Marie Wodzinska was his first choice. He travelled to Marienbad where he knew the Wodzinskas were staying. They were alarmed at his state. He was coughing and the warm weather was a blight to him. Marie took advantage of his having to rest by sketching him. After a month the Wodzinskas went home to Dresden. Chopin decided to go to Dresden as well. He asked the Countess for Marie’s hand in marriage. Marie seemed flattered but social class and other considerations had to be pondered and the Countess explained that no answer could be given quickly and that she would have to consult her husband who was travelling. And Chopin’s health was a worry. It would appear that Marie did not express any real feelings. She remained formal.

The Wodzinskas were gentry. Chopin and his family were not. Nicholas lived in a rented apartment. Their social backgrounds were incompatible. Chopin was angry. Rejection he could not take and the woman he is supposed to have loved he now rudely called his misfortune.

Marie was to marry Count Joseph Skarbek which marriage was a failure. She married again and died in 1896 at the age of 77.

Chopin visited Liszt and his mistress Marie d’Agoult in Paris. Here he met Mme Aurore Dudevant otherwise known as George Sand and he did not like her at first. Like Delphina she lived a life of scandal and was the subject of much gossip. She lounged about in trousers and smoked cigars. She was no lady. She was a writer and her novel, Lelia, caused a tremendous stir.

I have always thought that Chopin saw Titus in George Sand and that homosexual tendency, which he clearly had, as well as his love for women, now seemed to come together in a masculine female, George Sand.

With Liszt, Marie, Heine and others, Sand visited Chopin in his Paris apartment smoking evil smelling cigars. She noticed Chopin’s Pleyel piano and was interested since she played a little herself. She took to Chopin. By February 1837 Sand was saying, “Tell Chopin that I adore him and worship him.”

That year he was to make his first visit to England which lasted for a few weeks. By the end of July he was back in Paris considering going to a health resort. That year he wrote one of his best piano pieces, the Scherzo no. 2 in B flat minor.

Sand pursued him until Chopin gave in to her protective love. After all, he needed someone to look after him.

The relationship with Sand was traumatic. She had not told her previous lover, Lucien Mallefille, that he had been dumped and he arrived with loaded gun outside the new house of immorality threatening to kill both Sand and Chopin. Count Albert Grzymala was there to stand between the opposing factions.

From that time on Chopin was more uneasy and prone to jealousy.

George had a fifteen year old son, Maurice, and a ten year old daughter, Solange. Sand also employed a maid.

Sand and Chopin visited Palma in Majorca, where they later took a rented house owned by an unpleasant Jew called Gomez, as Chopin called him. The heat did not suit Chopin and he became ill and the rumour went around that he had a contagious disease. He was given notice to quit for this and other reasons and went to the monastery at Valldemosa. In their respective cells and austere conditions Chopin was still sick. Their financial decisions were absurd. They had little money and yet paid 700 francs for his Pleyel piano to shipped over from France. Eventually it was taken to Palma and put up for sale. In February 1839 they reached Marseille; their sojourn in Spain had not be a success.

By now their relationship was no longer a secret. In Paris they kept separate apartments as if to put people off the scent but everyone knew what was happening. In June, Chopin first saw Nohant the country mansion that Sand had just inherited from her grandmother.

But her arrangements with Chopin were unusual. She was into maternal life and treated Frederick as her child. While she was Chopin’s athletic lover she saw herself more as a mother figure. Her love making with Chopin she considered exciting because it was quasi-incestuous. When at Nohant, Chopin was said to be merely a house guest.

Chopin always had to had someone to get his teeth into, someone’s reputation to damage. He launched into Ignaz Moscheles the pianist and composer.

Moscheles was a honest man and commented that Chopin’s music was cloying and maudlin, which it sometimes is. Yet he tempered his remarks with praise for other aspects of it. If that was all it was, it would not have upset Chopin What did upset him was that young women liked the music of the Prague-born composer who was having female attention as a result which Chopin thought should be reserved exclusively for him.

To add to this Sand was entertaining distinguished men such as Balzac, Heine and Delacroix. Chopin had to match this and entertained Berlioz, Franchomme the cellist and even Meyerbeer, albeit reluctantly. In 1840 Sand made her debut as a playwright.

Her maternal instincts meant that she was possessive of Maurice and Solange. She met Pauline Garcia the much younger sister of La Malibran. Maurice was smitten with her (they were about the same age). Sand called Pauline her dear daughter. Observing Maurice’s sexual interest in her, George arranged the marriage of Pauline to the theatre writer, Louis Viardot. Chopin himself fancied her.

Sand had taken to pipe smoking and was aging with her pronounced double chin Then she took to cigarettes which were more ladylike. This did nothing for Chopin’s health and Paris was now fascinated with the music of Liszt. Chopin was depressed and spitting blood more regularly. His parents were very concerned. Sand told Maurice that Chopin was her other son. It was truly an absurd situation.

Chopin, always riddled with jealousy, now believed that George Sand was no longer being faithful to him and his desires went back to Delphina but she was now romantically involved with a young playwright, Sigismund Krasinski. Towards the end of 1842 Delphina sang in Paris and it rekindled all of Chopin’s passion. His Polonaise in F sharp minor Op. 44 was dedicated to her He wrote a love letter to her saying that he longed for her as a dying man longed for the last rites and the guarantee of heaven.

It is interesting to note that Chopin never dedicated any of his work to Sand.

By early 1845 Chopin knew he was very ill and feared death. Solange now hated Pauline Viardot whom she was told by her mother was another of her children as was Chopin. When Pauline was in the house Solange flirted with Chopin. There was another child in Sand’s life, one Augustine Brault whom she wanted to adopt and more so when it was learned that the child was to inherit a fortune. Maurice and Solange were against this, as was Chopin. It would be less attention for them. The legal moves to adopt fell through.

However, Maurice fancied Augustine and because of this she was tolerated in the Sand household. When mother found out about Maurice’s feelings for Augustine she changed her mind about her. Chopin has commented about Maurice conduct which angered Sand. “He is my son, not yours!” she stormed. What Maurice was doing reminded Chopin of his own gropings. Chopin had a fierce temper and it began to show in all its frightening vehemence. Sand was also getting fed up with nursing him although it is true to say that he nursed her often with her regular stomach complaints.

In 1846 the eighteen year old Solange announced her engagement. She had had a stormy relationship with her mother and Chopin did his best to reconcile them. This did not help.

Another event which distressed Chopin was that both Sand and Solange were posing for a lecherous sculptor by the name of Clesinger who was preparing busts of them and enjoying being a voyeur at the same time. But I blame the women for allowing themselves to be ogled.

By the early autumn of 1847 Chopin and Sand had broken up and Sand was seeing a young journalist called Borie who shared her extreme socialist tendencies.

It is difficult to assess what influence Sand had on Chopin and what effect the behaviour of her children had on him and his relationship with their mother.

By far the most fascinating and commendable woman in Chopin’s life was Jane Stirling.

Jane Wilhelmina Stirling was born in July 1804 at Kippenross House, near Dunblane in Perthshire. She was the youngest of thirteen children. Her first sister was married by the time Jane was two years old. Her mother died when Jane was only twelve and her father when she was sixteen. She passed in to the supervision of her sister, Katharine, now Mrs Erskine, who was thirteen years older than she was. Katharine had no children and was now a widow. She did not remarry and so was available to be a companion to Jane.

Jane had a clear head and was a typical Scotswoman, a very strong character. She was different as well. She attended parties and balls and as she was exceedingly pretty she had many proposals of marriage. Some say that she had over thirty such proposals, all of which she declined. She was particular and wished to remain single until she was certain of the right man. She remained sociable and went to the various functions but needed more than that. Kippenross House had a large library, a valuable collection of art and a Scottish harp. She was interested in all three and played the piano with clear skill.

In the second half of 1826 Katharine took her to Paris. They already had social contacts there and mixed with the French aristocracy as comfortably as they did the Scottish. Thereafter they divided their annual social life between Scotland and Paris. Jane, particularly, became fluent in the French language and was a francophile. She was wealthy having inherited from her parents.

They met Chopin and, as Jane was very attractive, he took her on as a pupil. She admired him and he her… and she could pay his exorbitant fees. She was six years older than he was and, latterly, he unkindly regarded her as a middle-aged spinster. In 1844 he dedicated his two Nocturnes Opus 55 to her. Strangely, he recommended her to the cellist Franchomme. One would have thought that he wanted her to himself but Franchomme taught the cello and she had expressed a desire to learn to play that instrument.

Auguste Joseph Franchomme was born in Lille in 1808 and was four years younger than Jane. He was a cellist of distinction and wrote some works including a Cello Concerto. He died in Paris in 1884.

Whatever Jane’s feelings she kept them to herself as George Sand was still reigning supreme in Chopin’s life. But in 1846 Chopin’s relationship with Sand was breaking up and he was living a semi-bachelor life. With Chopin’s permission, Jane took on some of Chopin’s secretarial and other duties. Her social position meant that this service did Chopin and the society in which he moved a great deal of good. She may also have suffered from loneliness and a sense of a lack of fulfilment and she was glad to be wanted and of service. She also had a crush on him. Perhaps, like Sand, she wanted to mother him and look after him. What is clear is that she was a benevolent patroness. She kept him for a while. She was his agent and business manager. She arranged his concerts and particularly the Salle Pleyel concert, after which he collapsed in her arms. Only Katharine knew about the full implications of these arrangements.

Jane won the hearts of Chopin’s parents. His sister, Louisa, also admired her and was grateful for what she was doing for Frederick. Over Christmas 1847 Jane sent Louisa a present, the Lady’s Companion intended as a New Year s gift. Chopin never talked of love for Jane. While he was grateful to her he may have found her too efficient and dominant but she had the right ideas Chopin was to forget the past with all their traumas and he needed changes. With her large family she could easily introduce Chopin to the well-to-do in London and elsewhere. It has been suggested that these introductions were her plan to get her family to meet him with a view to their approval of her possible marriage to him. But there were other problems. Scotland would not be suitable for a consumptive.

Chopin did not consider this. He was glad to have someone make plans for him and thus ease his anxious personality. He had been considering a move to London as Paris were no more in love with him and he had made contact with the Athenaeum Club in Pall Mall where Elgar and Sir Ivor Atkins were later to become members.

Jane made the preparations for the Salle Pleyel concert on 16 February 1848 ensuring that the heating was as Chopin would wish it and that the concert hall was aired. She arranged the flowers so that an intimate feel could be enjoyed. Chopin, dressed as immaculately as ever, but clearly ill, played Mozart’s Piano Trio in E with Alard and Franchomme. Then followed his Cello Sonata and other short pieces for solo piano. He only played an excerpt from his Barcarolle because he was too weak to play the more invigorating part. He took his bow and walked unassisted to his dressing room where he again collapsed in Jane’s arms, exhausted.

On 20 April 1848 Chopin sailed to England. He rested a while in Folkestone before travelling to London where Jane had booked him in at lodgings at 10 Bentinck Street near Cavendish Square. He did not like London. It was grey. After Easter he moved to a superior apartment as 48 Dover Street, Piccadilly where he stayed until the end of July. Jane had provided him with his notepaper complete with his monogram and his favourite brand of drinking chocolate. Broadwoods sent over a piano and did Pleyels and Erards. And so his drawing room had three grand pianos. The landlord, seeing this extravagance, doubled the rent but that was no odds to Chopin as Jane paid it.

London waited to hear Chopin.

Chopin heard the major London orchestras and dismissed them unkindly. He called their performances like their roast dinners… solid, strong and nothing else. He complained that they had no idea how to rehearse.

Nonetheless he played for Lady Gainsborough, Lady Blessington, the Athenaeum Club and on 15 May before Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Prince Albert went over to talk to him and the Queen spoke to him twice. Through Jane he was introduced to “all the best people” (what a pompous expression that is). But he did not like their attitude to music.

His money was running out. Jane came to the rescue again. But he did not want to be beholden to her and did not ask her again. She was always at hand and Chopin was bored and tired of her. He said very unkind things about these two Scottish ladies. Yet he could not do without them. Jane insisted that he went on long rides in the country for his health and she was right, but Chopin could not take the jolting and bumping of the carriage.

He acquired a manservant called Daniel who was Irish but spoke French who accompanied him on his outings and carried him to his rooms. There were times when Chopin was incredibly weak.

Jane, possibly to further her own desires, suggested that Chopin visit Edinburgh as the London season was coming to an end. Chopin had lost all hope for himself and become fatalistic. He did not care where he was.

Everywhere was miserable to him.

Twelve miles east of Edinburgh was Calder House where Jane had arranged Chopin should stay. She had also organised Pleyels to send a piano from London. Two of her brothers in law were told to look out for Chopin since much depended on them for the success of this venture. Chopin arrived after a twelve hour journey on the train from Euston and was spitting blood. The Highland air made matters worse. The only thing that kept him going was the prospect of concerts and the income from them. A successful concert might earn him 60 guineas. The doctor at Calder House was Polish now living in Edinburgh.

The Scottish ladies decided that the family would visit a relative who lived in a castle by the sea and, of course, Chopin had to go. They drove along the cliff roads in two vehicles, the sisters in one and Daniel and Chopin in the other. The horse of Chopin’s coupe were frightened by something and the reins snapped and the vehicle careered down the slope. The coachman had been thrown out. The coach crashed against a tree on the edge of the cliff.

Daniel pulled Chopin out.

The accident did not deter him from giving concerts but he kept changing him mind about details of what he was to play. He went to Manchester by train to give a concert there and was put up in the home of a German Jew much to his disgust. His anti-semitism and extreme racism was decidedly evil. But another house guest was Jenny Lind. The concert was on 28 August. There were overtures by Weber, Rossini and Beethoven and sung excerpts from Italian opera. Between such items Chopin played his Andante spianato, the Second Scherzo and the Berceuse. He was so weak that he was carried on and off the stage. He was given good reviews but the general opinion was that he and his music were not understood. So wrote Charles Halle.

Jane Stirling, believing that Chopin’s confidence was boosted and that this should continue, arranged a concert in Glasgow. She also arranged for him to stay with another widowed sister, Mrs Houston at Johnstone castle, a few miles from the city. Chopin was in a quandary as to what to play. The concert was on the afternoon on 27 September at the Merchants Hall complete with nobles and several members of the Stirling family. But the concert was badly attended. The Glasgow Herald proclaimed that Chopin and his music were hard to understand. Mrs Houston gave a grand reception to Prince and Princess Czartoryski from Vienna who were visiting London to escape political unrest and travelled to Scotland to hear Chopin. His nest concert was at the Hopetoun Rooms in Edinburgh and the tickets were half a guinea. Jane purchased a hundred and distributed them as complimentary tickets. It was Chopin’s last appearance in Scotland. He could not stay in Scotland living off Jane and the kind people who put him up in various castles and stately homes.

These people expected news of Chopin’s engagement to Jane. But he did not propose and this was put down to his reticence. Rumours of a forthcoming marriage reached Paris and Warsaw and was the social gossip of the hour.

Chopin did not want Jane. Although she had been his greatest friend and advocate, even if he did not see it that way, he was bored by her. He made all sorts of feeble excuses. He wrote to a friend, “A rich woman needs a rich husband.”

It was Jane’s family that broached the subject and, presumably, at her request. The debate took place in October. Chopin was nervous and tried to express the simple view that it was only friendship.

Most women would have been insulted by the rejection and turned on the one that rejected her. Not so, Jane.

She accepted it with a loving grace that reveals the fundamental goodness of her character although some biographers have labelled her a vampire and to add to this inanity called Sand a saint.

Chopin could not winter in Scotland and so bade farewell to that country and gave a concert in London for a Polish charity. He took lodgings at 4 St James’s Place, Piccadilly and he was ill. Doctors came and went. Jane and Mrs Erskine came to his aid and tried to prepare him for the next world, bringing their Bibles with them. But they were Protestants. Nonetheless they were genuine and kind people. Chopin complained to a friend that the Scottish ladies were getting on his nerves.

His last public appearance was at London’s Guildhall on 16 November, 1848, where he had to be carried. He was very ill with a sick headache and a swollen face. People left doors open or were always coming and going and Chopin found this insufferable. He played and the Poles loved it. The rest of the audience were merely polite. He was carried back to his lodgings and to his bed.

He left London on 23 November and was in Paris the following day still grumbling about Jane and Mrs Erskine who “pestered” him so.

Jane was a marvellous friend to Chopin and she died in 1859, ten years after Chopin’s death. Her involvement with Chopin will always be the matter of speculation and opinion but there is no doubt that she had his interests at heart and that her kindness was not appreciated by the ungrateful Chopin.

The fact that she did not become Mrs Chopin did not cause her to become offensive. She was loyal to the end and beyond.

But to return to the final days of Chopin. Back home in Paris, Chopin was comforted by the fact that he would die among friends. Various people attended to his needs. But cholera and the dreadful heat took people out of Paris in the summer and the heat increased his decline. Even Delphina left him. Jane Stirling would have stayed with him if she had been there and was aware of the situation.

He died at two in the morning of 17 October 1849. His lavish funeral was at the Church of the Madeleine and about 3000 people attended. Jane paid for the total cost funeral and for Louisa to attend from Warsaw. She also paid for Chopin’s Pleyel piano to be shipped to Louisa in Warsaw. Jane also purchased all of Chopin’s effects so that they would not fall into unsympathetic hands and set up a Chopin Museum at Calder House. On her death in 1859 the museum was bequeathed to Chopin’s mother. Most of these items were destroyed in Warsaw in 1861 during a Russian attack.

But Jane had kept a lock of Chopin’s auburn hair which is still available to be seen today.

She loved him probably more than anyone else did and it is so unfair that she could be treated with suspicion and that he treated Jane so badly.

Chopin was not a great composer by any means but there are certain works that has special place in peoples’ hearts and rightly so. However, too much of it is salon music monotonously in three time.

The Sonata no. 2 is a very fine work although the Sonata no. 3 is probably more popular. The Ballade no 1 in G minor is a very fine piece and the four scherzi are exemplary particularly the second. Some of the songs are gems and the Sonata for cello and piano is, in my opinion, a masterpiece.

However, some of his music is effeminate, tinkling music as some have called it, lacking depth… salon music. It may have its place but Chopin should be remembered for those fine works and some of his finest pieces may not be the best known!

The other problem is how Chopin should be played. He was lazy composer and did not put instructions in his music. Take, for example, the Second Scherzo. It is marked presto but the middle section in three sharps does not have a new tempo instruction and yet everyone plays it as an andante or moderato. The music here lends itself to a slower tempo but as far as Chopin s manuscript states the work is presto throughout.

Copyright © David C.F. Wright 1992, renewed 2002. This article must not be copied or quoted in part or the whole or downloaded or stored in any retrieval system without first obtaining the written consent of the author. Failure to comply may result in legal proceedings.

"Chopin coughs with infinite grace. He is an irresolute man. The only thing about him that is permanent is his cough." [Madame d’Agoult in a letter to George Sand]...

At the time when he came into George Sand’s life, Chopin, the composer and virtuoso, was the favourite of Parisian salons, the pianist in vogue. He was born in 1810, so that he was then twenty-seven years of age. His success was due, in the first place, to his merits as an artist, and nowhere is an artist’s success so great as in Paris. Chopin’s delicate style was admirably suited to the dimensions and to the atmosphere of a salon.[25]

[25] As regards Chopin, I have consulted a biography by Liszt, a study by M. Camille Bellaigue and the volume by M. Elie Poiree in the _Collection des musiciens celebres_, published by H. Laurens.

He confessed to Liszt that a crowd intimidated him, that he felt suffocated by all the quick breathing and paralyzed by the inquisitive eyes turned on him. "You were intended for all this," he adds, "as, if you do not win over your public, you can at least overwhelm it."

Chopin was made much of then in society. He was fragile and delicate, and had always been watched over and cared for. He had grown up in a peaceful, united family, in one of those simple homes in which all the details of everyday life become less prosaic, thanks to an innate distinction of sentiment and to religious habits. Prince Radz’will had watched over Chopin’s education. He had been received when quite young in the most aristocratic circles, and "the most celebrated beauties had smiled on him as a youth." Social life, then, and feminine influence had thus helped to make him ultra refined. It was very evident to every one who met him that he was a well-bred man, and this is quickly observed, even with pianists. On arriving he made a good impression, he was well dressed, his white gloves were immaculate. He was reserved and somewhat languid. Every one knew that he was delicate, and there was a rumour of an unhappy love affair. It was said that he had been in love with a girl, and that her family had refused to consent to her marriage with him. People said he was like his own music, the dreamy, melancholy themes seemed to accord so well with the pale young face of the composer. The fascination of the languor which seemed to emanate from the man and from his work worked its way, in a subtle manner, into the hearts of his hearers. Chopin did not care to know Lelia. He did not like women writers, and he was rather alarmed at this one. It was Liszt who introduced them. In his biography of Chopin, he tells us that the extremely sensitive artist, who was so easily alarmed, dreaded "this woman above all women, as, like a priestess of Delphi, she said so many things that the others could not have said. He avoided her and postponed the introduction. Madame Sand had no idea that she was feared as a sylph..." She made the first advances. It is easy to see what charmed her in him. In the first place, he appealed to her as he did to all women, and then,

too, there was the absolute contrast of their two opposite natures. She was all force, of an expansive, exuberant nature. He was very discreet, reserved and mysterious. It seems that the Polish characteristic is to lend oneself, but never to give oneself away, and one of Chopin’s friends said of him that he was "more Polish than Poland itself." Such a contrast may prove a strong attraction, and then, too, George Sand was very sensitive to the charm of music. But what she saw above all in Chopin was the typical artist, just as she

understood the artist, a dreamer, lost in the clouds, incapable of any activity that was practical, a "lover of the impossible." And then, too, he was ill. When Musset left Venice, after all the atrocious nights she had spent at his bedside, she wrote: "Whom shall I have now to look after and tend?" In Chopin she found some one to tend. ...

When Chopin was convicted of consumption, "which," as she [Sand] writes,

"was equivalent to the plague, according to the Spanish doctors, with their foregone conclusions about contagion," their landlord simply turned them out of his house. They took refuge in the Chartreuse monastery of Valdemosa, where they lived in a cell. The site was very beautiful. ... "We are planted between heaven and earth," wrote George Sand. "The clouds cross our garden at their own will and pleasure, and the eagles clamour over our heads." ...

[A later] deplorable journey to Majorca dates from November, 1838 to March, 1839. The intimacy between George Sand and Chopin continued eight years more.

In the summer Chopin stayed it Nohant. Eugène Delacroix, who was paying a visit there too, describes his presence as follows: "At times, through the window opening on to the garden, we get wafts of Chopin’s music, as he too is at work. It is mingled with the songs of the nightingales and with the perfume of the rose trees."

Chopin did not care much for Nohant. In the first place, he only liked the country for about a fortnight at a time, which is very much like not caring for it at all. Then what made him detest the country were the inhabitants. Hippolyte Chatiron was terrible after he had been drinking. He was extremely effusive and cordial. ...

The absolute contrast of two natures may be attractive at first, but the attraction does not last, and, when the first enthusiasm is over, the logical consequence is that they become disunited. This was what Liszt said in rather an odd but energetic way. He points out all that there was "intolerably incompatible, diametrically opposite and secretly antipathetic between two natures which seemed to have been mutually drawn to each other by a sudden and superficial attraction, for the sake of repulsing each other later on with all the force of inexpressible sorrow and boredom." Illness had embittered Chopin’s character. George Sand used to say that "when he was angry he was terrifying." He was very intelligent, too, and delighted in quizzing people for whom he did not care. Solange and Maurice [Sand’s children] were now older, and this made the situation somewhat delicate. Chopin, too, had a mania for meddling with family matters. He quarrelled one day with Maurice. Another day George Sand was annoyed with her son-in-law Clesinger and with her daughter Solange, and Chopin took their side. This was the cause of their quarrel; it was the last drop that made the cup of bitterness overflow.

The following is a fragment of a letter which George Sand sent to Grzymala, in 1847: "For seven years I have lived with him as a virgin. If any woman on earth could inspire him with absolute confidence, I am certainly that woman, but he has never understood. I know, too, that many people accuse me of having worn him out with my violent sensuality, and others accuse me of having driven him to despair by my freaks. I believe you know how much truth there is in all this. He himself complains to me that I am killing him by the privations I insist upon, and I feel certain that I should kill him by acting otherwise."[29]

It has been said that when Chopin was at Nohant he had a village girl there as his mistress. We do not care to discuss the truth of this statement. ...

The year of the rupture [between Sand and Chopin] was 1847, and before the rupture had really occurred, George Sand brought out a novel entitled Lucrezia Floriani. In this book she traces the portrait of Chopin as Prince Karol. She denied, of course, that it was a portrait, but contemporaries were not to be deceived, and Liszt gives several passages from Lucrezia Florianiin his biography of the musician. The decisive proof was that Chopin recognized himself, and that he was greatly annoyed. ...

She gives us warning that it is "a sad story and sorrowful truth" that she is telling us. She has herself the better role of the two naturally. It could not have been on that, account that Chopin’ was annoyed. He was a Pole, and therefore doubly chivalrous, so that such an objection would have been unworthy of a lover. What concerns us is that George Sand gives, with great nicety, the, exact causes of the rupture. In the first place, Karol was jealous of Lucrezia’s stormy past; then his refined nature shrank from certain of her comrades of a rougher kind. The invalid was irritated by her robust health, and by the presence and, we might almost say, the rivalry of the children. Prince Karol finds them nearly always in his way, and he finally takes a dislike to them. There comes a moment when Lucrezia sees herself obliged to choose between the two kinds of maternity, the natural kind and the maternity according to the convention of lovers.

The special kind of sentiment, then, between George Sand and Chopin, Just as between Lucrezia and Prince Karol, was just this: love with maternal affection. This is extremely difficult to define, as indeed is everything which is extremely complex. George Sand declares that her reason for not refusing intimacy with Chopin was that she considered this in the light of a duty and as a safeguard. "One duty more," she writes, "in a life already so full, a life in which I was overwhelmed with fatigue, seemed to me one chance more of arriving at that austerity towards which I felt myself being drawn with a kind of religious enthusiasm."[30]

-- from Rene Doumic’s "George Sand: Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings" Translated by Alys Hallard, First published in 1910.

(contributed by MariLi Pooler <goldhattedmindspring.com>)

35 solid facts on Chopin. This is from the site: http://clik.to/chopin/ or straight ahead at: http://destined.to/chopinhaven/.

1. Chopin didn’t actually like Fantasie-Impromptu. He thought just little of it (it is thought that he didn’t have any inspiration anymore when he composed it or his frail health just became worse). He never permitted it to be published. But it was still published, though, posthumously.
2. We all know that Chopin and Sand broke up because of a misunderstanding between the two. One very reliable source tells us that Sand in fact maneuvered Chopin into the mother-daughter quarrel. Sand intended it so Chopin will take the side of her daughter. This will then result into an estrangement.
3. Another source contrasts to the one said above. Since Sand left her home, her children became jealous and undisciplined. So one of them plotted the said misunderstanding between the two, which caused the parting.
4. Even before the break-up, Sand and Chopin already grew tensions and had small quarrels.
5. It is assumed that Sand got bored of Chopin and didn’t like him anymore because of his frail health (he was already coughing blood).
6. Chopin really loves Sand. She is the inspiration I said above.
7. Since he really loves Sand, he carried a lock of her hair till his death.
8. Chopin was afraid to be buried alive. He told his sister to cut his body open after he dies. He said this just a few days before he passed away. (Weird!!!)
9. He carries an urn filled with Polish soil. It was given to him by Elsner, his teacher in Warsaw. "May you never forget your native land wherever you may go, nor cease to love it with a warm and faithful heart, - Elsner."
10. He told the people to sprinkle the soil from the urn on his grave. And it was done. He was buried in France but the soil was from Poland.
11. His heart is already in Church of the Holy Cross in Warsaw. It is preserved, and this is again done by his words.
12. The stupid Chopin (forgive me for saying that) actually told his sister to burn all his unpublished manuscripts!
13. When revolution broke out in Poland, he was in Vienna, then. So, he thought he might want to fight the Russians, too. He actually decided to go back since his friend who was living with him did so. But in the middle of the journey, he instructed the driver (if that’s what you call it) to turn back. He was convinced of the argument with his mother that he shouldn’t come back because of his feeble health. (What the! He considered to do that. The stupid idiot. He is just going to contribute to the losses of Poland against the Russians if that were so.)
14. So what he did, he poured his furiousness to the piano and composed the Revolutionary etude.
15. When he came to Paris in 1831, the known composers were so excited of him. They planned his debut concert on January 25, 1832. But the Parisians didn’t like his playing. One of the critics said that his playing was too soft and that there is "too much luxuriance in the modulation, and disorder in the linking of phrases". But some composers like Liszt, Mendelssohn, Berlioz etc. were fond of him.
16. Since the Parisians didn’t like him, he considered the thought of leaving France for America.
17. Then he met Prince Radziwill, who persuaded him to stay, brought him to the salon of Baron Jacques de Rothschild. There, he was praised and was made to teach the children for 20 francs a lesson.
18. He said himself that, "I give myself an impression of a violin’s E string on a bass viol."
19. He also stated, "Our best tuner has drowned himself - now I do not even have a piano tuned as I like it - All I have left is a big nose and an underdeveloped fourth finger."
20. He had small fingers, but as someone stated, it stretched like the jaws of a snake. This astonished most pianists.
21. Chopin was in fact surrounded with such beautiful things. Sand once wrote:

    "To tear Chopin away from so many gateries, to associate him with a simple, uniform, and constantly studious life, he who had been brought up on the knees of princesses, was to deprive him of that which made him live, a factitious life, it is true."

22. Chopin visited many salons each night to play. He goes to about 20-30 salons a day just to satisfy himself.
23. He was "great in small things" even though he was "small in great things" as someone said.
24. Szopen is supposed to be his family name but then it was changed to a more Gallic Chopin.
25. Schumann said that Chopin is "the boldest and most proudest poetic spirit of our time".
26. Chopin adores Mozart. That is why Mozart’s Requiem was played during his funeral.
27. He once stated when he arrived in Paris: "I don’t know where there can be so many pianists as in Paris, so many asses and so many virtuosi."
28. He told Liszt once: "The crowd intimidates me. I feel asphyxiated by its breath, paralyzed by its curious looks, dumb before the strange faces."
29. Berlioz said he was dying all his life.
30. He fell in love with a popular singer but never spoke to her. Then he got secretly engaged to a young lady but her family wouldn’t allow marriage for Chopin’s insubstantial health.
31. The love affair between Sand and Chopin was a scandal for Sand was "that woman" to most of Chopin’s acquaintances.
32. Sand and a few other people once saw him before his piano, his eyes wild and his hair almost standing on end. It was many moments later before he recognized them.
33. He composed his piano concerto no. 2 before his piano concerto no. 1, the second was just published after the first.
34. His first published work was Rondo in C major, op. 1 when he was 15.
35. Chopin once wrote to a friend after his break-up with Sand, "I do my best to work, but it just won’t do. If I go on like this, my new works will not remind you of warbling birds and not even of broken china. - I work a little. I scratch a lot."

(Contribution by <chopin_nethotmail.com>)

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