A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Chopin, Frederic
CHOPIN, François Frederic, was born March 1, 1809 (not 1810, as has been frequently stated and even inscribed on his tomb-stone) at Zela Zowa Wola, a village six miles from Warsaw, in Poland; died at Paris, Oct. 17, 1849, and was buried at the cemetery of the Père-la-Chaise, between the graves of Cherubini and Bellini. Robert Schumann, when reviewing Chopin's Preludes for the 'Neue Zeitschrift für musik,' in 1839, called him 'the boldest and proudest poetic spirit of the times!' (Ges. Schriften, iii. 122); he might have added with at least equal truth, and in the face of all contemporary opposition, that Chopin was a legitimately trained musician of quite exceptional attainments, a pianist of the very first order, and a writer for the pianoforte preeminent beyond comparison—a great master of style, a fascinating melodist, as well as a most original manipulator of puissant and refined rhythm and harmony. As he preferred forms in which some sort of rhythmic and melodic type is prescribed at the outset, such as the Mazurka, Polonaise, Valse, Bolero, Tarantelle, &c., he virtually set himself the task of saying the same sort of thing again and again; yet he appears truly inexhaustible. Each Etude, Prelude, Impromptu, Scherzo, Ballade, presents an aspect of the subject not pointed out before; each has a raison d'étre of its own. With few exceptions, all of which pertain to the pieces written in his teens, thought and form, matter and manner, shades of emotion and shades of style, blend perfectly. Like a magician he appears possessed of the secret to transmute and transfigure whatever he touches into some weird crystal, convincing in its conformation, transparent in its eccentricity, of which no duplicate is possible, no imitation desirable. He was a great inventor, not only as regards the technical treatment of the pianoforte, but as regards music per se, as regards composition. He spoke of new things well worth hearing, and found new ways of saying such things. The emotional materials he embodies are not of the very highest; his moral nature was not cast in a sublime mould, and his intellect was not of the profoundest; his bias was romantic and sentimental rather than heroic or naïve—but be his material ever so exotic, he invariably makes amends by the exquisite refinement of his diction. He is most careful to avoid melodic, rhythmic, or harmonic commonplaces; a vulgar melody or a halting rhythm seem to have been instinctively revolting to him; and as for refined harmony, he strove so hard to attain it, that in a few of his last pieces he may be said to have overshot the mark, and to have subtilised his progressions into obtuseness.
The list of his works extends only up to op. 74, and when bound up in a few thin volumes Chopin is certainly not formidable, yet his published pieces represent an immense amount of care and labour. With regard to rare musical value, originality and perfection of style, the solo pieces might be classed as follows:—Etudes and Preludes; Mazurkas and Polonaises; Ballades and Scherzi; Nocturnes and Valses; etc. The two concertos are highly interesting as far as the treatment of the solo part is concerned, but the orchestration is poor.
During Chopin's lifetime it seems to have been a fixed notion with the generality of musicians that he was a sort of inspired amateur, who could not be classed with professional academically trained musicians. Liszt's singular and clever essay, 'Frederic Chopin,' did not mend matters much—for Liszt too, though he of all men knew best how eminent a musician Chopin was, chose to accent the poetical, romantic side of his individuality. Liszt was, moreover, led into errors of fact by the paucity of authentic biographical materials. The truth about Chopin's birth, family, health, character, friendships, early training, and the dawn of his career as a player and composer, was not known till the publication of Moritz Karasowski's recent and trustworthy biography (Dresden 1877, Ries). A Polish emigrant, 'Grzymala,' who was amongst Chopin's early acquaintances at Paris, seems answerable for the various mis-statements in the contemporary Dictionaries, and in Liszt's essay. The assertion for instance that Prince Radziwill, the composer of tolerable music to Goethe's 'Faust,' had defrayed the expenses of Chopin's schooling, is as much without foundation as the sentimental talk about Chopin's extreme feebleness and continuous ill-health. Both Liszt, and George Sand (in her memoirs), chose to paint Chopin as a feeble youth continually at death's door, living in an atmosphere of moonshine and sentimentality. The truth was quite the reverse. He was not a robust person, but he did not know a moment's illness before the last ten years of his life, when the germs of bronchitis and consumption developed rapidly under the late hours and excitement of Parisian life.
As a young man he was fresh and lively, ready for all kinds of fun and frolic, a good mimic and caricaturist, and quite strong enough to stand long journeys in rough German stage-coaches. There are records of his visits to Berlin, Dresden, Dantzig, Leipzig, Vienna, &c., ere he was twenty. Nicolas Chopin, his father, a Frenchman by birth and extraction, a native of Nancy, came to Warsaw as a private tutor. He became professor at the Lycée of Warsaw, and kept a select private school of his own, where young men of good families were brought up, together with his son Frederic. The mother, Justine Kryzanowska, was of a pure Polish family, and seems to have transmitted to her son the peculiar sensitiveness of her Sclavonic temperament. In 1818, when barely nine, Frederic played a concerto by Gyrowetz, and improvised in public. His first, very early compositions, were dances: Polonaises, Mazurkas, and Valses. A native of Bohemia, Zwyny, and a learned German, Joseph Eisner, director of the school of music at Warsaw, composer of much mediocre church music, &c., a sound musician, and it is always said a devoted student of Bach (i.e. of what little was then and there known of Bach), were his masters and subsequently his friends. At nineteen, a finished virtuoso, equal if not superior to all contemporaries except Liszt, Chopin started with his two concertos and some minor pieces, via Vienna and Munich, where he gave concerts, for Paris, ostensibly on his way to England. But he settled in Paris, and rarely stirred from thence. He used to say that his life consisted of an episode, without a beginning and with a sad end. The episode was this: at Liszt's instigation, in 1836, he made the acquaintance of Madame George Sand, and was completely fascinated and absorbed. In the autumn of 38, when he had begun to suffer from bronchitis, Madame Sand took him to Majorca, where they spent the winter, and where she nursed and loved him, for which kindness he was profuse in expressions of gratitude to the end of his days. Soon after their return to Paris she put him into one of the least attractive of her novels, 'Lucrezia Floriani,' under the name of Prince Karol, whom she depicts as a highflown, consumptive, and exasperating nuisance, and left him after some eight years of sentimental amenities to his cough and his piano. Barring a couple of [1]short visits to England, and one to Scotland shortly before his death in 49, he lived a retired yet far from quiet life in Paris, giving lessons, practising, and at intervals composing—the spoiled child of a small circle of sympathising admirers. But it was no ignoble retirement, as the names of some of his Parisian friends, such as Liszt and Berlioz, Balzac and Bellini, Adolph Nourrit and Heine, Ernst, Delacroix, and Meyerbeer, sufficiently attest.
Chopin's works include 2 Concertos for Piano and Orchestra; 1 Trio for Piano and Strings; 2 Duos for Piano and Cello. For Piano Solo 3 Sonatas; 27 Etudes; 52 Mazurkas; 25 Preludes; 19 Nocturnes; 13 Waltzes; 12 Polonaises; 5 Rondos; 4 Scherzos; 4 Ballades; 4 Fantaisies; 3 Eccossaises; 4 Impromptus; 4 sets of Variations; a Barcarole; a Berceuse; a Krakoviak; a Bolero; a Tarantelle; a Funeral March; an Allegro de concert, also a Rondeau for 2 Pianos, and 16 Polish songs, in all 74 numbered and 7 unnumbered works. By far the best edition is Carl Klindworth's, published at Moscow. There is a Thematic Catalogue, published by Breitkopf & Härtel.
[App. p.588 adds "the following list of works (for PF. solo, unless otherwise stated). The works marked with an asterisk were published posthumously.
Op.
1. Rondo, C minor.
2. 'La ci darem' Variations (with Orchestra).
3. Introduction and Polonaise. in C (PF. and Cello).
4. *Sonata, C minor.
5. *Rondeau à la Mazur.
6. Four Mazurkas.
7. Five Mazurkas.
8. Trio (PF. and Strings).
9. Three Nocturnes.
10. Twelve Studies.
11. Concerto, E minor.
12. Variations (with Orch.), 'Ludovic' (Hérold).
13. Fantasia on Polish airs.
14. Krakovlak Rondo (with Orch.)
15. Three Nocturnes.
16. Rondo, E♭.
17. Four Mazurkas.
18. Valse, E♭.
19. Bolero.
20. Scherzo, B minor.
21. Concerto, F minor (with Orch.)
22. Polonaise, E♭ (with Orch.)
23. Ballade, G minor.
24. Four Mazurkas.
25. Twelve Studies.
26. Two Polonaises.
27. Two Nocturnes.
28. Twenty-four Preludes.
29. Impromptu, A♭.
30. Four Mazurkas.
31. Scherzo, B♭ minor.
32. Two Nocturnes.
33. Four Mazurkas.
34. Three Valses.
35. Sonata. B♭ minor.
36. Impromptu, F♯.
37. Two Nocturnes.
38. Ballade. F.
39. Scherzo, C♯ minor.
40. Two Polonaises.
41. Four Mazurkas.
42. Valse, A♭.
43. Tarantella.
44. Polonaise, F♯ minor.
45. Prelude, C♯ minor.
46. Allegro de Concert.
47. Ballade. A♭.
48. Two Nocturnes.
49. Fantasia, F minor.
50. Three Mazurkas.
51. Impromptu, D♭.
52. Ballade. F minor.
53. Polonaise. A♭.
54. Scherzo, E.
55. Two Nocturnes.
56. Three Mazurkas.
57. Berceuse.
58. Sonata, B minor.
59. Three Mazurkas.
60. Barcarolle.
61. Polonaise Fantaisie.
62. Two Nocturnes.
63. Three Mazurkas.
64. Three Valses.
65. Sonata, G minor (PF. and Cello).
66. *Fantalsle Impromptu.
67. *Four Mazurkas.
68. *Four Mazurkas.
69. *Two Valses.
70. *Three Valses.
71. *Three Polonaises.
72. *Nocturne, E minor, Marche funebre in C minor, and three Écossaises.
73. *Rondo for two PFs. in C.
Without opus-number.
* Seventeen Songs with PF. acct.
Three Studies.
* Mazurkas In G, B♭, D, C, and A minor.
* Valses, E major and minor.
* Polonaises, G♯ minor and B♭ minor.
* Variations in E, 'The Merry Swiss Boy.'
Duet Concertante, on 'Robert' (for PF. and Cello, written with Franchomme)."]
- ↑ One of these was during the Revolution of ’48. He gave two concerts in London, at the houses of Mr. Sartoris and Lord Falmouth, and played at Guildhall at the Polish Ball in November.