The Poet of the Piano (Part 2)

... it is very difficult to compare young Chopin with any earlier composer, because of the originality of Chopin´s works composed already in the first half of his life. While Bach, Mozart and Beethoven had been just training at the age comparable to that of Chopin, he was considered a master pointing the path of the coming age.

In late October 1848 Chopin wrote out his last will and testament. He thought very often of his mother and sisters at this time, and playing his adaptations of Polish folk music he remembered the scenes of his native land. Chopin´s illness didn´t remit and he no longer had the strength to give piano lessons. However, he didn´t give up composing. As he needed money to pay the most essential expenses and for his doctors, he had to sell some of his valuable belongings. Feeling even weaker he desired one of his family members to be with him, and thus his sister Ludwika came to Paris. It was in a beautiful, sunny apartment at Place Vendôme 12 where, on October 17, 1849, Chopin died. 

According to Chopin´s dying wish, which resulted from his fear of being buried alive, before the funeral his heart was removed. His sister then took it to Warsaw and it was sealed within a pillar of the Holy Cross Church, with the inscription from Matthew VI:21: “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."

Chopin wanted Mozart´s Requiem to be sung at his funeral. The problem was that the major parts of the Requiem were written for female voices and the Church of the Madeleine had never allowed female singer to sing in its choir. The funeral was postponed for two weeks and then the church permitted female singers, though they had to stay behind a black velvet curtain. One of the soloists was Luigi Lablache, who had sung the same piece at Beethoven´s funeral and had also sung at Vincenzo Bellini´s funeral. Nearly three thousand people came to the funeral, which was held on 30th October, 1849. As he desired, Chopin was buried at Père Lachaise Cemetery, his grave is still visited by numerous people and constantly decorated with flowers.

There are over 60 Chopin´s organisations all around the world. The main Chopin centre of international importance is the Fryderyk Chopin Society of Warsaw, which continues in the activities of the Warsaw Music Society’s Chopin Section established in 1899. The idea to establish a Fryderyk Chopin Institue arose in 1934 from the initiative of several prominent representatives of cultural and political life in the country. Next year the Institute started collecting photographs, autographs, books, printed music and gramophone records. The institute created the basis of the future Museum, Library, Record Library and Photo Library, and also published the Chopin magazine and began to work on publishing The Complete Works of Fryderyk Chopin. Among the activities of the Institute belonged organising music events such as the International Chopin Piano Competitions, the Grand Prix du Disque Frédéric Chopin Record Competitions (since 1985), scientific symposia, exhibitions, festivals and competitions in Poland and also other countries. Since 1967 the Society has been organising annual National Polish Competitions, where competitors may gain Fryderyk Chopin Artistic Scholarships.   

More than 230 of Chopin´s works survived, all of them involve the piano. He wrote almost exclusively for solo piano and also composed a few pieces for various ensembles, particularly a piano trio and cello sonata. Although Chopin lived in the 1800s, he was educated in the tradition of Beethoven, Haydn, Mozart and Clementi. He also used Clementi's piano method when teaching his own students.

According to a musicologist Zdzisław Jachimecki, who also wrote Chopin´s biography, it is very difficult to compare young Chopin with any earlier composer, because of the originality of Chopin´s works composed already in the first half of his life. While Bach, Mozart and Beethoven had been just training at the age comparable to that of Chopin, he was considered a master pointing the path of the coming age.

Chopin is well known for having used rubato that is the opposite to strictly regular playing. It is a musical term for slightly speeding up or slowing down the tempo of a piece, which was frequently used in music of the Romantic Period and especially in piano music to create contrast and a certain style and sound to a piece. Chopin´s Heroic Polonaise is an excellent example of using rubato in a piece. 

One of Chopin's students, Friederike Müller of Vienna, wrote these words about Chopin's playing style in her diary: “His playing was always noble and beautiful; his tones sang, whether in full forte or softest piano. He took infinite pains to teach his pupils this legato, cantabile style of playing. His most severe criticism was "He—or she—does not know how to join two notes together." He also demanded the strictest adherence to rhythm. He hated all lingering and dragging, misplaced rubatos, as well as exaggerated ritardandos ... and it is precisely in this respect that people make such terrible errors in playing his works.”

Although Chopin´s style is technically demanding, it emphasizes expressive depth rather than virtuosity. His compositions were often inspired by experiences in his own emotional life. It sends shivers down your spine when you hear one´s most inner, tender, angry or confused thoughts expressed in such emotional form of art as music certainly is. Through music Chopin reveals to us his suffering, his pain, which is sometimes overcome and sometimes not, and it always leads to the same thing – pure beauty.

Chopin invented musical forms such as the ballade and made some major innovations in other forms such as the piano sonata, waltz, nocturne, étude, impromptu and prelude. He changed the new salon genre of the nocturne, invented by Irish composer John Field, into a more sophisticated musical form. He enriched popular dance forms, like the Polish mazurka and the Viennese waltz, with a greater variety of melody and expression. Chopin was the first to write ballades and scherzi as individual pieces. He also used the form of Bach's preludes and fugues and transformed the genre in his own preludes. Chopin modified the étude into a marvelous emotional piece and used it to teach his own revolutionary style, for instance playing with the weak fingers (3, 4, and 5) in fast figures (Op. 10, no. 2) and playing black keys with the thumb (Op. 10, no. 5).

Chopin himself never gave thematic titles to his instrumental works, but named them simply by genre and number, leaving all potential musical associations to the listener. The names of many pieces by which we know them were invented by other people. According to the name, we would suggest that the Revolutionary Étude was written with the failed Polish uprising against Russia in Chopin´s mind, but it only appeared at that time. The Funeral March was written before the rest of the sonata which it is a part of, but we don´t know the exact occasion that inspired its creation. Some of his melodies have been used as the basis of popular songs, such as the slow section of the Fantaisie-Impromptu (Op. posth. 66) and the first section of the Étude Op. 10 No. 3. These works are typical of an intense and personalised chromaticism, as well as a melodic curve. It resembles the operas of Chopin's day composed by Gioachino Rossini, Gaetano Donizetti, and especially Vincenzo Bellini. Chopin talked and wrote constantly about singers and used the piano to reproduce the charm of the singing voice.

Chopin as a teacher realised the importance of this work. He taught for several hours a day with true delight. He often required the ceaseless repetition of a passage until it was understood in the heart of a pupil. Chopin preferred pupils to follow the text carefully rather than play from memory. Usually he sat at his small upright pianino while the student played on the large Pleyel. He called attention to every mistake or carelessness, but used more examples that words. One of Chopin´s pupils, Carl Mikuli, stated: „Often the entire lesson passed without the pupil having played more than a few bars.“

In order to evoke the mood of a piece, to arouse the right musical impulse in the pupil and to achieve a particular expressiveness, Chopin once suggested to Georges Mathias during a section of Weber's Sonata in A flat major (op. 39) that 'an angel is passing over the sky'. While the young Liszt tried to stimulate the pupil's imagination by reading him a page of Chateaubriand or a poem by Hugo, Chopin obtained the same result with a single, concise image, through which he was able to translate his vision into words.

Repeated negligence or careless playing sometimes irritated him, but more often, Chopin showed a humane understanding of his students' personal, musical and technical problems. He could see into his pupil´s mind, knew how to inspire their self-confidence and to find the right words of encouragement to free their inner resources at the right moment. The following words of Emilie von Gretsch, Chopin´s student, illustrates this: "During the last lesson [...] Chopin showed me how best to practise the Etudes. Some of them required no comment from him, 'since you understand them perfectly' - that was his opinion. It was a special joy to me to be able to play easily what had previously seemed to involve perilous difficulties, particularly when I was working on these Etudes with Henselt. Chopin (I think he could read hearts), at the precise moment when this agreeable discovery about my progress crossed my mind, told me, 'This seems perfectly easy to you now, doesn't it ? - not like it was before. Well! In this short time you've made miraculous progress!' He told me that within a few months I'd be more aware of it, or, at any rate, he presumed that I would, since he had found this happened with his best students."

A lot of Chopin´s pupils experienced a feeling of revelation and liberation through Chopin's teaching, which opened to them the doors of all music, not just of piano playing.

Several films about Chopin have been made. In one of them, A Song to Remember, which talks about Chopin´s life and his relationship with George Sand, Cornel Wilde portrayed the composer and it gained him an Academy Award nomination as Best Actor. Among other films are Impromptu (1991), starring Hugh Grant as Chopin; La note bleue (1991); and Chopin: Desire for Love (2002).

In the end, I can only agree with the words of Gazebo, when he is singing “I like Chopin”.

Slávka Szaniszlová