Chapter XXII
STAY AT MARSEILLES (FROM MARCH TO MAY, 1839) AS DESCRIBED IN CHOPIN'S AND MADAME SAND'S LETTERS.--HIS STATE OF HEALTH.--COMPOSITIONS AND THEIR PUBLICATION.--PLAYING THE ORGAN AT A FUNERAL SERVICE FOR NOURRIT.--AN EXCURSION TO GENOA.--DEPARTURE FOR NOHANT.
As George Sand and her party were obliged to stop at Marseilles, she had Chopin examined by Dr. Cauviere. This celebrated physician thought him in great danger, but, on seeing him recover rapidly, augured that with proper care his patient might nevertheless live a long time. Their stay at Marseilles was more protracted than they intended and desired; in fact, they did not start for Nohant till the 22nd of May. Dr. Cauviere would not permit Chopin to leave Marseilles before summer; but whether this was the only cause of the long sojourn of the Sand party in the great commercial city, or whether there were others, I have not been able to discover. Happily, we have first-hand information--namely, letters of Chopin and George Sand--to throw a little light on these months of the pianist-composer's life. As to his letters, their main contents consist of business matters--wranglings about terms, abuse of publishers, &c. Here and there, however, we find also a few words about his health, characteristic remarks about friends and acquaintances, interesting hints about domestic arrangements and the like--the allusion (in the letter of March 2, 1839) to a will made by him some time before, and which he wishes to be burned, will be read with some curiosity.
An extract or two from the letter which George Sand wrote on March 8, 1839, to Francois Rollinat, launches us at once in medias res.
At last we are in Marseilles. Chopin has stood the passage very well. He is very weak here, but is doing infinitely better in all respects, and is in the hands of Dr. Cauviere, an excellent man and excellent physician, who takes a paternal care of him, and who answers for his recovery. We breathe at last, but after how many troubles and anxieties!...Write to me here to the address of Dr. Cauviere, Rue de Rome, 71.
Chopin charges me to shake you heartily by the hand for him. Maurice and Solange embrace you. They are wonderfully well. Maurice has completely recovered.
Chopin to Fontana; Marseilles, March 2, 1839:--
You no doubt learned from Grzymala of the state of my health and my manuscripts. Two months ago I sent you from Palma my Preludes. After making a copy of them for Probst and getting the money from him, you were to give to Leo 1,000 francs; and out of the 1,500 francs which Pleyel was to give you for the Preludes I wrote you to pay Nougi and one term to the landlord. In the same letter, if I am not mistaken, I asked you to give notice of my leaving the apartments; for were this not done before April, I should be obliged to retain them for the next quarter, till July.
The second batch of manuscripts may have now reached you; for it must have remained a long time at the custom-house, on the sea, and again at the custom-house.
I also wrote to Pleyel with the Preludes that I give him the Ballade (which I sold to Probst for Germany) for 1,000 francs. For the two Polonaises I asked 1,500 francs for France, England, and Germany (the right of Probst is confined to the Ballade). It seems to me that this is not too dear.
In this way you ought to get, on receiving the second batch of manuscripts, from Pleyel 2,500 francs, and from Probst, for the Ballade, 500 or 600 francs, I do not quite remember, which makes altogether 3,000 francs.
I asked Grzymala if he could send me immediately at least 500 francs, which need not prevent him from sending me soon the rest. Thus much for business.
Now if, which I doubt, you succeed in getting apartments from next month, divide my furniture amongst you three: Grzymala, Johnnie, and you. Johnnie has the most room, although not the most sense, judging from the childish letter he wrote to me. For his telling me that I should become a Camaldolite, let him take all the shabby things. Do not overload Grzymala too much, and take to your house what you judge necessary and serviceable to you, as I do not know whether I shall return to Paris in summer (keep this to yourself). At all events, we will always write one another, and if, as I expect, it be necessary to keep my apartments till July, I beg of you to look after them and pay the quarterly rent.
For your sincere and truly affectionate letter you have an answer in the second Polonaise. [FOOTNOTE: See next foot- note.] It is not my fault that I am like a mushroom that poisons when you unearth and taste it. I know I have never in anything been of service to anyone, but also not of much to myself.
I told you that in the first drawer of my writing-desk near the door there was a paper which you or Grzymala or Johnnie might unseal on a certain occasion. Now I beg of you to take it out and, WITHOUT READING IT, BURN IT. Do this, I entreat you, for friendship's sake. This paper is now of no use.
If Anthony leaves without sending you the money, it is very much in the Polish style; nota bene, do not say to him a word about it. Try to see Pleyel; tell him I have received no word from him, and that his pianino is entrusted to safe hands. Does he agree to the transaction I proposed to him?
The letters from home reached me all three together, with yours, before going on board the vessel. I again send you one.
I thank you for the friendly help you give me, who am not strong. My love to Johnnie, tell him that I did not allow them, or rather that they were not permitted, to bleed me; that I wear vesicatories, that I am coughing a very little in the morning, and that I am not yet at all looked upon as a consumptive person. I drink neither coffee nor wine, but milk. Lastly, I keep myself warm, and look like a girl.
Chopin to Fontana; Marseilles, March 6, 1839:--
My health is still improving; I begin to play, eat, walk, and speak, like other men; and when you receive these few words from me you will see that I again write with ease. But once more of business. I would like very much that my Preludes should be dedicated to Pleyel (surely there is still time, for they are not yet printed) and the Ballade to Robert Schumann. The Polonaises, as they are, to you and to Kessler. If Pleyel does not like to give up the dedication of the Ballade, you will dedicate the Preludes to Schumann.
[FOOTNOTE: The final arrangement was that Op. 38, the "Deuxieme Ballade," was dedicated to Robert Schumann; Op. 40, the "Deux Polonaises," to Julius Fontana; the French and the English edition of Op. 28, "Vingt-quatre Preludes," to Camille Pleyel, and the German editon to J. C. Kessler.]
Garczynski called upon me yesterday on his way back from Aix; he is the only person that I have received, for I keep the door well shut to all amateurs of music and literature.
Of the change of dedication you will inform Probst as soon as you have arranged with Pleyel.
From the money obtained you will give Grzymala 500 francs, the rest, 2,500 francs, you will send me as soon as possible.
Love me and write.
Pardon me if I overwhelm you too much with commissions, but do not be afraid, these are not the last. I think you do willingly what I ask you.
My love to Johnnie.
Chopin to Fontana; Marseilles, March 10, 1839:--
Thanks for your trouble. I did not expect Jewish tricks from Pleyel; but if it is so, I beg of you to give him the enclosed letter, unless he makes no difficulties about the Ballade and the Polonaises. On the other hand, on receiving for the Ballade 500 francs from Probst, you will take it to Schlesinger. If one has to deal with Jews, let it at least be with orthodox ones. Probst may cheat me still worse; he is a bird you will not catch. Schlesinger used to cheat me, he gained enough by me, and he will not reject new profit, only be polite to him. Though a Jew, he nevertheless wishes to pass for something better.
Thus, should Pleyel make the least difficulties, you will go to Schlesinger, and tell him that I give him the Ballade for France and England for 800 francs, and the Polonaises for Germany, England, and France for 1,500 francs (should he not be inclined to give so much, give them for 1,400, 1,300, and even for 1,200 francs). If he mentions the Preludes, you may say that it is a thing long ago promised to Pleyel--he wished to be the publisher of them; that he asked them from me as a favour before my departure from Paris--as was really the case. You see, my very dear friend, for Pleyel I could break with Schlesinger, but for Probst I cannot. What is it to me if Schlesinger makes Probst pay dearer for my manuscripts? If Probst pays dear for them to Schlesinger, it shows that the latter cheats me, paying me too little. After all, Probst has no establishment in Paris. For all my printed things Schlesinger paid me at once, and Probst very often made me wait for money. If he will not have them all, give him the Ballade separately, and the Polonaises separately, but at the latest within two weeks. If he does not accept the offer, then apply to Probst. Being such an admirer of mine, he must not pay less than Pleyel. You will deliver my letter to Pleyel only if he makes any difficulties.
Dear me! this Pleyel who is such an adorer of mine! He thinks, perhaps, that I shall never return to Paris alive. I shall come back, and shall pay him a visit, and thank him as well as Leo.
I enclose a note to Schlesinger, in which I give you full authority to act in this matter.
I feel better every day; nevertheless, you will pay the portier these fifty francs, to which I completely agree, for my doctor does not permit me to move from here before summer.
Mickiewicz's "Dziady" I received yesterday. What shall you do with my papers?
The letters you will leave in the writing-desk, and send the music to Johnnie, or take it to your own house. In the little table that stands in the anteroom there are also letters; you must lock it well.
My love to Johnnie, I am glad he is better.
Chopin to Fontana; March 17, 1839:--
I thank you for all your efforts. Pleyel is a scoundrel, Probst a scape-grace. He never gave me 1,000 francs for three manuscripts. Very likely you have received my long letter about Schlesinger, therefore I wish you and beg of you to give that letter of mine to Pleyel, who thinks my manuscripts too dear. If I have to sell them cheap, I would rather do so to Schlesinger than look for new and improbable connections. For Schlesinger can always count upon England, and as I am square with Wessel, he may sell them to whomsoever he likes. The same with the Polonaises in Germany, for Probst is a bird whom I have known a long time. As regards the money, you must make an unequivocal agreement, and do not give the manuscripts except for cash. I send you a reconnaissance for Pleyel, it astonishes me that he absolutely wants it, as if he could not trust me and you.
Dear me, this Pleyel who said that Schlesinger paid me badly! 500 francs for a manuscript for all the countries seems to him too dear! I assure you I prefer to deal with a real Jew. And Probst, that good-for-nothing fellow, who pays me 300 francs for my mazurkas! You see, the last mazurkas brought me with ease 800 francs--namely, Probst 300 francs, Schlesinger 400, and Wessel 100. I prefer giving my manuscripts as formerly at a very low price to stooping before these...I prefer being submissive to one Jew to being so to three. Therefore go to Schlesinger, but perhaps you settled with Pleyel.
Oh, men, men! But this Mrs. Migneron, she too is a good one! However, Fortune turns round, I may yet live and hear that this lady will come and ask you for some leather; if, as you say, you are aiming at being a shoemaker. I beg of you to make shoes neither for Pleyel nor for Probst.
Do not yet speak to anyone of the Scherzo [Op. 39]. I do not know when I shall finish it, for I am still weak and cannot write.
As yet I have no idea when I shall see you. My love to Grzymala; and give him such furniture as he will like, and let Johnnie take the rest from the apartments. I do not write to him, but I love him always. Tell him this, and give him my love.
Wodzinski still astonishes me.
When you receive the money from Pleyel, pay first the landlord's rent, and send me immediately 500 francs. I left on the receipt for Pleyel the Op. blank, for I do not remember the following number.
Madame Sand to Madame Marliani; Marseilles, April 22, 1839:--
...I was also occupied with the removal from one hotel to another. Notwithstanding all his efforts and inquiries, the good doctor was not able to find me a corner in the country where to pass the month of April.
I am pretty tired of this town of merchants and shopkeepers, where the intellectual life is wholly unknown; but here I am still shut up for the month of April.
Further on in the letter, after inviting Madame Marliani and her husband to come to Nohant in May, she proceeds thus:--
He [M. Marliani] loves the country, and I shall be a match for him as regards rural pleasures, while you [Madame Marliani] will philosophise at the piano with Chopin. It can hardly be said that he enjoys himself in Marseilles; but he resigns himself to recover patiently.
The following letter of Chopin to Fontana, which Karasowski thinks was written at Valdemosa in the middle of February, ought to be dated Marseilles, April, 1839:--
As they are such Jews, keep everything till my return. The Preludes I have sold to Pleyel (I received from him 500 francs). He is entitled to do with them what he likes. But as to the Ballades and Polonaises, sell them neither to Schlesinger nor to Probst. But whatever may happen, with no Schonenberger [FOOTNOTE: A Paris music-publisher] will I have anything to do. Therefore, if you gave the Ballade to Probst, take it back, even though he offered a thousand. You may tell him that I have asked you to keep it till my return, that when I am back we shall see.
Enough of these...Enough for me and for you.
My very life, I beg of you to forgive me all the trouble; you have really been busying yourself like a friend, and now you will have still on your shoulders my removal. I beg Grzymala to pay the cost of the removal. As to the portier, he very likely tells lies, but who will prove it? You must give, in order to stop his barking.
My love to Johnnie, I will write to him when I am in better spirits. My health is improved, but I am in a rage. Tell Johnnie that from Anthony as well as from me he will have neither word nor money.
Yesterday I received your letter, together with letters from Pleyel and Johnnie.
If Clara Wieck pleased you, that is good, for nobody can play better than she does. When you see her give her my compliments, and also to her father.
Did I happen to lend you Witwicki's songs? I cannot find them. I only ask for them in case you should chance to have them.
Chopin to Fontana; Marseilles, March 25 [should no doubt be April 25], 1839:--
I received your letter, in which you let me know the particulars of the removal. I have no words to thank you for your true, friendly help. The particulars were very interesting to me. But I am sorry that you complain, and that Johnnie is spitting blood. Yesterday I played for Nourrit on the organ, you see by this that I am better. Sometimes I play to myself at home, but as yet I can neither sing nor dance.
Although the news of my mother is welcome, its having been originated by Plat... is enough to make one consider it a falsehood.
The warm weather has set in here, and I shall certainly not leave Marseilles before May, and then go somewhere else in the south of France.
It is not likely that we shall soon have news from Anthony. Why should he write? Perhaps to pay his debts? But this is not customary in Poland. The reason Raciborski appreciates you so much is that you have no Polish habits, nota bene, not those Polish habits you know and I mean.
You are staying at No. 26 [Chaussee d'Antin]. Are you comfortable? On what floor, and how much do you pay? I take more and more interest in these matters, for I also shall be obliged to think of new apartments, but not till after my return to Paris.
I had only that letter from Pleyel which he sent through you-- it is a month ago or more. Write to the same address, Rue et Hotel Beauveau.
Perhaps you did not understand what I said above about my having played for Nourrit. His body was brought from Italy and carried to Paris. There was a Requiem Mass for his soul. I was asked by his friends to play on the organ during the Elevation.
Did Miss Wieck play my Etude well? Could she not select something better than just this etude, the least interesting for those who do not know that it is written for the black keys? It would have been far better to do nothing at all. [FOOTNOTE: Clara Wieck gave a concert in Paris on April 16, 1839. The study in question is No. 5 of Op. 10 (G flat major). Only the right hand plays throughout on black keys.]
In conclusion, I have nothing more to write, except to wish you good luck in the new house. Hide my manuscripts, that they may not appear printed before the time. If the Prelude is printed, that is Pleyel's trick. But I do not care. Mischievous Germans, rascally Jews...! Finish the litany, for you know them as well as I do.
Give my love to Johnnie and Grzymaia if you see them.--Your
FREDERICK.
One subject mentioned in this letter deserves a fuller explanation than Chopin vouchsafes. Adolphe Nourrit, the celebrated tenor singer, had in a state of despondency, caused by the idea that since the appearance of his rival Duprez his popularity was on the wane, put an end to his life by throwing himself out of a window at Naples on the 8th of March, 1839. [FOOTNOTE: This is the generally-accepted account of Nourrit's death. But Madame Garcia, the mother of the famous Malibran, who at the time was staying in the same house, thought it might have been an accident, the unfortuante artist having in the dark opened a window on a level with the floor instead of a door. (See Fetis: Biographie universelle des Musiciens.)] Madame Nourrit brought her husband's body to Paris, and it was on the way thither that a funeral service was held at Marseilles for the much-lamented man and singer.
Le Sud, Journal de la Mediterranee of April 25, 1839, [FOOTNOTE: Quoted in L. M. Quicherat's Adolphe Nourrit, sa vie, son talent, son caractere] shall tell us of Chopin's part in this service:--
At the Elevation of the Host were heard the melancholy tones of the organ. It was M. Chopin, the celebrated pianist, who came to place a souvenir on the coffin of Nourrit; and what a souvenir! a simple melody of Schubert, but the same which had so filled us with enthusiasm when Nourrit revealed it to us at Marseilles--the melody of Les Astres. [FOOTNOTE: Die gestirne is the original German title of this song.]
A less colourless account, one full of interesting facts and free from conventional newspaper sentiment and enthusiasm, we find in a letter of Chopin's companion.
Madame Sand to Madame Marliani; Marseilles, April 28, 1839:--
The day before yesterday I saw Madame Nourrit with her six children, and the seventh coming shortly...Poor unfortunate woman! what a return to France! accompanying this corpse, and she herself super-intending the packing, transporting, and unpacking [charger, voiturer, deballer] of it like a parcel!
They held here a very meagre service for the poor deceased, the bishop being ill-disposed. This was in the little church of Notre-Dame-du-Mont. I do not know if the singers did so intentionally, but I never heard such false singing. Chopin devoted himself to playing the organ at the Elevation, what an organ! A false, screaming instrument, which had no wind except for the purpose of being out of tune. Nevertheless, YOUR LITTLE ONE [votre petit] made the most of it. He took the least shrill stops, and played Les Astres, not in a proud and enthusiastic style as Nourrit used to sing it, but in a plaintive and soft style, like the far-off echo from another world. Two, at the most three, were there who deeply felt this, and our eyes filled with tears.
The rest of the audience, who had gone there en masse, and had been led by curiosity to pay as much as fifty centimes for a chair (an unheard-of price for Marseilles), were very much disappointed; for it was expected that he would make a tremendous noise and break at least two or three stops. They expected also to see me, in full dress, in the very middle of the choir; what not? They did not see me at all; I was hidden in the organ-loft, and through the balustrade I descried the coffin of poor Nourrit.
Thanks to the revivifying influences of spring and Dr. Cauviere's attention and happy treatment, Chopin was able to accompany George Sand on a trip to Genoa, that vaga gemma del mar, fior delta terra. It gave George Sand much pleasure to see again, now with her son Maurice by her side, the beautiful edifices and pictures of the city which six years before she had visited with Musset. Chopin was probably not strong enough to join his friends in all their sight-seeing, but if he saw Genoa as it presents itself on being approached from the sea, passed along the Via Nuova between the double row of magnificent palaces, and viewed from the cupola of S. Maria in Carignano the city, its port, the sea beyond, and the stretches of the Riviera di Levante and Riviera di Ponente, he did not travel to Italy in vain. Thus Chopin got at last a glimpse of the land where nine years before he had contemplated taking up his abode for some time.
On returning to Marseilles, after a stormy passage, on which Chopin suffered much from sea-sickness, George Sand and her party rested for a few days at the house of Dr. Cauviere, and then set out, on the 22nd of May, for Nohant.
Madame Sand to Madame Marliani; Marseilles, May 20, 1839:--
We have just arrived from Genoa, in a terrible storm. The bad weather kept us on sea double the ordinary time; forty hours of rolling such as I have not seen for a long time. It was a fine spectacle, and if everybody had not been ill, I would have greatly enjoyed it...
We shall depart the day after to-morrow for Nohant. Address your next letter to me there, we shall be there in eight days. My carriage has arrived from Chalon at Arles by boat, and we shall post home very quietly, sleeping at the inns like good bourgeois.
XXIII. JUNE TO OCTOBER, 1839
GEORGE SAND AND CHOPIN'S RETURN TO NOHANT.--STATE OF HIS HEALTH.--HIS POSITION IN HIS FRIEND'S HOUSE.--HER ACCOUNT OF THEIR RELATIONSHIP.--HIS LETTERS TO FONTANA, WHICH, AMONG MANY OTHER MATTERS, TREAT OF HIS COMPOSITIONS AND OF PREPARATIONS TO BE MADE FOR HIS AND GEORGE SAND'S ARRIVAL IN PARIS.
The date of one of George Sand's letters shows that the travellers were settled again at Nohant on the 3rd of June, 1839. Dr. Papet, a rich friend of George Sand's, who practised his art only for the benefit of the poor and his friends, took the convalescent Chopin at once under his care. He declared that his patient showed no longer any symptoms of pulmonary affection, but was suffering merely from a slight chronic laryngeal affection which, although he did not expect to be able to cure it, need not cause any serious alarm.
On returning to Nohant, George Sand had her mind much exercised by the question how to teach her children. She resolved to undertake the task herself, but found she was not suited for it, at any rate, could not acquit herself of it satisfactorily without giving up writing. This question, however, was not the only one that troubled her.
In the irresolution in which I was for a time regarding the arrangement of my life with a view to what would be best for my dear children, a serious question was debated in my conscience. I asked myself if I ought to entertain the idea which Chopin had formed of taking up his abode near me. I should not have hesitated to say "no," had I known then for how short a time the retired life and the solemnity of the country suited his moral and physical health. I still attributed his despair and horror of Majorca to the excitement of fever and the exces de caractere of that place. Nohant offered pleasanter conditions, a less austere retreat, congenial society, and resources in case of illness. Papet was to him an enlightened and kind physician. Fleury, Duteil, Duvernet, and their families, Planet, and especially Rollinat, were dear to him at first sight. All of them loved him also, and felt disposed to spoil him as I did.
Among those with whom the family at Nohant had much intercourse, and who were frequent guests at the chateau, was also an old acquaintance of ours, one who had not grown in wisdom as in age, I mean George Sand's half-brother, Hippolyte Chatiron, who was now again living in Berry, his wife having inherited the estate of Montgivray, situated only half a league from Nohant.
His warmth of manner, his inexhaustible gaiety, the originality of his sallies, his enthusiastic and naive effusions of admiration for the genius of Chopin, the always respectful deference which he showed to him alone, even in the inevitable and terrible apres-boire, found favour with the eminently-aristocratic artist. All, then, went very well at first, and I entertained eventually the idea that Chopin might rest and regain his health by spending a few summers with us, his work necessarily calling him back to Paris in the winter.
However, the prospect of this kind of family union with a newly-made friend caused me to reflect. I felt alarmed at the task which I was about to undertake, and which I had believed would be limited to the journey in Spain.
In short, George Sand presents herself as a sister of mercy, who, prompted by charity, sacrifices her own happiness for that of another. Contemplating the possibility of her son falling ill and herself being thereby deprived of the joys of her work, she exclaims: "What hours of my calm and invigorating life should I be able to devote to another patient, much more difficult to nurse and comfort than Maurice?"
The discussion of this matter by George Sand is so characteristic of her that, lengthy as it is, I cannot refrain from giving it in full.
A kind of terror seized me in presence of a new duty which I was to take upon me. I was not under the illusion of passion. I had for the artist a kind of maternal adoration which was very warm, very real, but which could not for a moment contend with maternal love, the only chaste feeling which may be passionate.
I was still young enough to have perhaps to contend with love, with passion properly so called. This contingency of my age, of my situation, and of the destiny of artistic women, especially when they have a horror of passing diversions, alarmed me much, and, resolved as I was never to submit to any influence which might divert me from my children, I saw a less, but still possible danger in the tender friendship with which Chopin inspired me.
Well, after reflection, this danger disappeared and even assumed an opposite character--that of a preservative against emotions which I no longer wished to know. One duty more in my life, already so full of and so overburdened with work, appeared to me one chance more to attain the austerity towards which I felt myself attracted with a kind of religious enthusiasm.
If this is a sincere confession, we can only wonder at the height of self-deception attainable by the human mind; if, however, it is meant as a justification, we cannot but be surprised at the want of skill displayed by the generally so clever advocate. In fact, George Sand has in no instance been less happy in defending her conduct and in setting forth her immaculate virtuousness. The great words "chastity" and "maternity" are of course not absent. George Sand could as little leave off using them as some people can leave off using oaths. In either case the words imply much more than is intended by those from whose mouths or pens they come. A chaste woman speculating on "real love" and "passing diversions," as George Sand does here, seems to me a strange phenomenon. And how charmingly naive is the remark she makes regarding her relations with Chopin as a "PRESERVATIVE against emotions which she no longer wished to know"! I am afraid the concluding sentence, which in its unction is worthy of Pecksniff, and where she exhibits herself as an ascetic and martyr in all the radiance of saintliness, will not have the desired effect, but will make the reader laugh as loud as Musset is said to have done when she upbraided him with his ungratefulness to her, who had been devoted to him to the utmost bounds of self-abnegation, to the sacrifice of her noblest impulses, to the degradation of her chaste nature.
George Sand, looking back in later years on this period of her life, thought that if she had put into execution her project of becoming the teacher of her children, and of shutting herself up all the year round at Nohant, she would have saved Chopin from the danger which, unknown to her, threatened him--namely, the danger of attaching himself too absolutely to her. At that time, she says, his love was not so great but that absence would have diverted him from it. Nor did she consider his affection exclusive. In fact, she had no doubt that the six months which his profession obliged him to pass every year in Paris would, "after a few days of malaise and tears," have given him back to "his habits of elegance, exquisite success, and intellectual coquetry." The correctness of the facts and the probability of the supposition may be doubted. At any rate, the reasons which led her to assume the non-exclusiveness of Chopin's affection are simply childish. That he spoke to her of a romantic love-affair he had had in Poland, and of sweet attractions he had afterwards experienced in Paris, proves nothing. What she says about his mother having been his only passion is still less to the point. But reasoning avails little, and the strength of Chopin's love was not put to the test. He went, indeed, in the autumn of 1839 to Paris, but not alone; George Sand, professedly for the sake of her children's education, went there likewise. "We were driven by fate," she says, "into the bonds of a long connection, and both of us entered into it unawares." The words "driven by fate," and "entered into it unawares," sound strange, if we remember that they apply not to a young girl who, inexperienced and confiding, had lost herself in the mazes of life, but to a novelist skilled in the reading of human hearts, to a constantly-reasoning and calculating woman, aged 35, who had better reasons than poor Amelia in Schiller's play for saying "I have lived and loved."
After all this reasoning, moralising, and sentimentalising, it is pleasant to be once more face to face with facts, of which the following letters, written by Chopin to Fontana during the months from June to October, 1839, contain a goodly number. The rather monotonous publishing transactions play here and there again a prominent part, but these Nohant letters are on the whole more interesting than the Majorca letters, and decidedly more varied as regards contents than those he wrote from Marseilles--they tell us much more of the writer's tastes and requirements, and even reveal something of his relationship to George Sand. Chopin, it appears to me, did not take exactly the same view of this relationship as the novelist. What will be read with most interest are Chopin's directions as to the decoration and furnishing of his rooms, the engagement of a valet, the ordering of clothes and a hat, the taking of a house for George Sand, and certain remarks made en passant on composers and other less-known people.
[I.]
...The best part of your letter is your address, which I had already forgotten, and without which I do not know if I would have answered you so soon; but the worst is the death of Albrecht. [FOOTNOTE: See p.27 foot-note 7.]
You wish to know when I shall be back. When the misty and rainy weather begins, for I must breathe fresh air.
Johnnie has left. I don't know if he asked you to forward to me the letters from my parents should any arrive during his absence and be sent to his usual address. Perhaps he thought of it, perhaps not. I should be very sorry if any of them miscarried. It is not long since I had a letter from home, they will not write soon, and by this time he, who is so kind and good, will be in good health and return.
I am composing here a Sonata in B flat minor, in which will be the Funeral March which you have already. There is an allegro, then a "Scherzo" in E flat minor, the "March," and a short "Finale" of about three pages. The left hand unisono with the right hand are gossiping [FOOTNOTE: "Lewa reka unisono z prawa, ogaduja po Marszu."] after the March. I have a new "Nocturne" in G major, which will go along with the Nocturne in G minor, [FOOTNOTE: "Deux Nocturnes," Op.37.] if you remember such a one.
You know that I have four new mazurkas: one from Palma in E minor, three from here in B major, A flat major, and C sharp minor. [FOOTNOTE: Quatre mazurkas, Op. 41.] They seem to me pretty, as the youngest children usually do when the parents grow old.
Otherwise I do nothing; I correct for myself the Parisian edition of Bach; not only the stroke-makers' [FOOTNOTE: In Polish strycharz, the usual meaning of which is "brickmaker." Chopin may have played upon the word. A mistake, however, is likewise possible, as the Polish for engraver is sztycharz.] (engravers') errors, but, I think, the harmonic errors committed by those who pretend to understand Bach. I do not do it with the pretension that I understand him better than they, but from a conviction that I sometimes guess how it ought to be.
You see I have praised myself enough to you.
Now, if Grzymata will visit me (which is doubtful), send me through him Weber for four hands. Also the last of my Ballade in manuscript, as I wish to change something in it. I should like very much to have your copy of the last mazurkas, if you have such a thing, for I do not know if my gallantry went so far as to give you a copy.
Pleyel wrote to me that you were very obliging, and have corrected the Preludes. Do you know how much Wessel paid him for them? It would be well to know this for the future.
My father has written to me that my old sonata has been published by Haslinger, and that the Germans praise it. [FOOTNOTE: There must have been some misunderstanding; the Sonata, Op. 4, was not published till 1851.]
I have now, counting those you have, six manuscripts; the devil take them if they get them for nothing. Pleyel did not do me any service with his offers, for he thereby made Schlesinger indifferent about me. But I hope this will be set right, f wrote to ask him to let me know if he had been paid for the piano sent to Palma, and I did so because the French consul in Majorca, whom I know very well, was to be changed, and had he not been paid, it would have been very difficult for me to settle this affair at such a distance. Fortunately, he is paid, and very liberally, as he wrote to me only last week.
Write to me what sort of lodgings you have. Do you board at the club?
Woyciechowski wrote to me to compose an oratorio. I answered him in the letter to my parents. Why does he build a sugar- refinery and not a monastery of Camaldolites or a nunnery of Dominican sisters!
[2.]
I give you my most hearty thanks for your upright, friendly, not English but Polish soul.
Select paper (wall-paper) such as I had formerly, tourterelle (dove colour), only bright and glossy, for the two rooms, also dark green with not too broad stripes. For the anteroom something else, but still respectable. Nevertheless, if there are any nicer and more fashionable papers that are to your liking, and you think that I also will like them, then take them. I prefer the plain, unpretending, and neat ones to the common shopkeeper's staring colours. Therefore, pearl colour pleases me, for it is neither loud nor does it look vulgar. I thank you for the servant's room, for it is much needed.
Now, as to the furniture: you will make the best of it if you look to it yourself. I did not dare to trouble you with it, but if you will be so kind, take it and arrange it as it ought to be. I shall ask Grzymala to give money for the removal. I shall write to him about it at once. As to the bed and writing- desk, it may be necessary to give them to the cabinet-maker to be renewed. In this case you will take the papers out of the writing-desk, and lock them up somewhere else. I need not tell you what you ought to do. Act as you like and judge what is necessary. Whatever you may do will be well done. You have my full confidence: this is one thing.
Now the second.
You must write to Wessel--doubtless you have already written about the Preludes. Let him know that I have six new manuscripts, for which I want 300 francs each (how many pounds is that?). If you think he would not give so much, let me know first. Inform me also if Probst is in Paris. Further look out for a servant. I should prefer a respectable honest Pole. Tell also Grzymala of it. Stipulate that he is to board himself; no more than 80 francs. I shall not be in Paris before the end of October--keep this, however, to yourself.
My dear friend, the state of Johnnie's health weighs sometimes strangely on my heart. May God give him what he stands in need of, but he should not allow himself to be cheated...However, this is neither here nor there. The greatest truth in the world is that I shall always love you as a most honest and kind man and Johnnie as another.
I embrace you both, write each of you and soon, were it of nothing more than the weather.--Your old more than ever long- nosed
FREDERICK.
[3.]
According to your description and that of Grzymala you have found such capital rooms that we are now thinking you have a lucky hand, and for this reason a man--and he is a great man, being the portier of George's house--who will run about to find a house for her, is ordered to apply to you when he has found a few; and you with your elegant tact (you see how I flatter you) will also examine what he has found, and give your opinion thereon. The main point is that it should be detached, if possible; for instance, a little hotel. Or something in a courtyard, with a view into a garden, or, if there be no garden, into a large court-yard; nota bene, very few lodgers--elegant--not higher than the second story. Perhaps some corps de logis, but small, or something like Perthuis's house, or even smaller. Lastly, should it be in front, the street must not be noisy. In one word, something you judge would be good for her. If it could be near me, so much the better; but if it cannot be, this consideration need not prevent you.
It seems to me that a little hotel in the new streets--such as Clichy, Blanche, or Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, as far as Rue des Martyrs--would be most suitable. Moreover, I send you a list of the streets where Mr. Mardelle--the portier of the Hotel Narbonne, Rue de la Harpe, No. 89, which belongs to George-- will look for a house. If in your leisure time you also looked out for something in our part of the town, it would be very nice. Fancy, I don't know why, but we think that you will find something wonderfully good, although it is already late.
The price she wishes to pay is from 2,000 to 2,500 francs, you might also give a couple of hundred francs more if anything extra fine should turn up. Grzymala and Arago promised to look out for something, but in spite of Grzymala's efforts nothing acceptable has thus far been found. I have written to him that he should employ you also in this business of mine (I say of MINE, for it is just the same as if it were mine). I shall write to him again to-day and tell him that I have asked you to give your help and use all your talents. It is necessary that there should be three bedrooms, two of which must be beside each other and one separated, for instance, by the drawing-room. Adjoining the third there will be required a well-lighted cabinet for her study. The other two may be small, this one, the third, also not very large. Besides this a drawing-room and dining-room in proportion. A pretty large kitchen. Two rooms for the servants, and a coal-cellar. The rooms must of course have inlaid floors, be newly laid, if possible, and require no repairs. But a little hotel or a separate part of a house in a court-yard looking into a garden would be most desirable. There must be tranquillity, quietness, no blacksmith in the neighbourhood. Respectable stairs. The windows exposed to the sun, absolutely to the south. Further, there must be no smoke, no bad odour, but a fine view, a garden, or at least a large court. A garden would be best. In the Faubourg St. Germain are many gardens, also in the Faubourg St. Honore. Find something quickly, something splendid, and near me. As soon as you have any chance, write immediately, don't be lazy; or get hold of Grzymala, go and see, both of you, take et que cela finisse. I send you a plan of the arrangement of the apartments. If you find something like this, draw the plan, or take it at once, which will be better than letting it slip out of your hands.
Mr. Mardelle is a decent man, and no fool, he was not always a portier. He is ordered to go and see you whenever he finds anything. You must also on your part be on the look-out, but let us keep that between us. I embrace you and Johnnie also. You will have our true gratitude when you find a house.
[a diagram of the apartments is inserted here in the letter.]
+----------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | | | | | Study | Bedroom. | Drawing room. | Bedroom. | Servants' room. | | | | | | | |----------------------------------------------------------------| | | | | | | Dining room | | | | | | |----------------------------------------------------------------| | | | | | | Lobby | | | | | | +----------------------------------------------------------------+
Pas de voisinage, surtout blacksmith, nor anything that belongs to him. For God's sake I beg of you take an active interest in the matter, my dear friend!
[4.]
I thank you for all your kind actions.
In the anteroom you will direct the grey curtains to be hung which were in my cabinet with the piano, and in the bedroom the same that were in the bedroom, only under them the white muslin ones which were under the grey ones.
I should like to have a little press in my bedroom, unless there be not room enough, or the drawing-room be too bare between the windows.
If the little sofa, the same which stood in the dining-room, could be covered with red, with the same stuff with which the chairs are covered, it might be placed in the drawing-room; but as it would be necessary to call in the upholsterer for that, it may be difficult.
It is a good thing that Domaradzki is going to be married, for surely he will give me back the 80 francs after the wedding. I should like also to see Podczaski married, and Nakw. (Nakwaska), and Anthony also. Let this remain between this paper, myself, and you.
Find me a valet. Kiss Madame Leo (surely the first commission will be the more pleasant to you, wherefore I relieve you of the second if you will do the first).
Let me know about Probst, whether he is in Paris or not. Do not forget Wessel. Tell Gutmann that I was much pleased that he asked for me at least once. To Moscheles, should he be in Paris, order to be given an injection of Neukomm's oratorios, prepared with Berlioz's "Cellini" and Doehler's Concerto. Give Johnnie from me for his breakfast moustaches of sphinxes and kidneys of parrots, with tomato sauce powdered with little eggs of the microscopic world. You yourself take a bath in whale's infusion as a rest from all the commissions I give you, for I know that you will do willingly as much as time will permit, and I shall do the same for you when you are married--of which Johnnie will very likely inform me soon. Only not to Ox, for that is my party.
[5.]
My dear friend,--In five, six, or seven days I shall be in Paris. Get things prepared as quickly as possible; if not all, let me find at least the rooms papered and the bed ready.
I am hastening my arrival as the presence of George Sand is necessary on account of a piece to be played. [FOOTNOTE: "Cosima." The first representation, at the Comedie Francaise, did not take place until April, 1840.] But this remains between us. We have fixed our departure for the day after to- morrow; thus, counting a few days for delay, we shall see each other on Wednesday or Thursday.
Besides the different commissions I gave you, especially that in the last letter about her house, which after our arrival will be off your shoulders--but till then, for God's sake, be obliging--besides all this, I say, I forgot to ask you to order for me a hat from my Duport in your street, Chaussee d'Antin. He has my measure, and knows how light I want it and of what kind. Let him give the hat of this year's shape, not too much exaggerated, for I do not know how you are dressing yourself just now. Again, besides this, call in passing at Dautremont's, my tailor's, on the Boulevards, and order him to make me at once a pair of grey trousers. You will yourself select a dark-grey colour for winter trousers; something respectable, not striped, but plain and elastic. You are an Englishman, so you know what I require. Dautremont will be glad to hear that I am coming. Also a quiet black velvet waistcoat, but with very little and no loud pattern, something very quiet but very elegant. Should he not have the best velvet of this kind, let him make a quiet, fine silk waistcoat, but not too much open. If the servant could be got for less than 80 francs, I should prefer it; but as you have already found one, let the matter rest.
My very dear friend, pardon me once more for troubling you, but I must. In a few days we shall see each other, and embrace for all this.
I beg of you, for God's sake, do not say to any Poles that I am coming so soon, nor to any Jewess either, as I should like to reserve myself during the first few days only for you, Grzymala, and Johnnie. Give them my love; to the latter I shall write once more.
I expect that the rooms will be ready. Write constantly to me, three times a day if you like, whether you have anything to say or not. Before leaving here I shall once more write to you.
Monday.
You are inappreciable! Take Rue Pigal [Pigalle], both houses, without asking anybody. Make haste. If by taking both houses you can diminish a little the price, well; if not, take them for 2,500 francs. Do not let them slip out of your hands, for we think them the best and most excellent. SHE regards you as my most logical and best--and I would add: the most splenetic, Anglo-Polish, from my soul beloved--friend.
[6.]
The day after to-morrow, Thursday, at five o'clock in the morning, we start, and on Friday at three, four, certainly at five o'clock, I shall be in Rue Tronchet, No. 5. I beg of you to inform the people there of this, I wrote to Johnnie to-day to retain for me that valet, and order him to wait for me at Rue Tronchet on Friday from noon. Should you have time to call upon me at that time, we would most heartily embrace each other. Once more my and my companion's most sincere thanks for Rue Pigalle.
Now, keep a sharp look-out on the tailor, he must have the clothes ready by Friday morning, so that I can change my clothes as soon as I come. Order him to take them to Rue Tronchet, and deliver them there to the valet Tineau--if I mistake not, that is his name. Likewise the hat from Dupont, [FOOTNOTE: In the preceding letter it was Duport] and for that I shall alter for you the second part of the Polonaise till the last moment of my life. Yesterday's version also may not please you, although I racked my brains with it for at least eighty seconds.
I have written out my manuscripts in good order. There are six with your Polonaises, not counting the seventh, an impromptu, which may perhaps be worthless--I do not know myself, it is too new. But it would be well if it be not too much in the style of Orlowski, Zimmermann, or Karsko-Konski, [FOOTNOTE: Chopin's countryman, the pianist and composer Antoine Kontski] or Sowinski, or other similar animals. For, according to my reckoning, it might fetch me about 800 francs. That will be seen afterwards.
As you are such a clever man, you might also arrange that no black thoughts and suffocating coughs shall annoy me in the new rooms. Try to make me good. Change, if you can, many episodes of my past. It would also not be a bad thing if I should find a few years of great work accomplished. By this you will greatly oblige me, also if you would make yourself younger or bring about that we had never been born.--Your old
FREDERICK.
Chapter XXIV
1839-1842.
RETURN OF GEORGE SAND AND CHOPIN TO PARIS.--GEORGE SAND IN THE RUE PIGALLE.--CHOPIN IN THE RUE TRONCHET: REMINISCENCES OF BRINLEY RICHARDS AND MOSCHELES.--SOIREES AT LEO'S AND ST. CLOUD.--CHOPIN JOINS MADAME SAND IN THE RUE PIGALLE.--EXTRACTS FROM GEORGE SAND'S CORRESPONDANCE; A LETTER OF MADAME SAND'S TO CHOPIN; BALZAC ANECDOTES.--MADAME SAND AND CHOPIN DO NOT GO TO NOHANT IN 1840.--COMPOSITIONS OF THIS PERIOD.--ABOUT CHOPIN AS A PIANIST.--LETTERS WRITTEN TO FONTANA IN THE SUMMER AND AUTUMN OF 1841.
Although Chopin and George Sand came to Paris towards the end of October, 1839, months passed before the latter got into the house which Fontana had taken for her. This we learn from a letter written by her to her friend Gustave Papet, and dated Paris, January, 1840, wherein we read:--
At last I am installed in the Rue Pigalle, 16, only since the last two days, after having fumed, raged, stormed, and sworn at the upholsterers, locksmith, &c., &c. What a long, horrible, unbearable business it is to lodge one's self here!
[FOOTNOTE: In the letter, dated Paris, October, 1839, preceding, in the George Sand "Correspondance," the one from which the above passage is extracted, occur the following words: "Je suis enfin installee chez moi a Paris." Where this chez moi was, I do not know.]
How greatly the interiors of George Sand's pavilions in the Rue Pigalle differed from those of Senor Gomez's villa and the cells in the monastery of Valdemosa, may be gathered from Gutmann's description of two of the apartments.
[FOOTNOTE: I do not guarantee the correctness of all the following details, although I found them in a sketch of Gutmann's life inspired by himself ("Der Lieblings-schuler Chopin's", No. 3 of "Schone Geister," by Bernhard Stavenow, Bremen, 1879), and which he assured me was trustworthy. The reasons of my scepticism are--1, Gutmann's imaginative memory and tendency to show himself off to advantage; 2, Stavenow's love of fine writing and a good story; 3, innumerable misstatements that can be indisputably proved by documents.]
Regarding the small salon, he gives only the general information that it was quaintly fitted up with antique furniture. But of George Sand's own room, which made a deeper impression upon him, he mentions so many particulars--the brown carpet covering the whole floor, the walls hung with a dark-brown ribbed cloth (Ripsstoff), the fine paintings, the carved furniture of dark oak, the brown velvet seats of the chairs, the large square bed, rising but little above the floor, and covered with a Persian rug (Teppich)--that it is easy to picture to ourselves the tout-ensemble of its appearance. Gutmann tells us that he had an early opportunity of making these observations, for Chopin visited his pupil the very day after his arrival (?), and invited him at once to call on George Sand in order to be introduced to her. When Gutmann presented himself in the small salon above alluded to, he found George Sand seated on an ottoman smoking a cigarette. She received the young man with great cordiality, telling him that his master had often spoken to her of him most lovingly. Chopin entered soon after from an adjoining apartment, and then they all went into the dining-room to have dinner. When they were seated again in the cosy salon, and George Sand had lit another cigarette, the conversation, which had touched on a variety of topics, among the rest on Majorca, turned on art. It was then that the authoress said to her friend: "Chop, Chop, show Gutmann my room that he may see the pictures which Eugene Delacroix painted for me."
Chopin on arriving in Paris had taken up his lodgings in the Rue Tronchet, No. 5, and resumed teaching. One of his pupils there was Brinley Richards, who practised under him one of the books of studies. Chopin also assisted the British musician in the publication, by Troupenas, of his first composition, having previously looked over and corrected it. Brinley Richards informed me that Chopin, who played rarely in these lessons, making his corrections and suggestions rather by word of mouth than by example, was very languid, indeed so much so that he looked as if he felt inclined to lie down, and seemed to say: "I wish you would come another time."
About this time, that is in the autumn or early in the winter of 1839, Moscheles came to Paris. We learn from his diary that at Leo's, where he liked best to play, he met for the first time Chopin, who had just returned from the country, and whose acquaintance he was impatient to make. I have already quoted what Moscheles said of Chopin's appearance--namely, that it was exactly like [identificirt mit] his music, both being delicate and dreamy [schwarmerisch]. His remarks on his great contemporary's musical performances are, of course, still more interesting to us.
He played to me at my request, and now for the first time I understand his music, and can also explain to myself the enthusiasm of the ladies. His ad libitum playing, which with the interpreters of his music degenerates into disregard of time, is with him only the most charming originality of execution; the dilettantish harsh modulations which strike me disagreeably when I am playing his compositions no longer shock me, because he glides lightly over them in a fairy-like way with his delicate fingers; his piano is so softly breathed forth that he does not need any strong forte in order to produce the wished-for contrasts; it is for this reason that one does not miss the orchestral-like effects which the German school demands from a pianoforte-player, but allows one's self to be carried away, as by a singer who, little concerned about the accompaniment, entirely follows his feeling. In short, he is an unicum in the world of pianists. He declares that he loves my music very much, and at all events he knows it very well. He played me some studies and his latest work, the "Preludes," and I played him many of my compositions.
In addition to this characterisation of the artist Chopin, Moscheles' notes afford us also some glimpses of the man. "Chopin was lively, merry, nay, exceedingly comical in his imitations of Pixis, Liszt, and a hunchbacked pianoforte-player." Some days afterwards, when Moscheles saw him at his own house, he found him an altogether different Chopin:--
I called on him according to agreement with Ch. and E., who are also quite enthusiastic about him, and who were particularly struck with the "Prelude" in A flat major in 6/8 time with the ever-recurring pedal A flat. Only the Countess O. [Obreskoff] from St. Petersburg, who adores us artists en bloc, was there, and some gentlemen. Chopin's excellent pupil Gutmann played his master's manuscript Scherzo in C sharp minor. Chopin himself played his manuscript Sonata in B flat minor with the Funeral March.
Gutmann relates that Chopin sent for him early in the morning of the day following that on which he paid the above-mentioned visit to George Sand, and said to him:--
Pardon me for disturbing you so early in the morning, but I have just received a note from Moscheles, wherein he expresses his joy at my return to Paris, and announces that he will visit me at five in the afternoon to hear my new compositions. Now I am unfortunately too weak to play my things to him; so you must play. I am chiefly concerned about this Scherzo.
Gutmann, who did not yet know the work (Op. 39), thereupon sat down at Chopin's piano, and by dint of hard practising managed to play it at the appointed hour from memory, and to the satisfaction of the composer. Gutmann's account does not tally in several of its details with Moscheles'. As, however, Moscheles does not give us reminiscences, but sober, business-like notes taken down at the time they refer to, and without any attempt at making a nice story, he is the safer authority. Still, thus much at least we may assume to be certain:--Gutmann played the Scherzo, Op. 39, on this occasion, and his rendering of it was such as to induce his master to dedicate it to him.
Comte de Perthuis, the adjutant of King Louis Philippe, who had heard Chopin and Moscheles repeatedly play the latter's Sonata in E flat major for four hands, spoke so much and so enthusiastically about it at Court that the royal family, wishing "to have also the great treat," invited the two artists to come to St. Cloud. The day after this soiree Moscheles wrote in his diary:--
Yesterday was a memorable day... at nine o'clock Chopin and I, with Perthuis and his amiable wife, who had called for us, drove out to St. Cloud in the heaviest showers of rain, and felt so much the more comfortable when we entered the brilliant, well-lighted palace. We passed through many state- rooms into a salon carre, where the royal family was assembled en petit comite. At a round table sat the queen with an elegant work-basket before her (perhaps to embroider a purse for me?); near her were Madame Adelaide, the Duchess of Orleans, and ladies-in-waiting. The noble ladies were as affable as if we had been old acquaintances...Chopin played first a number of nocturnes and studies, and was admired and petted like a favourite. After I also had played some old and new studies, and been honoured with the same applause, we seated ourselves together at the instrument--he again playing the bass, which he always insists on doing. The close attention of the little circle during my E flat major Sonata was interrupted only by the exclamations "divine!" "delicious!" After the Andante the queen whispered to a lady- in-waiting: "Would it not be indiscreet to ask them to play it again?" which naturally was equivalent to a command to repeat it, and so we played it again with increased abandon. In the Finale we gave ourselves up to a musical delirium. Chopin's enthusiasm throughout the whole piece must, I believe, have infected the auditors, who now burst forth into eulogies of us. Chopin played again alone with the same charm, and called forth the same sympathy as before; then I improvised...
[FOOTNOTE: In the "Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik" of November 12, 1839, we read that Chopin improvised on Grisar's "La Folle," Moscheles on themes by Mozart. La Folle is a romance the success of which was so great that a wit called it une folie de salon. It had for some years an extraordinary popularity, and made the composer a reputation.]
To show his gratitude, the king sent the two artists valuable presents: to Chopin a gold cup and saucer, to Moscheles a travelling case. "The king," remarked Chopin, "gave Moscheles a travelling case to get the sooner rid of him." The composer was fond of and had a talent for throwing off sharp and witty sayings; but it is most probable that on this occasion the words were prompted solely by the fancy, and that their ill-nature was only apparent. Or must we assume that the man Moscheles was less congenial to Chopin than the artist? Moscheles was a Jew, and Chopin disliked the Jews. As, however, the tempting opportunity afforded by the nature of the king's present to Moscheles is sufficient to account for Chopin's remark, and no proofs warranting a less creditable explanation are forthcoming, it would be unfair to listen to the suggestions of suspicion.
George Sand tells us in the "Histoire de ma Vie" that Chopin found his rooms in the Rue Tronchet cold and damp, and felt sorely the separation from her. The consequence of this was that the saintly woman, the sister of mercy, took, after some time, pity upon her suffering worshipper, and once more sacrificed herself. Not to misrepresent her account, the only one we have, of this change in the domestic arrangements of the two friends, I shall faithfully transcribe her delicately-worded statements:--
He again began to cough alarmingly, and I saw myself forced either to give in my resignation as nurse, or to pass my life in impossible journeyings to and fro. He, in order to spare me these, came every day to tell me with a troubled face and a feeble voice that he was wonderfully well. He asked if he might dine with us, and he went away in the evening, shivering in his cab. Seeing how he took to heart his exclusion from our family life, I offered to let to him one of the pavilions, a part of which I could give up to him. He joyfully accepted. He had there his room, received there his friends, and gave there his lessons without incommoding me. Maurice had the room above his; I occupied the other pavilion with my daughter.
Let us see if we cannot get some glimpses of the life in the pavilions of the Rue Pigalle, No. 16. In the first months of 1840, George Sand was busy with preparations for the performance of her drama Cosima, moving heaven and earth to bring about the admission of her friend Madame Dorval into the company of the Theatre-Francais, where her piece, in which she wished this lady to take the principal part, was to be performed. Her son Maurice passed his days in the studio of Eugene Delacroix; and Solange gave much time to her lessons, and lost much over her toilet. Of Grzymala we hear that he is always in love with all the beautiful women, and rolls his big eyes at the tall Borgnotte and the little Jacqueline; and that Madame Marliani is always up to her ears in philosophy. This I gathered from George Sand's Correspondance, where, as the reader will see presently, more is to be found.
George Sand to Chopin; Cambrai, August 13, 1840:--
I arrived at noon very tired, for it is 45 and 35 leagues from Paris to this place. We shall relate to you good stories of the bourgeois of Cambrai. They are beaux, they are stupid, they are shopkeepers; they are the sublime of the genre. If the Historical Procession does not console us, we are capable of dying of ennui at the politeness which people show us. We are lodged like princes. But what hosts, what conversations, what dinners! We laugh at them when we are by ourselves, but when we are before the enemy, what a pitiable figure we selves, make! I am no longer desirous to see you come; but I aspire to depart very quickly, and I understand why you do not wish to give concerts. It is not unlikely that Pauline Viardot may not sing the day after to-morrow, for want of a hall. We shall, perhaps, leave a day sooner. I wish I were already far away from the Cambresians, male and female.
Good night! I am going to bed, I am overcome with fatigue.
Love your old woman [votre vieille] as she loves you.
From a letter written two days later to her son, we learn that Madame Viardot after all gave two concerts at Cambrai. But amusing as the letter is, we will pass it over as not concerning us here. Of another letter (September 20,1840), likewise addressed to her son, I shall quote only one passage, although it contains much interesting matter about the friends and visitors of the inmates of the pavilions of the Rue Pigalle, No. 16:--
Balzac came to dine here the day before yesterday. He is quite mad. He has discovered the blue rose, for which the horticultural societies of London and Belgium have promised a reward of 500,000 francs (qui dit, dit-il). He will sell, moreover, every grain at a hundred sous, and for this great botanic production he will lay out only fifty centimes. Hereupon Rollinat asked him naively:--
"Well, why, then, do you not set about it at once?"
To which Balzac replied:
"Oh! because I have so many other things to do; but I shall set about it one of these days."
Stavenow, in Schone Geister (see foot-note, p. 70), tells an anecdote of Balzac, which may find a place here:--
One day Balzac had invited George Sand, Chopin, and Gutmann to dinner. On that occasion he related to them that the next day he would have to meet a bill of 30,000 francs, but that he had not a sou in his pocket. Gutmann asked what he intended to do? "Well," replied Balzac, "what shall I do? I wait quietly. Before to-morrow something unexpected may turn up, and give me the means to pay the sum." Scarcely had he said this when the door bell rang. The servant entered and announced that a gentleman was there who urgently wished to speak with M. Balzac.
Balzac rose and left the room. After a quarter of an hour he came back in high spirits and said:
"The 30,000 francs are found. My publisher wishes to bring out a new edition of my works, and he offers me just this sum."
George Sand, Chopin, and Gutmann looked at each other with a smile, and thought--"Another one!"
George Sand to her son; Paris, September 4, 1840:--
We have had here great shows of troops. They have fione the gendarme and cuisse the national guardsman. All Paris was in agitation, as if there were to be a revolution. Nothing took place, except that some passers-by were knocked down by the police.
There were places in Paris where it was dangerous to pass, as these gentlemen assassinated right and left for the pleasure of getting their hands into practice. Chopin, who will not believe anything, has at last the proof and certainty of it.
Madame Marliani is back. I dined at her house the day before yesterday with the Abbe de Lamennais. Yesterday Leroux dined here. Chopin embraces you a thousand times. He is always qui, qui, qui, me, me, me. Rollinat smokes like a steam-boat. Solange has been good for two or three days, but yesterday she had a fit of temper [acces de fureur]. It is the Rebouls, the English neighbours, people and dogs, who turn her head.
In the summer of 1840 George Sand did not go to Nohant, and Chopin seems to have passed most of, if not all, the time in Paris. From a letter addressed to her half-brother, we learn that the reason of her staying away from her country-seat was a wish to economise:--
If you will guarantee my being able to pass the summer at Nohant for 4,000 francs, I will go. But I have never been there without spending 1,500 francs per month, and as I do not spend here the half of this, it is neither the love of work, nor that of spending, nor that of glory, which makes me stay...
George Sand's fits of economy never lasted very long. At any rate, in the summer of 1841 we find her again at Nohant. But as it is my intention to treat of Chopin's domestic life at Nohant and in Paris with some fulness in special chapters, I shall now turn to his artistic doings.
In 1839 there appeared only one work by Chopin, Op. 28, the "Preludes," but in the two following years as many as sixteen--namely, Op. 35-50. Here is an enumeration of these compositions, with the dates of publication and the dedications.
[FOOTNOTE: Both the absence of dedications in the case of some compositions, and the persons to whom others are dedicated, have a biographical significance. They tell us of the composer's absence from Paris and aristocratic society, and his return to them.]
The "Vingt-quatre Preludes," Op. 28, published in September, 1839, have a twofold dedication, the French and English editions being dedicated a son ami Pleyel, and the German to Mr. J. C. Kessler. The publications of 1840 are: in May--Op. 35, "Sonate" (B flat minor); Op. 36, "Deuxieme Impromptu" (F sharp minor); Op. 37, "Deux Nocturnes" (G minor and G major); in July--Op. 42, "Valse" (A flat major); in September--Op. 38, "Deuxieme Ballade" (F major), dedicated to Mr. R. Schumann; in October--Op. 39, "Troisieme Scherzo" (C sharp minor), dedicated to Mr. A. Gutmann; in November--Op. 40, "Deux Polonaises" (A major and C minor), dedicated to Mr. J. Fontana; and in December--Op. 41, "Quatre Mazurkas" (C sharp and E minor, B and A flat major), dedicated to E. Witwicki. Those of 1841 are: in October--Op. 43, "Tarantelle" (A flat major), without any dedication; and in November--Op. 44, "Polonaise" (F sharp minor), dedicated to Madame la Princesse Charles de Beauvau; Op. 45, "Prelude" (C sharp minor), dedicated to Madame la Princesse Elizabeth Czernicheff; Op. 46, "Allegro de Concert" (A major), dedicated to Mdlle. F. Muller; Op. 47, "Troisieme Ballade" (A flat major), dedicated to Mdlle. P. de Noailles; Op. 48, "Deux Nocturnes" (C minor and F sharp minor), dedicated to Mdlle. L. Duperre; Op. 49, "Fantaisie" (F minor), dedicated to Madame la Princesse C. de Souzzo; and Op. 50, "Trois Mazurkas" (G and A flat major, and C sharp minor), dedicated to Mr. Leon Smitkowski.
Chopin's genius had now reached the most perfect stage of its development, and was radiating with all the intensity of which its nature was capable. Notwithstanding such later creations as the fourth "Ballade," Op. 52, the "Barcarolle," Op. 60, and the "Polonaise," Op. 53, it can hardly be said that the composer surpassed in his subsequent works those which he had published in recent years, works among which were the first three ballades, the preludes, and a number of stirring polonaises and charming nocturnes, mazurkas, and other pieces.
However, not only as a creative artist, but also as an executant, Chopin was at the zenith of his power. His bodily frame had indeed suffered from disease, but as yet it was not seriously injured, at least, not so seriously as to disable him to discharge the functions of a musical interpreter. Moreover, the great majority of his compositions demanded from the executant other qualities than physical strength, which was indispensable in only a few of his works. A writer in the "Menestrel" (April 25, 1841) asks himself the question whether Chopin had progressed as a pianist, and answers: "No, for he troubles himself little about the mechanical secrets of the piano; in him there is no charlatanism; heart and genius alone speak, and in these respects his privileged organisation has nothing to learn." Or rather let us say, Chopin troubled himself enough about the mechanical secrets of the piano, but not for their own sakes: he regarded them not as ends, but as means to ends, and although mechanically he may have made no progress, he had done so poetically. Love and sorrow, those most successful teachers of poets and musicians, had not taught him in vain.
It was a fortunate occurrence that at this period of his career Chopin was induced to give a concert, and equally fortunate that men of knowledge, judgment, and literary ability have left us their impressions of the event. The desirability of replenishing an ever-empty purse, and the instigations of George Sand, were no doubt the chief motive powers which helped the composer to overcome his dislike to playing in public.
"Do you practise when the day of the concert approaches?" asked Lenz. [FOOTNOTE: Die grossen Pianoforte-Virtusen unstrer Zeit, p. 36.] "It is a terrible time for me," was Chopin's answer; "I dislike publicity, but it is part of my position. I shut myself up for a fortnight and play Bach. That is my preparation; I never practise my own compositions." What Gutmann told me confirms these statements. Chopin detested playing in public, and became nervous when the dreaded time approached. He then fidgeted a great deal about his clothes, and felt very unhappy if one or the other article did not quite fit or pinched him a little. On one occasion Chopin, being dissatisfied with his own things, made use of a dress-coat and shirt of his pupil Gutmann. By the way, the latter, who gave me this piece of information, must have been in those days of less bulk, and, I feel inclined to add, of less height, than he was when I became acquainted with him.
Leaving the two concerts given by Chopin in 1841 and 1842 to be discussed in detail in the next chapter, I shall now give a translation of the Polish letters which he wrote in the summer and autumn of 1841 to Fontana. The letters numbered 4 and 5 are those already alluded to on p. 24 (foot-note 3) which Karasowski gives as respectively dated by Chopin: "Palma, November 17, 1838"; and "Valdemosa, January 9, 1839." But against these dates militate the contents: the mention of Troupenas, with whom the composer's business connection began only in 1840 (with the Sonata, Op. 35); the mention of the Tarantelle, which was not published until 1841; the mention (contradictory to an earlier inquiry--see p. 30) of the sending back of a valet nowhere else alluded to; the mention of the sending and arrival of a piano, irreconcilable with the circumstances and certain statements in indisputably correctly-dated letters; and, lastly, the absence of all mention of Majorca and the Preludes, those important topics in the letters really from that place and of that time. Karasowski thinks that the letters numbered 1, 2, 3, and 9 were of the year 1838, and those numbered 6, 7, and 8 of the year 1839; but as the "Tarantelle," Op. 43, the "Polonaise," Op. 44, the "Prelude," Op. 45, the "Allegro de Concert," Op. 46, the third "Ballade," Op. 47, the two "Nocturnes," Op. 48, and the "Fantaisie," Op. 49, therein mentioned, were published in 1841, I have no doubt that they are of the year 1841. The mention in the ninth letter of the Rue Pigalle, 16, George Sand's and Chopin's abode in Paris, of Pelletan, the tutor of George Sand's son Maurice, and of the latter's coming to Paris, speaks likewise against 1838 and for 1841, 1840 being out of the question, as neither George Sand nor Chopin was in this year at Nohant. What decides me especially to reject the date 1839 for the seventh letter is that Pauline Garcia had then not yet become the wife of Louis Viardot. There is, moreover, an allusion to a visit of Pauline Viardot to Nohant in the summer of 1841 in one of George Sand's letters (August 13, 1841). In this letter occurs a passage which is important for the dating both of the fifth and the seventh letter. As to the order of succession of the letters, it may be wrong, it certainly does not altogether satisfy me; but it is the result of long and careful weighing of all the pros and cons. I have some doubt about the seventh letter, which, read by the light of George Sand's letter, ought perhaps to be placed after the ninth. But the seventh letter is somewhat of a puzzle. Puzzles, owing to his confused statements and slipshod style, are, however, not a rare thing in Chopin's correspondence. The passage in the above-mentioned letter of George Sand runs thus: "Pauline leaves me on the 16th [of August]; Maurice goes on the 17th to fetch his sister, who should be here on the 23rd."
[I.] Nohant [1841].
My very dear friend,--I arrived here yesterday, Thursday. For Schlesinger [FOOTNOTE: The Paris music-publisher.] I have composed a Prelude in C sharp minor [Op. 45], which is short, as he wished it. Seeing that, like Mechetti's [FOOTNOTE: The Vienna music-publisher.] Beethoven, this has to come out at the New Year, do not yet give my Polonaise to Leo (although you have already transcribed it), for to-morrow I shall send you a letter for Mechetti, in which I shall explain to him that, if he wishes something short, I will give him for the Album instead of the mazurka (which is already old) the NEW prelude. It is well modulated, and I can send it without hesitation. He ought to give me 300 francs for it, n'est-ce pas? Par-dessus le marche he may get the mazurka, only he must not print it in the Album.
Should Troupenas, [FOOTNOTE: Eugene Troupenas, the Paris music- publisher.] that is, Masset, [FOOTNOTE: Masset (his daughter, Madame Colombier, informed me) was the partner of Troupenas, and managed almost the whole business, Troupenas being in weak health, which obliged him to pass the last ten winters of his life at Hyeres.] make any difficulties, do not give him the pieces a farthing cheaper, and tell him that if he does not wish to print them all--which I should not like--I could sell them at a better price to others.
Now of something else.
You will find in the right-hand drawer of my writing-desk (in the place where the cash-box always is) a sealed parcel addressed to Madame Sand. Wrap this parcel in wax-cloth, seal it, and send it by post to Madame Sand's address. Sew on the address with a strong thread, that it may not come off the wax- cloth. It is Madame Sand who asks me to do this. I know you will do it perfectly well. The key, I think, is on the top shelf of the little cabinet with the mirror. If it should not be there, get a locksmith to open the drawer.
I love you as an old friend. Embrace Johnnie.--Your
FREDERICK.
[2.] Nohant [1841].
Thanks for forwarding the parcel. I send you the Prelude, in large characters for Schlesinger and in small characters for Mechetti. Clip the MS. of the Polonaise to the same size, number the pages, and fold it like the Prelude, add to the whole my letter to Mechetti, and deliver it into Leo's own hands, praying him to send it by the first mail, as Mechetti is waiting for it.
The letter to Haslinger [FOOTNOTE: The Vienna music- publisher.] post yourself; and if you do not find Schlesinger at home leave the letter, but do not give him the MS. until he tells you that he accepts the Prelude as a settlement of the account. If he does not wish to acquire the right of publication for London, tell him to inform me of it by letter. Do not forget to add the opus on the Polonaise and the following number on the Prelude--that is, on the copies that are going to Vienna.
I do not know how Czerniszewowa is spelt. Perhaps you will find under the vase or on the little table near the bronze ornament a note from her, from her daughter, or from the governess; if not, I should be glad if you would go--they know you already as my friend--to the Hotel de Londres in the Place Vendome, and beg in my name the young Princess to give you her name in writing and to say whether it is Tscher or Tcher. Or better still, ask for Mdlle. Krause, the governess; tell her that I wish to give the young Princess a surprise; and inquire of her whether it is usual to write Elisabeth and Tschernichef, or ff. [FOOTNOTE: Chopin dedicated the Prelude, Op. 45, to Mdlle. la Princesse Elisabeth Czernicheff.]
If you do not wish to do this, don't be bashful with me, and write that you would rather be excused, in which case I shall find it out by some other means. But do not yet direct Schlesinger to print the title. Tell him I don't know how to spell. Nevertheless, I hope that you will find at my house some note from them on which will be the name....
I conclude because it is time for the mail, and I wish that my letter should reach Vienna without fail this week.
[3.] Nohant, Sunday [1841].
I send you the Tarantella [Op. 43]. Please to copy it. But first go to Schlesinger, or, better still, to Troupenas, and see the collection of Rossini's songs published by Troupenas. In it there is a Tarantella in F. I do not know whether it is written in 6/8 or 12/8 time. As to my composition, it does not matter which way it is written, but I should prefer it to be like Rossini's. Therefore, if the latter be in 12/8 or in C with triplets, make in copying one bar out of two. It will be thus: [here follows one bar of music, bars four and five of the Tarantella as it is printed.] [FOOTNOTE: This is a characteristic instance of Chopin's carelessness in the notation of his music. To write his Tarantella in 12/8 or C would have been an egregious mistake. How Chopin failed to see this is inexplicable to me.]
I beg of you also to write out everything in full, instead of marking repeats. Be quick, and give it to Leo with my letter to Schubert. [FOOTNOTE: Schuberth, the Hamburg music- publisher.] You know he leaves for Hamburg before the 8th of next month, and I should not like to lose 500 francs.
As regards Troupenas, there is no hurry. If the time of my manuscript is not right, do not deliver the latter, but make a copy of it. Besides this, make a third copy of it for Wessel. It will weary you to copy this nasty thing so often; but I hope I shall not compose anything worse for a long time. I also beg of you to look up the number of the last opus-- namely, the last mazurkas, or rather the waltz published by Paccini [FOOTNOTE: Pacini, a Paris music-publisher. He published the Waltz in A flat major, Op. 42, in the summer of 1840, if not earlier.]--and give the following number to the Tarantella.
I am keeping my mind easy, for I know you are willing and clever. I trust you will receive from me no more letters burdened with commissions. Had I not been with only one foot at home before my departure you would have none of these unpleasantnesses. Attend to the Tarantella, give it to Leo, and tell him to keep the money he may receive till I come back. Once more I beg of you to excuse my troubling you so much. To-day I received the letter from my people in Poland you sent me. Tell the portier to give you all the letters addressed to me.
[4.]
My dear friend,--As you are so good, be so to the end. Go to the transport commission-office of Mr. Hamberg et Levistal successeurs de Mr. Corstel fils aine et Cie, rue des Marais St. Martin, No. 51, a Paris, and direct them to send at once to Pleyel for the piano I am to have, so that it may go off the next day. Say at the office that it is to be forwarded par un envoy [sic] accelere et non ordinaire. Such a transport costs of course far more, but is incomparably quicker. It will probably cost five francs per cwt. I shall pay here. Only direct them to give you a receipt, on which they will write how many cwts. the piano weighs, when it leaves, and when it will arrive at Chateauroux. If the piano is conveyed by roulage [land-transport]--which goes straight to Toulouse and leaves goods only on the route--the address must not be a la Chatre, [FOOTNOTE: Instead of "la Chatre" we have in Karasowski's Polish book "la Chatie," which ought to warn us not to attribute all the peculiar French in this letter to Chopin, who surely knew how to spell the name of the town in the neighbourhood of the familiar Nohant.] but Madame Dudevant, a Chateauroux, as I wrote above. [FOOTNOTE: "Address of the piano: Madame Dudevant, a Chateauroux. Bureau Restant chez M. Vollant Patureau." This is what Chopin wrote above.] At the last-mentioned place the agency has been informed, and will forward it at once. You need not send me the receipt, we should require it only in case of some unforeseen reclamation. The correspondent in Chateauroux says that PAR LA VOYE ACCELERE [SIC] it will come from Paris in four days. If this is so, let him bind himself to deliver the piano at Chateauroux in four or five days.
Now to other business.
Should Pleyel make any difficulties, apply to Erard; I think that the latter in all probability ought to be serviceable to you. Only do not act hastily, and first ascertain how the matter really stands.
As to the Tarantella, seal it and send it to Hamburg. To- morrow I shall write you of other affairs, concerning Troupenas, &c.
Embrace Johnnie, and tell him to write.
[5.]
Thanks for all the commissions you have executed so well. To- day, that is on the 9th, I received the piano and the other things. Do not send my little bust to Warsaw, it would frighten them, leave it in the press. Kiss Johnnie for his letter. I shall write him a few lines shortly.
To-morrow I shall very likely send back my old servant, who loses his wits here. He is an honest man and knows how to serve, but he is tiresome, and makes one lose one's patience. I shall send him back, telling him to wait for me in Paris. If he appears at the house, do not be frightened.
Latterly the weather has been only so-so.
The man in Chateauroux was waiting three days for the piano; yesterday, after receiving your letter, I gave orders that he should be recalled. To-day I do not yet know what kind of tone the piano has, as it is not yet unpacked; this great event is to take place to-morrow. As to the delay and misunderstanding in sending it, do not make any inquiries; let the matter rest, it is not worth a quarrel. You did the best you could. A little ill-humour and a few days lost in expectation are not worth a pinch of snuff. Forget, therefore, my commissions and your transaction; next time, if God permits us to live, matters will turn out better.
I write you these few words late at night. Once more I thank you, most obliging of men, for the commissions, which are not yet ended, for now comes the turn of the Troupenas business, which will hang on your shoulders. I shall write to you on this subject more fully some other time, and to-day I wish you good night. But don't have dreams like Johnnie--that I died; but rather dream that I am about to be born, or something of the sort.
In fact, I am feeling now as calm and serene as a baby in swaddling-clothes; and if somebody wished to put me in leading- strings, I should be very glad--nota bene, with a cap thickly lined with wadding on my head, for I feel that at every moment I should stumble and turn upside down. Unfortunately, instead of leading-strings there are probably awaiting me crutches, if I approach old age with my present step. I once dreamt that I was dying in a hospital, and this is so strongly rooted in my mind that I cannot forget it--it is as if I had dreamt it yesterday. If you survive me, you will learn whether we may believe in dreams.
And now I often dream with my eyes open what may be said to have neither rhyme nor reason in it.
That is why I write you such a foolish letter, is it?
Send me soon a letter from my people, and love your old
FREDERICK.
[6.] Nohant [1841].
Thanks for your very kind letter. Unseal all you judge necessary.
Do not give the manuscripts to Troupenas till Schubert has informed you of the day of publication. The answer will very likely come soon through Leo.
What a pity that the Tarantella is gone to Berlin, for, as you know from Schubert's letter, Liszt is mixed up in this monetary affair, and I may have some unpleasantness. He is a thin-skinned Hungarian, and may think that I do not trust him because I directed that the manuscripts should not be given otherwise than for cash. I do not know, but I have a presentiment of a disagreeable mess. Do not say anything about it to the ailing Leo; go and see him if you think it necessary, give him my compliments and thanks (although undeserved), and ask pardon for troubling him so much. After all, it is kind of him to take upon him the forwarding of my things. Give my compliments, also to Pleyel, and ask him to excuse my not writing to him (do not say anything about his sending me a very inferior piano).
I beg of you to put into the letter-box at the Exchange yourself the letter to my parents, but I say do it yourself, and before 4 o'clock. Excuse my troubling you, but you know of what great importance my letter is to my people.
Escudier has very likely sent you that famous album. If you wish you may ask Troupenas to get you a copy as if it were for me; but if you don't wish, say nothing.
[FOOTNOTE: Leon Escudier, I suppose. The brothers Marie and Leon Escudier established a music business in the latter part of the fourth decade of this century; but when soon after both married and divided their common property, Marie got their journal "La France Musicale" and Leon the music-business. They wrote and published together various books on music and musicians.]
Still one more bother.
At your leisure transcribe once more this unlucky Tarantella, which will be sent to Wessel when the day [of publication] is known. If I tire you so much with this Tarentella, you may be sure that it is for the last time. From here, I am sure you will have no more manuscript from me. If there should not be any news from Schubert within a week, please write to me. In that case you would give the manuscript to Troupenas. But I shall write him about it.
[7.] Nohant [1841], Friday evening.
My dear Julius,--I send you a letter for Bonnet; read, seal, and deliver it. And if in passing through the streets in which you know I can lodge, you find something suitable for me, please write to me. Just now the condition about the staircase exists no longer. [FOOTNOTE: Chopin felt so much stronger that high stairs were no longer any objection to lodgings.] I also send you a letter to Dessauer [FOOTNOTE: Joseph Dessauer, a native of Prague, best known by his songs. He stayed in Paris in 1833, and afterwards settled in Vienna. George Sand numbered him among her friends.] in answer to his letter which Madame Deller sent me from Austria. He must already be back to Paris; be sure and ask Schlesinger, who will be best able to inform you of this.
Do not give Dessauer many particulars about me; do not tell him that you are looking for rooms, nor Anthony either, for he will mention it to Mdlle. de Rozieres, and she is a babbler and makes the least thing a subject for gossip. Some of her gossipings have already reached me here in a strange way. You know how great things sometimes grow out of nothing if they pass through a mouth with a loose tongue. Much could be said on this head.
As to the unlucky Tarantella, you may give it to Troupenas (that is, to Masset); but, if you think otherwise, send it by post to Wessel, only insist on his answering at once that he has received it. The weather has been charming here for the last few days, but my music--is ugly. Madame Viardot spent a fortnight here; we occupied ourselves less with music than with other things.
Please write to me whatever you like, but write.
May Johnnie be in good health!
But remember to write on Troupenas's copy: Hamburg, Schubert; Wessel, London.
In a few days I shall send you a letter for Mechetti in Vienna, to whom I promised to give some compositions. If you see Dessauer or Schlesinger, ask if it is absolutely necessary to pay postage for the letters sent to Vienna.--I embrace you, adieu.
CHOPIN.
[8.]
Nohant, Sunday [1841].
What you have done you have done well. Strange world! Masset is a fool, so also is Pelletan. Masset knew of Pacini's waltz and that I promised it to the "Gazette" for the Album. I did not wish to make any advances to him. If he does not wish them at 600 francs, with London (the price of my USUAL manuscripts was 300 francs with him)--three times five being fifteen--I should have to give so much labour for 1,500 francs--that cannot be. So much the more as I told him when I had the first conversation with him that it might happen that I could not let him have my things at this price. For instance, he cannot expect that I should give him twelve Etudes or a new Methode de Piano for 300 francs. The Allegro maestoso ["Allegro de Concert," Op. 46] which I send you to-day I cannot give for 300 francs, but only for 600 francs, nor the "Fantasia" [Op. 49], for which I ask 500 francs. Nevertheless, the "Ballade" [the third, Op. 47], the Nocturnes ["Deux Nocturnes," Op. 48], and Polonaise [F sharp minor, Op. 44], I shall let him have at 300 francs, for he has already formerly printed such things. In one word, for Paris I give these five compositions for 2,000 francs. If he does not care for them, so much the better. I say it entre nous--for Schlesinger will most willingly buy them. But I should not like him to take me for a man who does not keep his word in an agreement. "Il n'y avait qu'une convention facile d'honnete homme a honnete homme." therefore, he should not complain of my terms, for they are very easy. I want nothing but to come out of this affair respectably. You know that I do not sell myself. But tell him further that if I were desirous of taking advantage of him or of cheating him, I could write fifteen things per year, but worthless ones, which he would buy at 300 francs and I would have a better income. Would it be an honest action?
My dear friend, tell him that I write seldom, and spend but little. He must not think that I wish to raise the price. But when you yourself see my manuscript flies, [FOOTNOTE: An allusion to his small, fine writing.] you will agree with me that I may ask 600 francs when I was paid 300 francs for the Tarantella and 500 for the Bolero.
For God's sake take good care of the manuscripts, do not squeeze, dirty, or tear them. I know you are not capable of doing anything of the sort, but I love my WRITTEN TEDIOUSNESS [NUDY, tediousness; NUTY, notes] so much that I always fear that something might happen to them.
To-morrow you will receive the Nocturne, and at the end of the week the Ballade and Fantasia; I cannot get my writing done sooner. Each of these things you will transcribe; your copies will remain in Paris. If copying wearies you, console yourself with thinking that you are doing it for THE REMISSION OF YOUR SINS. I should not like to give my little spider-feet to any copyist who would daub coarsely. Once more I make this request, for had I again to write these eighteen pages, I should most certainly go wrong in my mind.
I send you a letter from Hartel.
Try to get another valet instead of the one you have. I shall probably be in Paris during the first days of November. To- morrow I will write to you again.
Monday morning.
On reading your letter attentively, I see that Masset does not ask for Paris. Leave this point untouched if you can. Mention only 3,000 francs pour les deux pays, and 2,000 francs for Paris itself if he particularly asks about it. Because la condition des deux pays is still easier, and for me also more convenient. If he should not want it, it must be because he seeks an opportunity for breaking with me. In that case, wait for his answer from London. Write to him openly and frankly, but always politely, and act cautiously and coolly, but mind, not to me, for you know how much loves you your...
[9.] Nohant [1841].
My dear friend,--You would be sure to receive my letters and compositions. You have read the German letters, sealed them, and done everything I asked you, have you not? As to Wessel, he is a fool and a cheat. Write him whatever you like, but tell him that I do not intend to give up my rights to the Tarantella, as he did not send it back in time. If he sustained losses by my compositions, it is most likely owing to the foolish titles he gave them, in spite of my directions. Were I to listen to the voice of my soul, I would not send him anything more after these titles. Say as many sharp things to him as you can.
[FOOTNOTE: Here are some specimens of the publisher's ingenious inventiveness:--"Adieu a Varsovie" (Rondeau, Op. 1), "Hommage a Mozart" (Variations, Op. 2), "La Gaite" (Introduction et Polonaise, Op. 3), "La Posiana" (Rondeau a la Mazur, Op. 5), "Murmures de la Seine" (Nocturnes, Op. 9), "Les Zephirs" (Nocturnes, Op. 15), "Invitation a la Valse" (Valse, Op. 18), "Souvenir d'Andalousie" (Bolero, Op. 19), "Le banquet infernal" (Premier Scherzo, Op. 20), "Ballade ohne Worte" [Ballad without words] (Ballade, Op. 23), "Les Plaintives" (Nocturnes, Op. 27), "La Meditation" (Deuxieme Scherzo, Op. 31), "Il lamento e la consolazione" (Nocturnes, Op. 32), "Les Soupirs" (Nocturnes, Op. 37), and "Les Favorites" (Polonaises, Op. 40). The mazurkas generally received the title of "Souvenir de la Pologne."]
Madame Sand thanks you for the kind words accompanying the parcel. Give directions that my letters may be delivered to Pelletan, Rue Pigal [i.e., Pigalle], 16, and impress it very strongly on the portier. The son of Madame Sand will be in Paris about the 16th. I shall send you, through him, the MS. of the Concerto ["Allegro de Concert"] and the Nocturnes [Op. 46 and 48].
These letters of the romantic tone-poet to a friend and fellow-artist will probably take the reader by surprise, nay, may even disillusionise him. Their matter is indeed very suggestive of a commercial man writing to one of his agents. Nor is this feature, as the sequel will show, peculiar to the letters just quoted. Trafficking takes up a very large part of Chopin's Parisian correspondence; [FOOTNOTE: I indicate by this phrase comprehensively the whole correspondence since his settling in the French capital, whether written there or elsewhere.] of the ideal within him that made him what he was as an artist we catch, if any, only rare glimmerings and glimpses.
Chapter XXV
TWO PUBLIC CONCERTS, ONE IN 1841 AND ANOTHER IN 1842.--CHOPIN'S STYLE OF PLAYING: TECHNICAL QUALITIES; FAVOURABLE PHYSICAL CONDITIONS; VOLUME OF TONE; USE OF THE PEDALS; SPIRITUAL QUALITIES; TEMPO RUBATO; INSTRUMENTS.--HIS MUSICAL SYMPATHIES AND ANTIPATHIES.--OPINIONS ON MUSIC AND MUSICIANS.
The concert which Chopin gave in 1841, after several years of retirement, took place at Pleyel's rooms on Monday, the 26th of April. It was like his subsequent concerts a semi-public rather than a public one, for the audience consisted of a select circle of pupils, friends, and partisans who, as Chopin told Lenz, took the tickets in advance and divided them among themselves. As most of the pupils belonged to the aristocracy, it followed as a matter of course that the concert was emphatically what Liszt calls it, "un concert de fashion." The three chief musical papers of Paris: the "Gazette Musicale," the "France Musicale," and the "Menestrel" were unanimous in their high, unqualified praise of the concert-giver, "the king of the fete, who was overwhelmed with bravos." The pianoforte performances of Chopin took up by far the greater part of the programme, which was varied by two arias from Adam's "La Rose de Peronne," sung by Mdme. Damoreau--Cinti, who was as usual "ravissante de perfection," and by Ernst's "Elegie," played by the composer himself "in a grand style, with passionate feeling and a purity worthy of the great masters." Escudier, the writer of the notice in the "France Musicale," says of Ernst's playing: "If you wish to hear the violin weep, go and hear Ernst; he produces such heart-rending, such passionate sounds, that you fear every moment to see his instrument break to pieces in his hands. It is difficult to carry farther the expression of sadness, of suffering, and of despair."
To give the reader an idea of the character of the concert, I shall quote largely from Liszt's notice, in which he not only sets forth the merits of the artists, but also describes the appearance of the room and the audience. First, however, I must tell a pretty anecdote of which this notice reminds me. When Liszt was moving about among the audience during the intervals of the concert, paying his respects here and there, he came upon M. Ernest Legouve. The latter told him of his intention to give an account of the concert in the "Gazette Musicale." Liszt thereupon said that he had a great wish to write one himself, and M. Legouve, although reluctantly, gave way. When it came to the ears of Chopin that Liszt was going to report on the concert, he remarked: "Il me donnera un petit royaume dans son empire" (He will give me a little kingdom in his empire).
[FOOTNOTE: Since I wrote the above, M. Legouve has published his "Soixante ans de Souvenirs," and in this book gives his version of the story, which, it is to be hoped, is less incorrect than some other statements of his relating to Chopin: "He [Chopin] had asked me to write a report of the concert. Liszt claimed the honour. I hastened to announce this good news to Chopin, who quietly said to me: "I should have liked better if it had been you." "What are you thinking of my dear friend! An article by Liszt, that is a fortunate thing for the public and for you. Trust in his admiration for your talent. I promise you qu'il vous fera un beau royaume.'--'Oui, me dit-il en souriant, dans son empire!'""]
These few words speak volumes. But here is what Liszt wrote about the concert in the "Gazette musicale" of May 2, 1841:--
Last Monday, at eight o'clock in the evening, M. Pleyel's rooms were brilliantly lighted up; numerous carriages brought incessantly to the foot of a staircase covered with carpet and perfumed with flowers the most elegant women, the most fashionable young men, the most celebrated artists, the richest financiers, the most illustrious noblemen, a whole elite of society, a whole aristocracy of birth, fortune, talent, and beauty.
A grand piano was open on a platform; people crowded round, eager for the seats nearest it; they prepared to listen, they composed them-selves, they said to themselves that they must not lose a chord, a note, an intention, a thought of him who was going to seat himself there. And people were right in being thus eager, attentive, and religiously moved, because he for whom they waited, whom they wished to hear, admire, and applaud, was not only a clever virtuoso, a pianist expert in the art of making notes [de faire des notes], not only an artist of great renown, he was all this and more than all this, he was Chopin...
...If less eclat has gathered round his name, if a less bright aureole has encircled his head, it is not because he had not in him perhaps the same depth of feeling as the illustrious author of "Conrad Wallenrod" and the "Pilgrims," [FOOTNOTE: Adam Mickiewicz.] but his means of expression were too limited, his instrument too imperfect; he could not reveal his whole self by means of a piano. Hence, if we are not mistaken, a dull and continual suffering, a certain repugnance to reveal himself to the outer world, a sadness which shrinks out of sight under apparent gaiety, in short, a whole individuality in the highest degree remarkable and attractive.
...It was only rarely, at very distant intervals, that Chopin played in public; but what would have been for anyone else an almost certain cause of oblivion and obscurity was precisely what assured to him a fame above the caprices of fashion, and kept him from rivalries, jealousies, and injustice. Chopin, who has taken no part in the extreme movement which for several years has thrust one on another and one against another the executive artists from all quarters of the world, has been constantly surrounded by faithful adepts, enthusiastic pupils, and warm friends, all of whom, while guarding him against disagreeable contests and painful collisions, have not ceased to spread abroad his works, and with them admiration for his name. Moreover, this exquisite, altogether lofty, and eminently aristocratic celebrity has remained unattacked. A complete silence of criticism already reigns round it, as if posterity were come; and in the brilliant audience which flocked together to hear the too long silent poet there was neither reticence nor restriction, unanimous praise was on the lips of all.
...He has known how to give to new thoughts a new form. That element of wildness and abruptness which belongs to his country has found its expression in bold dissonances, in strange harmonies, while the delicacy and grace which belong to his personality were revealed in a thousand contours, in a thousand embellishments of an inimitable fancy.
In Monday's concert Chopin had chosen in preference those of his works which swerve more from the classical forms. He played neither concerto, nor sonata, nor fantasia, nor variations, but preludes, studies, nocturnes, and mazurkas. Addressing himself to a society rather than to a public, he could show himself with impunity as he is, an elegiac poet, profound, chaste, and dreamy. He did not need either to astonish or to overwhelm, he sought for delicate sympathy rather than for noisy enthusiasm. Let us say at once that he had no reason to complain of want of sympathy. From the first chords there was established a close communication between him and his audience. Two studies and a ballade were encored, and had it not been for the fear of adding to the already great fatigue which betrayed itself on his pale face, people would have asked for a repetition of the pieces of the programme one by one...
An account of the concert in La France musicale of May 2, 1841, contained a general characterisation of Chopin's artistic position with regard to the public coinciding with that given by Liszt, but the following excerpts from the other parts of the article may not be unacceptable to the reader:--
We spoke of Schubert because there is no other nature which has a more complete analogy with him. The one has done for the piano what the other has done for the voice...Chopin was a composer from conviction. He composes for himself, and what he composes he performs for himself...Chopin is the pianist of sentiment PAR EXCELLENCE. One may say that Chopin is the creator of a school of pianoforte-playing and of a school of composition. Indeed, nothing equals the lightness and sweetness with which the artist preludes on the piano, nothing again can be placed by the side of his works full of originality, distinction, and grace. Chopin is an exceptional pianist who ought not to be, and cannot be, compared with anyone.
The words with which the critic of the Menestrel closes his remarks, describe well the nature of the emotions which the artist excited in his hearers:--
In order to appreciate Chopin rightly, one must love gentle impressions, and have the feeling for poetry: to hear Chopin is to read a strophe of Lamartine....Everyone went away full of sweet joy and deep reverie (recueillement).
The concert, which was beyond a doubt a complete success, must have given Chopin satisfaction in every respect. At any rate, he faced the public again before a year had gone by. In the Gazette Musicale of February 20, 1842, we read that on the following evening, Monday, at Pleyel's rooms, the haute societe de Paris et tous les artistes s'y donneront rendez-vous. The programme of the concert was to be as follows:--
1. Andante suivi de la 3ieme Ballade, par Chopin.
2. Felice Donzella, air de Dessauer.
3. Suite de Nocturnes, Preludes et Etudes, par Chopin.
4. Divers fragments de Handel, chante par Madame Viardot- Garcia.
5. Solo pour Violoncello, par M. Franchomme.
6. Nocturne, Preludes, Mazurkas et Impromptu.
7. Le Chene et le Roseau, chante par Madame Viardot-Garcia, accompagne par Chopin.
Maurice Bourges, who a week later reports on the concert, states more particularly what Chopin played. He mentions three mazurkas in A flat major, B major, and A minor; three studies in A flat major, F minor, and C minor; the Ballade in A flat major; four nocturnes, one of which was that in F sharp minor; a prelude in D flat; and an impromptu in G (G flat major?). Maurice Bourges's account is not altogether free from strictures. He finds Chopin's ornamentations always novel, but sometimes mannered (manierees). He says: "Trop de recherche fine et minutieuse n'est pas quelquefois sans pretention et san froideur." But on the whole the critique is very laudatory. "Liszt and Thalberg excite, as is well known, violent enthusiasm; Chopin also awakens enthusiasm, but of a less energetic, less noisy nature, precisely because he causes the most intimate chords of the heart to vibrate."
From the report in the "France musicale" we see that the audience was not less brilliant than that of the first concert:--
...Chopin has given in Pleyel's hall a charming soiree, a fete peopled with adorable smiles, delicate and rosy faces, small and well-formed white hands; a splendid fete where simplicity was combined with grace and elegance, and where good taste served as a pedestal to wealth. Those ugly black hats which give to men the most unsightly appearance possible were very few in number. The gilded ribbons, the delicate blue gauze, the chaplets of trembling pearls, the freshest roses and mignonettes, in short, a thousand medleys of the prettiest and gayest colours were assembled, and intersected each other in all sorts of ways on the perfumed heads and snowy shoulders of the most charming women for whom the princely salons contend. The first success of the seance was for Madame George Sand. As soon as she appeared with her two charming daughters [daughter and cousin?], she was the observed of all observers. Others would have been disturbed by all those eyes turned on her like so many stars; but George Sand contented herself with lowering her head and smiling...
This description is so graphic that one seems to see the actual scene, and imagines one's self one of the audience. It also points out a very characteristic feature of these concerts--namely, the preponderance of the fair sex. As regards Chopin's playing, the writer remarks that the genre of execution which aims at the imitation of orchestral effects suits neither Chopin's organisation nor his ideas:--
In listening to all these sounds, all these nuances, which follow each other, intermingle, separate, and reunite to arrive at one and the same goal, melody, do you not think you hear little fairy voices sighing under silver bells, or a rain of pearls falling on crystal tables? The fingers of the pianist seem to multiply ad infinitum; it does not appear possible that only two hands can produce effects of rapidity so precise and so natural...
I shall now try to give the reader a clearer idea of what Chopin's style of playing was like than any and all of the criticisms and descriptions I have hitherto quoted can have done. And I do this not only in order to satisfy a natural curiosity, but also, and more especially, to furnish a guide for the better understanding and execution of the master's works. Some, seeing that no music reflects more clearly its author's nature than that of Chopin, may think that it would be wiser to illustrate the style of playing by the style of composition, and not the style of composition by the style of playing. Two reasons determine me to differ from them. Our musical notation is an inadequate exponent of the conceptions of the great masters--visible signs cannot express the subtle shades of the emotional language; and the capabilities of Chopin the composer and of Chopin the executant were by no means coextensive--we cannot draw conclusions as to the character of his playing from the character of his Polonaises in A major (Op. 40) and in A flat (Op. 53), and certain movements of the Sonata in B flat minor (Op. 35). The information contained in the following remarks is derived partly from printed publications, partly from private letters and conversations; nothing is admitted which does not proceed from Chopin's pupils, friends, and such persons as have frequently heard him.
What struck everyone who had the good fortune to hear Chopin was the fact that he was a pianist sui generis. Moscheles calls him an unicum; Mendelssohn describes him as "radically original" (Gruneigentumlich); Meyerbeer said of him that he knew no pianist, no composer for the piano, like him; and thus I could go on quoting ad infinitum. A writer in the "Gazette musicale" (of the year 1835, I think), who, although he places at the head of his article side by side the names of Liszt, Hiller, Chopin, and--Bertini, proved himself in the characterisation of these pianists a man of some insight, remarks of Chopin: "Thought, style, conception, even the fingering, everything, in fact, appears individual, but of a communicative, expansive individuality, an individuality of which superficial organisations alone fail to recognise the magnetic influence." Chopin's place among the great pianists of the second quarter of this century has been felicitously characterised by an anonymous contemporary: Thalberg, he said, is a king, Liszt a prophet, Chopin a poet, Herz an advocate, Kalkbrenner a minstrel, Madame Pleyel a sibyl, and Doehler a pianist.
But if our investigation is to be profitable, we must proceed analytically. It will be best to begin with the fundamental technical qualities. First of all, then, we have to note the suppleness and equality of Chopin's fingers and the perfect independence of his hands. "The evenness of his scales and passages in all kinds of touch," writes Mikuli, "was unsurpassed, nay, prodigious." Gutmann told me that his master's playing was particularly smooth, and his fingering calculated to attain this result. A great lady who was present at Chopin's last concert in Paris (1848), when he played among other works his Valse in D flat (Op. 64, No. 1), wished to know "le secret de Chopin pour que les gammes fussent si COULEES sur le piano." Madame Dubois, who related this incident to me, added that the expression was felicitous, for this "limpidite delicate" had never been equalled. Such indeed were the lightness, delicacy, neatness, elegance, and gracefulness of Chopin's playing that they won for him the name of Ariel of the piano. The reader will remember how much Chopin admired these qualities in other artists, notably in Mdlle. Sontag and in Kalkbrenner.
So high a degree and so peculiar a kind of excellence was of course attainable only under exceptionally favourable conditions, physical as well as mental. The first and chief condition was a suitably formed hand. Now, no one can look at Chopin's hand, of which there exists a cast, without perceiving at once its capabilities. It was indeed small, but at the same time it was thin, light, delicately articulated, and, if I may say so, highly expressive. Chopin's whole body was extraordinarily flexible. According to Gutmann, he could, like a clown, throw his legs over his shoulders. After this we may easily imagine how great must have been the flexibility of his hands, those members of his body which he had specially trained all his life. Indeed, the startlingly wide-spread chords, arpeggios, &c., which constantly occur in his compositions, and which until he introduced them had been undreamt-of and still are far from being common, seemed to offer him no difficulty, for he executed them not only without any visible effort, but even with a pleasing ease and freedom. Stephen Heller told me that it was a wonderful sight to see one of those small hands expand and cover a third of the keyboard. It was like the opening of the mouth of a serpent which is going to swallow a rabbit whole. In fact, Chopin appeared to be made of caoutchouc.
In the criticisms on Chopin's public performances we have met again and again with the statement that he brought little tone out of the piano. Now, although it is no doubt true that Chopin could neither subdue to his sway large audiences nor successfully battle with a full orchestra, it would be a mistake to infer from this that he was always a weak and languid player. Stephen Heller, who declared that Chopin's tone was rich, remembered hearing him play a duet with Moscheles (the latter's duet, of which Chopin was so fond), and on this occasion the Polish pianist, who insisted on playing the bass, drowned the treble of his partner, a virtuoso well known for his vigour and brilliancy. Were we, however, to form our judgment on this single item of evidence, we should again arrive at a wrong conclusion. Where musical matters--i.e., matters generally estimated according to individual taste and momentary impressibility alone--are concerned, there is safety only in the multitude of witnesses. Let us, therefore, hear first what Chopin's pupils have got to say on this point, and then go and inquire further. Gutmann said that Chopin played generally very quietly, and rarely, indeed hardly ever, fortissimo. The A flat major Polonaise (Op. 53), for instance, he could not thunder forth in the way we are accustomed to hear it. As for the famous octave passages which occur in it, he began them pianissimo and continued thus without much increase in loudness. And, then, Chopin never thumped. M. Mathias remarks that his master had extraordinary vigour, but only in flashes. Mikuli's preface to his edition of the works of Chopin affords more explicit information. We read there:--
The tone which Chopin brought out of the instrument was always, especially in the cantabiles, immense (riesengross), only Field could perhaps in this respect be compared to him. A manly energy gave to appropriate passages overpowering effect-- energy without roughness (Rohheit); but, on the other hand, he knew how by delicacy--delicacy without affectation--to captivate the hearer.
We may summarise these various depositions by saying with Lenz that, being deficient in physical strength, Chopin put his all in the cantabile style, in the connections and combinations, in the detail. But two things are evident, and they ought to be noted: (1) The volume of tone, of pure tone, which Chopin was capable of producing was by no means inconsiderable; (2) he had learnt the art of economising his means so as to cover his shortcomings. This last statement is confirmed by some remarks of Moscheles which have already been quoted--namely, that Chopin's piano was breathed forth so softly that he required no vigorous forte to produce the desired contrasts; and that one did not miss the orchestral effects which the German school demanded from a pianist, but allowed one's self to be carried away as by a singer who takes little heed of the accompaniment and follows his own feelings.
In listening to accounts of Chopin's style of playing, we must not leave out of consideration the time to which they refer. What is true of the Chopin of 1848 is not true of the Chopin of 1831 nor of 1841. In the last years of his life he became so weak that sometimes, as Stephen Heller told me, his playing was hardly audible. He then made use of all sorts of devices to hide the want of vigour, often modifying the original conception of his compositions, but always producing beautiful effects. Thus, to give only one example (for which and much other interesting information I am indebted to Mr. Charles Halle), Chopin played at his last concert in Paris (February, 1848) the two forte passages towards the end of the Barcarole, not as they are printed, but pianissimo and with all sorts of dynamic finesses. Having possessed himself of the most recondite mysteries of touch, and mastered as no other pianist had done the subtlest gradations of tone, he even then, reduced by disease as he was, did not give the hearer the impression of weakness. At least this is what Mr. Otto Goldschmidt relates, who likewise was present at this concert. There can be no doubt that what Chopin aimed at chiefly, or rather, let us say, what his physical constitution permitted him to aim at, was quality not quantity of tone. A writer in the "Menestrel" (October 21, 1849) remarks that for Chopin, who in this was unlike all other pianists, the piano had always too much tone; and that his constant endeavour was to SENTIMENTALISE the timbre, his greatest care to avoid everything which approached the fracas pianistique of the time.
Of course, a true artist's touch has besides its mechanical also its spiritual aspect. With regard to this it is impossible to overlook the personal element which pervaded and characterised Chopin's touch. M. Marmontel does not forget to note it in his "Pianistes Celebres." He writes:--
In the marvellous art of carrying and modulating the tone, in the expressive, melancholy manner of shading it off, Chopin was entirely himself. He had quite an individual way of attacking the keyboard, a supple, mellow touch, sonorous effects of a vaporous fluidity of which only he knew the secret.
In connection with Chopin's production of tone, I must not omit to mention his felicitous utilisation of the loud and soft pedals. It was not till the time of Liszt, Thalberg, and Chopin that the pedals became a power in pianoforte-playing. Hummel did not understand their importance, and failed to take advantage of them. The few indications we find in Beethoven's works prove that this genius began to see some of the as yet latent possibilities. Of the virtuosi,
Moscheles was the first who made a more extensive and artistic use of the pedals, although also he employed them sparingly compared with his above-named younger contemporaries. Every pianist of note has, of course, his own style of pedalling. Unfortunately, there are no particulars forthcoming with regard to Chopin's peculiar style; and this is the more to be regretted as the composer was very careless in his notation of the pedals. Rubinstein declares that most of the pedal marks in Chopin's compositions are wrongly placed. If nothing more, we know at least thus much: "No pianist before him [Chopin] has employed the pedals alternately or simultaneously with so much tact and ability," and "in making constantly use of the pedal he obtained des harmonies ravissantes, des bruissements melodiques qui etonnaient et charmaient." [FOOTNOTE: Marmontel: "Les Pianistes celebres."]
The poetical qualities of Chopin's playingare not so easily defined as the technical ones. Indeed, if they are definable at all they are so only by one who, like Liszt, is a poet as well as a great pianist. I shall, therefore, transcribe from his book some of the most important remarks bearing on this matter.
After saying that Chopin idealised the fugitive poesy inspired by fugitive apparitions like "La Fee aux Miettes," "Le Lutin d'Argail," &c., to such an extent as to render its fibres so thin and friable that they seemed no longer to belong to our nature, but to reveal to us the indiscreet confidences of the Undines, Titanias, Ariels, Queen Mabs, and Oberons, Liszt proceeds thus:--
When this kind of inspiration laid hold of Chopin his playing assumed a distinctive character, whatever the kind of music he executed might be--dance-music or dreamy music, mazurkas or nocturnes, preludes or scherzos, waltzes or tarantellas, studies or ballades. He imprinted on them all one knows not what nameless colour, what vague appearance, what pulsations akin to vibration, that had almost no longer anything material about them, and, like the imponderables, seemed to act on one's being without passing through the senses. Sometimes one thought one heard the joyous tripping of some amorously- teasing Peri; sometimes there were modulations velvety and iridescent as the robe of a salamander; sometimes one heard accents of deep despondency, as if souls in torment did not find the loving prayers necessary for their final deliverance. At other times there breathed forth from his fingers a despair so mournful, so inconsolable, that one thought one saw Byron's Jacopo Foscari come to life again, and contemplated the extreme dejection of him who, dying of love for his country, preferred death to exile, being unable to endure the pain of leaving Venezia la bella!
It is interesting to compare this description with that of another poet, a poet who sent forth his poetry daintily dressed in verse as well as carelessly wrapped in prose. Liszt tells us that Chopin had in his imagination and talent something "qui, par la purete de sa diction, par ses accointances avec La Fee aux Miettes et Le Lutin d'Argail, par ses rencon-tres de Seraphine et de Diane, murmurant a son oreille leurs plus confidentielles plaintes, leurs reves les plus innommes," [FOOTNOTE: The allusions are to stories by Charles Nodier. According to Sainte-Beuve, "La Fee aux Miettes" was one of those stories in which the author was influenced by Hoffmann's creations.] reminded him of Nodier. Now, what thoughts did Chopin's playing call up in Heine?
Yes, one must admit that Chopin has genius in the full sense of the word; he is not only a virtuoso, he is also a poet; he can embody for us the poesy which lives within his soul, he is a tone-poet, and nothing can be compared to the pleasure which he gives us when he sits at the piano and improvises. He is then neither a Pole, nor a Frenchman, nor a German, he reveals then a higher origin, one perceives then that he comes from the land of Mozart, Raphael, and Goethe, his true fatherland is the dream-realm of poesy. When he sits at the piano and improvises I feel as though a countryman from my beloved native land were visiting me and telling me the most curious things which have taken place there during my absence...Sometimes I should like to interrupt him with questions: And how is the beautiful little water-nymph who knows how to fasten her silvery veil so coquettishly round her green locks? Does the white-bearded sea-god still persecute her with his foolish, stale love? Are the roses at home still in their flame-hued pride? Do the trees still sing as beautifully in the moonlight?
But to return to Liszt. A little farther on than the passage I quoted above he says:--
In his playing the great artist rendered exquisitely that kind of agitated trepidation, timid or breathless, which seizes the heart when one believes one's self in the vicinity of supernatural beings, in presence of those whom one does not know either how to divine or to lay hold of, to embrace or to charm. He always made the melody undulate like a skiff borne on the bosom of a powerful wave; or he made it move vaguely like an aerial apparition suddenly sprung up in this tangible and palpable world. In his writings he at first indicated this manner which gave so individual an impress to his virtuosity by the term tempo rubato: stolen, broken time--a measure at once supple, abrupt, and languid, vacillating like the flame under the breath which agitates it, like the corn in a field swayed by the soft pressure of a warm air, like the top of trees bent hither and thither by a keen breeze.
But as the term taught nothing to him who knew, said nothing to him who did not know, understand, and feel, Chopin afterwards ceased to add this explanation to his music, being persuaded that if one understood it, it was impossible not to divine this rule of irregularity. Accordingly, all his compositions ought to be played with that kind of accented, rhythmical balancement, that morbidezza, the secret of which it was difficult to seize if one had not often heard him play.
Let us try if it is not possible to obtain a clearer notion of this mysterious tempo rubato. Among instrumentalists the "stolen time" was brought into vogue especially by Chopin and Liszt. But it is not an invention of theirs or their time. Quanz, the great flutist (see Marpurg: "Kritische Beitrage." Vol. I.), said that he heard it for the first time from the celebrated singer Santa Stella Lotti, who was engaged in 1717 at the Dresden Opera, and died in 1759 at Venice. Above all, however, we have to keep in mind that the tempo rubato is a genus which comprehends numerous species. In short, the tempo rubato of Chopin is not that of Liszt, that of Liszt is not that of Henselt, and so on. As for the general definitions we find in dictionaries, they can afford us no particular enlightenment. But help comes to us from elsewhere. Liszt explained Chopin's tempo rubato in a very poetical and graphic manner to his pupil the Russian pianist Neilissow:--"Look at these trees!" he said, "the wind plays in the leaves, stirs up life among them, the tree remains the same, that is Chopinesque rubato." But how did the composer himself describe it? From Madame Dubois and other pupils of Chopin we learn that he was in the habit of saying to them: "Que votre main gauche soit votre maitre de chapelle et garde toujours la mesure" (Let your left hand be your conductor and always keep time). According to Lenz Chopin taught also: "Angenommen, ein Stuck dauert so und so viel Minuten, wenn das Ganze nur so lange gedauert hat, im Einzelnen kann's anders sein!" (Suppose a piece lasts so and so many minutes, if only the whole lasts so long, the differences in the details do not matter). This is somewhat ambiguous teaching, and seems to be in contradiction to the preceding precept. Mikuli, another pupil of Chopin's, explains his master's tempo rubato thus:--"While the singing hand, either irresolutely lingering or as in passionate speech eagerly anticipating with a certain impatient vehemence, freed the truth of the musical expression from all rhythmical fetters, the other, the accompanying hand, continued to play strictly in time." We get a very lucid description of Chopin's tempo rubato from the critic of the Athenaeum who after hearing the pianist-composer at a London matinee in 1848 wrote:--"He makes free use of tempo rubato; leaning about within his bars more than any player we recollect, but still subject to a presiding measure such as presently habituates the ear to the liberties taken." Often, no doubt, people mistook for tempo rubato what in reality was a suppression or displacement of accent, to which kind of playing the term is indeed sometimes applied. The reader will remember the following passage from a criticism in the "Wiener Theaterzeitung" of 1829:--"There are defects noticeable in the young man's [Chopin's] playing, among which is perhaps especially to be mentioned the non-observance of the indication by accent of the commencement of musical phrases." Mr. Halle related to me an interesting dispute bearing on this matter. The German pianist told Chopin one day that he played in his mazurkas often 4/4 instead of 3/4 time. Chopin would not admit it at first, but when Mr. Halle proved his case by counting to Chopin's playing, the latter admitted the correctness of the observation, and laughing said that this was national. Lenz reports a similar dispute between Chopin and Meyerbeer. In short, we may sum up in Moscheles' words, Chopin's playing did not degenerate into Tactlosigkeit [lit., timelessness], but it was of the most charming originality. Along with the above testimony we have, however, to take note of what Berlioz said on the subject: "Chopin supportait mal le frein de la mesure; il a pousse beaucoup trap loin, selon moi, l'independance rhythmique." Berlioz even went so far as to say that "Chopin could not play strictly in time [ne pouvait pas jouer regulierement]."
Indeed, so strange was Chopin's style that when Mr. Charles Halle first heard him play his compositions he could not imagine how what he heard was represented by musical signs. But strange as Chopin's style of playing was he thinks that its peculiarities are generally exaggerated. The Parisians said of Rubinstein's playing of compositions of Chopin: "Ce n'est pas ca!" Mr. Halle himself thinks that Rubinstein's rendering of Chopin is clever, but not Chopinesque. Nor do Von Bulow's readings come near the original. As for Chopin's pupils, they are even less successful than others in imitating their master's style. The opinion of one who is so distinguished a pianist and at the same time was so well acquainted with Chopin as Mr. Halle is worth having. Hearing Chopin often play his compositions he got so familiar with that master's music and felt so much in sympathy with it that the composer liked to have it played by him, and told him that when he was in the adjoining room he could imagine he was playing himself.
But it is time that we got off the shoals on which we have been lying so long. Well, Lenz shall set us afloat:--
In the undulation of the motion, in that suspension and unrest [Hangen und Bangen], in the rubato as he understood it, Chopin was captivating, every note was the outcome of the best taste in the best sense of the word. If he introduced an embellishment, which happened only rarely, it was always a kind of miracle of good taste. Chopin was by his whole nature unfitted to render Beethoven or Weber, who paint on a large scale and with a big brush. Chopin was an artist in crayons [Pastellmaler], but an INCOMPARABLE one! By the side of Liszt he might pass with honour for that master's well-matched wife [ebenburtige Frau, i.e., wife of equal rank]. Beethoven's B flat major Sonata, Op. 106, and Chopin exclude each other.
One day Chopin took Lenz with him to the Baronne Krudner and her friend the Countess Scheremetjew to whom he had promised to play the variations of Beethoven's Sonata in A flat major (Op. 26). And how did he play them?
Beautifully [says Lenz], but not so beautifully as his own things, not enthrallingly [packend], not en relief, not as a romance increasing in interest from variation to variation. He whispered it mezza voce, but it was incomparable in the cantilena, infinitely perfect in the phrasing of the structure, ideally beautiful, but FEMININE! Beethoven is a man and never ceases to be one!
Chopin played on a Pleyel, he made it a point never to give lessons on another instrument; they were obliged to get a Pleyel. All were charmed, I also was charmed, but only with the tone of Chopin, with his touch, with his sweetness and grace, with the purity of his style.
Chopin's purity of style, self-command, and aristocratic reserve have to be quite especially noted by us who are accustomed to hear the master's compositions played wildly, deliriously, ostentatiously. J. B. Cramer's remarks on Chopin are significant. The master of a bygone age said of the master of the then flourishing generation:--
I do not understand him, but he plays beautifully and correctly, oh! very correctly, he does not give way to his passion like other young men, but I do not understand him.
What one reads and hears of Chopin's playing agrees with the account of his pupil Mikuli, who remarks that, with all the warmth which Chopin possessed in so high a degree, his rendering was nevertheless temperate [massvoll], chaste, nay, aristocratic, and sometimes even severely reserved. When, on returning home from the above-mentioned visit to the Russian ladies, Lenz expressed his sincere opinion of Chopin's playing of Beethoven's variations, the master replied testily: "I indicate (j'indique); the hearer must complete (parachever) the picture." And when afterwards, while Chopin was changing his clothes in an adjoining room, Lenz committed the impertinence of playing Beethoven's theme as he understood it, the master came in in his shirt-sleeves, sat down beside him, and at the end of the theme laid his hand on Lenz's shoulder and said: "I shall tell Liszt of it; this has never happened to me before; but it is beautiful--well, BUT MUST ONE THEN ALWAYS SPEAK SO PASSIONATELY (si declamatoirement)?" The italics in the text, not those in parentheses, are mine. I marked some of Chopin's words thus that they might get the attention they deserve. "Tell me with whom you associate, and I will tell you who you are." Parodying this aphorism one might say, not without a good deal of truth: Tell me what piano you use, and I will tell you what sort of a pianist you are. Liszt gives us all the desirable information as to Chopin's predilection in this respect. But Lenz too has, as we have seen, touched on this point. Liszt writes:--
While Chopin was strong and healthy, as during the first years of his residence in Paris, he used to play on an Erard piano; but after his friend Camille Pleyel had made him a present of one of his splendid instruments, remarkable for their metallic ring and very light touch, he would play on no other maker's.
If he was engaged for a soiree at the house of one of his Polish or French friends, he would often send his own instrument, if there did not happen to be a Pleyel in the house.
Chopin was very partial to [affectionnait] Pleyel's pianos, particularly on account of their silvery and somewhat veiled sonority, and of the easy touch which permitted him to draw from them sounds which one might have believed to belong to those harmonicas of which romantic Germany has kept the monopoly, and which her ancient masters constructed so ingeniously, marrying crystal to water.
Chopin himself said:--
When I am indisposed, I play on one of Erard's pianos and there I easily find a ready-made tone. But when I feel in the right mood and strong enough to find my own tone for myself, I must have one of Pleyel's pianos.
From the fact that Chopin played during his visit to Great Britain in 1848 at public concerts as well as at private parties on instruments of Broadwood's, we may conclude that he also appreciated the pianos of this firm. In a letter dated London, 48, Dover Street, May 6, 1848, he writes to Gutmann: "Erard a ete charmant, il m'a fait poser un piano. J'ai un de Broadwood et un de Pleyel, ce qui fait 3, et je ne trouve pas encore le temps pour les jouer." And in a letter dated Edinburgh, August 6, and Calder House, August 11, he writes to Franchomme: "I have a Broadwood piano in my room, and the Pleyel of Miss Stirling in the salon."
Here, I think, will be the fittest place to record what I have learnt regarding Chopin's musical taste and opinions on music and musicians, and what will perhaps illustrate better than any other part of this book the character of the man and artist. His opinions of composers and musical works show that he had in a high degree les vices de ses qualites. The delicacy of his constitution and the super-refinement of his breeding, which put within his reach the inimitable beauties of subtlest tenderness and grace that distinguish his compositions and distinguished his playing, were disqualifications as well as qualifications. "Every kind of uncouth roughness [toutes les rudesses sauvages] inspired him with aversion," says Liszt. "In music as in literature and in every-day life everything which bordered on melodrama was torture to him." In short, Chopin was an aristocrat with all the exclusiveness of an aristocrat.
The inability of men of genius to appreciate the merit of one or the other of their great predecessors and more especially of their contemporaries has often been commented on and wondered at, but I doubt very much whether a musician could be instanced whose sympathies were narrower than those of Chopin. Besides being biographically important, the record of the master's likings and dislikings will teach a useful lesson to the critic and furnish some curious material for the psychological student.
Highest among all the composers, living and dead, Chopin esteemed Mozart. Him he regarded as "the ideal type, the poet par excellence." It is related of Chopin--with what truth I do not know--that he never travelled without having either the score of "Don Giovanni" or that of the "Requiem" in his portmanteau. Significant, although not founded on fact, is the story according to which he expressed the wish that the "Requiem" should be performed at his funeral service. Nothing, however, shows his love for the great German master more unmistakably and more touchingly than the words which on his death-bed he addressed to his dear friends the Princess Czartoryska and M. Franchomme: "You will play Mozart together, and I shall hear you." And why did Chopin regard Mozart as the ideal type, the poet par excellence? Liszt answers: "Because Mozart condescended more rarely than any other composer to cross the steps which separate refinement from vulgarity." But what no doubt more especially stirred sympathetic chords in the heart of Chopin, and inspired him with that loving admiration for the earlier master, was the sweetness, the grace, and the harmoniousness which in Mozart's works reign supreme and undisturbed--the unsurpassed and unsurpassable perfect loveliness and lovely perfection which result from a complete absence of everything that is harsh, hard, awkward, unhealthy, and eccentric. And yet, says Liszt of Chopin:--
His sybaritism of purity, his apprehension of what was commonplace, were such that even in "Don Giovanni," even in this immortal chef-d'oeuvre, he discovered passages the presence of which we have heard him regret. His worship of Mozart was not thereby diminished, but as it were saddened.
The composer who next to Mozart stood highest in Chopin's esteem was Bach. "It was difficult to say," remarks Mikuli, "which of the two he loved most." Chopin not only, as has already been mentioned, had works of Bach on his writing-table at Valdemosa, corrected the Parisian edition for his own use, and prepared himself for his concerts by playing Bach, but also set his pupils to study the immortal cantor's suites, partitas, and preludes and fugues. Madame Dubois told me that at her last meeting with him (in 1848) he recommended her "de toujours travailler Bach," adding that that was the best means of making progress.
Hummel, Field, and Moscheles were the pianoforte composers who seem to have given Chopin most satisfaction. Mozart and Bach were his gods, but these were his friends. Gutmann informed me that Chopin was particularly fond of Hummel; Liszt writes that Hummel was one of the composers Chopin played again and again with the greatest pleasure; and from Mikuli we learn that of Hummel's compositions his master liked best the Fantasia, the Septet, and the Concertos. Liszt's statement that the Nocturnes of Field were regarded by Chopin as "insuffisants" seems to me disproved by unexceptionable evidence. Chopin schooled his pupils most assiduously and carefully in the Nocturnes as well as in the Concertos of Field, who was, to use Madame Dubois's words, "an author very sympathetic to him." Mikuli relates that Chopin had a predilection for Field's A flat Concerto and the Nocturnes, and that, when playing the latter, he used to improvise the most charming embellishments. To take liberties with another artist's works and complain when another artist takes liberties with your own works is very inconsistent, is it not? But it is also thoroughly human, and Chopin was not exempt from the common failing. One day when Liszt did with some composition of Chopin's what the latter was in the habit of doing with Field's Nocturnes, the enraged composer is said to have told his friend to play his compositions as they were written or to let them alone. M. Marmontel writes:--
Either from a profound love of the art or from an excess of conscience personelle, Chopin could not bear any one to touch the text of his works. The slightest modification seemed to him a grave fault which he did not even forgive his intimate friends, his fervent admirers, Liszt not excepted. I have many a time, as well as my master, Zimmermann, caused Chopin's sonatas, concertos, ballades, and allegros to be played as examination pieces; but restricted as I was to a fragment of the work, I was pained by the thought of hurting the composer, who considered these alterations a veritable sacrilege.
This, however, is a digression. Little need be added to what has already been said in another chapter of the third composer of the group we were speaking of. Chopin, the reader will remember, told Moscheles that he loved his music, and Moscheles admitted that he who thus complimented him was intimately acquainted with it. From Mikuli we learn that Moscheles' studies were very sympathetic to his master. As to Moscheles' duets, they were played by Chopin probably more frequently than the works of any other composer, excepting of course his own works. We hear of his playing them not only with his pupils, but with Osborne, with Moscheles himself, and with Liszt, who told me that Chopin was fond of playing with him the duets of Moscheles and Hummel.
Speaking of playing duets reminds me of Schubert, who, Gutmann informed me, was a favourite of Chopin's. The Viennese master's "Divertissement hongrois" he admired without reserve. Also the marches and polonaises a quatre mains he played with his pupils. But his teaching repertoire seems to have contained, with the exception of the waltzes, none of the works a deux mains, neither the sonatas, nor the impromptus, nor the "Moments musicals." This shows that if Schubert was a favourite of Chopin's, he was so only to a certain extent. Indeed, Chopin even found fault with the master where he is universally regarded as facile princeps. Liszt remarks:--
In spite of the charm which he recognised in some of Schubert's melodies, he did not care to hear those whose contours were too sharp for his ear, where feeling is as it were denuded, where one feels, so to speak, the flesh palpitate and the bones crack under the grasp of anguish. A propos of Schubert, Chopin is reported to have said: "The sublime is dimmed when it is followed by the common or the trivial."
I shall now mention some of those composers with whom Chopin was less in sympathy. In the case of Weber his approval, however, seems to have outweighed his censure. At least Mikuli relates that the E minor and A flat major Sonatas and the "Concertstuck" were among those works for which his master had a predilection, and Madame Dubois says that he made his pupils play the Sonatas in C and in A flat major with extreme care. Now let us hear Lenz:-- He could not appreciate Weber; he spoke of "opera," "unsuitable for the piano" [unklaviermassig]! On the whole, Chopin was little in sympathy with the GERMAN spirit in music, although I heard him say: "There is only ONE SCHOOL, the German!"
Gutmann informed me that he brought the A flat major Sonata with him from Germany in 1836 or 1837, and that Chopin did not know it then. It is hard enough to believe that Liszt asked Lenz in 1828 if the composer of the "Freischutz" had also written for the piano, but Chopin's ignorance in 1836 is much more startling. Did fame and publications travel so slowly in the earlier part of the century? Had genius to wait so long for recognition? If the statement, for the correctness of which Gutmann alone is responsible, rests on fact and not on some delusion of memory, this most characteristic work of Weber and one of the most important items of the pianoforte literature did not reach Chopin, one of the foremost European pianists, till twenty years after its publication, which took place in December, 1816.
That Chopin had a high opinion of Beethoven may be gathered from a story which Lenz relates in an article written for the "Berliner Musikzeitung" (Vol. XXVI). Little Filtsch--the talented young Hungarian who made Liszt say: "I shall shut my shop when he begins to travel"--having played to a select company invited by his master the latter's Concerto in E minor, Chopin was so pleased with his pupil's performance that he went with him to Schlesinger's music-shop, asked for the score of "Fidelio," and presented it to him with the words:--"I am in your debt, you have given me great pleasure to-day, I wrote the concerto in a happy time, accept, my dear young friend, the great master work! read in it as long as you live and remember me also sometimes." But Chopin's high opinion of Beethoven was neither unlimited nor unqualified. His attitude as regards this master, which Franchomme briefly indicated by saying that his friend loved Beethoven, but had his dislikes in connection with him, is more fully explained by Liszt.
However great his admiration for the works of Beethoven might be, certain parts of them seemed to him too rudely fashioned. Their structure was too athletic to please him; their wraths seemed to him too violent [leurs courroux lui semblaient trop rugissants]. He held that in them passion too closely approaches cataclysm; the lion's marrow which is found in every member of his phrases was in his opinion a too substantial matter, and the seraphic accents, the Raphaelesque profiles, which appear in the midst of the powerful creations of this genius, became at times almost painful to him in so violent a contrast.
I am able to illustrate this most excellent general description by some examples. Chopin said that Beethoven raised him one moment up to the heavens and the next moment precipitated him to the earth, nay, into the very mire. Such a fall Chopin experienced always at the commencement of the last movement of the C minor Symphony. Gutmann, who informed me of this, added that pieces such as the first movement of the Moonlight Sonata (C sharp minor) were most highly appreciated by his master. One day when Mr. Halle played to Chopin one of the three Sonatas, Op. 31 (I am not sure which it was), the latter remarked that he had formerly thought the last movement VULGAR. From this Mr. Halle naturally concluded that Chopin could not have studied the works of Beethoven thoroughly. This conjecture is confirmed by what we learn from Lenz, who in 1842 saw a good deal of Chopin, and thanks to his Boswellian inquisitiveness, persistence, and forwardness, made himself acquainted with a number of interesting facts. Lenz and Chopin spoke a great deal about Beethoven after that visit to the Russian ladies mentioned in a foregoing part of this chapter. They had never spoken of the great master before. Lenz says of Chopin:--
He did not take a very serious interest in Beethoven; he knew only his principal compositions, the last works not at all. This was in the Paris air! People knew the symphonies, the quartets of the middle period but little, the last ones not at all.
Chopin, on being told by Lenz that Beethoven had in the F minor Quartet anticipated Mendelssohn, Schumann, and him; and that the scherzo prepared the way for his mazurka-fantasias, said: "Bring me this quartet, I do not know it." According to Mikuli Chopin was a regular frequenter of the concerts of the Societe des Concerts du Conservatoire and of the Alard, Franchomme, &c., quartet party. But one of the most distinguished musicians living in Paris, who knew Chopin's opinion of Beethoven, suspects that the music was for him not the greatest attraction of the Conservatoire concerts, that in fact, like most of those who went there, he considered them a fashionable resort. True or not, the suspicion is undeniably significant. "But Mendelssohn," the reader will say, "surely Chopin must have admired and felt in sympathy with this sweet-voiced, well-mannered musician?" Nothing, however, could be farther from the truth. Chopin hated Mendelssohn's D minor Trio, and told Halle that that composer had never written anything better than the first Song without Words. Franchomme, stating the case mildly, says that Chopin did not care much for Mendelssohn's music; Gutmann, however, declared stoutly that his master positively disliked it and thought it COMMON. This word and the mention of the Trio remind me of a passage in Hiller's "Mendelssohn: Letters and Recollections," in which the author relates how, when his friend played to him the D minor Trio after its completion, he was favourably impressed by the fire, spirit, and flow, in one word, the masterly character of the work, but had some misgivings about certain pianoforte passages, especially those based on broken chords, which, accustomed as he was by his constant intercourse with Liszt and Chopin during his stay of several years in Paris to the rich passage work of the new school, appeared to him old-fashioned. Mendelssohn, who in his letters repeatedly alludes to his sterility in the matter of new pianoforte passages, allowed himself to be persuaded by Hiller to rewrite the pianoforte part, and was pleased with the result. It is clear from the above that if Mendelssohn failed to give Chopin his due, Chopin did more than apply the jus talionis.
Schumann, however, found still less favour in the eyes of Chopin than Mendelssohn; for whilst among the works which, for instance, Madame Dubois, who was Chopin's pupil for five years, studied under her master, Mendelssohn was represented at least by the Songs without Words and the G minor Concerto, Schumann was conspicuous by his total absence. And let it be remarked that this was in the last years of Chopin's life, when Schumann had composed and published almost all his important works for pianoforte alone and many of his finest works for pianoforte with other instruments. M. Mathias, Chopin's pupil during the years 1839-1844, wrote to me: "I think I recollect that he had no great opinion of Schumann. I remember seeing the "Carnaval," Op. 9, on his table; he did not speak very highly of it." In 1838, when Stephen Heller was about to leave Augsburg for Paris, Schumann sent him a copy of his "Carnaval" (published in September, 1837), to be presented to Chopin. This copy had a title-page printed in various colours and was most tastefully bound; for Schumann knew Chopin's love of elegance, and wished to please him. Soon after his arrival in Paris, Heller called on the Polish musician and found him sitting for his portrait. On receiving the copy of the "Carnaval" Chopin said: "How beautifully they get up these things in Germany!" but uttered not a word about the music. However, we shall see presently what his opinion of it was. Some time, perhaps some years, after this first meeting with Chopin, Heller was asked by Schlesinger whether he would advise him to publish Schumann's "Carnaval." Heller answered that it would be a good speculation, for although the work would probably not sell well at first, it was sure to pay in the long run. Thereupon Schlesinger confided to Heller what Chopin had told him--namely, that the "Carnaval" was not music at all. The contemplation of this indifference and more than indifference of a great artist to the creations of one of his most distinguished contemporaries is saddening, especially if we remember how devoted Schumann was to Chopin, how he admired him, loved him, upheld him, and idolised him. Had it not been for Schumann's enthusiastic praise and valiant defence Chopin's fame would have risen and spread, more slowly in Germany.
"Of virtuoso music of any kind I never saw anything on his desk, nor do I think anybody else ever did," says Mikuli.. This, although true in the main, is somewhat too strongly stated. Kalkbrenner, whose "noisy virtuosities [virtuosites tapageuses] and decorative expressivities [expressivites decoratives]" Chopin regarded with antipathy, and Thalberg, whose shallow elegancies and brilliancies he despised, were no doubt altogether banished from his desk; this, however, seems not to have been the case with Liszt, who occasionally made his appearance there. Thus Madame Dubois studied under Chopin Liszt's transcription of Rossini's "Tarantella" and of the Septet from Donizetti's "Lucia di Lammermoor." But the compositions of Liszt that had Chopin's approval were very limited in number. Chopin, who viewed making concessions to bad taste at the cost of true art and for the sake of success with the greatest indignation, found his former friend often guilty of this sin. In 1840 Liszt's transcription of Beethoven's "Adelaide" was published in a supplement to the Gazette musicale. M. Mathias happened to come to Chopin on the day when the latter had received the number of the journal which contained the piece in question, and found his master furious, outre, on account of certain cadenzas which he considered out of place and out of keeping.
We have seen in one of the earlier chapters how little Chopin approved of Berlioz's matter and manner; some of the ultra-romanticist's antipodes did not fare much better. As for Halevy, Chopin had no great opinion of him; Meyerbeer's music he heartily disliked; and, although not insensible to Auber's French esprit and liveliness, he did not prize this master's works very highly. Indeed, at the Italian opera-house he found more that was to his taste than at the French opera-houses. Bellini's music had a particular charm for Chopin, and he was also an admirer of Rossini.
The above notes exemplify and show the truth of Liszt's remark:--
In the great models and the master-works of art Chopin sought only what corresponded with his nature. What resembled it pleased him; what differed from it hardly received justice from him.