Chopin

The climax of the summer was the harvest festival, which Chopin described at length in a letter to his parents. ‘We were sitting at dinner, just finishing the last course,’ he wrote. ‘We suddenly heard in the distance a chorus of falsetto voices; old peasant women whining through their noses and girls squealing mercilessly half a tone higher, to the accompaniment of a single violin, and that only a three-string one, whose alto voice could be heard repeating each phrase after it had been sung through.’

(#litres_trial_promo) The two boys left the dinner table and went out to watch the column of peasants approaching, led by four girls carrying the traditional wreaths and bunches of harvested crops. When they reached the manor house, the harvesters sang a long piece in which there was a verse addressed to each of the people staying there. When Chopin’s turn came, they teased him for his weedy looks and his interest in one of the peasant girls.

The girls carried the wreaths into the house, where they were ambushed by a couple of stable boys who drenched them with buckets of water. Barrels of vodka were rolled out, candles were brought onto the porch, and the violinist struck up a hearty mazur. Chopin opened the dancing with a young cousin of the Dziewanowskis, and carried on with other girls. He then took over from one of the peasants who was playing a double-bass, which was down to one string, and accompanied the flagging violinist. The warm, starry night was well advanced before Chopin and Dominik were called to bed and the peasants moved on to the village to continue their carousing. The whole evening made a vivid impression on Chopin, and left him a little wistful. His reminiscence of the jollity was tinged with a note of melancholy, and he had a vague foreboding that he would not be spending many more such carefree holidays in the Polish countryside.

He returned to Warsaw in September to embark on his final year at the Lycée. His father had at last given him a room of his own so he could apply himself to his studies; it was dwarfed by his piano, and rapidly filled up with sheet music, piled on shelves, chairs and cupboards. The composers most in evidence, apart from Bach, Mozart and Hummel, were Friedrich Wilhelm Kalkbrenner, a renowned pianist who composed mainly for that instrument, and Ferdinand Ries, a pupil of Beethoven who also wrote principally for it.

Music-making took up every available moment. Chopin took over from the organist of the Convent of the Visitation and played every Sunday at the Lycée and University Mass. With his sister Ludwika and other friends he sang in the choir of the Evangelical church. He was also often to be heard playing in drawing rooms around Warsaw. A contemporary diary gives the first detailed account of his playing, at a soirée given by Teresa Kicka. It describes how, after playing several works, he launched into an improvisation which he drew out for a very long time. This form of ad libitum playing revealed Chopin at his most poetic and inventive, and fascinated those fortunate enough to hear him. But the exercise visibly drained him as he played, and he began to look so pale and exhausted that the poet Niemcewicz eventually went up to him and pulled his hands away from the keyboard.

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Chopin was much too energetic for his constitution. During the Christmas season, for instance, he was often at the opera, at a concert or at a party, with the result that he was rarely in bed before two o’clock in the morning. He was incapable of taking things easy, and always had to join in whatever was going on. In a witty versified account, he described one occasion when he spent half of a party playing dances on the piano for the other guests, and then started dancing himself, not staid Polonaises or Quadrilles, but energetic mazurs and other country dances, during one of which he slipped and crashed to the floor, twisting his ankle.

(#litres_trial_promo) At the beginning of 1826 he fell ill. The symptoms were an inflammation of the throat and tonsils, and he retired to bed with a nightcap on his head and leeches at his throat.

His studies do not seem to have suffered from the illness, the active life he was leading or indeed from the now impressive volume of music he was writing. At the end of his final year at the Lycée, in July 1826, he once more managed to get through his exams, this time winning an honourable mention, along with Tytus Woyciechowski and Jan Matuszyński. This earned him a treat on the day after the exams: a trip to the opera to see the new production of Rossini’s La Gazza Ladra. But there was to be no month in the country that summer.

His younger sister Emilia was suffering from tuberculosis, and the disease had reached a critical stage. Her parents had decided to try the last resort of a spa cure, and their choice had fallen on Bad Reinerz (Duszniki Zdrój) in Silesia. Chopin was to be taken along as well, on the principle that it could only do him good too, and at the end of July Justyna set off with the two of them.

Life at Bad Reinerz was governed by a strict routine. The Chopins had to be at the spring by six in the morning for the first glass of mineral water. This was later complemented by draughts of whey, which were held to be good for the chest, and more glasses of mineral water at intervals during the day. A wheezing orchestra played while the clientele queued up for their glasses to be filled or walked up and down sipping the water. For Chopin, the only attraction of the place was the scenery: he had never seen anything more exciting than the flat Mazovian plain, and he was predictably impressed by the mountains in which the town nestled. He went for walks and enthused about the breathtaking views, but was depressed by the fact that he could not translate his sensations into his own medium. ‘There is something I lack here; something which all the beauties of Reinerz cannot make up for,’ he wrote to Elsner in Warsaw. ‘Imagine – there is not a single decent piano in the whole place.’

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Nevertheless, when a couple of children were suddenly orphaned by the death of their father who had come to take the waters, Chopin offered his services to help them. A piano was found, and he gave a recital in the Kurhaus for their benefit.

(#litres_trial_promo) It was so warmly received by the visitors to the spa that he was persuaded to give another. Humble as it was, this acclaim from an audience who had no idea of who he was provided another small measure of encouragement to the boy. It was also a weapon to be used in the battle against his father’s wish that he should enter the University rather than the Conservatoire. Both Żywny and Elsner must have been persuasive allies, and by the time Chopin returned to Warsaw, a decision had been reached on his future. It was a compromise: he was to enter the Conservatoire, and at the same time to attend lectures on certain subjects at the University.

THREE Musical Genius (#ulink_62efe2c8-0eac-51c3-8a77-a10404921e06)

‘I go to bed at nine; all tea parties, soirées and balls have gone by the board,’ a despondent Chopin wrote to Jan Białobłocki as he began his studies at the Conservatoire in the autumn of 1826. He was beset by a succession of minor ailments, such as toothache, neuralgia and digestive problems. ‘I drink emetic water on Dr Malcz’s orders and stuff myself with oat gruel like a horse.’

(#litres_trial_promo) It was hardly a propitious start to his hard-won musical studies.

The Warsaw Conservatoire, founded in 1821, offered entrants a number of courses to choose from. The one selected by Chopin consisted of three years of musical theory and counterpoint, the last of which was to be devoted to practical work such as writing masses and oratorios to Polish and Latin texts, vocal compositions of various types, works for orchestra, and chamber music. But he seems to have created his own curriculum from the start. When he joined the Conservatoire in September 1826, he took six lessons a week in counterpoint from Elsner and spent the rest of the time working on his own. Elsner was an enlightened teacher, who saw his role as that of adviser. ‘When teaching composition, one should never provide recipes, particularly with pupils of obvious ability,’ he explained; ‘if they wish to rise above themselves, they must find their own, so that they may have the means of discovering that which has not been discovered yet.’

(#litres_trial_promo) But Chopin found even this relaxed discipline taxing.

In accordance with the compromise reached with his father, he was also attending lectures at the University. Although the original idea had been that he should take a course in general subjects, he soon narrowed this down. The only course he seems to have followed seriously was that on Polish Literature given by the poet Kazimierz Brodziński, whose lectures covered a range of subjects, from aesthetics to folklore, which he was busily recording.

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Chopin had been born into a society that was in the process of reinventing itself: the old Poland embodied in the Commonwealth had failed and been dismembered at the end of the eighteenth century, and patriots bent on the re-establishment of a Polish state were aware that they must create a new synthesis of nationhood on which to build it. This involved, amongst other things, cultural redefinition based on a reassessment of the past and the integration of the mass of common people into the national project. Wittingly or not, Chopin was, through his music, doing just that, by distilling the essence of the old chivalric ideals on the one hand and reaching into the soul of popular culture on the other to create a new national idiom immediately recognisable to all. In this, he virtually epitomised the zeitgeist of his generation. Yet in certain fundamental ways he stood apart from his peers.

Given the accent placed in the Chopin household on education, and particularly on literature – his sisters Ludwika and Emilia had published poems and even a jointly written novel for children – Chopin could hardly fail to be aware that his generation was making literary history. Yet he failed to show any deep understanding of contemporary Polish writers. He did set to music some of the poems of the leading Romantic Adam Mickiewicz, as well as works by his friend the much lesser poet Stefan Witwicki, but he was far too down-to-earth in his approach to life to catch the spirit of exaltation that nourished the Romantic movement. He saw himself as a craftsman, focused exclusively on achieving greater skill and deeper knowledge in his chosen craft of music.

And even in this chosen craft, Chopin remained remarkably aloof from contemporary trends. His reverence for Bach continued undiminished – more than a decade later, he could still play all the Preludes and Fugues from memory, explaining: ‘That is something one never forgets!’

(#litres_trial_promo) As he learnt more about the theory of music, he developed a greater respect for Haydn, whom he valued for his ‘experience’, and for Mozart, who became his God. The only fashionable music Chopin was enthusiastic about was that of the Italian school. Elsner, who disliked it, steered him towards the music of Hummel, Ignaz Moscheles and the Irishman John Field – hardly exponents of the Romantic movement.

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Chopin’s attitude to the world was far removed from that of the typical Romantic. As he entered his eighteenth year he had his first close experience of death, when his fourteen-year-old sister Emilia died of consumption before his eyes. He was profoundly shaken. Where most of his peers would have poured out their grief and indulged their emotions, he did not wallow in his pain – he locked it away in a compartment of his mind where he could revisit it privately.

Soon after Emilia’s death the family moved house, to an apartment in one of the wings of the Krasiński Palace, just across the road from the Lycée. Nicolas Chopin had acquired a third job, teaching at the advanced military school of artillery and engineering, presided over by the revered General Józef Sowiński, who had lost a leg fighting for Napoleon at the battle of Borodino in 1812, and who became a friend of the family. Nicolas had saved enough to be able to do without boarders, which was fortunate as the other two Chopin girls were growing into young ladies, and the presence of young men in the home might have presented a hazard. The new apartment contained a drawing room with a fine view over the most handsome street in Warsaw, and, being so close to his previous home, the move did not affect Chopin’s way of life. On the other hand, it was quieter, and the family now enjoyed greater privacy. Chopin had his own ‘refuge’, a small room at the top of a rickety staircase which accommodated his piano.

This was just as well; that year of 1827 was also something of a landmark in Chopin’s musical development, for it was now that he made his first attempts at writing for orchestra. The most interesting of these are the set of Variations for Piano and Orchestra on the theme of the La ci darem la mano duet from Mozart’s Don Giovanni, which, as the Gazette Musicale de Paris asserted more than seven years later, ‘announce the superiority of Chopin’s nature with as much precision as felicity’.

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Chopin’s ability to write for the orchestra has often been questioned, and unfavourably compared with Beethoven’s magnificent interweaving of piano and orchestra. But to do this is to miss the point. Chopin used the orchestra essentially as an accompaniment to the piano, which it was meant to support rather than overshadow or outshine, and it is the piano that he used to develop his musical ideas.

He was growing increasingly sure of himself and the direction in which he was moving, and he was further encouraged by Hummel, who arrived in Warsaw to give a couple of concerts in April 1828, and who appears to have been impressed by Chopin. This first mark of recognition from an eminent musical personage was probably what prompted him to send copies of the Variations and his first Piano Sonata to publishers in Leipzig and Vienna.

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Chopin was now working on a new Rondo for two pianos, and this absorbed all his attention that summer, spent in a fine country house at Sanniki with his friends the Pruszak family. He was back in Warsaw at the end of August, just in time to see Rossini’s Barber of Seville and his latest opera, Otello, but the production was so bad that he longed to strangle the whole cast. His joy was all the greater when, a few days later, the chance of visiting a foreign capital presented itself.

A colleague of Nicolas Chopin, Professor Feliks Jarocki, had been invited to take part in a congress of naturalists and physicians organised in Berlin by Alexander von Humboldt. Since all his expenses were being paid, he offered to take young Chopin with him. The boy was overjoyed at the prospect of hearing renowned orchestras and choirs, and the chance to meet composers such as Gasparo Spontini who made up the city’s musical establishment. He had one acquaintance in Berlin who he felt sure would help him gain admittance to this charmed world: Prince Antoni Radziwiłł, a Polish aristocrat married to one of the Prussian royal princesses and the King’s Lieutenant in what was then the Duchy of Posen, the part of Poland ruled by Prussia. He was a distinguished amateur musician, and had met Chopin on one of his visits to Warsaw.

Berlin turned out to be something of a disappointment. After five days in a mail coach, the two travellers arrived in mid-September. Chopin’s first impressions were unfavourable: he found the streets formal and empty, and thought the women ugly. He had to dine at the hotel with Jarocki and the other visiting scientists, whom he found uninteresting and slightly ridiculous. Prince Radziwiłł was absent, and on the one occasion when Chopin did find himself in the same room with Spontini, Zelter and Mendelssohn he was too shy to introduce himself. He visited the local piano-makers, but there were no instruments in stock for him to try. He saw operas by Spontini, Onslow, Cimarosa and Weber, but was disappointed by the productions and the standard of the singing. The only thing that ‘came close to the ideal I have of great music’ was Handel’s Ode on St Cecilia’s Day, which he heard at the Singakademie.

(#litres_trial_promo) It was the first time he had been struck by Handel’s work, and his respect for that composer was to grow steadily. Years later, when Mendelssohn showed him a new edition of Handel’s work, Chopin would experience ‘a truly child-like joy’.

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The congress ended with a banquet during which the venerable professors dropped their inhibitions. They stuffed themselves in a way Chopin found hard to believe, and drank a good deal as well, with much clinking of glasses. When Zelter and his choir intoned a ceremonial cantata they all joined in, waving their arms and bawling their heads off. Chopin was quite happy to climb into a coach bound for Warsaw the next day. But, disappointing as it had been, the Berlin trip only whetted his appetite for foreign travel, and as he began his final year at the Conservatoire he dreamt of going further afield.

Chopin was now almost nineteen years old. He had grown into an interesting-looking young man, physically somewhat puny, but with a refined countenance and manner. This, as well as his sociability and his musical gift, meant that he was much sought after. He hated missing out on any gathering, and the consequent round of tea parties, dinners, soirées and balls exhausted him. ‘You know how awful it is when all you want to do is go to bed, and suddenly everyone wants you to start improvising,’ he complained, somewhat disingenuously, to a friend; he always complied, and, having sat down at the piano, would improvise for hours.

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This was the year devoted to practical exercises, but Elsner did not demand any of the regulation masses or oratorios from Chopin. The best-known compositions from this period are the Rondo on Cracovian Themes (op.14), also known as the Krakowiak, and the Fantasia on Polish Airs (op.13), both for piano and orchestra. Although some years later a Parisian critic was to hail the Fantasia as a landmark in musical history, it is hard to see it as one now.

(#litres_trial_promo) These pieces are notable for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the intricacy and beauty of the piano parts. But they belong in the tradition of the brilliant style, in which surface decoration is more important than underlying structure. A greater degree of daring and originality obtains here than in any of Chopin’s previous or indeed later writing for orchestra, and there are passages in which the latter assumes an active role and ceases to be merely an accompaniment for the piano. But perhaps the most interesting aspect of these and other works from the same period is the way in which Chopin handles the folk element in them.

Following his exposure to authentic folk music in 1824, Chopin had started collecting country tunes and using them in pieces for the piano. This was accepted practice, and many musicians either transcribed folk songs for various instruments or wrote variations on them. But Chopin was less interested in the tunes themselves than in the structure and essential character of this kind of music. The difference between what most musicians did with folk music and what he was attempting could be likened to the difference between using ready-made phrases of a foreign language, and learning the language and constructing one’s own phrases. By 1828 he had mastered the folk idiom so far that he could write original Mazurkas, often using elements of melodies he had heard in the country, but more often creating his own. This process eventually led him to create what was in effect an entirely new mode of musical expression through the melodic language of a people. An analogous treatment of the Polonaise form evolved with time into a pure expression of the historic, courtly ethos which had inspired the dance. He was no longer writing a country dance or a court dance; he was writing poems in the musical language of Mazovia, or alternatively in that of the vanished world of the Polish noble past.

At the same time, Chopin did apply himself to a work in the grand style – a concerto for piano and orchestra. This was probably meant to fall within the category of his practical work for Elsner, but it may also have been prompted by the need to have a substantial composition to show off – pianists were expected to demonstrate their virtuosity through their own works, not by interpreting others’. This was all the more important as Chopin was now planning a tour abroad. In April 1829, Nicolas Chopin petitioned the Minister of Education for the requisite funds. The move was not without precedent, as an older Conservatoire colleague of Chopin’s, the pianist Tomasz Nidecki, had been given a foreign travel grant a couple of years before. Nicolas reminded the Minister that his son had ‘had the honour of being heard by the late Tsar’, and that His Imperial Highness the Grand Duke ‘had often been most graciously pleased to allow him to give evidence of his growing talent in His Most Serene presence’.

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The Minister, Count Grabowski, endorsed the petition and recommended a handsome grant for three years, during which the young man was to visit Germany, France and Italy, but his superior, the Minister of the Interior, turned it down, with the observation, scrawled in the margin, that ‘Public funds cannot be frittered away on this kind of artist’.

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The disappointment caused by the failure of this petition was soon forgotten in the excitement created by the arrival, a few weeks later, of the legendary violinist Niccolò Paganini. Chopin went to most of the ten concerts he gave in Warsaw, and was bowled over by the virtuosity of his playing. Paganini was the first musician to elevate his instrument from its traditional role within the orchestra or quartet, and Chopin can hardly have failed to draw parallels with what he was doing himself regarding the piano.

Returning home after one of the concerts, Chopin composed a set of variations entitled Souvenir de Paganini. More important, he now set to work on a new idea of his own – of producing exercises that would help him draw a wider range of sound and greater expression from his chosen instrument. The first of these studies, or Études (nos. 8, 9, 10, and 11 of op.10), were written over the next six months, and with time they were to revolutionise his use of the piano.