Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician

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[FOOTNOTE: The short notice of Gutmann in Fetis' Biographie
Universelle des Musiciens, and those of the followers of this by
no means infallible authority, are very incorrect. Adolfo
Gutmann, Riccordi Biografici, by Giulio Piccini (Firenze:
Guiseppe Polverini, 1881), reproduces to a great extent the
information contained in Der Lieblingsschuler Chopin's in
Bernhard Stavenow's Schone Geister (Bremen: Kuhlmann, 1879), both
which publications, eulogistic rather than biographical, were
inspired by Gutmann.]

Whatever interest the reader may have taken in this survey of
Chopin's pupils, he is sure to be more deeply interested by the
account of the master's manner and method of teaching. Such an
account, which would be interesting in the case of any remarkable
virtuoso who devoted himself to instruction, is so in a higher
degree in that of Chopin: first, because it may help us to solve
the question why so unique a virtuoso did not form a single
eminent concert-player; secondly, because it throws still further
light on his character as a man and artist; and thirdly, because,
as Mikuli thinks may be asserted without exaggeration, "only
Chopin's pupils knew the pianist in the fulness of his unrivalled
height." The materials at my disposal are abundant and not less
trustworthy than abundant. My account is based chiefly on the
communications made to me by a number of the master's pupils--
notably, Madame Dubois, Madame Rubio, M. Mathias, and Gutmann--
and on Mikuli's excellent preface to his edition of Chopin's
works. When I have drawn upon other sources, I have not done so
without previous examination and verification. I may add that I
shall use as far as possible the ipsissima verba of my
informants:--

As to Chopin's method of teaching [wrote to me M. Mathias], it
was absolutely of the old legato school, of the school of
Clementi and Cramer. Of course, he had enriched it by a great
variety of touch [d'une grande variete dans l'attaque de la
touche]; he obtained a wonderful variety of tone and NUANCES
of tone; in passing I may tell you that he had an
extraordinary vigour, but only by flashes [ce ne pouvait etre
que par eclairs].

The Polish master, who was so original in many ways, differed
from his confreres even in the way of starting his pupils. With
him the normal position of the hand was not that above the keys
c, d, e, f, g (i.e., above five white keys), but that above the
keys e, f sharp, g sharp, a sharp, b (I.E., above two white keys
and three black keys, the latter lying between the former). The
hand had to be thrown lightly on the keyboard so as to rest on
these keys, the object of this being to secure for it not only an
advantageous, but also a graceful position:--

[FOOTNOTE: Kleczynski, in Chopin: De l'interpretation de ses
oeuvres--Trois conferences faites a Varsovie, says that he was
told by several of the master's pupils that the latter sometimes
held his hands absolutely flat. When I asked Madame Dubois about
the correctness of this statement, she replied: "I never noticed
Chopin holding his hands flat." In short, if Chopin put his hands
at any time in so awkward a position, it was exceptional;
physical exhaustion may have induced him to indulge in such
negligence when the technical structure of the music he was
playing permitted it.]

Chopin [Madame Dubois informed me] made his pupils begin with
the B major scale, very slowly, without stiffness. Suppleness
was his great object. He repeated, without ceasing, during the
lesson: "Easily, easily" [facilement, facilement]. Stiffness
exasperated him.

How much stiffness and jerkiness exasperated him may be judged
from what Madame Zaleska related to M. Kleczynski. A pupil having
played somewhat carelessly the arpeggio at the beginning of the
first study (in A flat major) of the second book of Clementi's
Preludes et Exercices, the master jumped from his chair and
exclaimed: "What is that? Has a dog been barking?" [Qu'est-ce?
Est-ce un chien qui vient d'aboyer?] The rudeness of this
exclamation will, no doubt, surprise. But polite as Chopin
generally was, irritation often got the better of him, more
especially in later years when bad health troubled him. Whether
he ever went the length of throwing the music from the desk and
breaking chairs, as Karasowski says, I do not know and have not
heard confirmed by any pupil. Madame Rubio, however, informed me
that Chopin was very irritable, and when teaching amateurs used
to have always a packet of pencils about him which, to vent his
anger, he silently broke into bits. Gutmann told me that in the
early stages of his discipleship Chopin sometimes got very angry,
and stormed and raged dreadfully; but immediately was kind and
tried to soothe his pupil when he saw him distressed and weeping.

To be sure [writes Mikuli], Chopin made great demands on the
talent and diligence of the pupil. Consequently, there were
often des lecons orageuses, as it was called in the school
idiom, and many a beautiful eye left the high altar of the
Cite d'Orleans, Rue St. Lazare, bedewed with tears, without,
on that account, ever bearing the dearly-beloved master the
least grudge. For was not the severity which was not easily
satisfied with anything, the feverish vehemence with which the
master wished to raise his disciples to his own stand-point,
the ceaseless repetition of a passage till it was understood,
a guarantee that he had at heart the progress of the pupil? A
holy artistic zeal burnt in him then, every word from his lips
was incentive and inspiring. Single lessons often lasted
literally for hours at a stretch, till exhaustion overcame
master and pupil.

Indeed, the pupils were so far from bearing their master the
least grudge that, to use M. Marmontel's words, they had more for
him than admiration: a veritable idolatry. But it is time that
after this excursion--which hardly calls for an excuse--we return
to the more important part of our subject, the master's method of
teaching.

What concerned Chopin most at the commencement of his
instruction [writes Mikuli] was to free the pupil from every
stiffness and convulsive, cramped movement of the hand, and to
give him thus the first condition of a beautiful style of
playing, souplesse (suppleness), and with it independence of
the fingers. He taught indefatigably that the exercises in
question were no mere mechanical ones, but called for the
intelligence and the whole will of the pupil, on which account
twenty and even forty thoughtless repetitions (up to this time
the arcanum of so many schools) do no good at all, still less
the practising during which, according to Kalkbrenner's
advice, one may occupy one's self simultaneously with some
kind of reading(!).

He feared above all [remarked Madame Dubois to me] the
abrutissement of the pupils. One day he heard me say that I
practised six hours a day. He became quite angry, and forbade
me to practise more than three hours. This was also the advice
of Hummel in his pianoforte school.

To resume Mikuli's narrative:--

Chopin treated very thoroughly the different kinds of touch,
especially the full-toned [tonvolle] legato.

[FOOTNOTE: Karasowski says that Chopin demanded absolutely
from his pupils that they should practise the exercises, and
especially the scales in major and minor, from piano to
fortissimo, staccato as well as legato, and also with a change
of accent, which was to be now on the second, now on the
third, now on the fourth note. Madame Dubois, on the other
hand, is sure she was never told by her master to play the
scales staccato.]

"As gymnastic helps he recommended the bending inward and
outward of the wrist, the repeated touch from the wrist, the
extending of the fingers, but all this with the earnest
warning against over-fatigue. He made his pupils play the
scales with a full tone, as connectedly as possible, very
slowly and only gradually advancing to a quicker TEMPO, and
with metronomic evenness. The passing of the thumb under the
other fingers and the passing of the latter over the former
was to be facilitated by a corresponding turning inward of the
hand. The scales with many black keys (B, F sharp, and D flat)
were first studied, and last, as the most difficult, C major.
In the same sequence he took up Clementi's Preludes et
Exercices, a work which for its utility he esteemed very
highly."

[FOOTNOTE: Kleczynski writes that whatever the degree of
instruction was which Chopin's pupils brought with them, they
had all to play carefully besides the scales the second book
of Clementi's Preludes et Exercices, especially the first in A
flat major.]

According to Chopin the evenness of the scales (also of the
arpeggios) not merely depended on the utmost equal
strengthening of all fingers by means of five-finger exercises
and on a thumb entirely free at the passing under and over,
but rather on a lateral movement (with the elbow hanging quite
down and always easy) of the hand, not by jerks, but
continuously and evenly flowing, which he tried to illustrate
by the glissando over the keyboard. Of studies he gave after
this a selection of Cramer's Etudes, Clementi's Gradus ad
Parnassum, Moscheles' style-studies for the higher development
(which were very sympathetic to him), and J. S. Bach's suites
and some fugues from Das wohltemperirte Clavier. In a certain
way Field's and his own nocturnes numbered likewise with the
studies, for in them the pupil was--partly by the apprehension
of his explanations, partly by observation and imitation (he
played them to the pupil unweariedly)--to learn to know, love,
and execute the beautiful smooth [gebundene] vocal tone and
the legato.

[FOOTNOTE: This statement can only be accepted with much
reserve. Whether Chopin played much or little to his pupil
depended, no doubt, largely on the mood and state of health he
was in at the time, perhaps also on his liking or disliking
the pupil. The late Brinley Richards told me that when he had
lessons from Chopin, the latter rarely played to him, making
his corrections and suggestions mostly by word of mouth.]

With double notes and chords he demanded most strictly
simultaneous striking, breaking was only allowed when it was
indicated by the composer himself; shakes, which he generally
began with the auxiliary note, had not so much to be played
quick as with great evenness the conclusion of the shake
quietly and without precipitation. For the turn (gruppetto)
and the appoggiatura he recommended the great Italian singers
as models. Although he made his pupils play octaves from the
wrist, they must not thereby lose in fulness of tone.

All who have had the good fortune to hear Chopin play agree in
declaring that one of the most distinctive features of his style
of execution was smoothness, and smoothness, as we have seen in
the foregoing notes, was also one of the qualities on which he
most strenuously insisted in the playing of his pupils. The
reader will remember Gutmann's statement to me, mentioned in a
previous chapter, that all his master's fingering was calculated
for the attainment of this object. Fingering is the mainspring,
the determining principle, one might almost say the life and
soul, of the pianoforte technique. We shall, therefore, do well
to give a moment's consideration to Chopin's fingering,
especially as he was one of the boldest and most influential
revolutionisers of this important department of the pianistic
art. His merits in this as in other respects, his various claims
to priority of invention, are only too often overlooked. As at
one time all ameliorations in the theory and practice of music
were ascribed to Guido of Arezzo, so it is nowadays the fashion
to ascribe all improvements and extensions of the pianoforte
technique to Liszt, who more than any other pianist drew upon
himself the admiration of the world, and who through his pupils
continued to make his presence felt even after the close of his
career as a virtuoso. But the cause of this false opinion is to
be sought not so much in the fact that the brilliancy of his
artistic personality threw all his contemporaries into the shade,
as in that other fact, that he gathered up into one web the many
threads new and old which he found floating about during the
years of his development. The difference between Liszt and Chopin
lies in this, that the basis of the former's art is universality,
that of the latter's, individuality. Of the fingering of the one
we may say that it is a system, of that of the other that it is a
manner. Probably we have here also touched on the cause of
Liszt's success and Chopin's want of success as a teacher. I
called Chopin a revolutioniser of fingering, and, I think, his
full enfranchisement of the thumb, his breaking-down of all
distinctions of rank between the other fingers, in short, the
introduction of a liberty sometimes degenerating into licence,
justifies the expression. That this master's fingering is
occasionally eccentric (presupposing peculiarly flexible hands
and a peculiar course of study) cannot be denied; on the whole,
however, it is not only well adapted for the proper rendering of
his compositions, but also contains valuable contributions to a
universal system of fingering. The following particulars by
Mikuli will be read with interest, and cannot be misunderstood
after what has just now been said on the subject:--

In the notation of fingering, especially of that peculiar to
himself, Chopin was not sparing. Here pianoforte-playing owes
him great innovations which, on account of their expedience,
were soon adopted, notwithstanding the horror with which
authorities like Kalkbrenner at first regarded them. Thus, for
instance, Chopin used without hesitation the thumb on the
black keys, passed it even under the little finger (it is
true, with a distinct inward bend of the wrist), if this could
facilitate the execution and give it more repose and evenness.
With one and the same finger he took often two consecutive
keys (and this not only in gliding down from a black to the
next white key) without the least interruption of the sequence
being noticeable. The passing over each other of the longer
fingers without the aid of the thumb (see Etude, No. 2, Op.
10) he frequently made use of, and not only in passages where
the thumb stationary on a key made this unavoidably necessary.
The fingering of the chromatic thirds based on this (as he
marked it in Etude, No. 5, Op. 25) affords in a much higher
degree than that customary before him the possibility of the
most beautiful legato in the quickest tempo and with a
perfectly quiet hand.

But if with Chopin smoothness was one of the qualities upon which
he insisted strenuously in the playing of his pupils, he was by
no means satisfied with a mere mechanical perfection. He advised
his pupils to undertake betimes thorough theoretical studies,
recommending his friend, the composer and theorist Henri Reber as
a teacher. He advised them also to cultivate ensemble playing--
trios, quartets, &c., if first-class partners could be had,
otherwise pianoforte duets. Most urgent, however, he was in his
advice to them to hear good singing, and even to learn to sing.
To Madame Rubio he said: "You must sing if you wish to play"; and
made her take lessons in singing and hear much Italian opera--
this last, the lady remarked, Chopin regarded as positively
necessary for a pianoforte-player. In this advice we recognise
Chopin's ideal of execution: beauty of tone, intelligent
phrasing, truthfulness and warmth of expression. The sounds which
he drew from the pianoforte were pure tone without the least
admixture of anything that might be called noise. "He never
thumped," was Gutmann's remark to me. Chopin, according to
Mikuli, repeatedly said that when he heard bad phrasing it
appeared to him as if some one recited, in a language he did not
know, a speech laboriously memorised, not only neglecting to
observe the right quantity of the syllables, but perhaps even
making full stops in the middle of words. "The badly-phrasing
pseudo-musician," he thought, "showed that music was not his
mother-tongue, but something foreign, unintelligible to him," and
that, consequently, "like that reciter, he must altogether give
up the idea of producing any effect on the auditor by his
rendering." Chopin hated exaggeration and affectation. His
precept was: "Play as you feel." But he hated the want of feeling
as much as false feeling. To a pupil whose playing gave evidence
of nothing but the possession of fingers, he said emphatically,
despairingly: "METTEZ-Y DONc TOUTE VOTRE AME!" (Do put all your
soul into it!)

[FOOTNOTE: "In dynamical shading [im nuanciren]," says Mikuli,
"he was exceedingly particular about a gradual increase and
decrease of loudness." Karasowski writes: "Exaggeration in
accentuation was hateful to him, for, in his opinion, it took
away the poesy from playing, and gave it a certain didactic
pedantry."]

On declamation, and rendering in general [writes Mikuli], he
gave his pupils invaluable and significant instructions and
hints, but, no doubt, effected more certain results by
repeatedly playing not only single passages, but whole pieces,
and this he did with a conscientiousness and enthusiasm that
perhaps he hardly gave anyone an opportunity of hearing when
he played in a concert-room. Frequently the whole hour passed
without the pupil having played more than a few bars, whilst
Chopin, interrupting and correcting him on a Pleyel cottage
piano (the pupil played always on an excellent grand piano;
and it was enjoined upon him as a duty to practise only on
first-class instruments), presented to him for his admiration
and imitation the life-warm ideal of the highest beauty.

With regard to Chopin's playing to his pupils we must keep in
mind what was said in foot-note 12 on page 184. On another point
in the above quotation one of Madame Dubois's communications to
me throws some welcome light:--

Chopin [she said] had always a cottage piano [pianino] by the
side of the grand piano on which he gave his lessons. It was
marvellous to hear him accompany, no matter what compositions,
from the concertos of Hummel to those of Beethoven. He
performed the role of the orchestra most wonderfully [d'une
facon prodigieuse]. When I played his own concertos, he
accompanied me in this way.

Judging from various reports, Chopin seems to have regarded his
Polish pupils as more apt than those of other nationalities to do
full justice to his compositions. Karasowski relates that when
one of Chopin's French pupils played his compositions and the
auditors overwhelmed the performer with their praise, the master
used often to remark that his pupil had done very well, but that
the Polish element and the Polish enthusiasm had been wanting.
Here it is impossible not to be reminded of the contention
between Chopin on the one hand and Liszt and Hiller on the other
hand about the possibility of foreigners comprehending Polish
national music (See Vol. 1., p. 256). After revealing the mystery
of Chopin's tempo rubato, Liszt writes in his book on this
master:--

All his compositions have to be played with this sort of
balancement accentue et prosodie, this morbidezza, of which it
was difficult to seize the secret when one had not heard him
often. He seemed desirous to teach this manner to his numerous
pupils, especially to his compatriots, to whom he wished, more
than to others, to communicate the breath of his inspiration.
These [ceux-ci, ou plutot celles-la] seized it with that
aptitude which they have for all matters of sentiment and
poesy. An innate comprehension of his thought permitted them
to follow all the fluctuations of his azure wave.

There is one thing which is worth inquiring into before we close
this chapter, for it may help us to a deeper insight into
Chopin's character as a teacher--I mean his teaching repertoire.
Mikuli says that, carefully arranged according to their
difficulty, Chopin placed before his pupils the following
compositions: the concertos and sonatas of Clementi, Mozart,
Bach, Handel, Scarlatti, Dussek, Field, Hummel, Ries, Beethoven;
further, Weber, Moscheles, Mendelssohn, Hiller, Schumann, and his
own works. This enumeration, however, does not agree with
accounts from other equally authentic sources. The pupils of
Chopin I have conversed and corresponded with never studied any
Schumann under their master. As to the cultivation of Beethoven,
it was, no doubt, limited. M. Mathias, it is true, told me that
Chopin showed a preference for Clementi (Gradus ad Parnassum),
Bach, Field (of him much was played, notably his concertos), and
naturally for Beethoven, Weber, &c.--Clementi, Bach, and Field
being always the composers most laid under contribution in the
case of debutants. Madame Rubio, on the other hand, confined
herself to stating that Chopin put her through Hummel, Moscheles,
and Bach; and did not mention Beethoven at all. Gutmann's
statements concerning his master's teaching contain some positive
evidence with regard to the Beethoven question. What he said was
this: Chopin held that dementi's Gradus ad Parnassum, Bach's
pianoforte fugues, and Hummel's compositions were the key to
pianoforte-playing, and he considered a training in these
composers a fit preparation for his own works. He was
particularly fond of Hummel and his style. Beethoven he seemed to
like less. He appreciated such pieces as the first movement of
the Moonlight Sonata (C sharp minor, Op. 27, No. 2). Schubert was
a favourite with him. This, then, is what I learned from Gutmann.
In parenthesis, as it were, I may ask: Is it not strange that no
pupil, with the exception of Mikuli, mentions the name of Mozart,
the composer whom Chopin is said to have so much admired? Thanks
to Madame Dubois, who at my request had the kindness to make out
a list of the works she remembers having studied under Chopin, we
shall be able to form a pretty distinct idea of the master's
course of instruction, which, to be sure, would be modified
according to the capacities of his pupils and the objects they
had in view. Well, Madame Dubois says that Chopin made her begin
with the second book of Clementi's Preludes et Exercices, and
that she also studied under him the same composer's Gradus ad
Parnassum and Bach's forty-eight preludes and fugues. Of his high
opinion of the teaching qualities of Bach's compositions we may
form an idea from the recommendation to her at their last meeting-
-already mentioned in an earlier chapter--to practise them
constantly, "ce sera votre meilleur moyen de progresser" (this
will be your best means to make progress). The pieces she studied
under him included the following ones: Of Hummel, the Rondo
brillant sur un theme russe (Op. 98), La Bella capricciosa, the
Sonata in F sharp minor (Op. 81), the Concertos in A minor and B
minor, and the Septet; of Field, several concertos (the one in E
flat among others) and several nocturnes ("Field" she says, "lui
etait tres sympathique"); of Beethoven, the concertos and several
sonatas (the Moonlight, Op. 27, No. 2; the one with the Funeral
March, Op. 26; and the Appassionata, Op. 57); of Weber, the
Sonatas in C and A flat major (Chopin made his pupils play these
two works with extreme care); of Schubert, the Landler and all
the waltzes and some of the duets (the marches, polonaises, and
the Divertissement hongrois, which last piece he admired sans
reserve); of Mendelssohn, only the G minor Concerto and the Songs
without Words; of Liszt, no more than La Tarantelle de Rossini
and the Septet from Lucia ("mais ce genre de musique ne lui
allait pas," says my informant); and of Schumann, NOTHING.

Madame Streicher's interesting reminiscences, given in Appendix
III., form a supplement to this chapter.

CHAPTER XXIX.

RUPTURE OF THE SAND-CHOPIN CONNECTION.--HER OWN, LISZT'S, AND
KARASOWSKI'S ACCOUNTS.-THE LUCREZIA FLORIANI INCIDENT.--FURTHER
INVESTIGATION OF THE CAUSES OF THE RUPTURE BY THE LIGHT OF
LETTERS AND THE INFORMATION OF GUTMANN, FRANCHOMME, AND MADAME
RUBIO.--SUMMING-UP OF THE EVIDENCE.--CHOPIN'S COMPOSITIONS IN
1847.--GIVES A CONCERT, HIS LAST IN PARIS (1848): WHAT AND HOW HE
PLAYED; THE CHARACTER OF THE AUDIENCE.--GEORGE SAND AND CHOPIN
MEET ONCE MORE.--THE FEBRUARY REVOLUTION; CHOPIN MAKES UP HIS
MIND TO VISIT ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND.

WE now come to the catastrophe of Chopin's life, the rupture of
his connection with George Sand. Although there is no lack of
narratives in which the causes, circumstances, and time of this
rupture are set forth with absolute positiveness, it is
nevertheless an undeniable fact that we are not at the present
moment, nor, all things well considered, shall be even in the
most distant future, in a position to speak on this subject
otherwise than conjecturally.