Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician

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[FOOTNOTE: Augustine Brault was according to the editor of the
Correspondance a cousin of George Sand's; George Sand herself
calls her in Ma Vie her parent, and tells us in a vague way
how her connection with this young lady gave occasion to
scandalous libels.]

The next quotation is from the letter dated Nohant, December 14,
1847. Desirez is the wife of Charles Poncy, to whom the letter is
addressed.

You have understood, Desirez and you, you whose soul is
delicate because it is ardent, that I passed through the
gravest and most painful phase of my life. I nearly succumbed,
although I had foreseen it for a long time. But you know one
is not always under the pressure of a sinister foresight,
however evident it may be. There are days, weeks, entire
months even, when one lives on illusions, and when one
flatters one's self one is turning aside the blow which
threatens one. At last, the most probable misfortune always
surprises us disarmed and unprepared. In addition to this
development of the unhappy germ, which was going on unnoticed,
there have arisen several very bitter and altogether
unexpected accessory circumstances. The result is that I am
broken in soul and body with chagrin. I believe that this
chagrin is incurable; for the better I succeed in freeing
myself from it for some hours, the more sombre and poignant
does it re-enter into me in the following hours...I have
undertaken a lengthy work [un ouvrage de longue haleine]
entitled Histoire de ma Vie...However, I shall not reveal the
whole of my life...It will be, moreover, a pretty good piece
of business, which will put me on my feet again, and will
relieve me of a part of my anxieties with regard to the future
of Solange, which is rather compromised.

We have, then, the choice of two explanations of the rupture:
George Sand's, that it was caused by the disagreement of Chopin
and her son; and Franchomme's, that it was brought about by
Chopin's disregard of George Sand's injunction not to receive her
daughter and son-in-law. I prefer the latter version, which is
reconcilable with George Sand's letters, confirmed by the
testimony of several of Chopin's friends, and given by an honest,
simple-minded man who may be trusted to have told a plain
unvarnished tale.

[FOOTNOTE: The contradictions are merely apparent, and disappear
if we consider that George Sand cannot have had any inclination
to give to Gutmann and Poncy an explanation of the real state of
matters. Moreover, when she wrote to the former the rupture had,
according to Franchomme, not yet taken place.]

But whatever reason may have been alleged to justify, whatever
circumstance may have been the ostensible cause of the rupture,
in reality it was only a pretext. On this point all agree--
Franchomme, Gutmann, Kwiatkowski, Madame Rubio, Liszt, &c. George
Sand was tired of Chopin, and as he did not leave her
voluntarily, the separation had to be forced upon him. Gutmann
thought there was no rupture at all. George Sand went to Nohant
without Chopin, ceased to write to him, and thus the connection
came to an end. Of course, Chopin ought to have left her before
she had recourse to the "heroic means" of kicking him,
metaphorically speaking, out of doors. But the strength of his
passion for this woman made him weak. If a tithe of what is
rumoured about George Sand's amorous escapades is true, a lover
who stayed with her for eight years must have found his capacity
of overlooking and forgiving severely tested. We hear on all
sides of the infidelities she permitted herself. A Polish friend
of Chopin's informed me that one day when he was about to enter
the composer's, room to pay him a visit, the married Berrichon
female servant of George Sand came out of it; and Chopin, who was
lying ill in bed, told him afterwards that she had been
complaining of her mistress and husband. Gutmann, who said that
Chopin knew of George Sand's occasional infidelities, pretended
to have heard him say when she had left him behind in Paris: "I
would overlook all if only she would allow me to stay with her at
Nohant." I regard these and such like stories, especially the
last one, with suspicion (is it probable that the reticent artist
was communicative on so delicate a subject, and with Gutmann, his
pupil and a much younger man?), but they cannot be ignored, as
they are characteristic of how Chopin's friends viewed his
position. And yet, tormented as he must have been in the days of
possession, crushed as he was by the loss, tempted as he
subsequently often felt to curse her and her deceitfulness, he
loved and missed George Sand to the very end--even the day before
his death he said to Franchomme that she had told him he would
die in no other arms but hers (que je ne mourrais que dans ses
bras).

If George Sand had represented her separation from Chopin as a
matter of convenience, she would have got more sympathy and been
able to make out a better case.

The friendship of Chopin [she writes in Ma Vie] has never been
for me a refuge in sadness. He had quite enough troubles of
his own to bear. Mine would have overwhelmed him; moreover, he
knew them only vaguely and did not understand them at all. He
would have appreciated them from a point of view very
different from mine.

Besides Chopin's illnesses became more frequent, his strength
diminished from day to day, and care and attendance were
consequently more than ever needful. That he was a "detestable
patient" has already been said. The world takes it for granted
that the wife or paramour of a man of genius is in duty bound to
sacrifice herself for him. But how does the matter stand when
there is genius on both sides, and self-sacrifice of either party
entails loss to the world? By the way, is it not very selfish and
hypocritical of this world which generally does so little for men
of genius to demand that women shall entirely, self-denyingly
devote themselves to their gifted lovers? Well, both George Sand
and Chopin had to do work worth doing, and if one of them was
hampered by the other in doing it, the dissolution of the union
was justified. But perhaps this was not the reason of the
separation. At any rate, George Sand does not advance such a
plea. Still, it would have been unfair not to discuss this
possible point of view.

The passage from the letter of George Sand dated September 1,
1846, which I quoted earlier in this chapter, justifies us, I
think, in assuming that, although she was still keeping on her
apartments in the Square d'Orleans, the phalanstery had ceased to
exist. The apartments she gave up probably sometime in 1847; at
any rate, she passed the winter of 1847-8, for the most part at
least, at Nohant; and when after the outbreak of the revolution
of 1848 she came to Paris (between the 9th and 14th of March),
she put up at a hotel garni. Chopin continued to live in his old
quarters in the Square d'Orldans, and, according to Gutmann, was
after the cessation of his connection with George Sand in the
habit of dining either with him (Gutmann) or Grzymala, that is to
say, in their company.

It is much to be regretted that no letters are forthcoming to
tell us of Chopin's feelings and doings at this time. I can place
before the reader no more than one note, the satisfactory nature
of which makes up to some extent for its brevity. It is addressed
to Franchomme; dated Friday, October 1, 1847; and contains only
these few words:--

Dear friend,--I thank you for your good heart, but I am very
RICH this evening. Yours with all my heart.

In this year--i.e., 1847--appeared the three last works which
Chopin published, although among his posthumous compositions
there are two of a later date. The Trois Mazurkas, Op. 63
(dedicated to the Comtesse L. Czosnowska), and the Trois Valses,
Op. 64 (dedicated respectively to Madame la Comtesse Potocka,
Madame la Baronne de Rothschild, and Madame la Baronne Bronicka),
appeared in September, and the Sonata for piano and violoncello,
Op. 65 (dedicated to Franchomme), in October. Now I will say of
these compositions only that the mazurkas and waltzes are not
inferior to his previous works of this kind, and that the sonata
is one of his most strenuous efforts in the larger forms. Mr.
Charles Halle remembers going one evening in 1847 with Stephen
Heller to Chopin, who had invited some friends to let them hear
this sonata which he had lately finished. On arriving at his
house they found him rather unwell; he went about the room bent
like a half-opened penknife. The visitors proposed to leave him
and to postpone the performance, but Chopin would not hear of it.
He said he would try. Having once begun, he soon became straight
again, warming as he proceeded. As will be seen from some remarks
of Madame Dubois's, which I shall quote farther on, the sonata
did not make an altogether favourable impression on the auditors.

The name of Madame Dubois reminds me of the soiree immortalised
by a letter of Madame Girardin (see the one of March 7, 1847, in
Vol. IV. of Le Vicomte de Launay), and already several times
alluded to by me in preceding chapters. At this soiree Chopin not
only performed several of his pieces, but also accompanied on a
second piano his E minor Concerto which was played by his pupil,
the youthful and beautiful Mdlle. Camille O'Meara. But the
musical event par excellence of the period of Chopin's life with
which we are concerned in this chapter is his concert, the last
he gave in Paris, on February 16, 1848. Before I proceed with my
account of it, I must quote a note, enclosing tickets for this
concert, which Chopin wrote at this time to Franchomme. It runs
thus: "The best places en evidence for Madame D., but not for her
cook." Madame D. was Madame Paul Delaroche, the wife of the great
painter, and a friend of Franchomme's.

But here is a copy of the original programme:--

FIRST PART.

Trio by Mozart, for piano, violin, and violoncello,
performed by MM. Chopin, Alard, and Franchomme.

Aria, sung by Mdlle. Antonia Molina di Mondi.

Nocturne, |
|--composed and performed by M. Chopin.
Barcarole, |

Air, sung by Mdlle. Antonia Molina di Mondi.

Etude, |
|--composed and performed by M. Chopin.
Berceuse, |

SECOND PART.

Scherzo, Adagio, and Finale of the Sonata in G minor, for
piano and violoncello, composed by M. Chopin, and performed
by the author and M. Franchomme.

Air nouveau from Robert le Diable, composed by M. Meyerbeer,
sung by M. Roger.

Preludes, |
|
Mazurkas, |--composed and performed by M. Chopin.
|
Valse, |

Accompanists:--MM. Aulary and de Garaude.

The report of "M. S." in the Gazette musicale of February 20,
1848, transports us at once into the midst of the exquisite,
perfume-laden atmosphere of Pleyel's rooms on February 16:--

A concert by the Ariel of pianists is a thing too rare to be
given, like other concerts, by opening both wings of the doors
to whomsoever wishes to enter. For this one a list had been
drawn up: everyone inscribed thereon his name: but everyone
was not sure of obtaining the precious ticket: patronage was
required to be admitted into the holy of holies, to obtain the
favour of depositing one's offering, and yet this offering
amounted to a louis; but who has not a louis to spare whep
Chopin may be heard?

The outcome of all this naturally was that the fine flower of
the aristocracy of the most distinguished women, the most
elegant toilettes, filled on Wednesday Pleyel's rooms. There
was also the aristocracy of artists and amateurs, happy to
seize in his flight this musical sylph who had promised to let
himself once more and for a few hours be approached, seen, and
heard.

The sylph kept his word, and with what success, what
enthusiasm! It is easier to tell you of the reception he got,
the transport he excited, than to describe, analyse, divulge,
the mysteries of an execution which was nothing analogous in
our terrestrial regions. If we had in our power the pen which
traced the delicate marvels of Queen Mab, not bigger than an
agate that glitters on the finger of an alderman, of her liny
chariot, of her diaphanous team, only then should we succeed
in giving an idea of a purely ideal talent into which matter
enters hardly at all. Only Chopin can make Chopin understood:
all those who were present at the seance of Wednesday are
convinced of this as well as we.

The programme announced first a trio of Mozart, which Chopin,
Alard, and Franchomme executed in such a manner that one
despairs of ever hearing it again so well performed. Then
Chopin played studies, preludes, mazurkas, waltzes; he
performed afterwards his beautiful sonata with Franchomme. Do
not ask us how all these masterpieces small and great were
rendered. We said at first we would not attempt to reproduce
these thousands and thousands of nuances of an exceptional
genius having in his service an organisation of the same kind.
We shall only say that the charm did not cease to act a single
instant on the audience, and that it still lasted after the
concert was ended.

Let us add that Roger, our brilliant tenor, sang with his most
expressive voice the beautiful prayer intercalated in Robert
le Diable by the author himself at the debut of Mario at the
Opera; that Mdlle. Antonia de Mendi [a niece of Pauline
Viardot's; see the spelling of her name in the programme], the
young and beautiful singer, carried off her share of bravos by
her talent full of hope and promise.

There is a talk of a second concert which Chopin is to give on
the 10th of March, and already more than 600 names are put
down on the new list. In this there is nothing astonishing;
Chopin owed us this recompense, and he well deserves this
eagerness.

As this report, although it enables us to realise the atmosphere,
is otherwise lacking in substance, we must try to get further
information elsewhere. Happily, there is plenty at our disposal.

Before playing the violoncello sonata in public [wrote Madame
Dubois to me], Chopin had tried it before some artists and
intimate friends; the first movement, the masterpiece, was not
understood. It appeared to the hearers obscure, involved by
too many ideas, in short, it had no success. At the last
moment Chopin dared not play the whole sonata before so
worldly and elegant an audience, but confined himself to the
Scherzo, Adagio, and Finale. I shall never forget the manner
in which he executed the Barcarole, that adorable composition;
the Waltz in D flat (la valse au petit chien) was encored
amidst the acclamations of the public. A grande dame who was
present at this concert wished to know Chopin's secret of
making the scales so flowing on the piano [faire les gammes si
coulees stir le piano]. The expression is good, and this
limpidity has never been equalled.

Stephen Heller's remark to me, that Chopin became in his last
years so weak that his playing was sometimes hardly audible, I
have already related in a preceding chapter. There I have also
mentioned what Mr. Charles Halle' told me--namely, that in the
latter part of his life Chopin often played forte passages piano
and even pianissimo, that, for instance, at the concert we are
speaking of he played the two forte passages towards the end of
the Barcarole pianissimo and with all sorts of dynamic finesses.
Mr. Otto Goldschmidt, who was present at the concert on February
16, 1848, gave some interesting recollections of it, after the
reading of a paper on the subject of Chopin, by Mr. G. A.
Osborne, at one of the meetings of the Musical Association (see
Proceedings, of the Musical Association for the year 1879-80):--

He [Chopin] was extremely weak, but still his playing--by
reason of that remarkable quality which he possessed of
gradation in touch--betrayed none of the impress of weakness
which some attributed to piano playing or softness of touch;
and he possessed in a greater degree than any pianoforte-
player he [Mr. Goldschmidt] had ever heard, the faculty of
passing upwards from piano through all gradations of tone...It
was extremely difficult to obtain admission, for Chopin, who
had been truly described as a most sensitive man--which seemed
to be pre-eminently a quality of artistic organisations--not
only had a list submitted to him of those who ought to be
admitted, but he sifted that list, and made a selection from
the selected list; he was, therefore, surrounded by none but
friends and admirers. The room was beautifully decorated with
flowers of all kinds, and he could truly say that even now, at
the distance of thirty years, he had the most vivid
recollection of the concert...The audience was so enraptured
with his [Chopin's] playing that he was called forward again
and again.

In connection with what Mr. Goldschmidt and the writer in the
Gazette musicale say about the difficulty of admission and a
sifted list, I have to record, and I shall do no more than
record, Franchomme's denial. "I really believe," he said to me,
"that this is a mere fiction. I saw Chopin every day; how, then,
could I remain ignorant of it?"

To complete my account of Chopin's last concert in Paris, I have
yet to add some scraps of information derived from Un nid
d'autographes, by Oscar Comettant, who was present at it, and,
moreover, reported on it in Le Siecle. The memory of the event
was brought back to him when on looking over autographs in the
possession of Auguste Wolff, the successor of Camille Pleyel, he
found a ticket for the above described concert. As the concert so
was also the ticket unlike that of any other artist. "Les lettres
d'ecriture anglaise etaient gravees au burin et imprimees en
taille-douce sur de beau papier mi-carton glace, d'un carre long
elegant et distingue." It bore the following words and figures:--

SOIREE DE M. CHOPIN,
DANS L'UN DES SALONS DE MM. PLEYEL ET CIE.,
20, Rue Rochechouart,
Le mercredi 16 fevrier 1848 a 8 heures 1/2.
Rang....Prix 20 francs....Place reservee.

M. Comettant, in contradiction to what has been said by others
about Chopin's physical condition, states that when the latter
came on the platform, he walked upright and without feebleness;
his face, though pale, did not seem greatly altered; and he
played as he had always played. But M. Comettant was told that
Chopin, having spent at the concert all his moral and physical
energy, afterwards nearly fainted in the artists' room.

In March Chopin and George Sand saw each other once more. We will
rest satisfied with the latter's laconic account of the meeting
already quoted: "Je serrai sa main tremblante et glacee. Je voulu
lui parler, il s'echappa." Karasowski's account of this last
meeting is in the feuilleton style and a worthy pendant to that
of the first meeting:--

A month before his departure [he writes], in the last days of
March, Chopin was invited by a lady to whose hospitable house
he had in former times often gone. Some moments he hesitated
whether he should accept this invitation, for he had of late
years less frequented the salons; at last--as if impelled by
an inner voice--he accepted. An hour before he entered the
house of Madame H...

And then follow wonderful conversations, sighs, blushes, tears, a
lady hiding behind an ivy screen, and afterwards advancing with a
gliding step, and whispering with a look full of repentance:
"Frederick!" Alas, this was not the way George Sand met her
dismissed lovers. Moreover, let it be remembered she was at this
time not a girl in her teens, but a woman of nearly forty-four.

The outbreak of the revolution on February 22, 1848, upset the
arrangements for the second concert, which was to take place on
the 10th of March, and, along with the desire to seek
forgetfulness of the grievous loss he had sustained in a change
of scene, decided him at last to accept the pressing and
unwearied invitations of his Scotch and English friends to visit
Great Britain. On April 2 the Gazette musicale announced that
Chopin would shortly betake himself to London and pass the season
there. And before many weeks had passed he set out upon his
journey. But the history of his doings in the capital and in
other parts of the United Kingdom shall be related in another
chapter.

CHAPTER XXX.

DIFFERENCE OF STYLE IN CHOPIN'S WORKS.----THEIR CHARACTERISTICS
DISCUSSED, AND POPULAR PREJUDICES CONTROVERTED.----POLISH
NATIONAL MUSIC AND ITS INFLUENCE ON CHOPIN.----CHOPIN A PERSONAL
AS WELL AS NATIONAL TONE-POET.--A REVIEW OF SOME OF HIS LESS
PERFECT COMPOSITIONS AND OF HIS MASTERPIECES: BOLERO; RONDEAU;
VARIATIONS; TARANTELLE; ALLEGRO DE CONCERT; TWO SONATAS FOR
PIANOFORTE (OP. 38 AND 58); SONATA (OP. 65) AND GRAND DUO
CONCERTANT FOR PIANOFORTE AND VIOLONCELLO; FANTAISIE; MAZURKAS;
POLONAISES; VALSES; ETUDES; PRELUDES; SCHERZI; IMPROMPTUS;
NOCTURNES; BERCEUSE; BARCAROLE; AND BALLADES-----THE SONGS.----
VARIOUS EDITIONS.

Before we inquire into the doings and sufferings of Chopin in
England and Scotland, let us take a general survey of his life-
work as a composer. We may fitly do so now; as at the stage of
his career we have reached, his creative activity had come to a
close. The last composition he published, the G minor Sonata for
piano and violoncello, Op. 65, appeared in October, 1847; and
among his posthumous compositions published by Fontana there are
only two of later date--namely, the mazurkas, No. 2 of Op. 67 (G
minor) and No. 4 of Op. 68 (F minor), which came into existence
in 1849. Neither of these compositions can be numbered with the
master's best works, but the latter of them is interesting,
because it seems in its tonal writhings and wailings a picture of
the bodily and mental torments Chopin was at the time enduring.

A considerable number of the master's works I have already
discussed in Chapters III., VIII., and XIII. These, if we except
the two Concertos, Op. II and 21 (although they, too, do not rank
with his chefs-d'oeuvre), are, however, for us of greater importance
biographically, perhaps also historically, than otherwise. It is
true, we hear now and then of some virtuoso playing the Variations,
Op. 2, or the Fantasia on Polish airs, Op. 13, nay, we may hear even
of the performance of the Trio, Op. 8; but such occurrences are of
the rarest rarity, and, considering how rich musical literature is
in unexceptionable concert-pieces and chamber compositions, one
feels on the whole pleased that these enterprising soloists and
trio-players find neither much encouragement nor many imitators.
While in examining the earlier works, the praise bestowed on them
was often largely mixed with censure, and the admiration felt for
them tempered by dissatisfaction; we shall have little else than
pure praise and admiration for the works that remain to be
considered, at least for the vast majority of them. One thing,
however, seems to me needful before justice can be done to the
composer Chopin: certain prejudices abroad concerning him have to
be combated. I shall, therefore, preface my remarks on particular
compositions and groups of compositions by some general
observations.

It is sometimes said that there are hardly any traces of a
development in the productions of Chopin, and that in this
respect he is unlike all the other great masters. Such an opinion
cannot be the result of a thorough and comprehensive study of the
composer's works. So far from agreeing with those who hold it, I
am tempted to assert that the difference of style between
Chopin's early and latest works (even when juvenile compositions
like the first two Rondos are left out of account) is as great as
that between Beethoven's first and ninth Symphony. It would be
easy to classify the Polish master's works according to three and
even four (with the usual exceptions) successive styles, but I
have no taste for this cheap kind of useless ingenuity. In fact,
I shall confine myself to saying that in Chopin's works there are
clearly distinguishable two styles--the early virtuosic and the
later poetic style. The latter is in a certain sense also
virtuosic, but with this difference, that its virtuosity is not
virtuosity for virtuosity's sake. The poetic style which has
thrown off the tinsel showiness of its predecessor does not,
however, remain unchanged, for its texture becomes more and more
close, and affords conclusive evidence of the increasing
influence of Johann Sebastian Bach. Of course, the grand master
of fugue does not appear here, as it were, full life-size, in
peruke, knee-breeches, and shoe-buckles, but his presence in
spite of transformation and attenuation is unmistakable. It is,
however, not only in the closeness and complexity of texture that
we notice Chopin's style changing: a striving after greater
breadth and fulness of form are likewise apparent, and, alas!
also an increase in sombreness, the result of deteriorating
health. All this the reader will have to keep in mind when he
passes in review the master's works, for I shall marshal them by
groups, not chronologically.