2010 Musical Anniversaries: Part Two

200 years ago – Frédéric François Chopin,

Birth house

in Polish Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin 
born in 1810 in a village in the Duchy of Warsaw -
died in Paris 1849
As a child prodigy pianist and composer, he grew up in Warshaw and studied there.
A Polish Uprising was suppressed by Russia.

At 19



Sand



Chopin, at almost 20, emigrated to Paris , where he earned a living  as a composer and piano teacher. From 1837 to 1847 he had a strong liaison with the French  feminist writer George Sand (Amandine Aurore Lucile Dupin, later Baroness (French:baronne) Dudevant  (1804– 1876).

 Being afflicted with  poor health  he died at the young age of  39.
Chopin composed mainly for the piano. All are technically demanding with nuanced and expressive depth. Chopin invented the musical form known as instrumental ballad.

Once in Paris, he hoped achieve his entry into the Parisian musical community. To that effect, he took lessons from the then prominent pianist Friedrich Kalkbrenner.

In February 1832 Chopin gave a successful concert about which musicologist and critic François-Joseph Fétis wrote in Revue musicale: "Here is a young man who, taking nothing as a model, has found, if not a complete renewal of piano music, then in any case part of what has long been sought in vain, namely, an extravagance of original ideas that are unexampled anywhere."

A bit earlier,  December 1831, Robert Schumann, reviewed Chopin's Variations on "La ci darem la mano", Op. 2 (on a theme from Mozart's opera Don Giovanni)
,
and said: "Hats off, gentlemen! A genius"

But did you know that:

• After his Paris concert début in February 1832, Chopin realized that his light-handed keyboard technique was not too good in large concert spaces. Later that year he was introduced to the Rothschild banking family, whose patronage enabled him to concertize in other private salon
• Chopin met and socialized with artists and other well known personages.Exercising his talents, he achieved celebrity status, earning a handsome income teaching piano to affluent students from all over Europe.
• He became friends with such as Hector Berlioz, Franz Liszt, Vincenzo Bellini, Ferdinand Hiller, Felix Mendelssohn, Heinrich Heine, Eugène Delacroix, Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski, Alfred de Vigny, and Charles-Valentin Alkan.
• He was undoubtedly a Polish patriot, but in France he used the French versions of his given names and traveled on a French passport issued on August 1, 1835, after Chopin had become a French citizen, possibly to avoid having to use Imperial Russian documents.
• Chopin wrote a lot of letters and enjoyed drawing caricatures. The Museum of Caricature and Cartoon Art in Warsaw is organising a caricature competition in his memory, named "Chopin's Smile".
• There is debate as to what was Chopin's birthday - the record says 22nd February, his family celebrated March 1st.



Chopin's Hand cast

• His Scottish benefactress Jane Stirling claimed to be the only one to know the true date: she wrote it down, put the scrap of paper in a sealed box and placed it in Chopin's coffin.Chopin as a pianist (admittedly, mainly playing his own music).
• Chopin was brought up with the nobility: although his legal father was not noble, some Chopin experts think that he may have been the illegitimate son of an aristocrat.
• Chopin never wrote an opera. However, an opera was written about him (using arrangements of his music) by the Italian musician and critic Giacomo Orefice.
• After his death, Chopin’s heart was preserved in cognac within a pillar of the Church of the Holy Cross in Warsaw.
• It was rescued from the Nazi bombing of Warsaw by a German general (a totally unexpected gesture as Chopin's music was banned as being a beacon of Polish nationalism by the Nazis).
• There is a supposition that Chopin died of cystic fibrosis.
• In order to find out if this was the case, the friars of the church would have to allow his heart to undergo DNA examination. As far as is known, the  Polish Culture Ministry has not made this request.
• During the Polish Uprising in 1863, Russian troops threw Chopin's piano out of a second floor window, presumably as a gesture of contempt to Polish nationalists. This "defenestration" led to a poem "Chopin's Piano" by the Polish poet Cyprian Norwid.
• Chopin seem to have been less enthused by  the orchestra of the London Philharmonic Society, allegedly he wrote: "the orchestra is rather like their roast beef or their turtle soup; excellent, strong, but nothing more".

Strona główna Wiersze znanych Interpretacje Wiadomości poetyckie Konkurs
 "Opowiadanie o śmierci" Poezja [debiuty] [in english] Chopin`s grand piano
By Norwid Cyprian Kamil

La musique est une chose étrange! Byron

L`arte? ... c`est l`art - et puis,

Voilà tout. Béranger

an excerpt..
VIII

For look - look now, Frederic...

This is Warsaw

Under a star ablaze -

one of Norwid's stark art works

Strange gaudy eyesore

Look, the Parish organs! Look!

Where you were raised!

There - the patricians` houses - old

As the Publica Res;
Pavements of the squares grey and cold,

And Zygmunt`s sword in its cloudy crest.

IX
Look!
From street to street
Charge Caucasian steeds
Like a storm-spurned starling fleet
Charging the horses speed -
A hundred a time - a hundred a time,
Flames swelling the building, - then dying down
Blazing again - and then - look now!
I see rifle butts pointing at the brow
Of bereaved widows -
And then I see, though through a wall of
Blinding smoke, at the porch, colonnade
A tumbril-like object swayed
To and fro... to and fro... - fallen!
Your piano has fallen!
(trans. Teresa Bałuk)