Unspeakable Beauty: Chopin

Photo taken in the year that he died.

What can I say? I was in love with Chopin's music from the first time my piano teacher introduced me to a Chopin Polonaise when I was eight. It was a simplified version, no doubt, as I was but a beginner on the piano. But my appreciation for Chopin's music has never wavered. 

Here are a dozen or more quotes about his music with some links at the end.

"Chopin wrote poetry that only a soul could hold."

-- George Sand

"Each of Chopin’s compositions is a conversation between two souls; one never perceives a distinction between a soloist and an accompanying instrument."
-- Robert Schumann

"Chopin's work is one of the peaks in the development of piano music. You could say he was a prophet of the piano. He was different from the people of his time. He created a new epoch."
-- Vladimir Horowitz

"Chopin was a kind of creator who valued ideas and emotions more than anything. He was always eager to provide unexpected harmonies."
-- Ignacy Jan Paderewski

"Chopin is the border between romanticism and modernism."
-- Artur Rubinstein

"Chopin spoke in his music directly to the hearts of the people. His music is direct, spontaneous and clear."
-- Arthur Honegger

"Chopin's music resembles a universe. It is self-contained, it is perfect, it is complete."
-- Leopold Godowsky

"Chopin has written some waltzes that are actually love letters." 

-- Wilfrid Mellers

"Chopin is the only soul who has revealed the genius of that instrument."
-- Franz Liszt

"Chopin is the greatest of them all – he reached the highest point of enlightenment and I have the feeling he is speaking directly to me with each piece."
-- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

"His creation was spontaneous, miraculous. He found it without searching for it, without foreseeing it. It came to his piano suddenly, complete, sublime, or it sang in his head during a walk, and he would hasten to hear it again by, tossing it off on his instrument. But then would begin the most heartbreaking labor I have ever witnessed. He would spend six weeks on one page, only to end up writing it just as he had traced it in his first outpouring."
--George Sand

"After playing Chopin, I feel as if I had been weeping over sins that I had never committed, and mourning over tragedies that were not my own."
--Oscar Wilde

 * * * 

Frédéric François Chopin (born Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin; (1 March 1810 – 17 October 1849) was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist of the Romantic period, who wrote primarily for solo piano. He has maintained worldwide renown as a leading musician of his era, one whose "poetic genius was based on a professional technique that was without equal in his generation" --Wikipedia

"The most vigorous applause seemed not to suffice to our enthusiasm in the presence of this talented musician, who revealed a new phase of poetic sentiment combined with such happy innovation in the form of his art."--Franz Liszt

* * * 

You may remember this from The Truman Show, where Truman first meets Lauren, the girl who captures his heart.

Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art.
--Frédéric Chopin

TW0 MORE FAVORITES

ETUDE  Opus 10 No. 3

PRELUDE  Opus 28 No. 4

Chopin: Desire for Love and Thoughts from the Keen Mind of George Sand

George Sand was a woman who could not  and would not live within the confining boundaries society placed on women of her day. To be published as a novelist, she therefore wrote under a pseudonym. Her real name was Amandine-Aurore-Lucile Dupin, baronne Dudevant. 

This week I was watching a movie about Frederic Chopin and his relationship to George Sand titled Chopin: Desire for Love. It brought to mind the 1991 film Impromptu with Hugh Grant and Judy Davis in which Davis (as G. Sand) states that the beauty of Chopin's music is "proof that there is a God." It was a great line, and a statement that is hard to argue with. His piano compositions were exquisite.

Chopin: Desire for Love is a more recent production (2002) and less enjoyable. Like Impromptu it centers on the relationship between Chopin and Aurore Dupin, but in this latter version their conflicts become the story. His self-centeredness becomes painful to watch, no matter how much his compositions inspire or convey of the turbulence at the center of their passions. 

Dupin has two children who still need a mother. Chopin, who has never married or had children, sees her children as an impediment to the inspiration her love provides him. It's a form of machisimo that is common in certain parts of the world. When we worked at an orphanage in Mexico, some of the children there were kicked out of their homes by a second husband who would have nothing to do with the offspring of the first. 

Director Jerzy Antczak was nominated for an Academy Award for this 2002 production, which he filmed in Polish, then dubbed in English. The score is fabulous, simply because there is so much of Chopin there. Yo-Yo Ma is even one of the players in the soundtrack. 

The effect that Antczak attempted to achieve was to illuminate the conditions that created these sometimes emotionally charged pieces, much like that which was more successfully accomplished in Immortal Beloved about the music of Beethoven. Beethoven's stormy temperament is fairly well-known, so that film worked for me. This film diverged significantly from the image I have of a fragile, perfectionist composer who struggled with sickness and depression. 

One imdb.com reviewer stated that both Chopin films strayed far from the actual story of Chopin's career and affair with Aurore Dupin so that both were unacceptable. Of the two I preferred the former, even though I become impressed with the skill with which modern film makers are able to re-create the sets in these period pieces.

The actors were good and well cast for their roles--Piotr Adamczak as Chopin and Damuta Stenka as George Sand. Several of the reviewers gave the film high marks, so it may be something to consider, even if it does have a soap opera aspect. I will give it 5 stars out of 10, only because there is so much wonderful Chopin music in there. 

* * * 

George Sand by Auguste Carpentier

George Sand as a writer did not get as developed in this film. According to some, she was even more popular than Balzac and Victor Hugo in her day, and highly influential politically. I thought it would be worthwhile to share some quotes from this rule-breaking woman who had to make a go of it in a very restrictive time for women. She believed it was OK for a woman to wear pants (they were more comfortable than frilly dresses) and write novels. What I seem to recall was that she lived much of her life on less sleep because she did all her writing at night. Making sacrifices is what writers must do if they are to succeed. 

I'm always impressed by how much writers of that era accomplished without typewriters and word processors, or photocopy machines. George Sand lived in 1830, the typewriter was invented in 1872.

What follows are several quotes from her letters and writings.

* * * 

"I have an object, a task, let me say the word, a passion. The profession of writing is a violent and almost indestructible one."

* * * 
"Life resembles a novel more often than novels resemble life."

* * * 

"Life is a long ache which rarely sleeps and can never be cured."

* * * 
"Art is not a study of positive reality, it is the seeking for ideal truth."

* * * 
"Masterpieces are only lucky attempts."

* * * 

About Chopin

"His creation was spontaneous, miraculous. He found it without searching for it, without foreseeing it. It came to his piano suddenly, complete, sublime, or it sang in his head during a walk, and he would hasten to hear it again by, tossing it off on his instrument. But then would begin the most heartbreaking labor I have ever witnessed." 

* * * 

Saturday Snippets: Fragments of Imagination and Observation

The other night I decided to do something useful: cleaned some of the debris and scraps of miscellany off my desk. What follows are various notes, interspersed with a few quotes from other sources. Every once in a while you just gotta do it.

* * *

"Well, my sense of humanity has gone down the drain
Behind every beautiful thing there’s been some kind of pain..." Bob Dylan, Not Dark Yet

* * *

His method: Following an idea as far as it would go.

* * *

Don't gather 'round people
don't go out and roam.
Please stay in your houses 
and please stay at home.

* * * 

As I was walking into town
I met a man whose head was down;
He used to be a happy clown
But now he only wears a frown

* * * 

I'm so old I can still remember when it was illegal to break the law.

* * * 

She gave him a tornado and said, "Let's go for a ride."
"I'm a little burned out, and it's late," he replied.

* * * 

One good thing about reading a lot of Solzhenitsyn & writing about it
is that you learn how to spell his name without having to look it up.

* * *

How did it happen that people created a special day to be tricksters?

* * * 

The next person who asks me for for a glass of pineapple juice mixed with grapefruit is gonna get a punch.

* * * 

"The best conversations... start over good food." 
Printed inside lid of Mezzetta Imported Capers

* * * 

"Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art."
--Frederick Chopin

* * * 

"The truth is too simple: one must always get there by a complicated route." --George Sand  

* * *

Meantime life goes on all around you. Make the most of it.

An Art Gallery, a Grand Piano and Chopin's Raindrop Prelude

It really is a grand piano. 

Yesterday afternoon I visited the Tweed Museum of Art on the campus of UMD. I'd been looking forward to seeing the new exhibit of Russian art that had been installed earlier this fall. Art museums are a great way to spend a slice of any day, but especially so when accompanied by live interpretations of Liszt and Chopin.

After one of the Tweed's recent opening receptions it was decided to leave the grand piano there for a spell. This past week one of the students has taken a shine to using it. Why not? The setting is perfect, both acoustically and aesthetically. (Thank you, Jessica)

Chopin's Prelude, Opus 28, No. 15 is one of 24 Chopin Preludes, very likely written while the composer and George Sand were staying at a monastery in Valldemossa, Majorca in 1838.

When I first took up piano at age 8 I had a wonderful piano teacher who introduced me to simplified versions of classic like the Moonlight Sonata (Beethoven) and this Chopin Prelude. I've been in love with Chopin ever since. She would likely be criticized by some for having allowed me to play as much as I did by ear. What I'm grateful for is how she helped me fall in love with the beauty of the music.

I'm similarly grateful for my father's interest in classical music. Sunday mornings he spent time reading the newspaper, which was sprawled around him on the floor as he sat in his easy chair listening to Beethoven's 5th, Echoes of Offenbach or Dvorak's New World Symphony.

George Sand purportedly once said that Chopin was proof that there is a God. In her memoir of her life she wrote specifically about Chopin's exquisite Preludes, which she called masterpieces.

Raised in Apple Valley, Jessica is a student in the economics program. 

He made a single instrument speak a language of infinity... He could often sum up, in ten lines that a child could play, poems of a boundless exaltation, dramas of unequalled power... His creation was spontaneous, miraculous. He found it without searching for it, without foreseeing it. It came to his piano suddenly, complete, sublime, or it sang in his head during a walk, and he would hasten to hear it again by tossing it off on his instrument. But then would begin the most heartbreaking labor I have ever witnessed.

In another place she wrote, "Art is not a study of positive reality, it is the seeking for ideal truth." This is certainly what many artists aspire to.

Let it take you away. 

Related Links

Friday Night at Rest (A Poem)

Impromptu (A film about George Sand and Chopin)

Can We Talk About Beauty for a Minute? 10 Pieces of Classical Music That Can Lift You Higher