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Composers Main Page

Anecdotes, Quotations, and Trivia of


Frédéric Chopin
Polish-born composer and painist (1810-1849)

♣ Borrowing from Chopin
Chopin was extremely fastidious about many things, including the appearance of his manuscripts. He once loaned the manuscript of his Piano Concerto in E Minor to a friend who, knowing this, was very careful wearing white gloves to turn the pages. He returned the manuscript to Chopin without a single mark upon it. Chopin opened it and immediately said in displeasure, "Oh! You were smoking when you read it!"
(N. Slonimsky, A Thing or Two about Music)

♣ Too much piano
The pianists Sigismond Thalberg and Alexander Dreyschock once attended Chopin's recital of his own compositions. They listened with delight, but after the performance, Thalberg began shouting at the top of his voice. "What's the matter?" asked Dreyschock in astonishment. "Oh," explained Thalberg, "I've been listening to piano all the evening, and now, for the sake of contrast, I want a little forte."
(William Mason, Memories of a Musical Life, 1901)

♣ Chopin vs. Liszt I
Liszt once asked Frederic Chopin to play in complete darkness as he did before on the previous occasion. But after putting out all the lights and drawing curtains, just as Chopin was going to the piano, Liszt whispered something in his ear and sat down in his stead. He then played the same composition which Chopin had played, and the audience was once again captivated. After the performance, Liszt lighted candles on the piano revealing himself to the stupefied audience.
"What do you say to it?" said Liszt to his rival.
"I say what everyone says; I too believed it was Chopin."
"You see," said the virtuoso rising, "that Liszt can be Chopin when he likes; but could Chopin be Liszt?"
(F. Niecks, Frederick Chopin as Man and Musician, 1888-90)

♣ Chopin vs. Liszt II
[Chopin] asked me [Ernest Legouvé] to give a newsaper report of [a rare public concert] but Liszt claimed the honor. I quickly went to Chopin to tell him the good news.
"I should have preferred you to do it," he said very sweetly.
"You are jesting, my dear Chopin. An article by Liszt! It is a positive piece of luck both for the public and for you. You may safely trust to his great admiration for your talent. I feel certain that he will map you out a magnificent kingdom."
"Yes," he answered, smiling, "a magnificent kingdom within his empire."
(E. Legouve, 60 Yars of Recollections, 1893)

♣ Chopin & George Sand I
After meeting Georges Sand, Chopin is said to have remarked, "What a repellent woman the Sand is! But is she really a woman? I am inclined to doubt it."
Nevertheless, Wilhelm von Lenz tells the following story:
Georges Sand did not say a word when Chopin introduced me. That was hardly civil of her and for that reason I immediately sat down close to her. Chopin hovered around like a frightened bird in a cage. . . .
Georges Sand rose, strode across the room like a man, and sat down at the glowing fire. I followed at her heels, and primed ready for the next encounter, sat down beside her. She had to say something, at last. She drew from her apron pocket an enormously thick Trabucco cigar and called back into the drawing-room: "Frédéric, a light!" I felt insulted for him - my great lord and master. I understood Liszt's remark 'Poor Frédéric!' in all its bearings.
Chopin obediently brought a light.
(F. Niecks, Frederick Chopin as Man and Musician, 1888-90; W. von Lenz, Die Grossen Pianoforte-Virtuosen, 1872)

♣ Chopin & George Sand II
George Sand's little dog had a habit of turning round and round to catch its tail. One evening when it was doing just that, she said to Chopin, "If I had your talent, I would compose a pianoforte piece of this dog." At once Chopin composed the charming Waltz in D flat (Op. 64), which is also called Valse du petit chien.
(Frederick Niecks, Frederick Chopin as Man and Musician, 1888-90)

♣ Chopin's death
[At his deathbed, Chopin] was really happy, and called himself happy. In the midst of the sharpest sufferings he expressed only ecstastic joy, touching love of God, thankfulness that I [Abbé Jelowicki] had led him back to God, contempt of the world and its good, and a wish for a speedy death. . . .
His usual language was always elegant, with well chosen words, but at last to express all this thankfulness and, at the same time, all the misery of those who die unreconciled to God, he cried, "Without you I should have croaked like a pig."
While dying he still called on the names of Jesus, Mary, Joseph, kissed the crucifix and pressed it to his heart with the cry, "Now I am at the source of Blessedness."
(James Hunekar, Chopin, the Man and his Music, 1900)

♣ Death brings good news
A gentleman of undoubted musical abilities . . . played very well and was extremely fond of Chopin's music, playing many of his pieces, even some of the very difficult ones. I [Charles Hallé] brought him the sad tidings of Chopin's death. "Capital!" he exclaimed, "now I can have his complete works bound!"
(C. E. and M. Hallé, Life and Letters of Sir Charles Halle, 1896)

♣ Wilhelm von Lenz's Recollections of Chopin

QUOTES BY CHOPIN

♣ "I'm a revolutionary, money means nothing to me."
(in 1833; quoted in Hedley, Chopin, 1947)

♣ "Bach is like an astronomer who, with the help of ciphers, finds the most wonderful stars . . . Beethoven embraced the universe with the power of his spirit . . . I do not climb so high. A long time ago I decided that my universe will be the soul and heart of man."
(Letter to Delphine Potocka)

♣ "Nothing is more odious than music without hidden meaning."
(Le Courrier musical, 1910)

♣ [On Russia's domination of Poland] "Sometimes I can only groan, and suffer, and pour out my despair at the piano!"
(The Unofficial Chopin Homepage: Chopin Quotes)

QUOTES ON CHOPIN

♣ "Hats off, gentlemen, a genius!" - Robert Schumann
(Pleasants, The Musical World of Robert Schumann, 1965)

♣ "He was dying all his life." - Hector Berlioz
(Elliot, Berlioz, 1967)

♣ "He is the truest artist I have ever met." - Eugène Delacroix
(Hedley, Chopin, 1947)

♣ "A composer for the right hand." - Richard Wagner

♣ "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
(Wilde, The Critic as Artist)

♣ "He was able to plunge his audience into profound bliss or into an abyss of sadness, as his music gripped one's soul . . . and then, to remove that impression and that memory of suffering from the others as well as from himself, he would turn surreptitiously to a mirror, arrange his hair and his cravat and instantly become a phlegmatic Englishman, or a sentimental, ridiculous lady, or an impertinent old beggar . . . " - Georges Sand
(G. Sand, Histoire de ma vie, 1854)

♣ "I love the angelic in his figure, which reminds me of Shelly: the peculiarly and very mysteriously veiled, unapproachable, withdrawing, unadventurous flavour of his being, that not wanting to know, that rejection of material experience, the sublime incest of his fantastically delicate and seductive art." - Leverkühn in Doctor Faustus
(Thomas Mann, Doctor Faustus, 1947)

♣ "Chopin, the sylph of the piano ... attached to this mortal world by the merest touch of a finger and nourished by dreams from on high. Listen to Chopin play! It is like the sighing of a flower, the whisper of the clouds, or the murmur of the stars."
(Le Ménestral, 1848)