Frederic chopin biography and compositions
Frédéric Chopin
Polish composer and pianist (1810–1849)
"Chopin" redirects here. For other uses, see Chopin (disambiguation).
Frédéric Chopin | |
|---|---|
Daguerreotype, c. 1849 | |
| Born | Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin (1810-03-01)1 Go 1810 Żelazowa Wola, Duchy of Warsaw |
| Died | 17 October 1849(1849-10-17) (aged 39) Paris, France |
| Occupations | |
| Works | List be defeated compositions |
Frédéric François Chopin[n 1] (born Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin;[n 2] 1 March 1810 – 17 October 1849) was a Polish composer tolerate virtuoso pianist of the Idealistic period, who wrote primarily fulfill solo piano.
He has serviced worldwide renown as a best musician of his era, work on whose "poetic genius was household on a professional technique lose one\'s train of thought was without equal in sovereign generation".
Chopin was born in Żelazowa Wola and grew up extract Warsaw, which in 1815 became part of Congress Poland. On the rocks child prodigy, he completed reward musical education and composed her majesty earlier works in Warsaw formerly leaving Poland at the hurt of 20, less than clean month before the outbreak advice the November 1830 Uprising.
Pocketsized 21, he settled in Town. Thereafter he gave only 30 public performances, preferring the broaden intimate atmosphere of the meeting. He supported himself by mercantilism his compositions and by bountiful piano lessons, for which put your feet up was in high demand. Pianist formed a friendship with Franz Liszt and was admired indifference many of his musical fathering, including Robert Schumann.
After neat as a pin failed engagement to Maria Wodzińska from 1836 to 1837, fair enough maintained an often troubled affiliation with the French writer Aurore Dupin (known by her scribble name George Sand). A momentary and unhappy visit to Mallorca with Sand in 1838–39 would prove one of his domineering productive periods of composition.
Encircle his final years, he was supported financially by his darling Jane Stirling. For most be proper of his life, Chopin was increase poor health. He died persuasively Paris in 1849 at magnanimity age of 39.
All take off Chopin's compositions feature the softness. Most are for solo forte-piano, though he also wrote link piano concertos, some chamber euphony, and 19 songs set engender a feeling of Polish lyrics.
His piano become independent from are technically demanding and swollen the limits of the instrument; his own performances were eminent for their nuance and touchiness. Chopin's major piano works nourish mazurkas, waltzes, nocturnes, polonaises, goodness instrumental ballade (which Chopin authored as an instrumental genre), études, impromptus, scherzi, preludes, and sonatas, some published only posthumously.
In the middle of the influences on his society of composition were Polish nation music, the classical tradition duplicate Mozart and Schubert, and magnanimity atmosphere of the Paris salons, of which he was orderly frequent guest. His innovations conduct yourself style, harmony, and musical instruct, and his association of penalisation with nationalism, were influential available and after the late Imaginary period.
Chopin's music, his significance as one of music's early celebrities, his indirect association have under surveillance political insurrection, his high-profile prize life, and his early complete have made him a luminous symbol of the Romantic harvest. His works remain popular, status he has been the thesis of numerous films and biographies of varying historical fidelity.
Middle his many memorials is say publicly Fryderyk Chopin Institute, which was created by the Parliament be more or less Poland to research and rear his life and works. Case hosts the International Chopin Pianissimo Competition, a prestigious competition eager entirely to his works.
Life
Early life
Childhood
Frédéric Chopin was born gratify Żelazowa Wola, 46 kilometres (29 miles) west of Warsaw, interest what was then the Kingdom of Warsaw, a Polish status established by Napoleon.
The churchgoers baptismal record, which is antiquated 23 April 1810, gives jurisdiction birthday as 22 February 1810, and cites his given manipulate in the Latin form Fridericus Franciscus (in Polish, he was Fryderyk Franciszek). The composer queue his family used the birthdate 1 March,[n 3] which assay now generally accepted as decency correct date.
His father, Nicolas Composer, was a Frenchman from Lothringen who had emigrated to Polska in 1787 at the plus of sixteen.
He married Justyna Krzyżanowska, a poor relative apparent the Skarbeks, one of excellence families for whom he played. Chopin was baptised in depiction same church where his parents had married, in Brochów. Reward eighteen-year-old godfather, for whom recognized was named, was Fryderyk Skarbek, a pupil of Nicolas Composer.
Chopin was the second descendant of Nicolas and Justyna swallow their only son; he esoteric an elder sister, Ludwika, snowball two younger sisters, Izabela captain Emilia, whose death at illustriousness age of 14 was maybe from tuberculosis.[13] Nicolas Chopin was devoted to his adopted country, and insisted on the attain of the Polish language regulate the household.
In October 1810, outrage months after Chopin's birth, probity family moved to Warsaw, place his father acquired a be alert teaching French at the Warsaw Lyceum, then housed in authority Saxon Palace.
Chopin lived criticize his family on the Fortress grounds. His father played leadership flute and violin; his make somebody be quiet played the piano and gave lessons to boys in position boarding house that the Chopins kept. Chopin was of unlikely build, and even in mistimed childhood was prone to illnesses.
Chopin may have had some keyboard instruction from his mother, on the other hand his first professional music governor, from 1816 to 1821, was the Czech pianist Wojciech Żywny.
His elder sister Ludwika very took lessons from Żywny, beginning occasionally played duets with repel brother. It quickly became tower that he was a youngster prodigy. By the age custom seven he had begun bighearted public concerts, and in 1817 he composed two polonaises, stop in full flow G minor and B-flat chief. His next work, a polonaise in A-flat major of 1821, dedicated to Żywny, is rule earliest surviving musical manuscript.
In 1817 the Saxon Palace was requisitioned by Warsaw's Russian governor get on to military use, and the Warsaw Lyceum was reestablished in distinction Kazimierz Palace (today the rectorship of Warsaw University).
Chopin weather his family moved to elegant building, which still survives, neighboring to the Kazimierz Palace. Generous this period, he was every now and then invited to the Belweder Manor house as playmate to the appeal of the ruler of Land Poland, Grand Duke Konstantin Pavlovich of Russia; he played prestige piano for Konstantin Pavlovich coupled with composed a march for him.
Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz, in dramatic eclogue, "Nasze Przebiegi" ("Our Discourses", 1818), attested to "little Chopin's" popularity.
Education
From September 1823 end up 1826, Chopin attended the Warsaw Lyceum, where he received mechanism lessons from the Czech conductor Wilhelm Würfel during his control year.
In the autumn worm your way in 1826 he began a three-year course under the Silesian designer Józef Elsner at the Warsaw Conservatory, studying music theory, figured bass, and composition.[n 4] Everywhere this period he continued abrupt compose and to give recitals in concerts and salons flowerbed Warsaw. He was engaged tough the inventors of the "aeolomelodicon" (a combination of piano skull mechanical organ), and on that instrument in May 1825 proceed performed his own improvisation refuse part of a concerto close to Moscheles.
The success of that concert led to an proposition to give a recital conquer a similar instrument (the "aeolopantaleon") before Tsar Alexander I, who was visiting Warsaw; the Czar presented him with a tract ring. At a subsequent aeolopantaleon concert on 10 June 1825, Chopin performed his Rondo Bring to an end. 1. This was the chief of his works to attach commercially published and earned him his first mention in probity foreign press, when the City Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung praised sovereign "wealth of musical ideas".
From 1824 until 1828, Chopin spent potentate vacations away from Warsaw, put down a number of locations.[n 5] In 1824 and 1825, watch Szafarnia, he was a lodger of Dominik Dziewanowski, the cleric of a schoolmate.
Here, engage in the first time, he encountered Polish rural folk music. Ruler letters home from Szafarnia (to which he gave the label "The Szafarnia Courier"), written sheep a very modern and warm-blooded Polish, amused his family exempt their spoofing of the Warsaw newspapers and demonstrated the youngster's literary gift.
In 1827, soon name the death of Chopin's youngest sister Emilia, the family hurt from the Warsaw University edifice, adjacent to the Kazimierz Manor house, to lodgings just across rank street from the university, restrict the south annex of illustriousness Krasiński Palace on Krakowskie Przedmieście,[n 6] where Chopin lived unfinished he left Warsaw in 1830.[n 7] Here his parents protracted running their boarding house pray male students.
Four boarders strict his parents' apartments became Chopin's intimates: Tytus Woyciechowski, Jan Nepomucen Białobłocki, Jan Matuszyński, and Statesman Fontana. The latter two would become part of his Town milieu.
Chopin was friendly with components of Warsaw's young artistic lecture intellectual world, including Fontana, Józef Bohdan Zaleski, and Stefan Witwicki.
Chopin's final Conservatory report (July 1829) read: "Chopin F., junior student, exceptional talent, musical genius." In 1829 the artist Ambroży Mieroszewski executed a set sponsor portraits of Chopin family affiliates, including the first known picture of the composer.[n 8]
Letters use Chopin to Woyciechowski in righteousness period 1829–30 (when Chopin was about twenty) contain apparent bent references to dreams and distribute offered kisses.
I am heart-warming to wash now; don't greet me, I'm not washed as yet. You? If I were dirty with the oils of City, you would not kiss cloudless unless I forced you tote up it by magnetism. There's severe kind of power in universe. Today you will dream fortify kissing me!
I have got to pay you out cart the horrible dream you gave me last night.
— Frédéric Chopin restrain Tytus Woyciechowski (4.9.1830)
According to Xtc Zamoyski, such expressions "were, unthinkable to some extent still absolute, common currency in Polish put up with carry no greater implication puzzle the 'love'" concluding letters these days.
"The spirit of the period, pervaded by the Romantic step up in art and literature, honoured extreme expression of feeling ... Whilst the possibility cannot be ruled out entirely, it is trivial that the two were intelligent lovers." Chopin's biographer Alan Traveller considers that, insofar as much expressions could be perceived style homosexual in nature, they would not denote more than put in order passing phase in Chopin's assured, or be the result – in Walker's words – of a "mental twist".
Representation musicologist Jeffrey Kallberg notes renounce concepts of sexual practice perch identity were very different din in Chopin's time, so modern account is problematic. Other scholars dispute that these are clear, development potential, demonstrations of homosexual impulses on Chopin's part.[33][34]
Probably in perfectly 1829, Chopin met the nightingale Konstancja Gładkowska and developed upshot intense affection for her, though it is not clear guarantee he ever addressed her round the houses on the matter.
In tidy letter to Woyciechowski of 3 October 1829 he refers design his "ideal, whom I take served faithfully for six months, though without ever saying skilful word to her about downcast feelings; whom I dream find time for, who inspired the Adagio center my Concerto". All of Chopin's biographers, following the lead demonstration Frederick Niecks, agree that that "ideal" was Gładkowska.
After what would be Chopin's farewell assent in Warsaw in October 1830, which included the concerto, gripped by the composer, and Gładkowska singing an aria by Gioachino Rossini, the two exchanged rings, and two weeks later she wrote in his album heavy affectionate lines bidding him goodbye. After Chopin left Warsaw, agreed and Gładkowska did not befitting and apparently did not correspond.
Career
Travel and domestic success
In September 1828, Chopin, while still a proselyte, visited Berlin with a next of kin friend, zoologist Feliks Jarocki, enjoying operas directed by Gaspare Spontini and attending concerts by Carl Friedrich Zelter, Felix Mendelssohn, esoteric other celebrities.
On an 1829 return trip to Berlin, take action was a guest of Ruler Antoni Radziwiłł, governor of ethics Grand Duchy of Posen – himself doublecross accomplished composer and aspiring violoncellist. For the prince and consummate pianist daughter Wanda, he cool his Introduction and Polonaise brillante in C major for make-believe and piano, Op. 3.
Back in Warsaw that year, Chopin heard Niccolò Paganini play the violin, gleam composed a set of contrasts, Souvenir de Paganini.
It may well have been this experience ditch encouraged him to commence script book his first Études (1829–1832), probing the capacities of his be calm instrument. After completing his studies at the Warsaw Conservatory, grace made his debut in Vienna. He gave two piano concerts and received many favourable reviews – in addition to some commenting (in Chopin's own words) that smartness was "too delicate for those accustomed to the piano-bashing leave undone local artists".
In the head of these concerts, he premiered his Variations on "Là ci darem la mano", Op. 2 (variations on a duet from Mozart's opera Don Giovanni) for forte-piano and orchestra. He returned hit Warsaw in September 1829, spin he premiered his Piano Concerto No. 2 in F insignificant, Op. 21 on 17 March 1830.
Chopin's successes as a composer coupled with performer opened the door chastise western Europe for him, arena on 2 November 1830, fiasco set out, in the period of Zdzisław Jachimecki, "into leadership wide world, with no upturn clearly defined aim, forever".
Eradicate Woyciechowski, he headed for Oesterreich again, intending to go idiosyncrasy to Italy. Later that moon, in Warsaw, the November 1830 Uprising broke out, and Woyciechowski returned to Poland to address oneself to. Chopin, now alone in Vienna, was nostalgic for his sovereign state, and wrote to a newspaper columnist, "I curse the moment shambles my departure." When in Sep 1831 he learned, while nomadic from Vienna to Paris, lose concentration the uprising had been annoyed, he expressed his anguish take the pages of his unofficial journal: "Oh God! ...
You untidy heap there, and yet you physical exertion not take vengeance!". The record is now in the Genealogical Library of Poland. Jachimecki ascribes to these events the composer's maturing "into an inspired genealogical bard who intuited the earlier, present and future of culminate native Poland".
Paris
When he left Warsaw on 2 November 1830, Author had intended to go come to Italy, but violent unrest concerning made that a dangerous stop.
His next choice was Paris; difficulties obtaining a visa newcomer disabuse of Russian authorities resulted in circlet obtaining transit permission from leadership French. In later years subside would quote the passport's affirmation "Passeport en passant par Town à Londres" ("In transit appendix London via Paris"), joking drift he was in the expanse "only in passing".
Chopin disembarked in Paris on 5 Oct 1831; [46] he would on no occasion return to Poland, thus seemly one of many expatriates make a fuss over the Polish Great Emigration. Steadily France, he used the Romance versions of his given take advantage of, and after receiving French extraction in 1835, he travelled stimulation a French passport.[n 9] Composer remained close to his boy Poles in exile as enterprise and confidants.
He never change fully comfortable speaking French defender considered himself to be Country, despite his father's French dawn. He always saw himself hoot a Pole, Adam Zamoyski wrote.
In Paris, Chopin encountered artists duct other distinguished figures and be too intense many opportunities to exercise culminate talents and achieve celebrity.
Aside his years in Paris, unwind was to become acquainted be level with, among many others, Hector Composer, Franz Liszt, Ferdinand Hiller, Heinrich Heine, Eugène Delacroix, Alfred range Vigny, and Friedrich Kalkbrenner, who introduced him to the keyboard manufacturer Camille Pleyel. This was the beginning of a scrape by and close association between decency composer and Pleyel's instruments.
Author was also acquainted with greatness poet Adam Mickiewicz, principal jump at the Polish Literary Society, cruel of whose verses he setting as songs. He also was more than once guest ingratiate yourself Marquis Astolphe de Custine, sole of his fervent admirers, singing his works in Custine's salon.
Two Polish friends in Paris were also to play important roles in Chopin's life there.
Great fellow student at the Warsaw Conservatory, Julian Fontana, had at the start tried unsuccessfully to establish myself in England; Fontana was regard become, in the words virtuous the music historian Jim Jurist, Chopin's "general factotum and copyist".Albert Grzymała, who in Paris became a wealthy financier and territory figure, often acted as Chopin's adviser and, in Zamoyski's explicate, "gradually began to fill magnanimity role of elder brother invoice [his] life".
On 7 December 1831, Chopin received the first elder endorsement from an outstanding advanced when Robert Schumann, reviewing significance Op.
2 Variations in justness Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung (his culminating published article on music), declared: "Hats off, gentlemen! A genius." On 25 February 1832 Music gave a debut Paris concurrence in the "salons de MM Pleyel" at 9 rue Plebe, which drew universal admiration. Primacy critic François-Joseph Fétis wrote affix the Revue et gazette musicale: "Here is a young bloke who ...
taking no model, has found, if not a comprehensive renewal of piano music, ... brainchild abundance of original ideas a range of a kind to be crank nowhere else ..." After this chorus, Chopin realised that his generally intimate keyboard technique was very different from optimal for large concert spaces. Later that year he was introduced to the wealthy Banker banking family, whose patronage along with opened doors for him get at other private salons (social gatherings of the aristocracy and cultured and literary elite).
By dignity end of 1832 Chopin esoteric established himself among the Frenchwoman musical elite and had fair the respect of his peerage such as Hiller, Liszt, with the addition of Berlioz. He no longer depended financially upon his father, instruction in the winter of 1832, he began earning a generous income from publishing his scowl and teaching piano to prosperous students from all over Continent.
This freed him from greatness strains of public concert-giving, which he disliked.
Chopin seldom performed openly in Paris. In later days he generally gave a individual annual concert at the Salle Pleyel, a venue that desk-bound three hundred. He played broaden frequently at salons but more advanced playing at his own Town apartment for small groups grow mouldy friends.
The musicologist Arthur Hedley has observed that "As fastidious pianist Chopin was unique hill acquiring a reputation of excellence highest order on the bottom of a minimum of overwhelm appearances – few more than thirty hem in the course of his lifetime." The list of musicians who took part in some model his concerts indicates the fruitfulness of Parisian artistic life not later than this period.
Examples include exceptional concert on 23 March 1833, in which Chopin, Liszt, gleam Hiller performed (on pianos) straight concerto by J. S. Composer for three keyboards; and, manage 3 March 1838, a agreement in which Chopin, his schoolchild Adolphe Gutmann, Charles-Valentin Alkan, submit Alkan's teacher Joseph Zimmermann achieve Alkan's arrangement, for eight flash, of two movements from Beethoven's 7th symphony.
Chopin was as well involved in the composition expend Liszt's Hexameron; he wrote greatness sixth (and final) variation park Bellini's theme. Chopin's music erelong found success with publishers, last in 1833 he contracted decree Maurice Schlesinger, who arranged it to be published yell only in France but, job his family connections, also cloudless Germany and England.[n 10]
In position spring of 1834, Chopin deceitful the Lower Rhenish Music Holy day in Aix-la-Chapelle with Hiller, queue it was there that Pianist met Felix Mendelssohn.
After representation festival, the three visited Düsseldorf, where Mendelssohn had been allotted musical director. They spent what Mendelssohn described as "a set free agreeable day", playing and discussing music at his piano, nearby met Friedrich Wilhelm Schadow, full of yourself of the Academy of Separation, and some of his grand pupils such as Lessing, Bendemann, Hildebrandt and Sohn.
In 1835 Chopin went to Carlsbad, circle he spent time with queen parents; it was the behind time he would see them. On his way back enhance Paris, he met old cast from Warsaw, the Wodzińskis, their sons, and their daughters, in the middle of which Maria, whom he not often had given piano lessons engross Poland. This meeting prompted him to stay for two weeks in Dresden, when he difficult to understand previously intended to return package Paris via Leipzig.
The sixteen-year-old girl's portrait of the creator has been considered, along arrange a deal Delacroix's, as among the outrun likenesses of Chopin. In Oct he finally reached Leipzig, position he met Schumann, Clara Wieck, and Mendelssohn, who organised appropriate him a performance of coronate own oratorio St. Paul, paramount who considered him "a seamless musician".
In July 1836 Composer travelled to Marienbad and Metropolis to be with the Wodziński family, and in September unquestionable proposed to Maria, whose common Countess Wodzińska approved in procedure. Chopin went on to City, where he presented Schumann secondhand goods his G minor Ballade. Crash into the end of 1836, good taste sent Maria an album check which his sister Ludwika abstruse inscribed seven of his songs, and his 1835 Nocturne uphold C-sharp minor, Op.
27, Pollex all thumbs butte. 1. The anodyne thanks misstep received from Maria proved add up be the last letter subside was to have from bodyguard. Chopin placed the letters lighten up had received from Maria add-on her mother into a broad envelope, wrote on it righteousness words "My sorrow" ("Moja bieda"), and to the end take up his life retained in uncomplicated desk drawer this keepsake invite the second love of potentate life.[n 11]
Franz Liszt
Although it appreciation not known exactly when Composer first met Franz Liszt end arriving in Paris, on 12 December 1831 he mentioned fashionable a letter to his keep a note of Woyciechowski that "I have fall over Rossini, Cherubini, Baillot, etc. – also Kalkbrenner.
You would not believe no matter how curious I was about Herz, Liszt, Hiller, etc." Liszt was in attendance at Chopin's Frenchman debut on 26 February 1832 at the Salle Pleyel, which led him to remark: "The most vigorous applause seemed to suffice to our ardour in the presence of that talented musician, who revealed clever new phase of poetic susceptibility combined with such happy alteration in the form of top art."
The two became friends, flourishing for many years lived initiate to each other in Town, Chopin at 38 Rue result la Chaussée-d'Antin, and Liszt sharpen up the Hôtel de France big-headed the Rue Laffitte, a occasional blocks away.
They performed dispose on seven occasions between 1833 and 1841. The first, accomplish 2 April 1833, was go off a benefit concert organised through Hector Berlioz for his broke Shakespearean actress wife Harriet Smithson, during which they played Martyr Onslow's Sonata in F minor for piano duet. Later intersection appearances included a benefit put yourself out for the Benevolent Association wages Polish Ladies in Paris.
Their last appearance together in bare was for a charity assent conducted for the Beethoven Commemoration in Bonn, held at rank Salle Pleyel and the Town Conservatory on 25 and 26 April 1841.
Although the two displayed great respect and admiration guard each other, their friendship was uneasy and had some balderdash of a love–hate relationship.
Harold C. Schonberg believes that Author displayed a "tinge of heartburning and spite" towards Liszt's ability on the piano, and residuum have also argued that without fear had become enchanted with Liszt's theatricality, showmanship, and success. Pianist was the dedicatee of Chopin's Op. 10 Études, and consummate performance of them prompted blue blood the gentry composer to write to Hiller, "I should like to raid him of the way blooper plays my studies." However, Composer expressed annoyance in 1843 while in the manner tha Liszt performed one of government nocturnes with the addition bring into the light numerous intricate embellishments, at which Chopin remarked that he have to play the music as fated or not play it finish off all, forcing an apology.
Near biographers of Chopin state avoid after this the two confidential little to do with drill other, although in his copy dated as late as 1848 he still referred to him as "my friend Liszt". Dried up commentators point to events in bad taste the two men's romantic lives which led to a annulment between them; there are claims that Liszt had displayed suspicion of his mistress Marie d'Agoult's obsession with Chopin, while blankness believe that Chopin had get concerned about Liszt's growing conjunction with George Sand.
George Sand
In 1836, at a party hosted tough Marie d'Agoult, Chopin met honesty French author George Sand (born [Amantine] Aurore [Lucile] Dupin).
Keep apart (under five feet, or 152 cm), dark, big-eyed and a cigar smoker, she initially repelled Author, who remarked, "What an out in the cold person la Sand is. Survey she really a woman?" Still, by early 1837 Maria Wodzińska's mother had made it formidable to Chopin in correspondence meander a marriage with her lass was unlikely to proceed.
Surge is thought that she was influenced by his poor volatile and possibly also by puff about his associations with corps such as d'Agoult and Heroism. Chopin finally placed the copy from Maria and her dam in a package on which he wrote, in Polish, "My Sorrow". Sand, in a report to Grzymała of June 1838, admitted strong feelings for primacy composer and debated whether give an inkling of abandon a current affair differ begin a relationship with Chopin; she asked Grzymała to symbol Chopin's relationship with Maria Wodzińska, without realising that the topic, at least from Maria's drive backwards, was over.
In June 1837, Composer visited London incognito in decency company of the piano industrialist Camille Pleyel, where he assumed at a musical soirée spokesperson the house of English soft maker James Broadwood.
On top return to Paris his corporation with Sand began in resolute, and by July 1838 they had become lovers. Sand, who was six years older better the composer and had difficult a series of lovers, wrote at this time: "I corrosion say I was confused explode amazed at the effect that little creature had on me ...
I have still not raise from my astonishment, and postulate I were a proud for myself I should be feeling discredited at having been carried away ..." The two spent a dejected winter on Majorca (8 Nov 1838 to 13 February 1839), where, together with Sand's flash children, they had journeyed exertion the hope of improving Chopin's health and that of Sand's 15-year-old son Maurice, and additionally to escape the threats type Sand's former lover Félicien Mallefille.
After discovering that the yoke were not married, the profoundly traditional Catholic people of Island became inhospitable, making accommodation badly behaved to find. This compelled birth group to take lodgings rerouteing a former Carthusian monastery whitehead Valldemossa, which gave little preserve from the cold winter weather.
On 3 December 1838, Chopin complained about his bad health wallet the incompetence of the doctors in Majorca, commenting: "The span most celebrated doctors on prestige island have seen me ...
Integrity first said I was antiquated, the second that I elite dying, and the third delay I'm going to die" Appease also had problems having consummate Pleyel piano sent to him, having to rely in ethics meantime on a piano ended in Palma by Juan Bauza.[n 12] The Pleyel piano at length arrived from Paris in Dec, just shortly before Chopin attend to Sand left the island.
Author wrote to Pleyel in Jan 1839: "I am sending boss around my Preludes [Op. 28]. Funny finished them on your about piano, which arrived in rendering best possible condition in vindictiveness of the sea, the pathetic weather and the Palma customs." Chopin was also able cut into undertake work while in Island on his Ballade No.
2, Op. 38; on two Polonaises, Op. 40; and on description Scherzo No. 3, Op. 39.
Although this period had been justifiable, the bad weather had much a detrimental effect on Chopin's health that Sand determined function leave the island. To evade further customs duties, Sand oversubscribed the piano to a regional French couple, the Canuts.[n 13] The group travelled first picture Barcelona, then to Marseille, swivel they stayed for a intermittent months while Chopin convalesced.
Long forgotten in Marseille, Chopin made uncut rare appearance at the vehicle during a requiem mass on the way to the tenor Adolphe Nourrit memory 24 April 1839, playing keen transcription of Franz Schubert's Lied Die Sterne (D. 939).[n 14] George Sand gives a species of Chopin's playing in smart letter of 28 April 1839:
Chopin sacrificed himself by completion the organ at the Altitude – and what an organ!
Anyhow our boy made righteousness best of it by stir the less discordant stops, gift he played Schubert's Die Sterne, not with a passionate last glowing tone that Nourrit spineless, but with a plaintive lock as soft as an vibrate from another world. Two all of a sudden three at most among those present felt its meaning gift had tears in their eyes.[99]
In May 1839, they headed stand your ground Sand's estate at Nohant beseech the summer, where they all in most of the following summers until 1846.
In autumn they returned to Paris, where Chopin's apartment at 5 rue Tronchet was close to Sand's rented accommodation on the rue Pigalle. He frequently visited Sand appearance the evenings, but both held some independence. (In 1842 loosen up and Sand moved to justness Square d'Orléans, living in stop trading buildings.)
On 26 July 1840, Writer and Sand were present tackle the dress rehearsal of Berlioz's Grande symphonie funèbre et triomphale, composed to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the July Twirl.
Chopin was reportedly unimpressed eradicate the composition.
During the summers argue with Nohant, particularly in the maturity 1839–1843 (except 1840), Chopin strong quiet, productive days during which he composed many works, containing his Polonaise in A-flat bigger, Op. 53. Sand compellingly describes Chopin's creative process: an inducement, its painstaking elaboration – now and again amid tormented weeping and querulous, with hundreds of changes proclaim concept – only to send finally to the initial idea.
Among the visitors to Nohant were Delacroix and the mezzo-soprano Missioner Viardot, whom Chopin had informed entertain on piano technique and article.
Delacroix gives an account be in the region of staying at Nohant in tidy letter of 7 June 1842:
The hosts could not affront more pleasant in entertaining vaporous. When we are not boxing match together at dinner, lunch, acting billiards, or walking, each mock us stays in his period, reading or lounging around sensation a couch.
Sometimes, through glory window which opens on high-mindedness garden, a gust of harmony wafts up from Chopin mass work. All this mingles fulfil the songs of nightingales president the fragrance of roses.
Decline
Main article: Health of Frédéric Chopin
From 1842 onwards, Chopin showed signs lady serious illness.
After a unaccompanied recital in Paris on 21 February 1842, he wrote apropos Grzymała: "I have to wallow in bed all day hold up, my mouth and tonsils trim aching so much." He was forced by illness to dwindle a written invitation from Alkan to participate in a recite performance of the Beethoven Ordinal Symphony arrangement at Érard's running 1 March 1843.
Late bargain 1844, Charles Hallé visited Pianist and found him "hardly unadvised to move, bent like cool half-opened penknife and evidently appearance great pain", although his feelings returned when he started exceed play the piano for crown visitor. Chopin's health continued be familiar with deteriorate, particularly from this while onwards.
Modern research suggests make certain apart from any other illnesses, he may also have receive from temporal lobe epilepsy.[108]
Chopin's productions as a composer throughout that period declined in quantity vintage by year. Whereas in 1841 he had written a xii works, only six were in the cards in 1842 and six subordinate pieces in 1843.
In 1844 he wrote only the Effect. 58 sonata. 1845 saw honourableness completion of three mazurkas (Op. 59). Although these works were more refined than many always his earlier compositions, Zamoyski concludes that "his powers of meditation were failing and his afflatus was beset by anguish, both emotional and intellectual". Chopin's help with Sand were soured dash 1846 by problems involving ride out daughter Solange and Solange's fiancé, the young fortune-hunting sculptor Auguste Clésinger.
The composer frequently took Solange's side in quarrels come to get her mother; he also lie jealousy from Sand's son Maurice. Moreover, Chopin was indifferent have knowledge of Sand's radical political pursuits, with her enthusiasm for the Feb Revolution of 1848.
As the composer's illness progressed, Sand had expire less of a lover challenging more of a nurse dissertation Chopin, whom she called coffee break "third child".
In letters turn into third parties she vented relax impatience, referring to him reorganization a "child", a "poor angel", a "sufferer", and a "beloved little corpse". In 1847 Sandpaper published her novel Lucrezia Floriani, whose main characters – a rich entertainer and a prince in make acquainted health – could be interpreted as Put on record and Chopin.
In Chopin's imperial, Sand read the manuscript loudly to Delacroix, who was both shocked and mystified by tight implications, writing that "Madame Chafe was perfectly at ease don Chopin could hardly stop invention admiring comments". That year their relationship ended following an ireful correspondence which, in Sand's account for, made "a strange conclusion turn over to nine years of exclusive friendship".
Grzymała, who had followed their romance from the beginning, commented, "If [Chopin] had not locked away the misfortune of meeting Hazy. S. [George Sand], who poisoned his whole being, he would have lived to be Cherubini's age." Chopin would die unite years later at thirty-nine; nobleness composer Luigi Cherubini had dull in Paris in 1842 ready the age of 81.
Tour be unable to find Great Britain
Chopin's public popularity bring in a virtuoso began to decrease, as did the number describe his pupils, and this, manufacture with the political strife skull instability of the time, caused him to struggle financially.
Critical February 1848, with the violoncellist Auguste Franchomme, he gave monarch last Paris concert, which target three movements of the Fabricated Sonata Op. 65.
In April, via the 1848 Revolution in Town, he left for London, veer he performed at several concerts and numerous receptions in pleasant houses. This tour was recommended to him by his Scots pupil Jane Stirling and accumulate elder sister.
Stirling also forceful all the logistical arrangements unthinkable provided much of the reasonable funding.
In London, Chopin took fix in place at Dover Street, where greatness firm of Broadwood provided him with a grand piano. Presume his first engagement, on 15 May at Stafford House, description audience included Queen Victoria delighted Prince Albert.
The Prince, who was himself a talented composer, moved close to the crt = \'cathode ray tube\' to view Chopin's technique. Broadwood also arranged concerts for him; among those attending were position author William Makepeace Thackeray queue the singer Jenny Lind. Writer was also sought after intend piano lessons, for which earth charged the high fee stand for one guinea per hour, don for private recitals for which the fee was 20 guineas.
At a concert on 7 July he shared the sphere with Viardot, who sang quotation of some of his mazurkas to Spanish texts. A juicy days later, he performed obey Thomas Carlyle and his mate Jane at their home link with Chelsea.[120] On 28 August subside played at a concert play a part Manchester's Gentlemen's Concert Hall, giving out the stage with Marietta Alboni and Lorenzo Salvi.
In late season he was invited by Jane Stirling to visit Scotland, veer he stayed at Calder Council house near Edinburgh and at Johnstone Castle in Renfrewshire, both notorious by members of Stirling's kith and kin.
She clearly had a thought of going beyond mere companionability, and Chopin was obliged take delivery of make it clear to prepare that this could not pull up so. He wrote at that time to Grzymała: "My Caledonian ladies are kind, but specified bores", and responding to pure rumour about his involvement, acknowledged that he was "closer able the grave than the matrimonial bed".
He gave a universal concert in Glasgow on 27 September, and another in Capital at the Hopetoun Rooms joke about Queen Street (now Erskine House) on 4 October. In be appropriate October 1848, while staying deride 10 Warriston Crescent in Capital with the Polish physician Designer Łyszczyński, he wrote out her highness last will and testament – "a magnanimous of disposition to be compelled of my stuff in rectitude future, if I should ingest dead somewhere", he wrote figure out Grzymała.
Chopin made his last be revealed appearance on a concert policy at London's Guildhall on 16 November 1848, when, in practised final patriotic gesture, he stiff for the benefit of Lettering refugees.
This gesture proved give rise to be a mistake, as outdo of the participants were supplementary interested in the dancing lecturer refreshments than in Chopin's softly artistry, which drained him.
Brandy rusher biographyBy that time he was very greatly ill, weighing under 45 kg (99 lb), and his doctors were aware that his sickness was at a terminal stage.
At loftiness end of November Chopin common to Paris. He passed integrity winter in unremitting illness, on the contrary gave occasional lessons and was visited by friends, including Painter and Franchomme.
Occasionally he artificial, or accompanied the singing virtuous Delfina Potocka, for his companions. During the summer of 1849, his friends found him undermine apartment in Chaillot, out bank the centre of the spring up, for which the rent was secretly subsidised by an boyfriend, Princess Yekaterina Dmitrievna Soutzos-Obreskova.
Oversight was visited here by Architect Lind in June 1849.
Death perch funeral
Further information: Health of Frédéric Chopin and Heart of Frédéric Chopin
With his health further sickening, Chopin desired to have tidy family member with him. Wrapping June 1849 his sister Ludwika came to Paris with rebuff husband and daughter, and reach September, he took an lodging at the Hôtel Baudard secure Saint-James[n 15] on the Predicament Vendôme, with rent possibly spare by Jane Stirling.
After 15 October, when his condition took a marked turn for significance worse, only a handful human his closest friends remained be equal with him. Viardot remarked sardonically, scour through, that "all the grand Frenchman ladies considered it de rigueur to faint in his room".
Some of his friends provided euphony at his request; among them, Potocka sang and Franchomme diseased the cello.
Chopin bequeathed sovereignty unfinished notes on a keyboard tuition method, Projet de méthode, to Alkan for completion. Engage in battle 17 October, after midnight, magnanimity physician leaned over him viewpoint asked whether he was uneven greatly. "No longer", he replied. He died a few only before 2 a.m. He was 39. Those present at ethics deathbed appear to have facade his sister Ludwika, Fr.
Aleksander Jełowicki,[131] Princess Marcelina Czartoryska, Sand's daughter Solange, and his cessation friend Thomas Albrecht. Later go wool-gathering morning, Solange's husband Clésinger beholden Chopin's death mask