Chopin. Adam Zamoyski

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СКАЧАТЬ was accompanied by an analogous development in his relations with other people. He still found it easy to make friends, and was outwardly sociable, but he grew more and more suspicious and wary of allowing them to approach too close. That is why the absent Tytus was not replaced by any other as Chopin’s confidant, and why their intimacy grew instead of waning. It also explains a great deal about Chopin’s behaviour with regard to Konstancja Gładkowska.

      Warsaw was not a large city, and it would have been impossible for him not to have seen her quite often, either socially or at musical evenings. After his triumphal concerts she must have been more than ever aware of his existence. And yet it would appear that he continued to pine from afar, without attempting to let her know his feelings. Romantic adolescents are often more interested in nurturing emotions than in achieving intimacy with their object, but in Chopin’s case the fear of putting himself in an embarrassing position is probably what paralysed any move towards intimacy. It was less risky to keep pining and at the same time to channel his frustration and self-pity towards Tytus, who remained the only real presence in Chopin’s heart. ‘Nobody apart from you shall have a portrait of me,’ he wrote to Tytus after the fuss over Brzezina’s attempt to print his portrait; ‘– one other person could, but never before you, for you are dearer to me.’¹⁹

      This intimacy went beyond the purely emotional. Tytus was a good pianist and wrote a little, and Chopin trusted his taste. Once he even wrote that Tytus had taught him how to ‘feel’ music.²⁰ Chopin was always sending him his ‘rubbish’ or ‘laboured bits of dreariness’, as he liked to refer to his works, particularly during the spring of 1830. ‘When I write something new, I’d like to know how you would like it,’ he wrote, ‘and I feel that my new concerto in E minor will hold no value for me until you have heard it.’²¹

      Chopin’s infatuation with Konstancja, and the attendant sense of frustration, were no doubt responsible for this uncharacteristic uncertainty, and for the sudden need to give his music meaning. For the first and last time in his life he was overtaken by the Romantic urge to programme his music both sentimentally and thematically. ‘I say to my piano what I would like to be saying to you,’ he wrote to Tytus – and what he would like to be saying to Konstancja, he might have added.²² The Adagio of the new concerto he was writing, which was secretly dedicated to her, is the only piece of his whose meaning Chopin ever tried to explain. ‘It is not supposed to be strong, but romantic, calm, melancholy; it should give the impression of gazing at a spot which brings back a thousand cherished mem ories,’ he wrote. ‘It should be like dreaming in beautiful springtime – by moonlight.’²³ Other pieces written during the same period are also tinged with sentimentality, like the Nocturnes, op.9, the E flat major Étude of op.10, and some of the songs he wrote to Witwicki’s poems, like ‘The Wish’ or ‘Where Does She Lovę’ (op.74). Even Elsner noticed that some of the music from this period was inspired by ‘beautiful eyes’.²⁴

      During the remainder of March and April Chopin let himself go to pieces. He had intended to finish his second concerto within a few weeks and perform it publicly at the end of April or the beginning of May, as he needed to pursue his career and earn more money, however much it cost him in ruffled sensibilities. He was still vaguely aiming to set out for Berlin in May, and thence go wherever seemed appropriate. But May came and went, and Chopin had neither finished his new concerto nor arranged another performance. While he was heaving sighs in Warsaw, Tsar Nicholas arrived for the state opening of the Polish parliament, and, as usual on such occasions, various artists converged on the city from abroad. These included the King of Prussia’s pianist Sigismund Woerlitzer; Miss Belleville, a fine pianist and pupil of Czerny, who had recently played Chopin’s La ci darem la mano Variations at a concert in Vienna; and the singer Henriette Sontag, a beautiful woman with a magnificent voice for whom Weber had composed the title role of Euryanthe six years before. She had retired from the operatic stage after her marriage to Count Rossi and now only sang in concerts.

      She gave eleven in Warsaw, most of which Chopin attended. He went into ecstasies over her voice, the elegance and control of which he related to his own touch on the piano, but felt she lacked depth of expression. ‘She seems to breathe into the stalls with the scent of the freshest flowers, and she caresses, soothes deliciously, but rarely moves to tears,’ he wrote to Tytus.²⁵ Prince Radziwiłł, who had also arrived in Warsaw, introduced them. They immediately took a liking to each other, and since Henriette was besieged all day long by admiring dignitaries and aristocrats, she asked him to come and call on her in the mornings at her hotel. At this time of day he would find her in her déshabille, and he soon became infatuated with her. ‘You cannot imagine how much pleasure I have had from a closer acquaintance – in her room, on the sofa – with this “envoy of heaven” as some of the local hotheads call her,’ he wrote to his friend, all thoughts of Konstancja temporarily banished from his head.²⁶

      Chopin had intended to give a concert himself during the Tsar’s visit, but for reasons which remain unclear no such event took place. While Miss Sontag sang to the various imperial majesties and Woerlitzer and Belleville played to them, people in Warsaw wondered why Chopin did not. It may be that his contacts with some of those identified by the authorities as subversive elements had something to do with it.

      With the end of June, the parliament dissolved and people began to leave the city. At the beginning of July the Haslinger edition of the La ci darem la mano Variations arrived in the Warsaw shops, and Chopin agreed to play them at a concert given on 8 July by a singer who had taken part in his earlier appearances. The audience was small, the public wearied by all the activity of the previous weeks, and although the reviews were favourable, the event failed to make any great impact.

      Chopin was wondering what to do next. Romuald Hube, one of his companions on the previous year’s trip to Vienna, with whom he had been intending to travel to Paris that summer, and then on to Italy, had departed, leaving him stranded in Warsaw. Since Tytus had not come to Warsaw as he had intended, and as Chopin had nothing better to do, he went to stay with him in the country, apparently intending to spend some time there. But after he had been there only two weeks, he read in the papers that Soliva had organised a concert in which Konstancja was to make her stage debut, and he rushed back to Warsaw, much to the annoyance of Tytus.

      The event may have been emotionally rewarding for Chopin, but when it was over he was once more at a loose end, harking back to his stay with Tytus. ‘Your fields have left me with a dull longing,’ he wrote; ‘that birch tree before your windows will not leave my thoughts.’ In an attempt to dispel these he went to join the rest of his family who were staying with the Skarbeks at Żelazowa Wola.²⁷ He spent a couple of weeks there, adding the finishing touches to his E minor Concerto. On the warm summer nights the piano would be wheeled out onto the terrace, and Chopin would play to the house party and to the local children who would creep into the park to listen.²⁸

      In the middle of August Chopin returned to Warsaw, and although he was restless and bored, he took no action to bring forward his departure. ‘Nothing draws me abroad,’ he wrote to Tytus. ‘Believe me that when I leave next week it will only be out of deference to my calling and common sense (which must be very small, since it cannot banish everything else from my mind).’²⁹ But while plans for a departure ‘next week for certain’ were announced in one letter, this was followed by another a couple of weeks later in which he informed his friend that ‘I’m still here; I don’t have enough will СКАЧАТЬ