Chopin. Adam Zamoyski

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СКАЧАТЬ Vienna, and the composer Czerny, who was in a tremendously good mood, having just finished writing out ‘an overture for eight pianos and sixteen players’.⁷ Old Würfel, now bedridden with tuberculosis, proffered advice on where the concert should be held and which of the two concertos Chopin should play. He was categorical that Chopin should under no circumstances perform free, advice which was seconded by Count Husarzewski and others who promised to help organise the event.

      One of the most prominent of these was a new acquaintance, the imperial physician and erstwhile friend of Beethoven, Dr Giovanni Malfatti, who had a somewhat unusual position both at court and in Viennese society. Chopin had a letter of introduction to Malfatti’s wife, a Polish countess, and was greeted ‘like a member of the family’.⁸ The doctor promised to introduce him to the most notable musical personages and to arrange a concert for him at court, which was not immediately possible since this was in mourning following the recent death of the King of Naples.

      ‘I shall be giving a concert, but where, when and how, I still cannot say,’ Chopin wrote home at the end of his first week, which ‘flew by’. He basked in the novelty of living in his own rooms, of eating out in the restaurants Mozart and Beethoven had frequented, of spending his days entirely as he wished and of going to the opera almost every evening. He went five times during the first week, three of them to operas he did not know – Mozart’s La Clemenza di Tito, Auber’s Fra Diavolo and Rossini’s Guillaume Tell. He found the standard of singing just as high as in the previous year, and what was most welcome to him was the continual change of programme, which meant that he could rapidly improve his education in this field.⁹

      Chopin was suffering from a cold, or ‘swollen nose’ as he put it, which is why he did not immediately call on the grander ladies to whom he had introductions. As soon as he recovered, however, he began to make up for lost time, and called on Countess Rzewuska, at whose home he expected to meet ‘the cream of Viennese society’, and several other Polish ladies married to Austrians. He also delivered his most important letter of introduction, from Grand Duke Constantine to Countess Tatischev, wife of the Russian ambassador. It was while he was awaiting her pleasure to receive him that, on 5 December, news arrived from Warsaw which shattered his hopes.

      On 29 November, revolution had broken out in the Polish capital. The Grand Duke had narrowly escaped being assassinated in the Belvedere by a group of cadets, while the Russian troops in the city were attacked and disarmed by bands of patriots. Although the reports were far from clear, both Chopin and Tytus were well aware of what lay behind them and of what probably lay ahead – national insurrection and armed conflict with Russia. After emotional deliberations lasting all night, Tytus prepared to return to Warsaw in order to fight in the national cause, but Chopin was prevailed upon to remain in Vienna.¹⁰

      ‘After Tytus left, too much suddenly fell on my shoulders,’ Chopin complained.¹¹ He was utterly unprepared, either practically or psychologically, to cope on his own, and he naturally fretted about family and friends in Warsaw. More to the point, events taking place there had a direct bearing on his position in Vienna. Austria was one of the three powers that had dismembered and abolished the Polish state at the end of the previous century, and while a degree of cordiality reigned between Poles and Austrians at the social level, their national interests were diametrically opposed. Events taking place in Warsaw did not directly threaten anyone in Vienna, but they evoked hostility and apprehension. Although after the initial outburst the leadership of the Polish rising was assumed by Prince Adam Czartoryski, Viennese society shared Metternich’s view that it was a revolution against the established order of Europe, and it was feared and disapproved of as much as the French Revolution had been. Even in the cheap trattoria where he sometimes took his dinner, Chopin overheard remarks such as ‘God made a mistake in creating the Poles,’ and ‘Nothing worthwhile has ever come out of Poland,’ which he took as personal as well as national insults.¹²

      Malfatti tried to persuade him that the artist should be cosmopolitan and overcome national feeling, to which Chopin retorted that he must be a very poor artist. He had never taken any interest in politics before, but now that everyone he knew and respected in Warsaw was engaged in a fight for survival, in which defeat would entail annihilation of the world he had grown up in, he felt personally involved.

      He never went near the Russian Embassy, wrote to his parents telling them to sell the diamond ring he had been given by Tsar Alexander, acquired shirt studs with Polish eagles on them, and brandished handkerchiefs embroidered with Polish motifs. He consorted with other Poles, mostly young men returning from foreign travel to join the Polish ranks who formed a rowdy element in Vienna, demonstrating their patriotic feelings at every opportunity.

      The Austrian police and Russian agents kept a close watch on their comings and goings, and Chopin’s sympathies were no secret to them. In consequence he never met ‘the cream of Viennese society’. In fact, during his eight-month sojourn in the city he did not once play at an aristocratic gathering; all the Lichnowskys and Schwarzenbergs who were so kind to him on his previous visit do not figure in his life at all during this one. No more is heard, either, of Dr Malfatti’s promises to arrange an appearance at court. Even Countess Rzewuska was on the side of law and order – not surprisingly, considering her past. At the age of four she had been torn from the arms of her mother, the beautiful twenty-four-year-old Princess Rozalia Lubomirska, who was pushed into a tumbril and sent to the guillotine in Paris during the Terror.

      Chopin could not afford to keep up the spacious apartment on his own, so he sublet it to an English family, thereby making a profit, and moved up one floor in the same building. The new apartment was no garret, as Chopin hastened to assure his parents: his room was large, with three windows and handsome mirrors. It contained only a bed, a large table and the piano. It was also quiet, and suited his more subdued mood. ‘How happy I am in this room!’ he wrote to them. ‘Before me I see a roof, beneath me I see pygmies whom I tower above. I am at my happiest when, having played long on Graf’s wonderful piano, I go to bed clutching your letters, and then dream only of you…’¹³

      He was unexpectedly joined by his friend Romuald Hube, who had returned from Italy (the trip on which Chopin had hoped to accompany him) and was stuck in Vienna, having tried and failed to cross the Polish frontier. Hube moved in with him, but the two led independent lives, he studying and arranging the notes he had made on his tour, Chopin ‘always practising on the piano, usually reworking phrases, and sometimes improvising’, in Hube’s words.¹⁴

      Life was pleasant, if a little uneventful. He was woken every morning by ‘an insufferably stupid servant’ with the morning coffee.¹⁵ This was often drunk cold, since his first action on getting out of bed was to sit down at the piano and play, sometimes for an hour or more. His German teacher would call at nine o’clock, followed by other visitors such as Nidecki and Hummel’s son, an artist. At midday Chopin would at last shed his dressing gown and get dressed to go out. After a walk on the Glacis (once part of the city fortifications, now a favoured promenade) with one or other of his friends, he would either go to lunch at someone’s house or accompany friends to one of the eating houses frequented by students, and thence to one of the more fashionable coffee houses. The afternoon, or what was left of it, was spent paying calls, and at dusk he would come home to dress for the evening. There was usually a dinner, soirée or concert of some description for him to attend, but he was always back at his lodgings not later than midnight to ‘play, weep, read, ponder, laugh, go to bed, put out the candle, and dream of home’.¹⁶

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