Chopin. Adam Zamoyski

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СКАЧАТЬ ‘That is something one never forgets!’⁴ As he learnt more about the theory of music, he developed a greater respect for Haydn, whom he valued for his ‘experience’, and for Mozart, who became his God. The only fashionable music Chopin was enthusiastic about was that of the Italian school. Elsner, who disliked it, steered him towards the music of Hummel, Ignaz Moscheles and the Irishman John Field – hardly exponents of the Romantic movement.⁵

      Chopin’s attitude to the world was far removed from that of the typical Romantic. As he entered his eighteenth year he had his first close experience of death, when his fourteen-year-old sister Emilia died of consumption before his eyes. He was profoundly shaken. Where most of his peers would have poured out their grief and indulged their emotions, he did not wallow in his pain – he locked it away in a compartment of his mind where he could revisit it privately.

      Soon after Emilia’s death the family moved house, to an apartment in one of the wings of the Krasiński Palace, just across the road from the Lycée. Nicolas Chopin had acquired a third job, teaching at the advanced military school of artillery and engineering, presided over by the revered General Józef Sowiński, who had lost a leg fighting for Napoleon at the battle of Borodino in 1812, and who became a friend of the family. Nicolas had saved enough to be able to do without boarders, which was fortunate as the other two Chopin girls were growing into young ladies, and the presence of young men in the home might have presented a hazard. The new apartment contained a drawing room with a fine view over the most handsome street in Warsaw, and, being so close to his previous home, the move did not affect Chopin’s way of life. On the other hand, it was quieter, and the family now enjoyed greater privacy. Chopin had his own ‘refuge’, a small room at the top of a rickety staircase which accommodated his piano.

      This was just as well; that year of 1827 was also something of a landmark in Chopin’s musical development, for it was now that he made his first attempts at writing for orchestra. The most interesting of these are the set of Variations for Piano and Orchestra on the theme of the La ci darem la mano duet from Mozart’s Don Giovanni, which, as the Gazette Musicale de Paris asserted more than seven years later, ‘announce the superiority of Chopin’s nature with as much precision as felicity’.⁶

      Chopin’s ability to write for the orchestra has often been questioned, and unfavourably compared with Beethoven’s magnificent interweaving of piano and orchestra. But to do this is to miss the point. Chopin used the orchestra essentially as an accompaniment to the piano, which it was meant to support rather than overshadow or outshine, and it is the piano that he used to develop his musical ideas.

      He was growing increasingly sure of himself and the direction in which he was moving, and he was further encouraged by Hummel, who arrived in Warsaw to give a couple of concerts in April 1828, and who appears to have been impressed by Chopin. This first mark of recognition from an eminent musical personage was probably what prompted him to send copies of the Variations and his first Piano Sonata to publishers in Leipzig and Vienna.⁷

      Chopin was now working on a new Rondo for two pianos, and this absorbed all his attention that summer, spent in a fine country house at Sanniki with his friends the Pruszak family. He was back in Warsaw at the end of August, just in time to see Rossini’s Barber of Seville and his latest opera, Otello, but the production was so bad that he longed to strangle the whole cast. His joy was all the greater when, a few days later, the chance of visiting a foreign capital presented itself.

      A colleague of Nicolas Chopin, Professor Feliks Jarocki, had been invited to take part in a congress of naturalists and physicians organised in Berlin by Alexander von Humboldt. Since all his expenses were being paid, he offered to take young Chopin with him. The boy was overjoyed at the prospect of hearing renowned orchestras and choirs, and the chance to meet composers such as Gasparo Spontini who made up the city’s musical establishment. He had one acquaintance in Berlin who he felt sure would help him gain admittance to this charmed world: Prince Antoni Radziwiłł, a Polish aristocrat married to one of the Prussian royal princesses and the King’s Lieutenant in what was then the Duchy of Posen, the part of Poland ruled by Prussia. He was a distinguished amateur musician, and had met Chopin on one of his visits to Warsaw.

      Berlin turned out to be something of a disappointment. After five days in a mail coach, the two travellers arrived in mid-September. Chopin’s first impressions were unfavourable: he found the streets formal and empty, and thought the women ugly. He had to dine at the hotel with Jarocki and the other visiting scientists, whom he found uninteresting and slightly ridiculous. Prince Radziwiłł was absent, and on the one occasion when Chopin did find himself in the same room with Spontini, Zelter and Mendelssohn he was too shy to introduce himself. He visited the local piano-makers, but there were no instruments in stock for him to try. He saw operas by Spontini, Onslow, Cimarosa and Weber, but was disappointed by the productions and the standard of the singing. The only thing that ‘came close to the ideal I have of great music’ was Handel’s Ode on St Cecilia’s Day, which he heard at the Singakademie.⁸ It was the first time he had been struck by Handel’s work, and his respect for that composer was to grow steadily. Years later, when Mendelssohn showed him a new edition of Handel’s work, Chopin would experience ‘a truly child-like joy’.⁹

      The congress ended with a banquet during which the venerable professors dropped their inhibitions. They stuffed themselves in a way Chopin found hard to believe, and drank a good deal as well, with much clinking of glasses. When Zelter and his choir intoned a ceremonial cantata they all joined in, waving their arms and bawling their heads off. Chopin was quite happy to climb into a coach bound for Warsaw the next day. But, disappointing as it had been, the Berlin trip only whetted his appetite for foreign travel, and as he began his final year at the Conservatoire he dreamt of going further afield.

      Chopin was now almost nineteen years old. He had grown into an interesting-looking young man, physically somewhat puny, but with a refined countenance and manner. This, as well as his sociability and his musical gift, meant that he was much sought after. He hated missing out on any gathering, and the consequent round of tea parties, dinners, soirées and balls exhausted him. ‘You know how awful it is when all you want to do is go to bed, and suddenly everyone wants you to start improvising,’ he complained, somewhat disingenuously, to a friend; he always complied, and, having sat down at the piano, would improvise for hours.¹⁰

      This was the year devoted to practical exercises, but Elsner did not demand any of the regulation masses or oratorios from Chopin. The best-known compositions from this period are the Rondo on Cracovian Themes (op.14), also known as the Krakowiak, and the Fantasia on Polish Airs (op.13), both for piano and orchestra. Although some years later a Parisian critic was to hail the Fantasia as a landmark in musical history, it is hard to see it as one now.¹¹ These pieces are notable for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the intricacy and beauty of the piano parts. But they belong in the tradition of the brilliant style, in which surface decoration is more important than underlying structure. A greater degree of daring and originality obtains here than in any of Chopin’s previous or indeed later writing for orchestra, and there are passages in which the latter assumes an active role and ceases to be merely an accompaniment for the piano. But perhaps the most interesting aspect of these and other works from the same period is the way in which Chopin handles the folk element in them.

      Following his exposure to authentic folk music in 1824, Chopin had started collecting country tunes and using them in pieces for the piano. This was accepted practice, and many musicians either transcribed folk songs for various instruments or wrote variations СКАЧАТЬ