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Frederic Chopin: Paris Chopin
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Chopin recognized that he did not have the stamina to compete in public against such virtuosos as Liszt and Sigismund Thalberg. So long as he was able to earn enough by teaching, Chopin preferred to forgo concertizing for composition. His musical tastes are public knowledge. Friendly with Berlioz and Mendelssohn, he was not impressed with their music. Nor, for that matter, did he appreciate Robert Schumann's work, despite the latter's warm welcome written for the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik when Chopin first arrived in Paris. Schumann introduced Clara Wieck to Chopin's work, and eventually her performances of Chopin's pieces made favorable impressions on innumerable audiences.
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Although it did not seem advisable to give concerts in Vienna, yet Chopin made many pleasant acquaintances among the musicians and prominent people, and was constantly invited. He had planned to go from Vienna to either Italy or France. As there were political troubles in the former country, he decided to start for Paris, stopping on the way at a few places. In Munich he gave a morning concert, in the hall of the Philharmonie, which won him renown. From Munich he proceeded to Stuttgart, and during a short stay there, heard the sad news of the taking of Warsaw by the Russians. This event, it is said, inspired him to compose the C minor Etude, Op. 10, No. 12.
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Chopin's reputation as a composer was principally that of a miniaturist who achieved great melodic and harmonic richness within brief and simple musical forms. Once firmly established in Paris... Chopin began to experiment with more complex musical structures, most notably in his scherzos, ballades, and polonaises. As titles for independent piano pieces, scherzo (Italian for "joke") and ballade (usually a lyrical vocal work) had no specific meaning for nineteenth-century audiences, so Chopin was free to define these genres himself. His scherzos adhere loosely to a ternary (A-B-A) structure, while the ballades use principles of sonata form, but he turned both genres into virtual tone poems that explore a remarkably wide expressive range. Chopin wrote many simple polonaises in his youth, but he avoided the genre after he left Poland. When he turned to the polonaise again in the mid-1830s, he invested it with a heroic scale and character far removed from its dance origins.
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Ironically, Chopin didn't care much for the music of his illustrious contemporaries even though many were friends or acquaintances. Schumann, who had been extravagant in his praise of Chopin in introducing him to Germany, was too idiosyncratic. Berlioz and Mendelssohn didn't interest him and Liszt was often vulgar. Chopin's heroes were Bach and Mozart. This sense of classical proportion and elegance combined with a love of bel canto operatic singing and his Polish heritage form Chopin's basic aesthetic. The Polish expatriate who spent most of his creative life in Paris is the first nationalist composer.
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The first year in Paris Chopin played at a number of concerts and functions, with ever increasing success. But in spite of the artistic success, his finances ran low, and he began to consider a trip to America. Fortunately he met Prince Radziwill on the street at this time, and was persuaded to play at a Rothschild soirée in the evening. From this moment, it is said, his prospects brightened, and he secured a number of wealthy patrons as pupils. Whether this be true or not, he came to know many titled personages. One has only to turn the pages of his music to note how many pieces are dedicated to Princess This and Countess That.
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Chopin was born in the village of Żelazowa Wola, in the Duchy of Warsaw, to a Polish mother and French-expatriate father and came to be regarded as a child-prodigy pianist. In November 1830, at the age of twenty, Chopin went abroad. After the subsequent outbreak, and in 1831 the suppression, of the Polish November 1830 Uprising, he never returned to Poland, instead becoming one of the many members of the Polish Great Emigration. In Paris he made a comfortable living as composer and piano teacher, while giving few public performances, used the French version of his given name, Frédéric, and became a French citizen like his father[4][5][6]. From 1837 to 1847 he conducted a turbulent relationship, with the French writer George Sand (Aurore Dudevant). Always in frail health, at 39 in Paris he succumbed to pulmonary tuberculosis.[7]
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Paris Chopin