As long as we live and keep in touch
with the works of the great composers we shall love
more and more the music of Frederic Francois Chopin.
It will be pleasant to learn from
time to time something about him. We should like,
for example, to know:
In what country he was born.
In what places he lived.
What kinds of music he composed.
Perhaps we may begin by learning that
he was born in a little village in Poland not far
from the City of Warsaw, beside which flows the famous
river Vistula.
Chopin’s father, a Frenchman
by birth, was a schoolmaster. (So was the father of
Franz Schubert, you remember.) The boy’s mother
was a native of Poland. From the time when he
was a little boy, the future great composer loved
his mother’s country and the people just as much
as he loved the dear mother herself.
The father knew that his little son
was musical, so he took the greatest care to have
him taught by the best teachers. He watched over
him quite as Leopold Mozart watched the progress of
Wolferl; and as Mendelssohn’s mother guided
Felix and Fanny in their first music lessons.
Mendelssohn and Chopin were indeed
very nearly the same age. Mendelssohn was born
in February, 1809, and Chopin was born the first of
March in the same year. Let us keep their names
together in our memory for the future.
Mendelssohn died two years before
the death of Chopin. Both of these great composers
kept busily at their work until the last year of their
lives although neither of them was very strong.
Chopin was only nine years old when
he first played in public. It is said that he
created quite a sensation. But like all those
who know that talent is something to be worked for,
he did not stop studying just because his playing
was pleasing to other people. In fact, it was
just on that account that he began to work all the
harder.
Then there came a great change.
He left his home and went to Paris, where he lived
for the rest of his life. Even though he was but
a youth of twenty-one, he had already composed two
concertos for the piano. These he had played
in public to the great delight of all who heard him,
but especially of his countrymen.
You see, Chopin’s going to Paris
was a strange journey. The boy was leaving his
mother’s country and going to the land of his
father. Like Joseph Haydn, who went away at the
age of six, Chopin never lived at home again.
But he did not reach Paris a stranger.
The world of music had heard of him and some of its
great ones welcomed his coming.
Let us always think of these men who
knew each other well as a family.
Liszt was a great pianist.
Berlioz was a famous composer for the orchestra.
Meyerbeer was best known as an operatic composer.
Heine was a great poet whose verses
were set to music by many song composers.
Berlioz was the only one of the group who was born
in France.
During his boyhood Chopin played much
in public, journeying to some of the great cities
of Europe, among them Vienna, Berlin, and Munich.
Therefore, when he played in Paris
it was as an artist. Here, as at home, he charmed
everyone by the beauty of his music and the loveliness
of his touch.
He possessed the true piano hand.
It was somewhat narrow. The fingers were long
and tapering. It seemed at once strong and vigorous,
yet delicate and sensitive.
Indeed, Chopin’s music is of
just these qualities. It is strong in its nobility,
delicate in its sentiment.
One would think that to arrive in
Paris and to be welcomed by the great ones would make
everything easy.
But it was not so for Chopin.
Only a few people were present at his first concert
and for quite a while he had no pupils.
Indeed, it was all so discouraging
that he made up his mind to return to his beloved
Poland.
His friend, Franz Liszt, begged him
not to go. Others, too, urged him to stay in
Paris. One friend, who met him in the street as
he was about to leave, advised him as did the others
to stay in Paris.
But no, he was going home.
“But,” said this friend,
“first come with me to visit a true lover of
music.”
So Chopin went with him to the house
of Baron Rothschild. Here he played, so charming
the company with his music that ever so many of them
begged him for the privilege of lessons.
And so, all in a moment, his troubles blew away, as troubles
often do.
Do you wonder what kind of a man the
little Polish boy became after he found success in
Paris?
One person said about him:
“Chopin talks little, and rarely
about music. But when he does speak of music
one must listen to him.”
Another said:
“He is reserved and quiet, especially
among strangers, but among his friends he is witty
and full of sly humor.”
But his thoughts were not for words,
they did not weave the pretty phrases of idle talk.
They were busy making nocturnes, waltzes, mazurkas,
impromptus and many other kinds of music that
we shall learn to love as we hear them.
Music was Chopin’s true speech.
The world soon learned to love what he said in it.
And it always will love it.
There was neither telephone nor telegraph
in those days. Yet it did not take long for another
composer, Robert Schumann, who lived far away, in
Germany, to learn that a genius by the name of Chopin
lived in Paris.
The post carried to Schumann a copy
of Chopin’s first printed music. This was
a theme taken from Mozart’s Opera Don Juan,
which Chopin arranged with variations for the piano.
When Schumann played it to his friends
everyone exclaimed: “How beautiful it is!”
Then someone said:
“Chopin I never heard the name.
Who can he be?”
So we see that his thoughts printed
as music flew like winged messengers to carry news
of him to others in distant places. And people
not merely asked: “Who can he be?”
but they found out who he was, and kept passing the
news on and on until finally it has reached us!
Chopin was never a robust person,
though he was well and busy most of his life.
But in the last years he suffered much from illness.
This led him to travel to many places from Paris for
the good of his health.
Chopin was devoted to Poland, the
beloved land of his birth. Here is a picture
of the great composer who has fallen asleep at the
keyboard and is dreaming of a glorious future for
Poland.
Once he went to England and to Scotland.
He played in London and was highly praised for the
beautiful way he performed his own music.
While it is true that Chopin was ill
in the last years of his life, we must notice that
he kept right on with his work. He played and
composed just as he always had done. Chopin died
in Paris, October 17, 1849, just two years after Mendelssohn,
who died in 1847.
Many men, who would have given up
everything had they not been brave, have worked right
on through illness.
Milton was blind, but he dictated
Paradise Lost to his daughter.
Beethoven was deaf, but he did not give up composing.
Robert Louis Stevenson, who wrote
the lovely Child’s Garden of Verses,
was ill all his life, but he kept on writing.
Grieg was probably never well all his life, but he
never gave up.
Have you ever thought that the beautiful
ideas of great men sometimes outlive famous cities?
What a lot of cities and countries
we must visit in our thoughts, to see the great composers
at their work. For example
1. Grieg belongs to Norway.
2. Chopin to Warsaw and Paris.
3. Schubert to Vienna in Austria.
4. Bach to Thuringia in Saxony, Germany.
5. Handel to Germany and England.
6. Haydn to Hungary.
7. Beethoven to Germany and Vienna.
(He was born at Bonn on the Rhine.)
8. Schumann to Germany.
9. Mendelssohn to Hamburg and Berlin, Germany.
10. Mozart to Salzburg and Vienna in Austria.
It will be a pleasant thing for us
to see if we can arrange these names in order, beginning
with the oldest, Bach and Handel, and coming down to
the latest. By doing such things, time and time
again, they begin to stick in the memory.