Frederick Chopin

“An angel, fair of face as a tall, sad woman...” This portrait of Chopin, penned by a hand he loved, should stand as the frontispiece of this study. Naïve painters in the Middle...

On the first of October of that same year, Nicolas Chopin was made professor of French at the Warsaw High School, and the whole family moved to the capital. They were immediatel...

When he was asked, after one of his improvisations at the piano, improvisations that were a mixture of brilliance that was always slightly sombre, and of tenderness that was at...

But it was not until the following year that he was to find his voice. One evening at the Opera, he noticed in a small part a young singer with a clear tone, fair hair, and an a...

Titus Woyciechowski rejoined Chopin at Kalisz. Older than he by several years, he was in appearance and character just the opposite of Frederick; a tall strong youth with clear,...

When the stage-coach in which Chopin rode had passed the walls of Paris, the young musician climbed up on the seat beside the driver. He hardly knew where to look, at the monume...

This Radziwill family seems to have had a special influence on the life of Chopin. What beautiful analogies one could draw in comparing this encounter with such another when som...

concert organized by Berlioz in honour of Harriet Smithson, the Irish actress he had just married. On Christmas Day, at the Salle Pleyel, he played, with Liszt at the other pian...

In the summer of 1835, Chopin learned that his parents were going very shortly to Carlsbad to take the cure and he decided on the spot to get there first. The sentiments that bo...

Some six years before this romance in such few words, we glanced at the face of a woman bending over her paper and watched her enthusiastic hand pen these words: “To live, how s...

While Frederick Chopin, in the year 1837, was living out the slow decomposition of his love, George Sand was back at her little Château de Nohant. There she spent long months al...

As a matter of fact, they had agreed to meet at Perpignan, because Chopin’s decent soul stuck at advertising his departure, and at proclaiming his resounding luck. Perhaps, too,...

Nietzsche, on a very dark day, wrote to a friend: “Isn’t it a work of art: to hope?” In landing at Marseilles in the early spring of 1839, Chopin and George Sand built a work of...

It was not only furniture and habits that were held in common in the rue Pigalle, but friends as well. Sharing,—that was the great doctrine of Pierre Leroux, George’s new direct...

In October, 1839, King Louis-Philippe expressed a desire to hear Chopin play, and had him invited with Moschelès, the pianist, to Saint-Cloud. Count de Perthuis received the two...

It seems that it was about 1842 that life for Chopin began to lower its tone. For whom should he cultivate even the will to get well, now that love was no longer ahead, but behi...

There was a great deal of sickness in Paris. Grzymala had just passed seventeen days without sleeping; Delacroix, more ill than ever, dragged himself nevertheless to the Luxembo...

For twenty years Chopin had been playing hide-and-seek with revolutions. He had left Warsaw a few weeks before that of 1830. His projected trip to Italy in the spring of 1831 ha...

The _Barcarolle_ is that of 1846 (op. 60). The _Berceuse_ (op. 57) dates from 1845. As for the _Nocturne_ and the _Etude_ that were announced, one can only guess. The _Sonata fo...

“If you can, come. I am ill, and no doctor can help me as you can. If you need money, borrow it; when I am better I can easily make it and return it to whoever lends it to you,...

“Mother Louise and daughter Louise” hurried to him at once. Calasante accompanied them. Chopin would have greatly liked to see again the friend of his youth, Titus, who had just...

The death of an artist is the moment of his transfiguration. There are many who were thought great, whose work nevertheless returns at once to the dust. For others, on the contr...