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The Stop
Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849), was a Polish/French Romantic composer and pianist, best known for his highly influential solo pieces for piano and his piano concerti. His ‘original and sensitive’ understanding of the instrument enabled him to ‘exploit all the resources of the piano of his day.’ Chopin ‘understood as no one before him the true nature of the piano as an expressive instrument,’ and as such he wrote music which is inextricable from both the ‘instrument for which it was conceived and which cannot be imagined apart from it.’ 1
Chopin’s father, Nicholas, was a French émigré who tutored the children of aristocratic families in Warsaw. As a young child, Chopin was exposed to music by his mother and in combination with his father’s introduction of him to ‘cultured Warsaw society,’ soon began playing the piano and composing tunes.2 Recognising his prodigious talent from an early age, Chopin’s family arranged for private lessons and enrolled him in the Warsaw Conservatory of Music where he studied for three years under the Polish composer Josef Elsner. Believing his student’s unique ‘imagination must never be checked by purely academic demands,’ Elsner put Chopin through intense instruction in both harmony and composition while allowing him to develop a ‘high degree of individuality’ in his playing.
To give their son a ‘broader musical experience’ than Warsaw could provide, in 1829 Chopin’s parents sent him to Vienna where audiences were ‘enthralled with his highly technical yet poetically expressive performances.’ Over the next three years, he toured and performed in Poland, Germany and Austria, before settling in Paris in 1832 - then the centre of European culture. Chopin befriended many young composers of the day - including Liszt, Berlioz and Mendelssohn - and his talent and reputation meant he soon achieved a level of success and financial security which allowed him to focus on the ‘main business of his life - teaching and composing,’ and no longer needed to perform publicly.3
As a young man, Chopin had many love affairs - at one time was engaged - but none of these relationships lasted more than a year. However, in 1836 he met the ‘free-living’ French novelist Amantine-Lucile-Aurore Dudevant, née Dupin (better known by her pen name, George Sand), and began a ten-year affair with her in the summer of 1838. That autumn, they and her two children travelled to a villa in Majorca, where they ‘were idyllically happy’ until the harsh winter and Chopin’s subsequent infection with tuberculosis. The following May they moved to Sand’s country home in Nohant to start a life that for the next seven years would be his ‘happiest and most productive.’ During this time, he returned to private teaching and produced a series of masterpieces. The demand for Chopin’s new work continued to grow, and as he had become ‘increasingly shrewd in his dealings with publishers,’ he was able to generate an income which allowed him to live an elegant lifestyle.
In the mid-1840s, Chopin’s relationship with Sand began to deteriorate alongside his worsening health problems - both exacerbated by his increasingly ‘mercurial behaviour’ which some scholars believe to have been caused by an undiagnosed form of epilepsy. With Sand’s ‘unflattering portrayal’ of their relationship in her novel Lucrezia Floriani (1846), the affair came to an end. Though both parties desired reconciliation, their pride prevented this from happening and it is at this point that Chopin appears to have ‘given up his struggle with ill health.’ A well-received but punishing tour of England and Scotland led to a rapid deterioration of his health, and his final public concert appearance was on 16 November 1848 at the Guildhall in London where he played to benefit a charity supporting Polish refugees. He returned to Paris, where he died eleven months later at the age of 39. Chopin’s body was buried at Père Lachaise cemetery, but his heart was interred at the Church of the Holy Cross in Warsaw, near the place of his birth.
The Detour
Today’s Detour is to Curious Clocks and Watches Through Time (16:03). Part of the British Museum’s Curator’s Corner and hosted by horologist Oliver Cooke, it is a fascinating dive into the depths of the museum’s clock collection in which six highly unusual - and amazing - clocks are investigated. One might say watching this is worth your time.4
The Recommendation
Today’s Recommendation is Harold C. Schonberg’s5 The Lives of the Great Composers (3rd Edition) (1998). Though connected to today’s Stop, it’s an unusual recommendation in that I’ve not read this particular version. I read the first edition when I was in middle school,6 but not this one. I have no doubt that it's just as good or even better - and am pleased it remains highly recommended as an introduction to these people's lives, making them human and present. Give it a try!
From the back cover: This invaluable history of classical music, which traces the consecutive line from Monteverdi to the tonalists of the 1990s, not only unravels the evolutionary patterns of musical development, but reveals the composers themselves - their lives and states of mind, their private defeats and public triumphs.
From Schumann, who believed angels were dictating his harmonies, to J. S. Bach who had a cantata deadline to meet every Sunday in order to feed nine children, we can discern the various sources of inspiration. We witness the ‘musical duel’ of Mozart versus Clementi, Mendelssohn’s ‘at home’ with Victoria and Albert, Elgar nearly ruining his career with ‘Pomp and Circumstance’ and Delius, for all his international dash, never losing his Bradford accent.
For this newly designed third edition, Schonberg has extended the book’s coverage and made many changes and additions reflecting the wide range of musicological findings of the past fifteen years. What has not been changed is the character of the book, which remains an object of delight to all music lovers and a unique source of biographical detail which is always revealing and relevant.
Remember: You can always buy The Lives of the Great Composers from Amazon, but you can also get it from your local new or used bookstores - or (like my 14-year-old self) even check it out from the library. And those options are better for everyone.
The Sounds
Today’s playlist, befitting the Stop, is composed of five brilliant Chopin tracks providing a beautiful 21 minutes of musical escape: ‘Nocturne No. 20 in C-Sharp Minor, Op. Posth.,’ ‘Nocturne No. 2 in E-flat Major, Op. 9 No. 2,’ ‘Piano Trio in G Minor, Op. 8: IV. Finale. Allegretto,’ ‘Waltz Op. 64, No. 1 in D-Flat Major ‘Minute Waltz’, and ‘Fantasy on Polish Airs, Op. 13: Largo non troppo.’ Enjoy.
The Thought
Today’s Thought is from one of my favourite philosophers, Søren Kierkegaard:7
‘People understand me so poorly that they don’t even understand my complaint about them not understanding me.’
If you have a thought on this Thought - or any part of today’s issue - please leave a comment below:
And that’s the end of this Stop - I hope you enjoyed the diversion!
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Until the next Stop …
Today’s Stop is in response to a question my 16 y/o daughter asked on the school run a couple of weeks ago: name three tunes by Chopin. And, though I’ve listened to a bit of Chopin and even tried to play a few of his pieces, I was surprised that I couldn’t say anything more than that I knew he’d written some nocturnes and études - but nothing specific. So, I decided to look into him - and it turns out my lack of titles is fine, because Chopin didn’t like names for his compositions, instead preferring to use numbers and sequences. He’s a fascinating individual, not least because he produced more in 39 years than, well, pretty much anyone else. Hmm. Sources for today’s Stop include: Chopin (Britannica) and Chopin (biography.com).
Chopin first published a composition at seven and at eight he gave his first public performance at a charity concert. When he was 11, he performed for the Russian Tsar Alexander I who was visiting Warsaw.
By this point, Chopin detested concert performances, having developed an ‘innate repugnance’ to this activity.
I’d apologise for the puns, but … that would defeat the purpose of puns. Discuss.
Schonberg was the Pulitzer Prize-winning chief music critic of the New York Times from 1960-1980. For more about him, his obituary is a great resource: Harold Schonberg Obituary (NYT).
Up to the end of the 8th grade, I worked four hours a week at the local library, usually shelving books but occasionally working my way through the stacks in the tedium that is shelf-reading. However, this was OK because there were books to be found. Books I would have never encountered had I’d not been working my way through the 300s, 600s or 921s. For a reader who would read anything, it was like working in a candy shop. Better, even - because that candy lasts to this day.
If you’re a long-time Bus Rider, you know I really like Kierkegaard. I’ve used a couple of his quotes as Thoughts, but he’s also the subject of a previous Stop: The Bus (1.17) 2 June 2022.
Never apologize for a pun, or even multiple puns. It defeats the purpose. Enjoy the cringing of others, even join in, but don’t apologize.