Tabloid Tuesday: Frederic Chopin

For the next two weeks I will be again featuring a pair of contemporaneous composers: first Frederic Chopin, and next week, Franz Liszt.

Chopin was born in 1810 about 40 miles West of Warsaw, Poland. A few years later, the family relocated to Warsaw where his father taught French. Both of his parents were musicians, so Chopin grew up in a household always filled with joy and music. His mother even taught piano to some of the boys who boarded in the Chopin household.

At only the age of 7, Chopin began to give public concerts and he composed his first two polonaises, neither of which have survived to this day.

The young composer gained popularity as he premiered his new compositions out of his family parlour at the University of Warsaw. Four of the boarders who lived with the Chopin family became very intimate friends of Chopin, two of whom would become part of his Paris milieu when he moved there in 1830 at the age of 20.

Chopin was not a typical musician. He disliked large public concerts, and only gave just over 30 over the course of his lifetime. He much preferred playing in small salons and at his home for friends. He could afford to do this because of the freedom his income from teaching piano and selling his compositions. He attained great critical acclaim within his lifetime, and even received praise from some of the greats, including Robert Schumann.

At the age of 26, Chopin became engaged to 16 year old Maria. However, not long afterwards, the engagement was broken off by Maria’s mother. It has been speculated that the break in the engagement was due to rumors of Chopin’s relations with women such as French author, George Sand.

He collected all of the letters from both Maria and her mother and tied them in a bundle, upon which he wrote in Polish, “my tragedy.”

Two years later, Chopin and Sand became lovers. Originally Chopin had been repulsed by the author when they first met at a party hosted by Liszt’s mistress. He had written of her, “what an unattractive person la Sand is. Is she really a woman?”

This episode is reminiscent of earlier Romantics in the literary and political world, Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin. When this pair first met at ThomasPaine’s house, Godwin was enraged after the dinner claiming that Wollstonecraft was too talkative and never let Paine get a word in edgewise. He had gone to dinner there to hear the great philosopher speak, not this insipid and scandalous woman. Eventually, they ended up marrying and having a daughter, Mary Shelley (the author of Frankenstein and wife of poet Percy Bysshe Shelley) together. (As an aside, don't feel obliged to click on ALL the links to these important English Romantic figures... I'll just leave them there for you along with my ulterior motive.)

But, much like Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin, first impressions for Chopin and Sand turned out to be incorrect.

Also like Wollstonecraft and one of her earlier lovers, Gilbert Imlay (with whom she also had a daughter: Fanny Imlay named for Wollstonecraft's dear departed friend Fanny Blood), this couple received a bad reputation from the public when it was revealed that they were not married while on vacation in Majorca one year for the winter months. The couple was exiled from their situation and forced to spend the winter nearly freezing in a monastery.

The couple eventually broke up after 10 years together. Chopin was shortly afterwards proposed to by Jane Stirling whom he denied because he felt that he was nearing the end of his life.

Chopin had been weak and sickly since he was a young man, and now he knew that he would soon be overtaken. His sister came from Poland to watch over him in his declining health and he was surrounded by a small number of loved ones at his deathbed when he passed away at the age of 39 from tuberculosis.

Just like he requested, upon his death Chopin’s heart was removed from his body, preserved, and sent back to Poland where it remains sealed in a pillar of the Holy Cross Church in Warsaw.