Chopin: The Man and His Music | Page 8

least
not to the former. He pretended gayety and had great hopes for the
future, for he was living entirely on means supplied him by his father.
News of Constantia gladdened him, and he decided to go to Italy, but
the revolution early in 1831 decided him for France. Dr. Malfatti was
good to him and cheered him, and he managed to accomplish much
social visiting. The letters of this period are most interesting. He heard
Sarah Heinefetter sing, and listened to Thaiberg's playing of a
movement of his own concerto. Thalberg was three years younger than

Chopin and already famous. Chopin did not admire him: "Thalberg
plays famously, but he is not my man...He plays forte and piano with
the pedals but not with the hand; takes tenths as easily as I do octaves,
and wears studs with diamonds."
Thalberg was not only too much of a technician for Chopin, but he was
also a Jew and a successful one. In consequence, both poet and Pole
revolted.
Hummel called on Frederic, but we hear nothing of his opinion of the
elder man and his music; this is all the more strange, considering how
much Chopin built on Hummel's style. Perhaps that is the cause of the
silence, just as Wagner's dislike for Meyerbeer was the result of his
obligations to the composer of "Les Huguenots." He heard Aloys
Schmitt play, and uttered the very Heinesque witticism that "he is
already over forty years old, and composes eighty years old music."
This in a letter to Elsner. Our Chopin could be amazingly sarcastic on
occasion. He knew Slavik the violin virtuoso, Merk the 'cellist, and all
the music publishers. At a concert given by Madame Garzia-Vestris, in
April, 1831, he appeared, and in June gave a concert of his own, at
which he must have played the E minor concerto, because of a passing
mention in a musical paper. He studied much, and it was July 20, 1831,
before he left Vienna after a second, last, and thoroughly discouraging
visit.
Chopin got a passport vised for London, "passant par Paris &.
Londres," and had permission from the Russian Ambassador to go as
far as Munich. Then the cholera gave him some bother, as he had to
secure a clean bill of health, but he finally got away. The romantic story
of "I am only passing through Paris," which he is reported to have said
in after years, has been ruthlessly shorn of its sentiment. At Munich he
played his second concerto and pleased greatly. But he did not remain
in the Bavarian capital, hastening to Stuttgart, where he heard of the
capture of Warsaw by the Russians, September 8, 1831. This news, it is
said, was the genesis of the great C minor etude in opus 10, sometimes
called the "Revolutionary." Chopin exclaimed in a letter dated
December 16, 1831, "All this caused me much pain--who could have
foreseen it!" and in another letter he wrote, "How glad my mamma will
be that I did not go back." Count Tarnowski in his recollections prints
some extracts from a diary said to have been kept by Chopin.

According to this his agitation must have been terrible. Here are several
examples:
"My poor father! My dearest ones! Perhaps they hunger? Maybe he has
not anything to buy bread for mother? Perhaps my sisters have fallen
victims to the fury of the Muscovite soldiers? Oh, father, is this the
consolation of your old age? Mother, poor suffering mother, is it for
this you outlived your daughter?"
"And I here unoccupied! And I am here with empty hands! Sometimes
I groan, suffer and despair at the piano! O God, move the earth, that it
may swallow the humanity of this century! May the most cruel fortune
fall upon the French, that they did not come to our aid." All this sounds
a trifle melodramatic and quite unlike Chopin.
He did not go to Warsaw, but started for France at the end of
September, arriving early in October, 1831. Poland's downfall had
aroused him from his apathy, even if it sent him further from her. This
journey, as Liszt declares, "settled his fate." Chopin was twenty-two
years old when he reached Paris.

II. PARIS:--IN THE MAELSTROM

Here, according to Niecks, is the itinerary of Chopin's life for the next
eighteen years: In Paris, 27 Boulevard Poisonniere, to 5 and 38
Chaussee d'Antin, to Aix-la-Chapelle, Carlsbad, Leipzig, Heidelberg,
Marienbad, and London, to Majorca, to 5 Rue Tronchet, 16 Rue Pigalle,
and 9 Square d'Orleans, to England and Scotland, to 9 Square d'Orleans
once more, Rue Chaillot and 12 Place Vendeme, and then--Pere la
Chaise, the last resting-place. It may be seen that Chopin was a restless,
though not roving nature. In later years his inability to