This thread is dedicated to the most commonly asked and/or interesting facts about Chopin.

Was Chopin Polish or French?

Chopin was born in Poland, just a few miles from Warsaw. His mother was Polish and his father French. However, as strange as it may sound, Chopin's father spoke only Polish while at home. It is often thought that he wanted to rid himself of all things French.

Chopin considered himself Polish. Afterall, he spent his early childhood and teens living there. This is quite evident in the mazurkas and polonaises he wrote. These "dances" were definitely Polish in origin. But Chopin expanded on them and created some of his very best works when he composed them. The mazurkas, especially, are among the shining jewels he left us.

Why did Chopin composed only for the piano?

This is probably the most frequently asked question about him. First of all, it is wrong. While it is true that the majority of Chopin's works are for the piano, he did compose 2 piano concertos, songs, music for the violin, cello, and flute. But the piano was Chopin's first love. He started playing when he was just four and he developed such insight into the piano and the music it was capable of producing. He thought of it as an orchestra, and under his hands he proved to us that it was, indeed, able to express all possible human emotions.

Was Chopin gay?

Again, this question almost always comes up when mentioning Chopin. As far as we can tell from various sources (first hand accounts, his letters, experts who have delved deeply into his life, he was not.

But it is easy to come to this conclusion. Chopin was extremely particular about the way he dressed and the way he conducted himself. He learned his elegant manners and such from the aristocratic boys with whom he was raised. Chopin's father, then a teacher, boarded children of the most afluent families in the region. Chopin felt, as an artist, that he was obliged to dress and act with eloquence and propriety.

Perhaps the reason why some may have thought him a homosexual could be found in his letters. He had several childhood friends to whom he wrote. He often used such phrases in these letters as "I kiss your lips," "you are my only love," and such. What most people do not understand is in those days and in the Polish culture, it was quite common for males to hug each other and even kiss each other on the lips. It was considered a form of respect and admiration.

Chopin, himself, was quite reserved and especially shy around the ladies. He had his heart broken twice when he was just a very young man. And some believe that he may have retreated from any real romantic attachments. His liaison with George Sand is a story in itself and would require its own posting.

Again, there is no real proof to support this allegation.

Hi Kathleen, what a good idea to add a 'FAQ' section. I would add to your remarks about his composing mainly for piano, that I think he also liked to be able to perform and be in control of the music he wrote. When he wrote for orchestra, for example, it pained him when the orchestra didn't rehearse enough so that the performance wasn't as it should have been. At least with the piano he could perform his own music as it was meant to sound. (If only we could have heard him!)

I would have loved to be able to be in the room that time he played his own concerto with his brilliant young pupil Carl Filtsch, Carl taking the normal piano part and Chopin playing the orchestral part.

As for his sexual orientation - I agree that effusive greetings which sound over-the-top to us today were the norm in Poland in the C19th, so that can be misleading for modern readers. However I also believe that all human beings are on a gradient somewhere between 'total gayness' and 'total straightness' and Chopin might not necessarily have been right at the latter end of the scale. Certainly he attracted admirers (NOT lovers) of both sexes.

Thank you, MaryRose. It is always great to hear from you for your knowledge of Chopin is overwhelming.

Your statement about Chopin wanting to be in control just never came to my mind, but I agree that it is an important reason why Chopin choose the piano. Would we call him a bit of a "control freak," which is such a stupid term? Who doesn't want to be in control of his/her own life. I know I do, but complete control is not possible.

Please, please add your own FAQ's. You know so much, and this is the place to share it.

Here's another FAQ.

There is always a certain mystic associated with Chopin as opposed to some other composers. Why is this so?

Very good question, and one that would take several paragraphs and many opinions to answer adequately.

First of all, Chopin had, what so many consider, an almost perfect childhood. He loved to run and play in the countryside around his home with his friends. He was, usually, the leader in many of their escapades. He and his sisters (3) often put on plays and wrote stories. He and his sister, Emilia, even published a newspaper of sorts, which often expressed both their views on current events. Chopin was full of fun and liked to play the comic. He was an excellent mimic and could draw caricatures that were often hiliarious. All in all, his genius was apparent in many ways, even as a youngster. The fact that his youngest sister, Emilia, died at the age of 14, was perhaps the first taste of real sadness that Chopin encountered.

How did Chopin turn from a joyful and full-of-life child into such a reserved, private and often depressed man?


I am going to leave it here at this point because I would love to have some opinions from others on this subject.

Kathleen

Yes, why is there a special mystique around Chopin, as compared to most of his composer colleagues? I wonder every time I visit PW. I keep expecting to run into a pack of rabid Beethoven fanatics or something, but so far, nothing like that has happened. I know we’ve all explored this question before, but we’ve never found a satisfying answer. Another shot at it:

Perhaps it’s because of the intensely personal quality of his music, the way it involves each of us as individuals, bringing us into direct contact with his inner world.

Perhaps it has something to do with the mysteriousness of the man, the many contradictions which make him so difficult to define or to pin down. For example, how could someone write such sensual music, yet remain so reserved and tightly controlled? And as Kathleen asked, how could someone with such a well-developed sense of humor end up so dark and depressive?

Well, there are some obvious factors in that. He certainly had a number of major losses, in addition to the death of his sister. The fall of Poland in 1830 seems to have greatly affected him. His inability to return to his family and friends— the loss of nearly everyone important to him —was a huge blow. (Mme Sand wrote that he could have returned to Poland at any time, but this was not as simple a matter as she made it sound.) He was disappointed in love a number of times, and never attained the kind of relationship he wished for.

And, of course, he got really, really sick. It’s a lot harder to keep a cheery outlook when you can’t breathe and are in constant pain, when the slightest activity costs such a great effort. It may not be necessary to look much further than this.

But I have another answer, which is that Chopin never really lost his sense of joy and fun, that it just got pushed into the background for a while, and that he is a much more light-hearted being than we might expect from reading about him. Those who have known him in the 20th and 21st centuries can attest to this. I know that he definitely had a dark side—and that without it, he could not have produced music of such lasting value and impact— but it appears that a good deal of the view of him as sad and morose is nothing more than Romantic mythology. It’s not who he is at the core.

(My FAQ: Why am not tired of writing about this guy yet??)

Elene

I forgot a couple of other important possibilities concerning why our friend's disposition may have darkened as his life progressed:

His perfectionism meant that there was always a disconnect between his ideals, his sky-high standards for himself and others, and the world of reality that confronted him. This was a persistent source of distress.

His capacity for empathy and compassion caused him to feel the pain of others acutely.

DANG, I wish we could edit for more than a few hours after a post! I've left typos, too! (Did I just mention something about perfectionism causing distress?)

Elene

I hate the editing restrictions too, Elene. But typos are allowed as we are all human beings I am sure even Chopin might have made typos if he had had a computer. He certainly didn't spell as well as you do, and that is something that surprises me about him.

Your reasoning about why Chopin weaves such a unique spell as a person as well as a composer, even nearly two centuries after he lived, is spot-on I think. He was just so human, so personal and individual, and touches our inner core.

I agree that he retained a sense of fun and this is evident even in the letters he wrote near the end of his life, during his unhappy travels around Britain - it must have felt like a second exile. And yes, when one feels even mildly unwell it is a severe damper on any light-heartedness. How much more so when one is struggling to get through each day, gasping for breath and knowing that death hovers at your shoulder.

Chopin probably didn't spell well for the same reason I don't. My immagination allows for quite a few variations in the sound of each word. Since I spell phonetically, I never spell anything quite the same way twice.

Ah, yes, imagination and creativity in spelling! I'm going to think of it that way from now on!

Come to think of it, it's interesting that memory for words and for music don't seem to correspond. I remember spellings with great ease, using visual memory (was a spelling champ in junior high), but can't memorize music to save my life. Chopin had a prodigious musical memory but had a relatively hard time with spelling. (Though he seems to have done pretty
well with language overall.)

Our Fryc went from a language that has logical and consistent, though complicated, spelling to one in which spelling can be brain-twistingly inconsistent, so at least some of his difficulty with spelling in French is not surprising.

However, despite the logic of Polish spelling, I'm having some trouble digesting words that have lots of Zs and Cs and Ys in a row, but fortunately I can take a mental snapshot of them and then look at them in my head and remember them. Most of the time. It's still not real easy!

I wonder what mental process went on that allowed Chopin to memorize music so easily (and what those of you who are like that with memory are experiencing). I suppose the whole structure was so clear to him that it just stayed in his brain. He told someone who asked how he could play so many Bach WTC pieces from memory, "You don't forget a thing like that." Geez, I sure do!

Elene

To further add to the confusion. I have no memory for the correct spelling of words but find it rather easy to play from memory as long as I have the music in front of me. I just sort of glance at it from time to time, but I'm not really "reading" it.

Take the sheet music away, and I am rather lost.

I wonder what thought process is at work here. Probably 75% muscle memory and 25% photographic memory.

Kathleen

It seems we have been a bit distracted; that's OK.

Back to the FAQ's.

How much music did Chopin write and what is considered his greatest work?

Chopin wrote over 300 compositions. Most for the piano, but several for other instruments as well. {See above}

As far as his greatest works, that would be impossible to answer. Certainly his Heroic Polonaise is very popular. Then, his mazurkas are considered remarkable and lovely. But, in my opinion, his etudes stand out as perhaps his greatest achievement. And I would have to include his preludes. According to one expert, Robert Collet, they are the most permanently significant of all his works.

In an interview of pianist Fou T' Song with BBC Radio 3 (during Chopin weekend 5/08), he was asked for his favorites among Chopin's works. He answered that while the mazurkas were the most personal of Chopin's output, his own favorites were the preludes. In fact, he said that he would take the preludes over "all of Wagner".

I would take any of the preludes over all of Wagner.

Though Wagner was of course influenced by Chopin. Chopin bears no responsibility for what Wagner did with the influence, however!

It's hard to believe that those two were actually close contemporaries, but that is the case, with Wagner being just a couple of years younger.

Thinking of Wagner reminds me of a news item I heard yesterday. A group in the Netherlands, the Terran-Klingon Research Ensemble, is working very seriously on a full-length Klingon opera. In Klingonese, of course. I don't know when they expect it to be performed. This could go either way, wonderful or horrible, depending on the abilities of those involved.

I don't know if even Chopin's love of opera would extend quite that far!

Elene

Gosh (about the Klingon opera) - I hope they have surtitles lol.

There's a joke going around that the "real" Trekkers were upset to find that the Klingonese in the new movie had subtitles, so that one didn't actually have to learn the language! But in reality, there are no Klingons in the movie at all... perhaps too bad, since there are, honestly, many Klingonese speakers living on Earth, and I hear that one can even get a scholarship to study that language.

I think I have my hands more than full trying to deal with studying Polish and a little Slovak, while attempting to keep my tiny competence with French alive. I don't even know more than three or four words of Vulcan!

At any rate, Klingons could hardly be more different from Our Friend, but they do LOVE opera.

Elene

As I recall Wagner has achieved something of a god like stature among them - something he always wanted.

Wagner always wanted to be admired by Klingons? Really??!!

The real question is, who doesn't want to be admired by Klingons?

Well, having Klingons NOT like one could have very bad consequences....

This is giving me a picture of Klingons monitoring Earth's culture from afar during the mid-to-late 19th century. (Maybe they liked Beethoven too?) But Wagner didn't KNOW the Klingons were admiring his work, in that case. Or maybe, since the Klingons don't observe the Prime Directive, they communicated with him?

But Chopin would probably go over a lot better with the Vulcans-- despite his rampant emotions-- and of course their tastes are more refined.

We know that Spock was extremely familiar with Brahms, but we don't know if he ever played any Chopin.

Hopelessly OT, I know....

Elene

What in the world are Klings?

Kathleen

Kathleen, “What in the world are Klingons?” is a question with a 43-year-long answer (and they're not exactly in the world anyway), so better just look here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klingon

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klingon_culture

This second Wiki page includes the line:

‘"Stovokor" redirects here. For the Klingon death metal band, see Stovokor (band).’

I haven’t dared to look yet.

It is daunting to imagine trying to explain all this to Our Friend. Though I suppose he should check out the opera if it's ever finished! (Somewhat lame attempt to stay OT.)

Elene

Of course, Wagner would have preferred to be admired by blond eyed blue haired Aryans but I doubt if he'd have said no to being deified by anyone.

OK...back to the original purpose, FAQ

How do most experts (musicologist) feel about Chopin's music, since he didn't compose major pieces as so many of his contempories did?

You will find some minor disagreements on the value of Chopin and the influence that his music made. But, I would guess that 99% of them realize him as the genius that he was. I am going to quote just one expert, and I wish others would post what they have read from other musicians.

From Jeremy Nicholas in his book: Chopin - His Life and Music



I love the part where Mr. Nicholas says that Chopin is an understanding friend. For to me, his music seems to reflect all that I feel but can not express.

Kathleen

I certainly do find Chopin to be an understanding friend, one who often can express what I feel better than I can myself. That personal, intimate quality is surely a very large part of his attraction for us. But it must be remembered that he himself lived among the "contrapuntal rigors of Bach," played a great deal of Beethoven-- and toward the end of his life, in my opinion, was starting to sound rather like Brahms (the 25th prelude, for example, the long, meandering "extra" one).

(Don't the concerti, the cello sonata, and the piano sonatas count at all as "major"? I know what you mean, though.)

How about this for another FAQ:

What is the easiest of Chopin's works to try first?

The DtC thread reminded me of this topic. While there are some other pretty accessible short pieces by Our Guy, I think the E minor prelude is my pick for the best Chopin piece to try when one has never played anything of his before. What do you think?

Elene

I think Prelude C minor No 20 is the easiest. Next is A major No 7. Everything else is from difficult to very difficult.

My vote for "easiest" is his posthumous waltz in A minor.

I actually find that A minor waltz a little tricky because it covers a fairly wide area and gets into my visuospatial problems somehow. It's maddening because it is such a simple piece, yet I have trouble with it.

(That's the one they used in that awful movie "Desire for Love," if I remember correctly... not that I want to remember!)

Elene

I also found that waltz difficult, Elene. That run was part of the problem, but moving my left hand from a bass note to a chord (this is the first Chopin I played in over 15 years) was very tricky. And it being ranked a "4" made me wonder what in the world was wrong with me.

I agree that the E minor is probably the easiest, but that jump may take days and days to accomplish. Otherwise, I believe it sums up very well how Chopin was able to create such heartfelt yearning using relatively few notes.

Kathleen

Time for another FAQ:

What is the one thing that Chopin will be remembered for?

That is a tough one because there are so many possibilities. If I had to chose just one, I would say his ability to create music that has stood the test of time. So many of his contempories have long been forgotten. However, Chopin's music is still as fresh and intriguing as it was almost 200 years ago. I guess you could say that it has a timeless quality that continues to appeal to generation after generation. It might possibly be its unique quality that touches the soul and can often bring many to tears. When music can move us in such a way, it is magical and everlasting. (Gosh, I got a little "over-the-top" with my answer.)

I'd like to hear from everyone who has an opinion on this.

Many thanks,
Kathleen