Yes.
Let us take the opportunity to remind everyone that 'not everything' we read on the internet is true.

Not to mention anywhere else either.

And especially, if it's in a place like this where we sort of know many of the people, we have some ability to consider the source, and in that instance, the source was......uh.......not good.


Me too. Granted, I've had the advantage of being there with my wife who speaks French, but the old stereotype, while not completely false, isn't that true either.


We were in Poland last September for the amateur piano competition and had an excellent travel experience, in every respect. If possible it will help if you're at an "international"-type hotel, because most of the staff there will speak English and the place can serve as a comfortable home-base. But even if not, at least in Warsaw you won't have too much trouble finding people here-and-there who speak at least some English, and it seemed that the Polish people in general are very welcoming to Americans, including outside Warsaw. We had been somewhat apprehensive too, but needlessly.

P.S. I should mention that I had made a point of learning some Polish in advance, and that probably helped a lot. Even if all you know is how to ask "Do you speak English?"
I was able to say it so well that a few times, the answer (in Polish) was, "No, but you speak Polish!"

That's new to me too.

Regarding the rubato. In Chopin, Kalkbrenner, and similar contemporaries, the left hand is steady (or is supposed to be), and the right hand is free especially when it comes to those massive runs that appear in his works. This is similar to what the 19th century opera singers were doing, and what these composers, especially Chopin, were trying to imitate on the piano. Thinking of the music this way helps to make more sense of it.

Now to keep the left hand steady...

John

But not completely.

That is often said, but I think it's an exaggerated statement, and I would guess that when Kalkbrenner and others said it back in the day, they only intended it as a relative statement -- i.e. the L.H. remains relatively steady.

The one absolute thing that I would say about steadiness of the L.H. (rarely said, I think, but very important) is that one shouldn't do artificial or unthinking rubatos in the L.H. that are only due to difficulty making leaps. I think a lot of that goes on. BTW I'm not talking about you!! and in fact the way I learned it was that I was caught doing it in a recital with a Chopin Nocturne, the "simple" E-flat, #2. I kept pausing a tiny bit before the 1st note of each measure. I guess it had become habitual, and I came to feel it was passionate and heart-rending, without realizing that the way it had gotten started was that it was "easier" than getting my L.H. down there in time!

I agree with you. I too think of it as relatively steady. There are times when it should flow rather than sit there solid as a rock. Rubato, like anything else, should be done tastefully and carefully. Your example of ending up with an exaggerated rubato due to technical diffculties is not uncommon. I too have problems with keeping my left hand flowing and accurate at the same time. Part of it is my physical difficulties, which play up more than I wish. I have developed a hesitation while going from one area of the keyboard to another. This makes it very difficult to have a flowing bass line like that in Rachmaninoff's Elegie, which I am working on now. I think part of it s a bit of insecurity with the lefthand. Hopefully with more slow practice and attention to this problem, will help me get past it.

Anyway, again we are left with composer's performance details by written down by people who were quite old by the time they did so. Their perceptions of what was, and how to do it, was most likely stretched and distorted by time.
The problem with this is we never really know what the composer intended because we were never there to ask them.

The problem today is we've gone to the opposite extreme were everything is taken so literal from the music. Granted keeping accuracy in mind is excellent regarding the time and notation, but playing exactly what the editor's gave us is not necessarily aways what the composer wanted. What we have are usually very dry and uninteresting performances of some very interesting and beautiful music.

Chopin was notorious for his multiple versions of the same pieces. He'd dash off a manuscript for the publishing house in Paris, and while that was on press, he'd request changes be made. The changes were not made because it was too late to redo the engravings. The edition was already printed, bound, and mailed off to the bookstores. Then there are the English, German, and Polish editions that have even more differences.

In other cases, there were individual manuscripts with additional changes that made it into the mainstream. These again are yet again different from anything else. Some of the better editions, such as Henle, and Wiener-Urtext, have editors who have done some research. In the end their editions are really an amalgamation of what was printed, and not printed. So today we're left with playing something that we hope is what Chopin intended, and we're probably way off base from that intention.

John

Dear Kathleen,

Rubato is definitely one of the concepts most associated with Chopin, during his life and after.

It isn't the easiest thing to write about: I suspect demonstrations at a keyboard are probably the best way to begin to get a handle on the possibilities. That said, there are excellent discussions of the concept in Eigeldinger's Chopin: Pianist and Teacher (a book that has quasi-Biblical status for me). Eigeldinger notes that there were 3 meanings of the term that came into play for Chopin: 1) the steady accompaniment; fluctuating melody rubato that others have already mentioned; 2) the kind where both hands steal time together; and (least common) 3) having to do with shifting accentual structures in cadences of mazurkas.

A good piece to play around with the second kind of rubato is the C major Mazurka from opus 33 (it probably should be numbered "2", but most editions print it as number 3). This is the one Lenz was playing for Chopin, Meyerbeer came in and said it was in duple, rather than triple, much to Chopin's consternation. So: try playing it to make someone think it is duple, but without actually losing the triple meter. And pay attention to Chopin's accents (which tell us a lot about rubato if you read them correctly).

There's much more to be said, but that should be enough to get things rolling.

And good luck with your class!

Jeff Kallberg

I'm not even going to try to start on the rubato question; thanks Jeff etc. for your useful discussion.

But before Kathleen and Mary-Rose jump in, I must take this up:

"Chopin from what I've read was somewhat contemptuous and jealous of competitors, and very bitter and cold to everyone else."

John, don't take this personally, but:

NO
NO
NO
NO!


Please go back, if it doesn't drive you too crazy, and read what we've written on this subject. It's been discussed in the past couple of months, so you won't have to go back too horribly far. Try page 171, for example.

The article you read in the Independent is a mess; I'm not sure what the people who run that paper have against Our Friend, but they've published some awful stuff about him before, too. If you want to know about Chopin's character, frankly, "lovesick groupies" though we may be, our group is a far better source of information.

As Frycek pointed out some time ago, one could get a copy of Chopin's letters and "let the man speak for himself." And the Eigeldinger book, which as Dr. Jeff says is a kind of Bible for the Chopinologist, includes the viewpoints of a great many of Chopin's contemporaries.

Elene

""Chopin from what I've read was somewhat contemptuous and jealous of competitors, and very bitter and cold to everyone else.""

I don't like to argue with John. Since we lack a fly with a camcorder and the reminiscences are somewhat risky, going to what we do know, for sure, is the music. "Bitter and contemptuous, and cold" is not what it says to me... though the art itself says many things.

If I were to risk an opinion, it seems to me that he was greatly admired and beloved in his own time, by some; others were jealous and hateful; others desired to ride the coattails of a great man; others did what they could to tear his memory down. Thus has it ever been with the great ones. And I do think John's guess, about the effect of the physical and psychic suffering he experienced, very likely does have some truth in it. How could it not?

I've long been aware of that example, and numerous times have tried like heck to see what that could possibly have been about.

And I have no clue.

I can't get anything like "duple" out of it no matter how hard I try, any which way.

OK, I went off to try 33/3, and I'm afraid I can't find a way to make it sound duple either, but it does have a metric quirkiness in the A section, doesn't it? Rubinstein's recording also doesn't sound duple to me, though it does have the usual rhythmic flexibility and stretched second beats. Jeff, perhaps sometime if you get around to it, could you record it the way you were describing it?

Another mazurka that starts off sounding vaguely duple is the opus-less one called "Notre Temps."

The discussion of what's been written about Chopin's personal qualities reminded me of a bit from one of the Flint recordings. It goes like this, starting in the middle of a conversation:

Rose: “Oh, yes, yes, I read about all that.”

Chopin Voice: “I know. The things you read about me, huh? Some of the things, they are so wrong.”

“Some of them I suppose are.”

“Some things are right, but I get great pleasure, you know, out of argument sometimes I have had with people who have pretend to write my life, you know, and I think to myself, ‘Ah, you wait till you come over here, you rascal!’ You know? And I castigation— castigate them, you know.”

“Do you?!”

“Well, I have.” [a little sheepishly]

“Who? Who might you castigate?”

“I learned with years, how you say, I learned to be a little more discreet, but at times I find it difficult to hold my tongue.”

Think we're going to be in any trouble?


Elene

Right. I have Rubinstein's "LP's" of the mazurkas (tells you something about me, eh?) and you're right. In fact, I've never heard any recording or performance of this mazurka that sounds duple, nor (as far as I know) does anyone attempt to make it sound that way in performance. We know there was something going on about duple meter (even if not in the last 170 years) but I haven't been able to get any clue what it might have been.

Thank you, Dr. Kallberg. I have Eigeldinger's book. I need to go back and reread it to refresh my mind about rubato. Now I must go find that mazurka. I appreciate your well wishes concerning my class. My fingers are crossed.

And John C: That article curls my toes! We have discussed it before, as Elene as mentioned. Good grief, the author didn't even get the date of Chopin's death correct. He died at the age of 39 and not 40. This is a very simple fact to research. And he left Poland to "make his mark" into the world of music, not to escape the Revolution. One is very suspect when one reads something that is so obviously slanted and full of glaring factual errors.

I so totally agree that you must read primary sources before you pass any kind of judgment on the man. Again, as Elene recommended, the Eigeldinger book and Chopin's Letters. I believe both will open your eyes to the real Chopin. Was he an angel? Hardly! But was he the miserable creature described in that article? Can you really believe that such a creature would be capable of writing such heavenly and glorious music? Hardly!

Believe it or not, my (sometimes) teacher told me to play that 35 note run with rubato when it became obvious to both her and me that I was never going to conquer it any other way.

Regards,
Kathleen

Mark: I have Rubinstein's recordings of Chopin's mazurkas. What does it say about us? I am curious.

Kathleen

OMG, I just listened (isn't the iPOD wonderful!) to several of Chopin's mazurkas, and the hairs on my arms are standing on end. Joyful and dancelike (almost), then off to that land of Polish pride. Maybe I am the only one who can hear this part, but they are magical. They seem to flow so freely from the fingers almost as if he were improvising one after the other, so effortlessly. If only I could play them the way I hear them.

I am, once again, reminded of his genius.

Kathleen

Let me clarify why I have posted this. First of all I chose one of many sources to list as my reference in the post, and I agree this one, after reading again does not come across as being nice or accurate. Unfortunately it seems that many authors do this today rather than research facts, and sadly I was guilty of it this time.

Now, personally I've felt this, and this is why I did some research on the subject. I didn't just read the articles, I actually put these search words into Bing and Google to find the information.

So sorry for putting knickers in a twist, but that was never my goal. This I guess is quite a passionate subject, that unfortunately puts a different light on our hero. Anyway I've been thinking about this from a psychological point of view for quite some time, and from one that's been through quite a bit both emotionally as well as physically. When one is ill, chronic or not, we wake up hoping the next day will be "normal", but sadly it is not.

Like Msr. Chopin, I've always been self conscious about myself. I had a clubbed foot at birth. It was surgically corrected, quite successfully, but still I was at a disadvantage growing up. Physically I could never participate in sports well due to delayed development in my eye-hand coordination. I'd be ridiculed for not hitting a ball the right way, for running too slow, thanks to the clubbed foot, wearing baby shoes, etc. I went through school or as I should say hell growing up. I go to a party today and feel uncomfortable because I don't feel I fit in. I'm a misfit in my eyes because I'm "not" like the others.

Now as my current condition has progressed, I have become more of a realist. People call me a cynic, but in reality I'm being a realist. If things are rotten, I say so. I don't glaze over anything anymore, nor do I look for the bright happy times that there could be, Why should I? Things are the way they are, and we should just deal with them. Like Chopin, I have tried to push people away. I don't need them to console me, or patronize me. If someone visits me, I am polite, but distant.

I know what the inevitable is for me, but I've chosen at the moment to put it out of my mind. It's not like it's not there. Believe me. The not-so-wonderful Mr. Parkie likes to visit quite often, and it's all I can do to keep him away. So in many ways I too come across as grumpy to many people most of the time. I get annoyed with people that complain about minscule things. To me these are anthills, not mountains in the scope of everything else. I get annoyed with sitting in traffic now, waiting for people at the supermarket, having to deal with vistors, and with many other things. I don't have time to waste on these things. There are so much I need and want to do when I can do it, the worst thing is wasting my precious good time with idiots.

Now back to Msr. Chopin... He may really have had a tender personality initially, but as time went on and he became more ill, he keep up the front at first, but being in pain, both emotionally as well as physically, takes its toll on the soul. So in the end he couldn't care anymore whether he was a grumpy arrogant SOB or not.

Again, as I've said before, that what we have of our beloved famous composers is only what we can read about them. If only we could go back in time and be there and experience their company first hand. Only then would we have a real understanding of what they were like.



John

Kathleen, Mark meant that having LPs, specifically, tells something about us.

I have CDs of Rubinstein playing the mazurkas but an LP of his nocturnes! And plenty of other LPs left, I'm afraid.

John, although you don't need to be consoled, my heart goes out to you, and I feel honored that you have shared your story with us. While you may feel like a misfit in some places, you appear to fit in PERFECTLY here! More later.

Elene

My impression, to further clarify, was that this meant we were old!
I'm proud to have a collection of vinyl myself (although not in the classical arena).

Well that took some courage to share, John. I thank you for being so honest with us; I hope that it means that you feel safe enough to speak your inner truth with your friends here.

That said, I have some trouble recognizing you from your thumbnail sketch of self-portraiture. Your presence here bespeaks a person of kind and generous nature, and a person of accomplishment. Of course, getting there; yes, it takes the struggle and the hard-won ability to endure and persevere. It is a lot easier to say that this is valuable than it is to get there through it.

It does illumine your 'take' on Chopin's personality and his inner life. I like especially the effort to get inside his personality, and to try to see the world as he did (this is a classical technique of raja yoga: "The mind, like a colorless jewel, takes on the qualities of that on which it is placed.") Takes on the qualities.

Did you know that the oak has more than two hundred pests and diseases that afflict it, or parasitize it? It is said (of the species here in California) that they live for two hundred years, and die for two hundred years. Even then, their story is not over, for they provide shelter and food and affect the environment for at least several hundred years more. It is not unlike Chopin's story, in a way--- it is far from over, and has nourished many lives beyond his own time... and it may be as hard to really know how they experience the world. Not that giving it a try doesn't bear fruit of its own.

John - thank you for your touching description of your life problems and outlook. It seems to me that these greatly increase the beauty of your piano playing.

As for Chopin's character: going by his own letters, primary sources and eyewitness accounts, it seems he really was remarkably unembittered considering his prolonged suffering. Even in his last days he was showing care and concern for others, although he was also capable of making caustic and amusing remarks to his most intimate friends. A tremendous amount of people genuinely loved him throughout his life so one can only assume he must, therefore, have been a lovable person.

LOL.....I tried hard to be clear, by putting "quotes" around "LP's," but wasn't. All I meant was that it probably means one is a little older.

Yes -- I guess this means I was at least a little bit clear.

Shhhhhhhhh!

To everyone who is missing Sotto Voce - as I do myself - I have a message from him. He says he will contact those who replied to stevebob's goodbye PM with their e-mail addresses. He also said that there is an inaccuracy in the statement from the site owner:
Frank's reply

Sotto Voce was never ever suspended before. The above statement from Frank was made specifically to contradict Horowitzian mentioning that he had not been suspended previously.

"And yes he has had previous "suspensions" (which we usually call time-outs)." says Frank. Whatever "we" call them -- hiatus, suspension, time-out, forced absence -- there have been none imposed upon Steven previously, ever.

It therefore seems a rather serious matter to have these false impressions being given just so PW management seems fairer than they actually were, and Sotto Voce seems worse than he actually was. I am mentioning this to warn people - don't imagine you won't be banned without a previous time-out. You can be, even if you immediately apologise for your wrongdoing both publicly and privately.

Sotto has taken up these issues backchannel but received no response. That, folks, is the kind of forum this has become.

I am not able to say you're wrong, Mary-Rose. I saw the posts, I saw the personal agendas revealed, and I feel--- I don't know if it's as strongly as you do--- greatly disappointed and displeased. And I badly miss Frycek and Steven.

This business of forgiving, not seven times but seventy times seven, is not for the benefit of the other person, but for our own. It also allows a space for redress, and for the other parties to think over the bigger picture, and to hope to deserve our forgiveness--- and I mean all of them.

It is not that we're too stupid to know what's going on, or that we have to deny that the dark side of human nature exists. Anyone can lose it--- whole cultures can--- I know I have. But sometimes people have what it takes to try to make things right again. Not always; it is somewhat special. It takes a power of grace that is not given to all. There are many examples in the world of the contrary.

I would hope that all the parties avail themselves.

My Czech dad also lived to 84. His idea of garlic bread was to toast rye bread, spread goose grease on it, and then spread chopped garlic over that and then salt it. And my raw bacon-eating uncle lived to 98!

Thanks for the article John, it would have been a shame to have missed it.

My kinda guy. To be honest folks, and I've touched on similar topics in the past in the Teacher's Forum, shouldn't the greatest piano teacher/player/composer who ever was, and probably will be deserve as much slack as there is? Chopin knew he was it, as did Mozart before him. That knowledge must affect your day-to-day.

On another note he may have died of cystic fibrosis not TB. In fact as O'Shea indicates http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3320707 , it's by far the more obvious conclusion.

Dear Mark and Elene,

Try turning the notes marked with accents (save for the first one - the upbeat to m. 1, I mean) into half notes. In other words, literally turn the mazurka into 4/4. Then try backing off from that gradually, into a gray area somewhere in between the 3/4 and 4/4.

This is an experiment, mind you: I don't claim to have discovered any secret to rubato here.

If the University of Chicago ever gets around to posting the video of my talk there last fall on the web (or if they have already, I can't find it), you can hear/watch me to try to do this as part of my talk on Chopin's pencil (since a pencil figures into Lenz's anecdote).

Rubinstein (for all his other wonders) takes a very gentle approach to the rhythmic pushing and pulling - quite consciously, as he rejected that way of playing (he writes about this in his memoirs). I'll see if I can track down a recording by someone else who pulls more vigorously on the rhythmic notation.

Jeff Kallberg

CF sounds plausible based on the symptoms, and I'm no expert on CF, but it does raise a couple of questions/issues: first, Chopin seems not to have been affected until his teens; wouldn't CF have been apparent from birth? My understanding is that he was basically a healthy child, even if not as robust as others his age. Is CF something that can be 'acquired' later in life?

Secondly, if he had CF how could he have lived as long as he did (39), given the relative lack of medical interventions that were possible in his time? More than one source indicates that the life expectancy of CF patients currently, at least among those who can available themselves of modern medical treatments, is about mid-30's, a vast improvement from ~50 years ago.

It seems, then, that Chopin wouldn't have lived long enough to have written his first polonaise! (at age 7 ??)

It is interesting to speculate; will we even know?

Chopin had a lot of CF symtoms in his youth - fat intolerance, constant infections. The oldest person to be diagnosed with CF was 46 - he lived to be 66. O'Shea figures that's what may have killed his sister. For whatever reason, the autopsy never said TB.

Keyboardklutz, I don't know what page to refer you to in order to direct you to our past discussions on Chopin's health. I can send you a couple of other articles if you like. Thank you for the link to the CF article; I hadn't seen that specific one before.

The lead singer from the band Remy Zero died recently at age 40 from CF; it was considered a remarkable achievement to have lived that long. And that's today.

Alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency seems to fit the best, I think, especially looking at the overall pattern of the family. Unfortunately, CF and alpha-1 have a lot of similar symptoms in their clinical presentations. Most of the researchers who have written papers on Chopin's health have said that it's impossible to make a definitive diagnosis. Even O'Shea doesn't reach an absolute conclusion.

TB fits fairly well, but it's true that on autopsy, that was not the diagnosis (apparently because of the lack of cavitations in the lungs), and no one was ever quite clear what was wrong with the man. One thing they said for sure was that his heart was in worse shape than his lungs. We do know that the immediate cause of death was heart failure. And we know that, one way or another, he had constant, huge difficulties to contend with just to get through the day.

There's no reason he couldn't have had alpha-1 or CF plus a concurrent infection of TB or something else, though. What I think is amazing is that so many people are still so fascinated with this subject that they continue to write papers.

Chopin's supposed low testosterone level is mentioned as support for both the CF and the alpha-1 theories, based only on the fact that he wrote that he was having trouble growing whiskers at age 22. This, I'd say, doesn't necessarily tell us anything. My own husband, with similar coloring and genetic background, couldn't grow a beard till his late 20s, and I can tell you for sure that his testosterone level was just fine.

When researching all this a couple of years ago, I noticed that a number of emotional symptoms were listed for late-stage pulmonary diseases like emphysema, and they sounded similar to the issues Chopin seems to have had with irritability and that sort of thing toward the end. But as Mary-Rose pointed out, as far as we can tell he kept himself pretty well under control even at the worst times, especially considering what he was up against. I've been too ill myself in the past week to write extensively about this.

Your quote from Chopin's student Zofia Rozengardt is often mentioned-- largely because her view of her teacher is so NOT what most others said. Whatever was going on, definitely Chopin was in pretty bad shape by that time. And whatever friction existed between them, it didn't stop him from writing the only sacred music of his life as a present for Zofia's wedding.

As to Chopin knowing he was "it"-- my impression is a decided lack of egotism.* Again, read his letters. There's no self-aggrandizement. And no, I don't think even the greatest artists deserve a lot of slack for bad behavior-- and I'm quite certain he wouldn't think so either. His sky-high standards applied to himself above all.

Really, folks-- if I didn't know him to be a decent human being, I wouldn't love him as I do.

Elene Gusch, DOM

*strangely enough, same for Liszt-- and if anyone deserved a little feeling of self-importance, he did

Elene, thanks for all that. Have you read O'Shea? I'd appreciate your opinion - you can read some of it in google books.

I disagree about 'slack', in my book he deserves as much as it takes! Maybe I'm too devoted to Chopin?