Are there any images of Chopin as a child?



I love this portrait:









This is the youngest Chopin I could find... Does anybody know how old he was here?

ChopinAddict, the youngest pics of Chopin seem to be a rather grotty teenage amateur picture that I can't find for the moment, and a now-lost oil painting done in Poland when he was 19.



The bottom one of your selection shows Chopin when he was 23. His (not always reliable) biographer Niecks wrote of that one that "M. Mathias regards as the best portrait of Chopin a lithograph by Engelmann after a drawing by Vigneron, of 1833, published by Maurice Schlesinger, of Paris. In a letter to me he writes: “This portrait is marvelous for the absolutely exact ides it gives of Chopin: the graceful fall of the shoulders, the Polish look, the charm of the mouth.” Mathias was one of Chopin's pupils so you'd think he would know.

BTW the one that you love, I fear is not authentic....

[edit] Oh, and the two rather nice Radziwill sketches done at age 16 and 19 on the website Jeff Kallberg guided us to.

Thank you for the information, Mary-Rose!

I feared the image I love was not authentic too....
I found it here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/artists/09ff1fe8-d61c-4b98-bb82-18487c74d7b7

I love ALL portraits of Chopin at any rate!

CA

Here's the grotty amateur one MaryRose mentioned. I'm afraid it's even grottier than it might be since my image was tiny and I had to "blow it up." He was 14. Whoever sketched him got the nose right and the mouth and chin a bit wrong. He probably hated it. Note the ears.

That puckish and youthful portrait—which I'm certain I've never seen before now—reminds me of Pee-wee Herman, and I don't mean that in a bad way at all. I always thought Pee-wee was adorable.

Steven

Cute portrait...

It's very quick and easy to do, plus saves the trip into town or the long wait for it to arrive in the post (especially witht he Royal Mail strike over here at the moment). Its there instantly and you can take it anywhere, although it does need charging every so often. Single tracks cost 79p on iTunes, and an album of 10-20 tracks will set you back £7.99. If you wanted to buy Askenazy's complete Chopin works, that costs you £79.99, but its much cheaper than buying each track individually! I can't see you having any problems with it. By the way do you have an apple computer or a PC, as iPods generally work better with macs than PCs because they're made by the same company?

Regarding the current topic on Chopin portraits, I don't think I have anything to add.

Ah! Yesterday my iPod wouldn't charge. I tried everything, I rebooted, changed the USB port, then it went completely dead, so I really thought that was it. I DESPERATELY need it when I go out otherwise I would go insane with the noise etc. Chopin is my rescuer (as always).
I rushed out to buy a new one, and guess what... As soon as I came home with the new one, I tried to charge the old one again (I don't know why!) and it worked... So now I have two, although I do think the old one might be faulty, I had even tried another computer - nothing, it was completely dead...

Chopin4Life: I have an iPod and love it. I was wondering about downloading music. I have Askenazy's complete Chopin and also Rubinstein (minus etudes). I play them all the time on my little speaker than I have hooked up to the iPod. For being so small, it does a great job.

ChopinAddict: Keep one in the car.

I thought that one picture of Chopin as a teenager looked rather vampirish. I prefer the one where he looks like an angel because his music is truly heaven-sent.

I just started reading a very interesting book called Talent is Overrated. I was drawn to it immediately because talent has always been a bit out-of-reach for me. Some great thoughts about it, in general. Will share more tomorrow.

Kathleen

My daughter's iPod is getting up in years, and sometimes won't charge. She was trying to use my MacBook to charge it the other day, and after she plugged and unplugged and jiggled it over and over, it finally decided it would allow itself to be charged.

I still haven't made the leap, myself. I do download music to my computer, though.

Elene

ChopinAddict and Elene: I have always used a "charging dock" for my iPods, and have never had a problem. My current one lives on the dock in between uses, and that way it's always fully charged when I need it, and I don't have to bother using the computer for this purpose. I don't even know if the computer would charge it- never tried.. I only connect it to the computer for synchronizing when I've added new music to iTunes.

Thanks for the advice, Chardonnay. I think it is better than a computer. Besides, if you want to charge it overnight, you don't have to leave the computer on...

Here's my silly question of the day: I have an Ipod and I love it too, but I only use it either with headphones or the charging dock. I'm still learning. How do you get the Ipod to play through the car stereo?

I know, I warned you it was a silly question!

Not a silly question. If your car has an Ipod adapter/socket then you can just plug it into there. It's usually located around the centre console or in the glove box. If not you can probably get one installed. Just downloaded Pollini études minus the Trois Nouvelle Études.

There are also cassette adapters and FM transmitters that plug into either your headphone jack or the proprietary port on the bottom of the ipod. You would either put a dummy tape into your deck, or set your radio to the proper frequency..

Some stereos will also have AUX inputs, either something that looks like a headphone jack or 2xRCA plugs somewhere on the unit. In that case, you just get a 1/8" to __ cable, plug into your headphone jack, and switch your stereo to AUX. This is what I do with my non-ipod mp3 player.

ipod specific accessories will _look_ better, but you might pay less for others.

Thanks very much to both of you for the information. Sometimes I feel like technology is changing faster than I can keep up!

There was a time when I thought headphones and portable music were just "it". I actually toted a hand-held mono reel-to-reel around, with some kind of primitive over-the-ear cans, so I could hear The Band and Emerson, Lake and Palmer when I took off for a walk to the park in New Orleans. (Yes, it was quite a long time ago.)

Now, I'm looking for SACD players and better speakers, and it is "it" no longer. The offerings as to SACD players seem very limited now (one disc at a time, no EQ, no balance control, etc), but I think it's a trend with a lot to offer, especially if you love piano music--- so hard to reproduce faithfully.

I can't make out if I'm ahead of the curve or behind the times. The lossy compression of MP3s lacks appeal to me--- I can hear a difference. Maybe if we're talking about Britney and the like, it hardly matters. Still, having a soundtrack for your life that lifts you above the mundane and rackety...

There are a few players that support lossless codecs (like FLAC) natively. Quite a few others can be hacked into supporting lossless formats, too (google: rockbox).

That wouldn't help you if you were trying to buy music online, since almost everything is one lossy codec or another...and it wouldn't help with SACDs, since I don't think that there's currently a way to read the extended info (you just get redbook if you stick them in a computer). But regardless, I rip all of my music to flac. I can't stick it on the player that I have right now, but the upside is that I'll never need to rip my CDs again because I have lossless copies already..and I can just encode to whatever format I need in one pass.

Thanks, Buck. But you lost me around the first sentence. I envy people who know all the tech stuff.

I am still reading that "Talent" book and hope to give a brief review soon.

Best to all,
Kathleen

It means, more or less, that what you put on an iPod has a lot of the originally recorded data "thrown away" to make the file smaller. So, the audio quality is degraded. This matters more with classical music than it does with contemporary pop recordings, which are engineered to fit in a narrower range of frequencies that sound uniformly "loud," and emphasize certain features, such as the bass.

Some of my Chopin books came in, Kathleen. I'll be joining you in soaking up some new information.

Hi Cleff:

Thanks for the explanation. I think I've got it.

Enjoy your "soaking," and please post what you've learned so far, every so often. We can all use (well, maybe just me) a refresher course. I have been soaking for about 3 weeks, but I fear that I will forget a lot before my class starts in Feb. So I am going to have to "resoak" around mid-January. I will be an absolute prune.

My best to you...really!!
Kathleen

Which would you suggest as I can only affford one

The Cambridge Companion to Chopin edited by James Samson
or
Jeremey Siepmann - Audio book about Chopin's Life

Thanks

Quite a while back I joked that since some of us have an almost religious devotion to Chopin, they might wish to start a religion for the sake of the tax benefits. Well, that hasn’t happened, but I did attend the Church of Beethoven this past Sunday morning here in Albuquerque. It was founded by a cellist from the NMSO as an uplifting experience that could be enjoyed by everyone and would showcase local musicians and poets. The program included a Barber mini-opera and a Dvořák quartet, and was really wonderful. The place was packed. But as so often happens with classical concerts, the audience was on the elderly side-- though the musicians were in their 20s and 30s.

Back to the portraits: I did see one attempt at a picture of Chopin as a child, but it’s only an artist’s conception. It’s in a fairly worthless book by Victor Seroff (I think). It shows about an 8-year-old kid playing for an audience, with his little legs dangling from his chair. I remember it because he looks exactly like my husband at that age.

I like the “grotty” youthful portrait despite the rather disproportionate features. I think it says something worthwhile about its subject, who appears to be staring into forever, seeing what the rest of us can’t. The quality of the watercolor, technically, seems good to me. A good B&W copy can be found in Ates Orga’s bio. The caption says “Anonymous, c. 1830.”

I’ve always been especially fond of Maria’s portrait of her fiancé. (Have you seen any of her other work? It’s extraordinary. Some can be found in Chopin In His Own Land.) I’m having the feeling that the universe has taken a sudden jump sideways, though, because I could have sworn she painted his eyes blue, but on the site that Jeff linked us to they’re brown. I went to the only other color copy I could find, on the cover of Tad Szulc’s bio, and they’re brown there too! Eek! I remember referring to this portrait when we were discussing his eye color, and writing something like, “They’re blue in Maria’s painting. End of story.” For heaven’s sake, I’ve seen the original! Are the copies wrong, or my memory??

About the death mask, I agree, Joe, that his face was not at its best after all it had been through and then getting squished by plaster, but still, it looks to me like Clésinger squared the chin and strangely enough, lengthened the nose (vertically) a bit, and generally made the face a bit more chiseled and handsome. I don’t mind; the effect is gorgeous, especially the slight smile that makes it look like the subject is in the midst of some delicious dream. I was surprised to read the quote from Niecks, on the site Jeff sent us to, that said Chopin’s friends were not happy with the bust-- unless they meant some other bust.

(I was cleaning out my closet a couple days ago and thinking again how freakin’ weird it is to have a dead man’s head in a box next to one’s shoes.)

I think the sitting portrait probably gives us a pretty good idea of the overall appearance of the man, but if I remember correctly, it was not done during his lifetime. There are odd angles to the chair arms and the man’s hips, but otherwise it’s excellent.

I hadn’t seen the portrait ChopinAddict loves before. It’s a good effort, isn’t it? The eyes are too large, and again, the nose is too long. In actuality his nose was not all that long top to bottom-- there was a lot of space between his nose and mouth-- it was more just horizontally prominent.

Elene

"Which would you suggest as I can only afford one: The Cambridge Companion to Chopin edited by James Samson or Jeremey Siepmann - Audio book about Chopin's Life"

Well, Kathleen, I can't say which would suit you better, but I can tell you which one I got: The Cambridge Companion, by Sampson, ed. I haven't read it through yet, but I've glanced through, and I can tell you that (1) it's a collection of essays by Chopin scholars, published by a university press. The writing does not appear to be intended for a strictly technical audience; an intelligent person would be able to make sense of it. (2) You don't need a microscope to read the print; both the text and musical examples are crisply printed and stand out well on the white paper. The serif typeface looks like about 9-pt. The glued (not sewn) binding seems sturdy; the paper is nearly opaque yet flexible, so the volume is easy to handle. It is about 7" x 9.75", with margins sufficient for making notes. (3) Fairly extensive footnotes are collected at the end of the book, an arrangement which has its downside, but which leaves the text uncluttered. The index is not extensive, but it is supported by a Chopin discography and a chronology of his works. The latter is a best effort based on the sketchy information available. Taken together, it is quite useful, and more so because there is a chronology of significant dates of his life and times, and b&w reproductions of his image; both at the front of the volume. The bibliography is modest. (4) It lists at about $34 from Barnes, including shipping but not tax or discounts. Publication date is 1992; date on the soft-cover reprint is 2004. If it was updated for this printing, it's not mentioned. (5) Skimming the chapter titles, there are sections on: the history of the public piano concert; the nocturne; the etudes; tonal architecture; the extended musical forms and the smaller forms (this chapter is by our own Jeff Kallberg);dance; sonatas; Chopin in performance; Polish reaction to Chopin in his own time; Victorian attitudes; and his influence up to 1990 (appx.).

My impression is that it's a useful book which is a pretty good amount of information, from different viewpoints, and not a bad deal for the money. ISBN-13 is: 9780521477529.

It's some other bust. Clesinger did another one, a big one, with naked shoulders and his eyes open. It's detestable. He looks vacuous and a bit porky.

I have just found out that sometimes when iPods won't charge or show up it can be a problem with the driver. In such cases it suffices to go to the Device Manager and uninstall it, then when you connect the iPod again Windows will reinstall the driver automatically and in most cases it will be OK....

CA

The instructions to us contributors, from the then editor of Cambridge University Press, was "to write so that what you say can be understood by a piano teacher in Leeds." I always imagined the Leeds piano teacher as pretty smart . . .

The Siepmann offers its own pleasures; my guess is you'd enjoy whichever one you purchase.

Jeff

My dear Cleff:

You deserve a huge hug for such a detailed and so useful description of the Sampson book. I truly appreciate all the work you put in just typing it all. And I appreciate and value your recommendation.

Jeff: Gosh, now I am wondering if I am as smart as a Leeds piano teacher. If you are one of the contributors, I know it will be a great addition to my library. I listened to Siepmann's Beethoven and thought it wonderful.

Thank you all so much.
Kathleen

It's Samson, not Sampson.

Is there supposed to be something particular about intelligence or lack of same in people from Leeds?

Elene

It's on my wish list now! Thanks for the information!