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Keyboardklutz, I was editing while you were posting, so please have another look. Thanks.

Something else of possible interest:
http://lf1.cuni.cz/Data/Files/PragueMedicalReport/pmr_110_2009_02/pmr2009a0016.pdf

Elene

Thanks. Any references gratefully received - I am supposed to be working on a paper on Chopin. What do you put the intolerance to fatty foods in his youth down to?

Elene - thank you for writing the reply I was about to, only more eloquently.

keyboardklutz - indeed, with that music I'd cut him any amount of slack. But as it happens, we don't need to. He really was a remarkable human being - very human, yet noble too.

Chopin's autopsy found his heart was the thing that killed him. It was the worst looking thing they found. The statement was made that there was "no consumption of the lungs" which was probably quite true, as the "consumption" they were referring to was literal - a fatal finding - true only of people who had actually died of TB not managed to live with it as he did. Since we no longer have the report -it was apparently destroyed in a fire at some point- I forget when- all we have to go on was what Ludwika could remember, and wrote in a letter. So the fact that TB wasn't mentioned is meaningless in the context of the time.

It seems strange though, all those doctors - some of them top specialists, if it had been TB I'm sure they would have spotted it.

Just curious: what kind of paper?

I've been asked to consider delivering a paper kinda to do with his health for an upcoming piano conference. Writing the paper will be fun but I hate traveling so I'm not sure I want to go. It's in Slovenia (I think).

Dear Elene,

Thanks for this article by Karenberg, which I hadn't known. It's nice to see someone from the medical side draw attention to the problems with these posthumous diagnoses of famous figures of the past. I've added it to the readings for my seminar this term. (In this birthday year, I'm focusing more on younger Chopin, but this article may still come in handy for some of the students.)

Jeff Kallberg

I missed that, thanks.

Those are exactly the main issues with this CF theory. It wouldn't be unusual for the problems not to start quite at birth, but he would almost certainly have been much more ill much earlier than he was. It doesn't sound like much of a theory.

I'm pretty sure I've tried exactly that.....but I will again.

.....but he wasn't nearly ill enough with those things.

I know that the CF theory is seriously regarded in some quarters, and in fact when I was in Warsaw last September for the amateur Chopin competition there were some substantial materials distributed about it, but for what it's worth, what I've said above is in line with what I learned and observed about CF.

There's atypical CF, the symtoms of which easily vary from person to person. As I stated earlier the record for someone not being diagnosed is 46 years!

Whatever is that?

Do you remember the authorities in Warsaw were contemplating doing an examination of a sliver of Chopin's well-preserved heart last year? But in the end they decided not to. It would have been interesting to get more information on this.

Where do we get the information that Chopin was intolerant of fatty foods, though? He loved ice-cream and milk....

Good Morning Mary-Rose, it's in his letters. When I've finished my yoga I'll dig it out for you. Nasal Polyps to you and I.

Keyboardklutz, I realized that one article I was thinking you should read is in Spanish, and besides that I can’t find it. It gave a pretty good overview of Chopin’s health situation. I expect you’ve read J J Kuzemko’s old article advancing the alpha-1 hypothesis; it’s interesting but he gets so many basic facts wrong about the man’s life that its credibility seems reduced somewhat.

I’m glad you did bring all this up because I’ve learned a lot about CF today. The idea of atypical CF is very interesting. Just now I was reading about the possibility of hemorrhaging in CF, which I wasn’t aware of. So that, alpha-1, and TB could all cause the observed symptom of hemoptysis.

MR, I think the distinctive damage that TB causes to the lungs would have been obvious on autopsy. My understanding is that even in a mild case that the person manages to throw off, there is an obvious, visible lesion.

But you know, as much as everyone enjoys historical diagnosis, whatever the cause of Chopin’s illness, his symptoms were exactly the same, and we know pretty much what they were and how they affected him.

(About the fats-- he did mention in a letter something about having to stay away from soups and sauces or something like that. And we’re told that he was completely unable to manage the olive-oil soaked menu in Majorca. Funny you should mention the ice cream; I was eating some Haagen-Dazs mint earlier this evening, which is unusual for me, and I got to wondering why that goes down so well when many types of fatty foods bother me so much. I have no good answer-- but I certainly don’t have any of the above illnesses.)

A good many of us who hang around here have chronic physical and/or emotional health challenges. I suppose it’s not surprising that we relate to a man whose body was such a persistent nuisance to him, and to the art that transcended all that. And I’m sure that those of us with chronic pain or disability can relate to John’s comment that “being in pain, both emotionally as well as physically, takes its toll on the soul.” I’ve watched my irritability soar and my personality deteriorate frighteningly quickly on days of severe pain (which fortunately haven’t occurred for quite a while). Chopin must surely have had times when his control slipped.

However, I think what some people may have experienced as coldness was the fundamental need of an extremely sensitive person to put some distance and protection between himself and a pain-inducing world.

Elene

How funny! As I opened your post what did I have in my hand? Kuzemko's paper! He says "...During his early adolescence he developed intolerance to 'fatty foods' which resulted in prolonged episodes of diarrhoea and weight loss." I can't locate the page with his reference for that but I'm sure it's reliable.

Same problem when he was fed pork in Majorca.

Just a little more about Chopin’s character, two examples that I think show that he was neither bitter and contemptuous nor an “arrogant SOB.”

-- His behavior after the breakup with Mme Sand. His last letter to her takes the high road; it is restrained, firm but gentle. Their friends insisted to her that he never spoke ill of her. No one would have thought less of him at the time if he had ranted and raved about her treatment of him, but apparently he did not. He bore his pain and humiliation quietly.

-- An acquaintance of Chopin’s who was dying asked him to come and play for him. Chopin was feeling like heck himself at the time, and the man was not a close friend, but he went and played. Unfortunately I don’t remember any details.

Elene

Dr. Kallberg,
Maybe I'm missing something but......I don't see what you mean because the notes marked with accents already are half notes.

Need I say, of course please feel free to just punt on this. As I said, I find the "duple" story to be puzzling and I've wondered if maybe it's just that some mistake was made -- so maybe it doesn't have any answer.

BTW.....Could you tell us what you mean that the piece probably should be #2 in the set? Pardon if you have already said it and I just missed it.

P.S. I've ordered the book, due any day now.

Dear Mark,

Sorry, I was too vague (or too hurried, or thinking of the treble, or something!) when I described the notes with accents. Anyway, what I meant to say was try holding the notes with accents for two beats before bringing in the notated third beat. So in measure 1 (just looking at the bass): Beat 1 = low G; pseudo beats 2 and 3 = G an octave higher; pseudo beat 4 = low G. That turns it into a literal duple meter. If you back away from this literal duple gradually (i.e. reduce the amount of time you linger on the accented notes) I find you can get a result that one person might feel is triple and another duple.

But maybe I'm deluding myself. (Wouldn't be the first time!)

As far as the ordering of opus 33 goes (and I hadn't explained this anywhere, so don't fret about asking): the French and English first editions print the C major as number 2 and the D major as number 3. Only the German edition reverses this order. Interestingly, though, the only surviving autograph for the opus is that which served as the basis for the German edition. Here, Chopin numbered them as they appear in the French and English editions (C major = No. 2; D major = No. 3), but their order is physically reversed in the manuscript (D major comes before C major). Something very similar happened in the German edition of op. 41, where the C-sharp minor Mazurka, though numbered 4, was moved to the front of the manuscript, and became number 1 in the ensuing print. It is only a guess, but I think this reflects decisions by someone in-house at Breitkopf rather than by Chopin (otherwise why would the French and English editions read the way they do). Because of an ill-placed belief earlier in the 20th century that the "German editions were best", opus 33 came to be printed in modern editions with the D major before the C major. The new Polish edition (Ekier) is the first to correct this.

Jeff Kallberg

I’ve been wanting to get around to discussing Dr. Jeff’s old article on the Marche Funèbre/not Funèbre, the one from the 1990s [actually, 2001] that he gave a link for a while back.

The quote from an 1833 letter that included “I myself am a revolutionist, so I have quite nothing to do with money” gave me a smile.

It’s so amazing to realize that Chopin later removed the “funeral” part of the name of that funeral march to end all funeral marches. (I mean, no one ever needs to write a funeral march again.) I don’t have a favorite theory as to why he might have done that, but the idea that he might have been trying to keep it from being associated with Berlioz’ work appeals to me. It has amazed me that Chopin and Berlioz were friends, since their personalities and the style of their work seem so incompatible. It sounds very believable that Chopin might have wanted to clap his hands over his ears and run when confronted with Berlioz’ music, as Solange reported.

I was wondering: Did Chopin himself call 72/2 a funeral march, or was that name added later?

Looking at the original editions of the march is certainly eye-opening. (Funny how one develops notions about a piece that are not supported by what the composer actually wrote.) Chopin put all the parts of the beginning measures in the lower staff, which as Jeff points out increases the sense of darkness and doom. It’s much harder to read that way, though, and I’m just as glad that later editors made it easier by moving the RH to the top staff.

And no crescendo at the beginning of the A section? It’s always seemed so natural to me to have one; it’s like doom inexorably approaching. I have an ancient recording of Rachmaninov playing the march, and there’s no crescendo and not much of any other expression at the beginning of the section. It’s boring, frankly. It doesn’t have any emotional impact at all. I was rather shocked at Rachmaninov playing in such an offhand manner, as if he simply didn’t care, but I suppose he was at one of those points in his concert career where he was burned out, and maybe right at that moment he wasn’t even able to care. Anyway, I’d play the crescendo whether marked or not.

About the relationship to the march and “preghiera” in La Gazza Ladra, I can’t say anything useful, but I notice that those two are separate pieces in the opera, not married together as in Op. 35.

I was wondering, where did I get the assumption that the Op. 35 march had a lot to do with Beethoven’s Op. 26? I spent New Year’s Eve leafing through Samson’s and Siepmann’s works looking for references. (Yes, utter nerdhood, and proud of it.) Siepmann (p. 153) sees the march as “one of music’s most pessimistic utterances.” I can’t agree at all. The nocturne/prayer section is like a little visit to heaven, and to me it sounds like hope.

Although I remember hearing this piece on the radio when my daughter was small, having not thought of it in years (hadn’t learned it yet myself), and feeling that it was deeply disturbing. I put a recording on for my daughter and asked her what she thought of it. She kind of shrugged. When I told her that it seemed disturbing to me, she asked, “If it disturbs you, why do you listen to it?” Five-year-old wisdom! Of course, nowadays she’s deeply dark in her own work as a writer.

Fascinating to see Berlioz’ firsthand account of Chopin’s funeral. I’ve become curious lately about Paul Delaroche-- it had escaped me that he was one of the pallbearers-- what relation did he have to Chopin’s circle? I only know that he moved to Nice in 1849, presumably late in the year, and then was the close companion of Mme Potocka, who continued to do her usual muse thing, until his own death in 1856.

Jeff, I like your word “otherworld.” Yes, Chopin must have felt close to the otherworld a great deal of the time.

Elene