+1

I love the Alan Walker book. It had gone out of print at the time I got my copy, and I'm delighted that's no longer the case.

Another worthy item is Gerald Abraham's Chopin's Musical Style, though I suspect it's out of print.

On the topic of books, is anyone familiar with Notes on Chopin by André Gide? (The title makes me think of Susan Sontag's famous essay. )

Dang, I just realized I have Jim Samson's The Music of Chopin but not his biography:

Chopin (Master Musician Series) by Jim Samson, at Amazon

Steven

The trouble with the friends in high places scenario is that the world in which Chopin flourished is long gone. If he managed to overcame his nerves enough to become a concert pianist (a very big if) he'd have had celebrity acquaintances and fans but if not, if he were "merely" a piano teacher and composer he'd probably have been innumdated with brownies and chicken soup from his pupils' mothers - and perhaps the tender mercies of an old girlfriend (or several old girlfriends) and that would be about it.

Thanks everyone. You are ALL wise beyond your years. I am going to PM you.

And thank you for all your suggestions about good books. Including 12 books and 12 of my own, I am literally drowning. Help!

Now this is rrrrreeeaaaallllllyyyyy far out. But if it were possible, would you stipulate on the back of your drivers license that your heart be dontated to Chopin only? I told you this was a weird question.

Jeff, I didn't care for [u] Chopin in Paris./u] There was so much about Chopin that had little do with his Paris days. He came to Paris fully developed, both as a man and as a musician. Yes, Paris was very important in his life, but it did not define him.

I agree about the Walker book.

My best, Kathleen

I gave my heart to Fryderyk a long time ago. But would our tissues be a match?

I'm sorry to hear that the Samson and Siepmann bios are out of print. (The Siepmann book I have is Chopin, the Reluctant Romantic.)

I think anyone with a serious interest not only in Chopin but the history and practice of the piano should own a copy of Eigeldinger's Chopin, pianist and teacher (originally Chopin vu par ses eleves), the book we've often mentioned here. It's a gold mine.

I didn't know that Gide had written about Chopin. I seem to be about the only one left who has NOT finished a book on Chopin!

Elene

I've got to say I agree wholeheartedly about Eigeldinger's book. I worried that it might be dry and not my cup of tea, and hesitated before purchasing it. It turned out to be very interesting to me and a trove of information, too.

I consider it a remarkable piece of scholarship and a very important part of the corpus of information available about Chopin and his music.

Steven

Hi everyone,

The Samson biography (in the Master Musicians series published by Oxford University Press) is still very much in print.

The Gide Notes on Chopin contain some interesting observations and meditations on the music. Worth a read, I think.

Since I haven't popped in in awhile, I thought I'd mention a couple new items from the world of Chopin scholarship. Apropos the discussion about health care and Chopin, there's a fascinating new article by J.Q. Davies, "Reflecting on Reflex, or Another Touching New Fact about Chopin," in Keyboard Perspectives II published by the Westfield Center for Historical Piano Studies. (The table of contents is here:
Westfield Center )

Anyway, the "new fact" comes from a treatise by Jan Matuszyński, Chopin's friend, who was a physician and author of a couple medical treatises. In one of them (on the influence of the sympathetic nerve on the sense functions), Matuszyński wrote:

"I know a distinguished pianist, of tremendously nervous temperament; he often has trouble urinating, and often is subject to all possible trouble without being at liberty to satisfy his needs; yet whistling or a few chords on the piano frees this obstruction in an instant.
"The intimate connection existing between the human ear and the abdominal viscera by the sympathetic nerves permits these organs to have a significant influence upon the organ of hearing."

It seems pretty clear who the "distinguished pianist" was.

Now the essay is quite serious, even though the motivating fact seems trivial or even funny, as it contains a fascinating discussion of the relationship of 19th-century medical understanding of the functions of the sympathetic nerve to Chopin's conception of pianistic touch. Well worth a read.

On the home front, I recently did a public lecture at the University of Chicago about this: Memory of Poland. My talk concerned the picture on the bottom (though it mentioned the picture on top too.) Eventually there will be a webcast available; I'll let folks know when this transpires.

Of possible interest is what I think might be the first hearing (played by yours truly) of a sketch Chopin entitled "Doÿna Vallacha", which is to say a doina from the Wallachia region of Romania. (It is a sketch entirely in pencil, a rare thing for Chopin, who almost always sketched in ink.) The doina genre was adopted by klezmer musicians in the early 20th century, and you can hear a definite familial connection between what Chopin wrote and what the early klezmer musicians played. (Here's an example of one of those early klezmer pieces: Joseph Moskowitz )

Sorry to run on so long!

Jeff

Thanks very much for the list of favorite books. Some are in print; some aren't but I was able to get the ISBN number (very useful); and for some it was nice to see that I guessed right and had them on the list. It's extremely helpful to know your views about them.

Plenty to get my teeth into!

BTW, there's a link on the first page of this thread to books and movies; dead, unfortunately, but a very good idea (maybe a casualty of migrating to a new host for the site). I wonder if it would be too ambitious to offer a sub-thread, or set of them: one for books, one for films, one for recordings, and maybe one for links. I would be willing to work on it to start it up, but the best way to set it up would be so you guys could post into the listings, with your own capsule reviews or opinions... just like the recent posts.

PS- and one for editions of scores

Perhaps at last we have crossed into the territory of Too Much Information. We've discussed Chopin's heart before, but never his bladder! Could Dr. Jan maybe have been a little less obvious in his description of the nervous pianist?

But thanks, Jeff K., for your very meaty and fascinating post and for information we'd probably never have gotten elsewhere. I'm trying to decide whether to cough up the cash to joint the Westfield Center. (Oh... bad unintentional pun.)

I have to think a bit about whether there is actually any connection between the sympathetic nervous system, bladder control, and hearing. I'd say the 19th c. docs were probably off base, but one thing that comes to mind is that a person could learn such an association through simple conditioning. I guess we'd have to know something about little Frycek's experience of potty training.

In Oriental medicine, the ear is associated with Kidney meridian. Which has relatively little to do with this topic, though.

I'd love to hear that proto-klezmer sketch-- and I love klezmer! Thanks for posting the Moskowitz tune. We have quite a bit of klezmer activity in Albuquerque. In fact, the singer in my husband's Brazilian (choro, samba, etc.) band also plays accordion in the klezmer band Der Rebbe's Orkestra. I would never have associated Chopin with klezmer, but both activate my internal Slavic circuits.

Elene

I think the pee/whistling story simply shows that even just a snatch of music was enough to relax Chopin - who was too sensitive for normal life, as really he inhabited the Sphere of Music. (Many thanks to Jeff for his fascinating contribution.)

On the subject of Chopin's letters, I came upon this rather apt description by a blogger (davidrochester, wordpress) who professes to be more of a fan of Chopin the writer than Chopin the composer:

For the past week, I’ve been completely drowned in the life and works of Fryderyk Chopin, whose music I have never particularly liked (except for the Nocturnes and Etudes) but with whom I am obliged to become reacquainted for the sake of the project I’m working on. I treated myself to a volume of his collected letters, which have become my favorite reading material lately; while I am not his number-one fan in a musical sense, his personality absolutely delights me. Chopin was a highly complex, extremely intelligent, fussy, gossipy, charming elitist with a wicked tongue and an often deadpan sardonic sense of humor. I’ve always thought that if I’d met him, we would have hit it off famously. His letters are a fascinating revelation both of his character and of the times he lived in; they range from beautifully tender epistles to beloved friends and family to imperious, spoiled-brat instructions to his friend Julian Fontana who was his factotum in Paris while Chopin was in Nohant and Majorca with George Sand. Interwoven with his personal life are amazing insights about the nature of creativity and art. Even if you have no interest in music, Chopin’s letters are worth reading; they are a marvelous autobiography, a first-hand portrait of a bygone age, and a testament to how much we, as a society, are lacking now that we no longer write letters

Hmmm, not a bad idea, but it wouldn't work--- this is just an ordinary thread, structurally.

Back to the bladder: this is a vexation common to many; at least, sufferers may say to themselves that they're in the company of the great. It's something.

Does this sound like anyone we know?

”But beneath the aristocratic surface of his cosmopolitan gaiety lived a most private, dedicated, and disciplined man. His wit was a line of defense against a deep-rooted melancholia. This interplay between the two sides of his nature is apparent in his music; passion and resignation are inherent in everything he composed.” -- Paul Wittke
It’s part of a description of Samuel Barber by a friend of his. After the e-cital, feeling that I’d had enough Chopin for the moment (really), I started to seriously work at Barber’s own Nocturne. It was an inefficient way to try to get away from Chopin, though, since this piece is essentially a Chopin nocturne pulled through a time warp and twisted into a Möbius strip, or possibly put in a blender. It has all of his cliches though none of his language. Phenomenal piece.

I can imagine that if we’d had a Chopin in the 20th century (the guy who could have obtained a heart transplant), he might have been a bit like Barber.

(Clef, one of the major homeopathic remedies has an indication for "can't urinate in front of others." I should remember which but I'd have to look it up. As you say, this kind of problem seems rather common.)

"How awful that the artist has become nothing but the after-dinner mint of society" – Samuel Barber

Jeff - there is another place where we can discuss books, films and so on. Have a look here and feel free to start a thread or two:

Chopin thread in Composer's Lounge

However the strange thing is that some of the information we put there earlier has disappeared. I wonder how that can be?

Elene - what an interesting quote about Barber. It could indeed be about Chopin.

Hehe, I thought so, too, when I first visited there after a long hiatus. It turns out that the default Display Option (toward the bottom of that page) shows only the topics most recently active, and needed to be changed to "Show Topics from all dates."

And while I'm here ... the following was posted in a Pianist Corner thread about when we learn a wrong note somewhere and don't realize it until much time has passed:


I was sure this was off the mark, but I responded before actually doing research to back up what I thought I already knew. If I misstepped, I hope someone will correct me.

Steven

Oh Sotto, I'm glad you solved the mystery of the missing posts! I found it rather disquieting.

You did well on the 'untidy manuscripts' thread. What you said was very true. You could've added that quite a lot of Chopin's manuscripts as sent to the publishers were written out by his copyist, Fontana, who had a similar neatness to Chopin although I think he tended to put the tails of the notes in a slightly odd place.

Steven, I thought your reply to the "untidy manuscripts" thing was very appropriate too. And I didn't know about the CFEO. What a lot I've learned from you guys this week!

There really is/was a fair amount of variation between different editions of Chopin's work, though "untidy" doesn't sound like a good description of his manuscripts to me either. The Henle and so-called Paderewski editions, not to mention the Polish national edition, make an effort to sort it all out. I wonder if Dr. Kallberg would care to comment?

Didn't Chopin himself put the stems of notes that have the stems going downward on the opposite side to what we would?

Elene

But in addition to the neatness factor, I did take issue with the degree of variation among editions as well; it seems to me that the kinds of differences tracked by the endnotes in Henle and Paderewski are more likely to concern dynamics, articulation and phrasing than notes—and when they do concern notes, it's typically in the harmonic details or voicings of chords.

I could be wrong, as I've never even considered doing a serious inventory. But even so, the statement that "notes will often vary from one edition to the next" (emphasis mine) seemed like a gross overstatement of a situation that arises only on occasion.

Obviously often, occasionally, sometimes and the like are imprecise, slippery and subjective. And in any case, are we talking about prevalence of discrepancies within a typical composition or in Chopin's entire corpus of work? I suspect that there's at least one inconsistency in the great majority of Chopin's works—but that none of them contains such variants in the majority of its measures.

Steven

With respect to untidiness: it depends which manuscripts. Chopin's private manuscripts (those intended only for his eyes) could be quite messy, with pitches and rhythms notated imprecisely and incompletely, massive amounts of crossings-out (by cross-hatching), and large numbers of ink blots (Chopin used his sketch pages to blot the ink from his quill). His public manuscripts (those intended to be read by someone else, usually either a publisher or a gift-recipient) were (by definition, I suppose) quite legible in most respects. Though these public manuscripts could often feature many more crossings-out than we might have expected.

With respect to variations in notes: These do occur with some frequency from first edition to first edition. That they do so has nothing to do with untidiness (as I wrote above, his publishers' manuscripts were perfectly legible -which is not the same thing as unambiguous), and everything to do with Chopin's tendency to continue to compose even after a point when other composers might have assumed a work to be finished.

My favorite example of this (in one of my favorite pieces) is the Nocturne in B major, op. 62 no. 1. I invite you to compare mm. 53-55 (where the opening theme of the middle section returns within the middle section) in the first editions. (A good chance to use the CFEO site!) Unfortunately I can't point you to an online source for the manuscript that served as the basis for the French edition, but you'd find that it offers a different reading than what the French edition prints - Chopin changed it when he read proofs. And the German edition differs from both the French manuscript and the French first edition. A wonderful example of Chopin composing in public, as it were.

Jeff

I read recently (sorry, don't remember where) that Chopin prepared his manuscripts for publication very meticulously. However, his wish that his unpublished works remain private was not respected, and they remain a source of errata.

I'm hardly an authority. (Barnes was able to turn up most of the books from your suggestions--- and has even shipped them; I may be less misinformed than I am now.)

Thayer's "Life" recounts that Beethoven's manuscripts were a fright, and especially after the passing of the copyist with whom he had worked for many years, getting a clean engraving was a real problem. The heavy prevalence of pirated reprints (partly because of the lack of international copyrights) and the fact that he did (as Dr. Kallberg said of Chopin) change his mind between editions...

Such a rich harvest of errors, between what the writer wrote, the copyist copied, the engraver engraved, and the performer performed. I doubt anyone could copy scores without making mistakes--- I never could.

One of our members mentioned that a heart transplant could have saved Chopin's life. I had the impression that TB was the main culprit in his decease. As recently as my childhood, it was not possible to treat TB medically; isolation, rest, etc., and later, screening were the main public health tools. Now we do have medications--- at least for some varieties. It's gaining on us again, though. Taking up the goal of its eradication once again could be a nice thing to do, "in memoriam."

Chopin fought tuberculosis to a draw over the course of 20 or more years but he actually died of cor pulmonale which is a heart condition brought on by chronic obstruction of the lungs. The heart literally works itself to death, enlarging and eventually failing. Even today it usually kills the patient within five years of the onset of symptoms.

Frycek: Would this condition be called "congestive heart failure" today?

Jeff: I am listening to 62, #1, as I write this, and wow..is it ever a prime example of Chopin's genius at improv. The whole piece sounds as if he just sat down and doodled and noodled around. If only I could noodled as well. One just never has an inkling of what might be coming next; hence, it has that "ad lib" quality. I got a chill as I zoomed in on that letter and could actually make out the wording. Well, not the Polish translation, but I could actually make out the individual letters. I don't know why, but I felt as if I were invading his privacy, that's how personal it felt.

I can only imagine what Beethoven's manuscripts looked like. However, I do think that it is the very essense of music (and perhaps most art) that it is a living thing, if you will. Again, I can only imagine that when Chopin saw an actual published copy of one of his works, he was not happy with it. Oh, that perfectionism in him cried out for his pen and those famous cross-outs. He was perhaps the first and most famous do-overs of composers. Always great "hearing" from you.

Jeff: That index on the first page was created by me, and it almost killed me. What a job!! I had no inkling that the thread would get as large as it has. I finally had to give up. But yes, in the Composer's Corner, we have our very own topic - Chopin, under which we can start any thread on any subject. Jump right in and start something new.

Kathleen

No, cor pulmonale is a different entity. Cor pulmonale is right sided heart failure. Congestive heart failure is left sided heart failure and is more common and more treatable. The symptoms are quite similar though - including shortness of breath, faintness, swelling ankles and legs.

A very interesting look-up. Thank you, Frycek.

Jeff Clef, I don't know what page it's on, but sometime early in 2008 (I think) we had a long discussion of the various theories of what was wrong with Chopin, and it should be possible to find it, but might be more trouble than it's worth! I am-- mostly-- in the alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency camp. But definitely, at the end, it was heart failure.

Elene

Discovering more Chopin bit by bit.
Just now I nearly cried when I heard Etude Op. 25 No. 1 for the first time:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p46asrc_7BA&fmt=18
What a wonderful piece. I can't get enough.

Dear babama, you have some treats ahead of you. Even now, after many listenings, Chopin sometimes brings tears to my eyes.

I just found this article on the bbc webiste. It's ten years old so you may have not seen it before the part that interested me was this:

"Chopin's music - best known for his piano preludes - was part of Poland's national identity."

The middle part in particular. Do you agree that his preludes were what he was best known for? And why?

Hi Chopin4life, no, I don't agree with that statement at all and if I'd seen it at the time would have written to the naughty BBC to contradict it (as I have since about other Chopin-related errors).

So what is Chopin 'best known for'? I would say, if you'll excuse my using the nicknames:

- Funeral March
- Minute Waltz
- Revolutionary Study
- Military Polonaise
- Raindrop Prelude

What do others think?

I just noticed that we have two Jeffs. If it's OK with Jeff Cleff, I will address him as Clef.


Welcome Babama: The etude (25, 1) is one that always brings tears to my eyes. I remember hearing it as background music for a skater in the Winter Olympics some years ago. I have never seen or heard anything like it...from heaven-sent. I agree with Mary-Rose that you have hours upon hours of pure joy ahead of you.

Mary-Rose: I agree with your list although I wish it weren't so. These are pieces that have overshadowed so much of Chopin's extraordinary compositions. While I do like the idea that he is recognized by many for the works you cited, if I had my way, I would create my own list that would truly represent his genius (not that the above are not sublime, but just crowding out what the public is really missing).

It will take me a day to get my head on straight and come up with my own wish-list, if you will.

BTW, I borrowed the book Piano by Jeremy Siepmann. What a treasure chest of information it is.


Kathleen

Yes I agree that list probably covers most of the most popular ones. I'd add nocturne op. 9 no. 2 and fantaisie impromptu?

How about the most famous genre, like preludes?