Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Just for those totally devoted to Chopin

Patty,

Are you talking about the waltz 34/2 in A min? You say posth and I didn't think that one was?

Is this the waltz (numbered 17) you mean?


waltz in a minor 17 post


It's absolutely delightful.

Kahleen

Ohhh, that one. That is pretty. I was looking through my Shirmer Chopin waltzes and couldn't find it. Still can't for that matter. Guess it's not there.

Yes, Kathleen, this is the waltz, now Peyton has to listen if it is 34/2...

Beautiful.

Patty

That Waltz in A minor is No 19 or Brown Index 150. I must say I like Mike White (Yamaha G-3 & P-80) playing of this Waltz much better than Valery Lloyd-Watts'. It's a Waltz and Mike played it like a Waltz, and Valery played it like a Nocturne or something like that.

Does anyone need the music for it? I've got a copy and it's gotten hard to find now. I could scan it.

I have a thing for haunting pieces. Music I like tend to be romantic, sad and haunting. Most of Chopin music falls into this category.

Just listen to Chopin Nocturnes to have an idea of what I mean. Listen to Chopin Nocturne Op.48 No.1, Nocturne Op.27 No.2, Chopin Nocturne in C# minor. Prelude No.4 is such a simple piece of music but it's got such a powerfull feeling.

And no, I am not forgetting any other pieces, I just think it'd be better to keep this post short.

No it's not Op. 34/2; it doesn't have an opus mumber. Just called Waltz in A minor, #17.

The 34/2 is a completely different waltz.

Sotto Voce:
I think the jury is deadlocked on the subject of Chopin's possible homosexuality.

What a paradox this man was. To this day, I don't think anyone has come close to understanding what went on inside his head or within his heart.

What he couldn't put in words, he put into his music. And from the range of emotions in his works, he went from one extreme to the other. Almost (and some have suggested this) like a manic-depressive.

When writing to his childhood friends, Chopin often employed phrases as: My soul, My dear, My life, "I kiss you cordially on the mouth with your permission, Love me sweetheart, I love only you, Give me your mouth. None of Chopin's friends were homsexual.

We can understand why some biographers have winced at such excesses of language and why one came up with a theory about Chopin's conscious or latent homosexuality.

(It also might be worth mentioning that Chopin was raised by women, his mother and sisters...and he was the only boy in the family. He could have very well acquired a certain trace of femininity from being around them.)


Chopin had an extreme reserve with regard to women. According to George Sand (with whom he lived for nine years), "He scorns the realities of the flesh. He says that certain acts could spoil one's memories."

Some authors think that his imagination predominated over his sense of reality, the idea of love seemed more exciting than love itself, in its physical form.

I personally can accept this statement because of the music he wrote. So much of it is filled with such a sense of strong yearning, unrequited love type of sadness, and soulful loneliness. Almost like a schoolgirl/boy fantasizes about a "dream lover." Especially the slow movement of his concerto in E. It was written to express his feelings about a young girl with whom he went to school, Konstancja Gladkowska. How he did worshipped her (from afar, naturally). He did speak with her but only about mundane matters. Never did he express his feelings about her. He wrote to his friend Titus...that she was his ideal. That movement in the concerto always brings tears to my eyes because of its heartbreaking loveliness and quiet passion.

What is so sad...several years after his death when through his letters it was discovered how he felt about her, she was totally suprised and said that she thought he was quite strange and much too shy. Then she went on her merry way without another thought about the whole thing.

Yes, Titus Wojciechowski was a lifelong friend. Extremely handsome, he was a robust gentleman farmer and was married to Countess Poleytillo. He was frequently appalled by the effusiveness of his friend whose genius he admired, but he did not hesitate to put him in his place: "I don't liked to be kissed!" (Men kissing men on the mouth was quite common place in Russia and could have very well been accepted as custom in Poland also.) Hey, the French kiss men to this day, first on one check and then the other.

I remember growing up (my mother's side was Polish) and my granfather used to kiss his grown sons and grandchildren on the mouth. We never thought anything of it.

Well, I guess one could write a book on this subjct alone (perhaps it has been done).

He was a tortured soul most of his life. The brief periods of true happiness were mostly from his childhood. Then, here and there....and once in a while.

I'm currently reading the book: Chopin by Bernard Gavoty. He makes it quite clear tht he believes Chopin was the best thing to happen to music. He often refers to him as "our hero." Our hero did this...or Our hero did that, or Our poor hero... Quite charming, I think and exceptionally sensitive.

Kathleen

I'd love a copy. It's such a nice waltz I'm surprised it's not in the usual Chopin collection book?

Sorry for the long post (above).

I, also, think that Mike White played the waltz exceptionally well. He is my hero (speaking of heroes).

But I do like Valarie's rendition. I think by playing it slowly, the charm of the piece comes shining through.

I play it slowly also. For two reasons: I like it that way, and 2) I don't do "fast" very well. Whenever I try to speed it up a tad, I fumble all over the place. Even though (as a whole) it is not a difficult piece, it does have some tricky spots. And they trip me up more often than not.

Peyton: Don't you think that the nocture we're learning sounds like a polonaise? It has such a slow, heavy and stately beginning and a lot of angst all over. Certainly not typical of some of his other nocturnes.

I tried recording the following enchanting nocturne via audacity...not the best quality. But for those looking for something relatively easy and wonderful to play, consider this.


Nocture in C minor

Kathleen

Kathleen, I appreciate your thoughts on the subject and the sensitivity with which you express them.
That's true insofar as we are aware, but something we can never know because, as CHAS said in his earlier post in another thread, people just didn't "come out" in those days.

How true.

Considering what Tschaikovsy (sp?) went through, it's no wonder.

How so tragic about him. What a waste.

Kathleen

Just a quick note. Kathleen, the Nocturne you posted is the posthumous c minor. It's just that there are two Nocturnes in c minor OP.48 No.1 and the one you posted. I just wanted to make the distinction.

Nice recording by the way.

Actually one of Chopin's friends was a homosexual and a notorious one at that. He was the Marquis de Custine, minor poet and major travel writer who wrote a definite portrait of Russia. De Custine had been married young to a young lady of his mother's chosing. He apparently loved her deeply in spite of his sexual orientation. After she and their baby died in childbirth he began to seek the company of other men. He made overtures to the wrong man and ended up beaten and bloody on a road outside of Paris. After that he came out. His own level of society shunned him so he found his friends among the more tolerant artistic circles frequented Chopin and Delacroix. By the time Chopin met him, De Custine was established with his life partner, an Englishman named Edward. Chopin in the company of other men, like Delacroix occasionally spent a weekend at De Custine's estate. Chopin rode donkey's by day and entertained the company at the piano in the evenings. Chopin kept a very kind letter De Cusine wrote to him. De Custine wrote it at about the time Chopin's engagement broke off. Chopin must've been obviously ill and depressed. De Custine wrote to him that though he sensed Chopin's troubles were not just physical, regardles of how troubled he was, that he must take care of himself. De Custine offered him a loan if it were necessary for Chopin to take a cure at a spa or to simply give off teaching to rest, or the use of his estate to recuperate. Chopin didn't take him up on it but thought enough of the kindness of the gesture to keep the letter.

"A horse, a horse ... my kingdom for" ... a jolly old copy of the Chopin C minor (1837) Nocturne post. How tantalising to hear Ashkenazy doing his CD thing ... nice job Kathleen and thanks for the lead ... and finding that my ABRSM edition fades at 19 Nocturnes and doesn't include the extra two nocturnes ... the post. C sharp and the C minor (1837).

Even the Sheet Music Archives ( where I seem to download a daily 2 gems) haven't added the C minor (1837) Nocturne to their marvellous list. Can't wait to get to the keyboard with this early work.

Can anybody help me with an instant copy? ... scrub round the horseless wild kingdom offer ... perhaps I can ask Tom Pearce to lend me his grey mare.

The date of the C minor Nocturne (1837) would indicate that Chopin was still studying his craft under Elsner. Could the "post." be as a result of Chopin regarding the Nocturne as something beneath him ... we know that on his deathbed in 1849:

"He orders all his unpublished and uncompleted works to be thrown on the fire. He said to Wojciech Grzymala (some name!!):
"You will find many works, more or less worth of me; in the name of the affection which you hold for me, please burn them all apart from the beginning of my method for piano. The rest, without any exception, must be consumed by fire, for I have too much respect for my public and I do not want all the pieces unworthy of my public to be distributed on my responsibility under my name." In his last hours, as Pauline Viardot recounts, he still found the strength to say a warm word to everyone.

I'm not a 100% Chopin player; I go through periods where Bach or Liszt or others become my focus. But I gravitate back to Chopin more than to any other composer, and it's safe to say he is the pole star for most amateurs and certainly for audiences at piano recitals. Why is that?

I can think of at least two qualities to his music that account for this: accessibility and - I'll make this word up - "transportability". His music is immediately accessible on an emotional level, and defines Romanticism for many people. He also has the ability to transport you to another world, especially when listening to a fine artist playing Chopin. You are suddenly out of the real world and cocooned in another place altogether, a place of your own imagination that you can construct any way you want out of the emotions the music evokes. His Nocturnes in particular have this quality, and I've been in recitals where the audience is so enwrapped in the experience they forget to applaud at the end (I'm thinking especially of Artur Rubinstein's performance of the Nocturnes).

Actually the 1837 date is probably wrong for the C Minor Posthumous Noctune. If the write up in the Paderewski edition Minor Works is correct the date 1837 (the rational for which is never given and is not printed in the Paderweski) the date should've been around 1827 when Chopin was 17 and studying composition under Professor Elsner. I actually think it was a piece he left in Poland and forgot about. How it survived until 1937 when it was first published and reached the Paris Conservatory Library which provided the manuscript, is anybody's guess. It may have been a piece he'd left in the album of one of his teenaged friends that made it's way to library through a bequest or an auction. Most of the papers Chopin left with his family including the manuscripts for half a dozen waltzes were destroyed in 1866 when the Russians trashed and burned the belongings of the tenants of the building in which Chopin's mother and surviving sister were still living as a reprisal for an attempted assasinatiion of the Russian governor by one of the tenants. Of course the nocturne may've been one of the papers sister Isabella did manage to save.

I have a copy that may be scanned if it can wait till I get off work this evening.

Thanks Frycek ... your kind offer is awaited with baited breathe.

You are a real Sherlock Holmes when it comes to the history of Chopin ... it is quite by chance that you support my presumption that the Nocturne was written during the Elsner period (however, I must come clean in having got my sums wrong and missed out a decade ... being totally distracted and trying to rationalize the unworthy "post."

Perhaps we'll never know when the Nocturne was written ... but who's complaining when there's prospect of delighting in an untried Chopin work.

double post ... sorry chaps

Yea, I can hear a bit of a polonais in there. Hey, are you playing the Nocturne here? My computer won't play it (unrecognized format) but I'm curious.