Chopin: The Man and His Music | Page 3

much that he was left to himself with the usual good
and ill results. He first played on February 24, 1818, a concerto by
Gyrowetz and was so pleased with his new collar that he naively told
his mother, "Everybody was looking at my collar." His musical
precocity, not as marked as Mozart's, but phenomenal withal, brought
him into intimacy with the Polish aristocracy and there his taste for
fashionable society developed. The Czartoryskis, Radziwills, Skarbeks,
Potockis, Lubeckis and the Grand Duke Constantine with his Princess
Lowicka made life pleasant for the talented boy. Then came his lessons
with Joseph Elsner in composition, lessons of great value. Elsner saw
the material he had to mould, and so deftly did he teach that his pupil's
individuality was never checked, never warped. For Elsner Chopin
entertained love and reverence; to him he wrote from Paris asking his
advice in the matter of studying with Kalkbrenner, and this advice he
took seriously. "From Zwyny and Elsner even the greatest ass must
learn something," he is quoted as having said.
Then there are the usual anecdotes--one is tempted to call them the
stock stories of the boyhood of any great composer. In infancy Chopin
could not hear music without crying. Mozart was morbidly sensitive to
the tones of a trumpet. Later the Polish lad sported familiarly with his
talents, for he is related to have sent to sleep and awakened a party of
unruly boys at his father's school. Another story is his fooling of a Jew
merchant. He had high spirits, perhaps too high, for his slender
physique. He was a facile mimic, and Liszt, Balzac, Bocage, Sand and
others believed that he would have made an actor of ability. With his
sister Emilia he wrote a little comedy. Altogether he was a clever, if not
a brilliant lad. His letters show that he was not the latter, for while they

are lively they do not reveal much literary ability. But their writer saw
with open eyes, eyes that were disposed to caricature the peculiarities
of others. This trait, much clarified and spiritualized in later life,
became a distinct, ironic note in his character. Possibly it attracted
Heine, although his irony was on a more intellectual plane.
His piano playing at this time was neat and finished, and he had already
begun those experimentings in technique and tone that afterward
revolutionized the world of music and the keyboard. He being sickly
and his sister's health poor, the pair was sent in 1826 to Reinerz, a
watering place in Prussian Silesia. This with a visit to his godmother, a
titled lady named Wiesiolowska and a sister of Count Frederic
Skarbek,--the name does not tally with the one given heretofore, as
noted by Janotha,--consumed this year. In 1827 he left his regular
studies at the Lyceum and devoted his time to music. He was much in
the country, listening to the fiddling and singing of the peasants, thus
laying the corner stone of his art as a national composer. In the fall of
1828 he went to Berlin, and this trip gave him a foretaste of the outer
world.
Stephen Heller, who saw Chopin in 1830, described him as pale, of
delicate health, and not destined, so they said in Warsaw, for a long life.
This must have been during one of his depressed periods, for his stay in
Berlin gives a record of unclouded spirits. However, his sister Emilia
died young of pulmonary trouble and doubtless Frederic was
predisposed to lung complaint. He was constantly admonished by his
relatives to keep his coat closed. Perhaps, as in Wagner's case, the
uncontrollable gayety and hectic humors were but so many signs of a
fatal disintegrating process. Wagner outlived them until the Scriptural
age, but Chopin succumbed when grief, disappointment and intense
feeling had undermined him. For the dissipations of the "average
sensual man" he had an abiding contempt. He never smoked, in fact
disliked it. His friend Sand differed greatly in this respect, and one of
the saddest anecdotes related by De Lenz accuses her of calling for a
match to light her cigar: "Frederic, un fidibus," she commanded, and
Frederic obeyed. Mr. Philip Hale mentions a letter from Balzac to his
Countess Hanska, dated March 15, 1841, which concludes: "George
Sand did not leave Paris last year. She lives at Rue Pigalle, No.
16...Chopin is always there. Elle ne fume que des cigarettes, et pas

autre chose" Mr. Hale states that the italics are in the letter. So much
for De Lenz and his fidibus!
I am impelled here to quote from Mr. Earnest Newman's "Study of
Wagner" because Chopin's exaltation of spirits, alternating with
irritability and intense depression, were duplicated in Wagner. Mr.
Newman writes of Wagner: "There have been few men in whom the