Frederic Chopin as a Man and Musician

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Title: Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician

Author: Frederick Niecks
Release Date: January, 2004 [EBook #4973] [Yes, we are more than
one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on April 8,
2002]
Edition: 10
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FREDERICK CHOPIN ***

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Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician
Frederick Niecks
Third Edition (1902)

VOLUME I.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION (1888) PREFACE TO THE
SECOND EDITION (1890) PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION
(1902) PROEM: POLAND AND THE POLES CHAPTERS I-XIX

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

While the novelist has absolute freedom to follow his artistic instinct
and intelligence, the biographer is fettered by the subject-matter with
which he proposes to deal. The former may hopefully pursue an ideal,
the latter must rest satisfied with a compromise between the desirable
and the necessary. No doubt, it is possible to thoroughly digest all the

requisite material, and then present it in a perfect, beautiful form. But
this can only be done at a terrible loss, at a sacrifice of truth and
trustworthiness. My guiding principle has been to place before the
reader the facts collected by me as well as the conclusions at which I
arrived. This will enable him to see the subject in all its bearings, with
all its pros and cons, and to draw his own conclusions, should mine not
obtain his approval. Unless an author proceeds in this way, the reader
never knows how far he may trust him, how far the evidence justifies
his judgment. For-- not to speak of cheats and fools--the best informed
are apt to make assertions unsupported or insufficiently supported by
facts, and the wisest cannot help seeing things through the coloured
spectacles of their individuality. The foregoing remarks are intended to
explain my method, not to excuse carelessness of literary workmanship.
Whatever the defects of the present volumes may be--and, no doubt,
they are both great and many--I have laboured to the full extent of my
humble abilities to group and present my material perspicuously, and to
avoid diffuseness and rhapsody, those besetting sins of writers on
music.
The first work of some length having Chopin for its subject was Liszt's
"Frederic Chopin," which, after appearing in 1851 in the Paris journal
"La France musicale," came out in book-form, still in French, in 1852
(Leipzig: Breitkopf and Hartel.--Translated into English by M. W.
Cook, and published by William Reeves, London, 1877). George Sand
describes it as "un peu exuberant de style, mais rempli de bonnes
choses et de tres-belles pages." These words, however, do in no way
justice to the book: for, on the one hand, the style is excessively, and
not merely a little, exuberant; and, on the other hand, the "good things"
and "beautiful pages" amount to a psychological study of Chopin, and
an aesthetical study of his works, which it is impossible to over-
estimate. Still, the book is no biography. It records few dates and
events, and these few are for the most part incorrect. When, in 1878,
the second edition of F. Chopin was passing through the press, Liszt
remarked to me:--
"I have been told that there are wrong dates and other mistakes in my
book, and that the dates and facts are correctly given in Karasowski's
biography of Chopin [which had in the meantime been published]. But,
though I often thought of reading it, I have not yet done so. I got my

information from Paris friends on whom I believed I might depend. The
Princess Wittgenstein [who then lived in Rome, but in 1850 at Weimar,
and is