Frederick Niecks

“ All these enchanting melodies, these ineffable delicacies of execution, these melancholy and impassioned inspirations, and all that poesy of playing and of composition which takes hold at once of your imagination and heart, have penetrated, moved, enraptured 500 auditors, as they do the eight or ten privileged persons who listen to him religiously for whole hours; every moment there were in the hall those electric fremissements, those murmurs of ecstasy and astonishment which are the bravos of the soul. ”

“ Liszt, too, reports that Chopin's face resumed an unwonted youth, purity, and calm; that his youthful beauty so long eclipsed by suffering reappeared. Common as the phenomenon is, there can be nothing more significant, more impressive, more awful, than this throwing-off in death of the marks of care, hardship, vice, and disease—the corruption of earthly life; than this return to the innocence, serenity, and loveliness of a first and better nature; than this foreshadowing of a higher and more perfect existence. ”

“ Forward then, Chopin! forward! let this triumph decide you; do not be selfish, give your beautiful talent to all; consent to pass for what you are; put an end to the great debate which divides the artists; and when it shall be asked who is the first pianist of Europe, Liszt or Thalberg, let all the world reply, like those who have heard you..."It is Chopin." ”

“ The favoured pupils from the highest aristocracy appeared with modest demeanour and full of the most profound devotion, they glided silently, like gold-fishes in a vase, one after another into the salon, and sat down as far as possible from the piano, as Chopin liked people to do. Nobody spoke, Chopin only nodded, and shook hands with one here and there, not with all of them. The square pianoforte, which stood in his cabinet, he had placed beside the Pleyel concert grand in the salon, not without the most painful embarras to him. ”

“ A past, present, and future which never existed and never will exist, a Poland and a Polish people glorified. Reality passed through the refining fires of his love and genius and reappeared in his music sublimated as beauty and poetry. No other poet has like Chopin embodied in art the romance of the land and people of Poland. And, also, no other poet has like him embodied in art the romance of his own existence. But whereas as a national poet he was a flattering idealist, he was as a personal poet an uncompromising realist. ”

“ There is an enthralling weirdness about this work, a weirdness made up of force of passion and an indescribable fantastic waywardness. Nothing more common than the name of Fantasia, here we have the thing! The music falls on our ears like the insuppressible outpouring of a being stirred to its heart's core, and full of immeasurable love and longing. Who would suspect the composer's fragility and sickliness in this work? ”

“ What Chopin has written remains for all times the highest ideal of Polish music. Although it would be impossible to point out in a single bar a vulgar utilisation of a national theme, or a Slavonic aping of it, there yet hovers over the whole the spirit of Polish melody, with its chivalrous, proud, and dreamy accents; yea, even the spirit of the Polish language is so pregnantly reproduced in the musical diction as perhaps in no composition of any of his countrymen; unless it be that Prince Oginski with his polonaises and Dobrzynski in his happiest moments have approached him. ”

“ When this kind of inspiration laid hold of Chopin his playing assumed a distinctive character, whatever the kind of music he executed might be—dance-music or dreamy music, mazurkas or nocturnes, preludes or scherzos, waltzes or tarantellas, studies or ballades. He imprinted on them all one knows not what nameless colour, what vague appearance, what pulsations akin to vibration, that had almost no longer anything material about them, and, like the imponderables, seemed to act on one's being without passing through the senses. ”

“ Chopin, who has not been heard in public for several years; Chopin, who imprisons his charming genius in an audience of five or six persons; Chopin, who resembles those enchanted isles where so many marvels are said to abound that one regards them as fabulous; Chopin, whom one can never forget after having once heard him; Chopin has just given a grand concert at Rouen before 500 people for the benefit of a Polish professor. Nothing less than a good action to be done and the remembrance of his country could have overcome his repugnance to playing in public. ”

“ What reveals perhaps more distinctly than anything else Chopin's idiosyncrasy is his friendship for Titus Woyciechowski. At any rate, it is no exaggeration to say that a knowledge of the nature of Chopin's two passions, his love and his friendship—for this, too, was a passion with him—gives into our hands a key that unlocks all the secrets of his character, of his life, and of their outcome—his artistic work. Nay more, with a full comprehension of, and insight into, these passions we can foresee the sufferings and disappointments which he is fated to endure. ”

“ I know of no more affecting composition among all the productions of Chopin than the "Polonaise-Fantaisie" (in A flat major) , Op. 61 (published in September, 1846) . What an unspeakable, unfathomable wretchedness reveals itself in these sounds! We gaze on a boundless desolation. These lamentations and cries of despair rend our heart, these strange, troubled wanderings from thought to thought fill us with intensest pity. There are thoughts of sweet resignation, but the absence of hope makes them perhaps the saddest of all. ”

“ The exquisite ease and grace, the subtle spirit that breathes through this movement, defy description, and, more, defy the attempts of most performers to reproduce the original. He who ventures to interpret Chopin ought to have a soul strung with chords which the gentlest breath of feeling sets in vibration, and a body of such a delicate and supple organisation as to echo with equal readiness the music of the soul. ”

“ Our fathers danced it with a marvellous ability and a gravity full of nobleness; the dancer, making gliding steps with energy, but without skips, and caressing his moustache, varied his movements by the position of his sabre, of his cap, and of his tucked-up coat-sleeves, distinctive signs of a free man and warlike citizen. Whoever has seen a Pole of the old school dance the polonaise in the national costume will confess without hesitation that this dance is the triumph of a well- made man, with a noble and proud tournure, and with an air at once manly and gay. ”

“ In Monday's concert Chopin had chosen in preference those of his works which swerve more from the classical forms. He played neither concerto, nor sonata, nor fantasia, nor variations, but preludes, studies, nocturnes, and mazurkas. Addressing himself to a society rather than to a public, he could show himself with impunity as he is, an elegiac poet, profound, chaste, and dreamy. He did not need either to astonish or to overwhelm, he sought for delicate sympathy rather than for noisy enthusiasm. ”

“ Visited as we now are by the highest musical talent, by this great player and the other eminent composer, it must be difficult for each successive candidate for our patronage and applause to produce in sufficient quantity that essential element to success—novelty; but M. Chopin has proved satisfactorily that it is not easy to estimate the capabilities of the instrument he handles with so much grace and ingenuity, or limit the skill and power whose magic touch makes it pour forth its sublime strains to electrify and delight anew the astonished listener. ”

“ Well, the first business of an artist, then, is to make himself a reputation, and a reputation is not made by one or two successes. A first success, be it ever so great, and achieved under ever so favourable circumstances, is at best but the thin end of the wedge which has been got in, but which has to be driven home with much vigour and perseverance before the work is done. "Art is a fight, not a pleasure-trip," said the French painter Millet, one who had learnt the lesson in the severe school of experience. Unfortunately for Chopin, he had neither the stuff nor the stomach for fighting. ”

“ One is seized by an ever-increasing longing to get out of this oppressive atmosphere, to feel the fresh breezes and warm sunshine, to see smiling faces and the many-coloured dress of Nature, to hear the rustling of leaves, the murmuring of streams, and voices which have not yet lost the clear, sonorous ring that joy in the present and hope in the future impart. The two nocturnes, Op. 62, seem to owe their existence rather to the sweet habit of activity than to inspiration. ”

“ At the time of the Berlin visit Chopin was a lively, well-educated, and well-mannered youth, who walked through life pleased and amused with its motley garb, but as yet unconscious of the deeper truths, and the immensities of joy and sadness, of love and hate, that lie beneath. ”

“ Polish bravery is so universally recognised and admired that it is unnecessary to enlarge upon it. For who has not heard at least of the victorious battle of Czotzim, of the delivery of Vienna, of the no less glorious defeats of Maciejowice and Ostrolenka, and of the brilliant deeds of Napoleon's Polish Legion? And are not the names of Poland's most popular heroes, Sobieski and Kosciuszko, household words all the world over? Moreover, the Poles have proved their chivalry not only by their valour on the battle-field, but also by their devotion to the fair sex. ”