Frederick Niecks

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There are artists who pretend to despise the great public, but their abuse of it when it withholds its applause shows their real feeling. No artist can at heart be fully satisfied with the approval of a small minority; Chopin, at any rate, was not such a one. Nature, who had richly endowed him with the qualities that make a virtuoso, had denied him one, perhaps the meanest of all, certainly the least dispensable, the want of which balked him of the fulfilment of the promise with which the others had flattered him, of the most brilliant reward of his striving. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ Yes, one must admit that Chopin has genius in the full sense of the word; he is not only a virtuoso, he is also a poet; he can embody for us the poesy which lives within his soul, he is a tone-poet, and nothing can be compared to the pleasure which he gives us when he sits at the piano and improvises. He is then neither a Pole, nor a Frenchman, nor a German, he reveals then a higher origin, one perceives then that he comes from the land of Mozart, Raphael, and Goethe, his true fatherland is the dream-realm of poesy. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Frederick enjoyed the greatest of blessings that can be bestowed upon mortal man—viz., that of being born into a virtuous and well-educated family united by the ties of love. I call it the greatest of blessings, because neither catechism and sermons nor schools and colleges can take the place,, or compensate for the want, of this education that does not stop at the outside, but by its subtle, continuous action penetrates to the very heart's core and pervades the whole being. The atmosphere in which Frederick lived was not only moral and social, but also distinctly intellectual. ”

“ We have considered him as a pupil at the Warsaw Lyceum and as a student of music under the tuition of Zywny and Elsner; we have considered him as a son and as a brother, as a lover and as a friend, as a man of the world and as a man of business; and we have considered him as a virtuoso, as a teacher, and as a composer. Having done all this, there remains only one thing for me to do—namely, to summarise the thousands of details of the foregoing account, and to point out what this artist was to his and is to our time. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Imagine what a pass the musical world of Vienna must have come to when Stadler, Kiesewetter, Mosel, and Seyfried could be called, as Chopin did call them, its elite! Abbe Stadler might well say to the stranger from Poland that Vienna was no longer what it used to be. Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert had shuffled off their mortal coil, and compared with these suns their surviving contemporaries and successors—Gyrowetz, Weigl, Stadler, Conradin Kreutzer, Lachner, &c.—were but dim and uncertain lights. ”

“ If Chopin imagined that he was fully understood as an artist by society, he was sadly mistaken. Liszt and Heller certainly held that he was not fully understood, and they did not merely surmise or speak from hearsay, for neither of them was a stranger in that quarter, although the latter avoided it as much as possible. What society could and did appreciate in Chopin was his virtuosity, his elegance, and his delicacy. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Now, though the purity of a work of art is no proof of the purity of the artist (who may reveal only the better part of his nature, or give expression to his aspirations) , the impurity of a work of art always testifies indubitably to the presence of impurity in the artist, of impurity in thought, if not in deed. It is, therefore, not an unwarranted assumption to say that the works of George Sand prove conclusively that she was not the pure, loving, devoted, harmless being she represents herself in the "Histoire de ma Vie." ”

“ But at the very height of his rising ardour he suddenly plunges back into that wild, self-surrendering, heaven and earth-forgetting joyousness—a stroke of genius as delightful as it is clever. If we do not understand by the name of scherzo a fixed form, but rather a state of mind, we may say that Chopin's waltzes are his scherzos and not the pieces to which he has given that name. None of Chopin's waltzes is more popular than the first of Op. 64 (in D flat major) . And no wonder! The life, flow, and oneness are unique; the charm of the multiform motions is indescribable. ”

“ THE works of no composer of equal importance bear so striking a national impress as those of Chopin. It would, however, be an error to attribute this simply and solely to the superior force of the Polish musician's patriotism. The same force of patriotism in an Italian, Frenchman, German, or Englishman would not have produced a similar result. Characteristics such as distinguish Chopin's music presuppose a nation as peculiarly endowed, constituted, situated, and conditioned, as the Polish—a nation with a history as brilliant and dark, as fair and hideous, as romantic and tragic. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ At the time of Nicholas Chopin's arrival, Poland was dreaming of a renascence of her former greatness, and everyone was looking forward with impatience to the assembly of the Diet which was to meet the following year. Predisposed by sympathy, he was soon drawn into the current of excitement and enthusiasm that was surging around him. Indeed, what young soul possessed of any nobleness could look with indifference on a nation struggling for liberty and independence. ”

“ An elegiac sadness [says Liszt] predominates, intersected by wild movements, melancholy smiles, unexpected starts, and intervals of rest full of dread such as those experience who have been surprised by an ambuscade, who are surrounded on all sides, for whom there dawns no hope upon the vast horizon, and to whose brain despair has gone like a deep draught of Cyprian wine, which gives a more instinctive rapidity to every gesture, a sharper point to every emotion, causing the mind to arrive at a pitch of irritability bordering on madness. ”