'Is this the mighty ocean, is this all?'
'Is this the mighty ocean, is this all?'
Are we to hold seriously that Music can be explained by any system of laws and regulations, that its influence upon us can be classified under heads and reduced to scientific maxims? Is it not rather degrading to analyse the divine art into tricks of surprise and devices of rhetoric, into this kind of figure and that kind of modulation, into a nice adjustment of curve and harmony and cadence? Where is the 'finecareless rapture' of the artist? Where is the inspiration of the poet? Surely it is better that we should ignorantly worship than that we should be turning Apollo into a sophist and setting the Muses to keep school.
Part of this objection has already been met. The true sphere of analysis is not life but the living body, not inspiration but the form in which it is manifested. And herein we may contend that there is a right as well as a wrong use of law. Some rules of Music are purely transitory in their nature, and can therefore only afford an imperfect basis for judgment even in the generation that accepts them. The prohibitions of the old counterpoint, for instance, were in many cases merely conventional limits, determined by the particular characteristics of the human voice; they are therefore no longer binding on our instrumental composers. The restrictions of early harmony were merely retrospective inferences from the actual practice of past compositions: they had no logical validity, and therefore became obsolete. But the laws which here present themselves as a part of the artistic code have a double claim on our acceptance: first, that they are, as a matter of fact, embodied in the greatest works of the greatest masters; and second, that they draw their origin from the fundamental attributes of our human nature. For the essential qualities which underlie the artistic character have altered very little since the earliest authentic record of its history. Revolutions have come and gone, fashions have arisen and have passed away, yet the work that made Athens beautiful is still our type and climax of perfect achievement. Literature has been shaken by the clash of contending parties, it hassubmitted to new dynasties and new leaders, yet the great principles of its constitution are the same now as in the time of theOdyssey. And Music, though it has grown more slowly and deliberately than the representative arts, may still be shown to have sprung from the same source, and to have followed an even more continuous line of evolution. If, then, we can analyse the conditions that have made that evolution possible, we are not degrading Art into a mere ingenious mechanism, but explaining the necessary laws of its life and progress.
Finally, it must be remembered that if excellence in musical art be difficult to formulate, it is not, for that reason, difficult to apprehend. The beauty of a great masterpiece rises from the supreme and consummate expression of characteristics, which, in a greater or less degree, are common to all normal humanity. No doubt, in different races, there are differences of convention, as there are of scale and instrument and musical language, but convention in itself is always negative, and its sole force is the establishment of temporary limitations. Within their widening scope the whole range of the art gradually extends; within them lie its wonders of purity and sublimity, its treasures of pathos and humour, its contrasts of wise reticence and opulent display. And for the proper appreciation of these gifts, there are no strange or recondite qualities demanded, only receptivity of ear, only sanity of emotion, only patience that is willing to observe, and courage that is ready to speak its mind. The rest is a matter of training and experience: training by which we rouse our faculties to a higher stage of development, experienceby which we learn to equip our criticism with new facts and new relations. In Music it is essentially true that 'admiration grows as knowledge grows': it is equally true that knowledge itself lies open to the attainment of all honest endeavour.
Like a poet, hiddenIn the light of thought,Singing hymns unbidden,Till the world is wroughtTo sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not.
Like a poet, hiddenIn the light of thought,Singing hymns unbidden,Till the world is wroughtTo sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not.
We are more accustomed in literature than in music to find immortality conferred on artists whose total quantity of production is slight or incomplete. Sappho lives in a few lyrics, Villon in a few ballades, Persius is a great satirist with some six hundred lines of verse, Merimée a great novelist with a slender handful of short stories. In all such cases we accept perfection of finish, individuality of note, concentration of effort, as more than compensating for the narrow limits within which the writer has thought fit to be confined: and we even impute it as a virtue that he has not changed the gold of his thought into the more diffuse silver of a meaner standard. But in music, as a rule, our judgment is affected by other considerations. For some reason the composer has generally been more lavish than his brother artists: he has worked more rapidly, perhaps more continuously, and has gained, in proportion, a larger abundance to bestow. Six weeks sufficed Mozart for histhree greatest symphonies: Handel wrote theMessiahin less than a month: Schubert created nine of his songs in a single day: and it is therefore little wonder if we have learned to expect some opulence of achievement in our musicians, or even to estimate them, as an innkeeper discriminates his guests, by the amount of their baggage and the number of their retinue.
We shall find an interesting commentary on this view if we turn to the programme of a famous concert, given at Warsaw on February 24, 1818. The principal work performed was a pianoforte concerto which served to bring two names, those of its composer and its interpreter, into a forcible and prominent contrast. The one was a master of established reputation and acknowledged authority, theHofkapellmeisterat Vienna, the friend of Beethoven, the musician whose operas were applauded in every capital, whose symphonies were set in the balance against Haydn's, whose quartetts were declared by dispassionate judges to be the equal of Mozart's. The other was planting his first footsteps in a byway of the art which he was to tread for thirty years with little deviation, satisfied to pluck a posy of flowers from the hedgerow, and lay it down as his offering at the journey's end. The one covered the whole field of composition, and, at the end of his career, could number a list of works which outmatches the industry of almost all his contemporaries. The other, cut short by an early death, has left us a few thin volumes, curiously uniform in style, and restricted, with scarcely an exception, to the limits of a single instrument. Yet the one is as completely forgotten as though he had never lived, while the otherhas passed into the company of the immortals. To our ears the name of Adalbert Gyrowetz is of the most forlorn unfamiliarity, it has become 'fantastic, unsubstantial—like Henry Pimpernel and old John Naps of Greece'; but no vicissitude of fortune, no changing fashion of art, can ever obliterate from our memory the image of Frederick Chopin.
It must, however, be added, that Chopin's slenderness of accomplishment in no way indicated any poverty of invention. His work was not, as is sometimes said of Gray's, the laborious tillage of a light soil; rather it was like that Japanese gardening, which intensifies the beauty of a single blossom by cutting off all the rest. The true reason, indeed, is to be found in a point of character, 'Il avait l'esprit écorché vif,' said the comrade who knew him best, and in these words may be found the whole explanation, both of his life and of his artistic career. Delicate, sensitive, fastidious, he would shrink from committing himself to a decision, lest it should fall short of the highest that he knew. Rapid and brilliant in improvisation, he would spend weeks in writing and rewriting a single page. A pianist of rare and exquisite gifts, he would often feel paralysed by the mere sight of a public audience. Generous, affectionate, and enthusiastic, he was yet too earnest to be forbearing, too susceptible to be tolerant, too exacting to show indulgence, and the same acute criticism with which he visited the actions of others, he applied in an equal measure to his own.
Hence there is a special danger in estimating him from a British standpoint. Our bluff, sturdy manhood has little in common with the keenness and mobility which mark one side of the artistictemperament, and we have never been very successful at comprehending alien characters or alien nationalities. True, we have advanced beyond the stage of unreasoning hostility towards the stranger who presumes to be more impressionable than ourselves, but for the most part we have only substituted a half-contemptuous compassion which is equally galling, and almost equally unintelligent. A past generation looked on Shelley and wondered that the fires of Heaven delayed their falling; the present age insults Heine with forgiveness, in consideration of the purgatory of his later years; and in like manner, when we hear of Chopin, we think, 'Poor fellow! he was consumptive,' and prepare ourselves to condone the irregularities of his life by some rough and ready diagnosis of physical disease. It seldom occurs to us to reflect that the problem may be too complex for so easy a solution, and that, before it can be solved at all, it must at least be stated correctly. As a matter of fact, Chopin's life was singularly blameless, and, until its close, singularly free from the material conditions of trouble. No doubt there is a deep pathos in the record of a death which seems to us premature: no doubt the pathos is intensified by the spectacle of failing strength and encroaching sickness; but it is an entirely false application of perspective to let our view of the end obliterate our view of the whole. And there is otherwise little hardship in the case. The feeble health was compensated, at least in part, by friendship, by affection, and by fame such as few musicians have enjoyed in their lifetime. It is not history to draw fancy pictures of a querulous invalid, a continuousburden to himself and to all who cared for him; still less to fill page after page with unsubstantiated rumours of ill-usage and neglect. Chopin's relation to his friends was neither that of tyrant nor that of victim, and his career, if, like every other, it was traversed by heavy clouds, at least had its bursts of sunshine and its long days of genial warmth.
He was born on 1st March 1809,[16]at the little village of Zelazowa Wola, near Warsaw. His father, Nicholas Chopin, was a Frenchémigré, possibly with Polish blood in his veins, who, after sundry vicissitudes, had settled down as tutor in the family of Countess Skarbek, and had there met and married a Polish lady called Justina Krzyzanowska. Frederick, the only son, was the third of four children, and so was privileged to pass his earliest years in the Oriental despotism of a nursery peopled by admiring sisters.
In 1810 Nicholas Chopin carried off his household to the Capital, where he had been appointed Professor of French at the new Lyceum. At first there seems to have been some stress of poverty: salaries were low, life was unsettled; no one knew what quarter of Europe would next be set ablaze by the indomitable activity of Napoleon. However, in 1814, the Congress of Vienna established a kingdom of Poland, shorn, no doubt, of its border territories, and held in check by the suzerainty of Russia, but still governed by a Pole as viceroy, and recognisingPolish as its official language. This was far from meeting the wishes of the 'patriotic party,' which looked to France as its ally and to the Emperor as its protector, but at least it ensured some measure of independence, and, after the next year, a certain prospect of peace and tranquillity.
As might be expected, the change of political condition produced an immediate effect on the national temper. Warsaw, which, in 1812, was one of the most miserable of cities, began in 1815 to recover the signs of material prosperity. Trade was developed, schools were opened, the great houses welcomed back their exiles, and the country at large shook off its dream of disquietude and set its face hopefully to the future. Only in secret rose an occasional murmur that Russia was an alien power, that the days of Suvorov had not passed out of memory, that the Viceroy was a mere puppet in the hands of the Emperor Alexander, and that the new Commander-in-Chief was a truculent savage who needed all the eloquence of his Polish wife to keep him from open oppression. Apart from these scattered voices of discontent, there can be no doubt that the nation rejoiced at its deliverance from German officialism, and, with characteristic buoyancy, resumed the business of life, and not a little of its brilliance.
Naturally, the Chopins bore their part in the general advance. Even while the fate of Poland was still in the balance, two fresh appointments had been added to the Professorship at the Lyceum, and the gradual restoration of the great families opened the way for a private school, over which no one was so capable of presiding as Count Skarbek'sold tutor. This enlargement of means was the only thing wanted to make Chopin's childhood a period of almost ideal happiness. His parents seem to have been altogether worthy of the affection which he lavished on them: the father kindly, honourable, upright, firm in the government of his family, and unwearied in the administration of its resources; the mother bright, active and tender-hearted, full of folklore and household recipes, sincere in religion, charitable in conduct, gentle and courteous in speech. Then the house was visited by all manner of interesting people—poets, professors, politicians,—who would talk to Nicholas Chopin about his old home in half-Polish Lorraine, where men still spoke of the good Duke Stanislaus, or would exchange memories of the war and hopes for the newrégime. And for the more important aspects of life there could be no better companions than the three sisters—Louisa, who knew everything in the lesson-books; Isabella, who was practical, and could always find things when they were lost; and Emily, the best of playfellows, who told the most delightful stories, and had a special talent for making believe. Almost every birthday there were theatricals, almost every evening there was music for who would listen—all around was a world of flowers and sunshine, of pleasant looks and pleasant voices, of 'short task and merry holiday.' It is a poignant contrast to turn to the four children, less fortunate but not less gifted, who during these same years were writing their journals and acting their solitary plays in the bleak parsonage at Haworth.
Very little can be ascertained about Chopin's musical education. We know that his pianoforte teacherwas a Bohemian called Adalbert Zywny, and that he learned harmony and counterpoint from Elsner, but we have scarcely any information as to the extent and value of the lessons. It is certain that in after life his system of fingering was entirely original and unorthodox, from which we may conjecture that Zywny never really taught him to play a scale—and indeed there is some tradition that the Professor was a violinist who only took to the piano as a second string, and who allowed the boy to spend most of his time in improvisation. Elsner was a good-tempered, easy-going oldkapellmeister, who did his pupil the greatest service by teaching him to love Bach, and then allowed him to go his own way without further supervision. The works which Chopin published during his student period have little or no scope for counterpoint, but they show beyond controversy that he and his master were equally indifferent to what is known as classical structure. On the other hand, his sense of harmony was always admirable, and there can be no doubt that he owed much of its development to the wise care, and still wiser reticence, with which the laws and prohibitions were explained to him. Again, Liszt is probably right in drawing special attention to the moral value of Elsner's teaching. With a conscientious pupil the method of encouragement is the easiest possible way to inculcate a feeling of responsibility, and the most successful teacher is he who knows how to train mediocrity and to leave genius a free hand. It should be added that Chopin's relation to his two masters was always cordial and affectionate. As late as 1835, we find him docketing a letter from Zywny, a curious, formal, kindly note, full of good wishes and finelanguage, while to Elsner he always looked with a boy's hero-worship, as to a mentor whose advice was never to be neglected, and whose praise was the highest of commendations.
We may well understand that, as a pupil, he was best left alone. His precocity was something phenomenal, even in the decade which saw Mendelssohn at Weimar and Liszt at Paris: before he was eight years old he was a pianist of established reputation; before he was nine he played one of Gyrowetz' pianoforte concertos at a charity concert; at ten he ventured into the presence of the Grand Duke Constantine, and offered that awful potentate a military march for use among the troops. Of course, every one petted and caressed him, and called him the young Mozart. Countesses and princesses danced to his mazurkas, or sat by the piano while he improvised: Royalty itself sent down a great glittering clattering chariot, and galloped him off to play at the Belvidere: from end to end of the brilliant, light-hearted, pleasure-loving city he moved at his ease, like the young Prince Charming in a fairy tale, sure of a welcome, sure of applause, and accepting all that society offered with a child's careless enjoyment.
An atmosphere so heavy with adulation might well have poisoned a nature less lovable or less simple-hearted. But its only effect on Chopin was to increase still further his natural refinement of manner and to accentuate his intolerance of anything like rudeness or vulgarity. There does not seem to have been a trace of vanity in his constitution. He played 'as the linnets sing,' without effort, without premeditation, and without any apparent idea that his performance was out of the common. At hisdébut,in the charity concert of 1818, the only feature which struck him as exciting any admiration was his lace collar; the watch given him two years later by Catalani only appealed to him as a new toy of unusual splendour: in all the record of his childhood there is not a single indication of petulance or conceit. We can easily reconstruct his portrait:—a little, frail, delicate elf of a boy, with fair hair and a prominent nose, the face redeemed from ugliness by the wonderful brown eyes and the quick intelligence of expression; a temperament which was keen, nervous and changeable, a character rapid and alert, bubbling over with effervescent spirits, playful, affectionate, and sensitive. He was already an accomplished actor and a born mimic, full of odd sayings and harmless mischief, clever and imaginative, utterly devoid of self-consciousness or affectation. His one defect was his want of a boy's adventurousness, and his disinclination to out-door sports and exercises. We can hardly imagine his tearing his clothes or getting his feet wet. But we must remember that this disability is not always to be regarded as an unpardonable sin, and that, ever since the days of Euripides, there has been a feud between the poet and the athlete. Had Chopin been more robust, he would doubtless have taken life with the greater equanimity—and we should have lost one of the most characteristic figures in the history of Music.
Unfortunately many of the anecdotes which are current about his boyhood bear the clear impress of mythology. The utmost we can say of them is, that they appear to contain some elements of truth which have been overlaid by enthusiastic biographers until they are almost unrecognisable. We can well believefor instance, that he once made an April fool of an irascible landowner by sending him a sham business-letter in Yiddish; but M. Karasowski, who tells the story, ruins it by gravely adding that the child played his trick with the deliberate moral purpose of curing his neighbour's temper; and, worse still, that the sermon was successful. Again, it is quite possible that on one insubordinate afternoon, when the pupils had proved too many for the usher, Chopin appeared on the scene and kept them quiet by improvising romances; but then we are further told that his representation of night, on the pianoforte, was so realistic that it sent all the boys to sleep. No doubt these embellishments are innocuous enough, though they add nothing which it is of any moment to preserve, but the uncritical fancy which accepts them as historical, offers but an ominous prospect for the discussion of the later life. That the record of Chopin's manhood is still a fruitful theme for controversy is mainly owing to the fact that it has been treated by writers who, for the most part, show a lamentable disregard of the value of evidence.
In 1824, Chopin was promoted from his father's preparatory school to the fourth class of the Warsaw Lyceum. There he worked hard, rose rapidly, won two or three prizes, and gained the esteem and respect of his school-fellows by developing a remarkable talent for caricature. It must have been an agonising moment when the director confiscated a sheet of paper containing an unflattering portrait of himself, and it says something for the young scapegrace, that the sketch was returned with no heavier rebuke than a sardonic comment on the excellence of the likeness. The first holidays were spent on afriend's estate in Szafarnia, from which the boy issued to his parents a periodical journal, after the model of theWarsaw Courier, and even got one of the daughters of the house to give it an amateur imprimatur, in imitation of the official censorship. The same year witnessed, at some family festival, the production of a new comedy, written in collaboration by Frederick Chopin, aged fifteen, and Emily Chopin, aged eleven. And all this time the dramatist, artist, journalist, and student of Polish history is writing his harmony exercises, playing his Kalkbrenner concertos, composing songs, devising variations, and generally progressing in music as though he had no other occupation to distract him. Grant that the comedy has no great literary value, and that theRanz des Vachesvariations are slight and childish, it still remains a marvel that one small head should have exhibited such restless and versatile ability. To find a parallel, we must go back to the golden age of Leonardo and the two Cellini, when all arts lay open and the common lands of knowledge had not yet been enclosed.
Up to 1825 Nicholas Chopin does not seem to have had any idea of making his son a professional musician. The first essays had been so many in number, and so various in impulse, that they might well account for some feeling of uncertainty, but by the end of 1824 the boy's activity had begun to take a more settled direction, and the events of the next year are mainly musical. First, there were two concerts, on March 27 and June 10, at the former of which Chopin was set to improvise on an instrument with the amazing name of Æolopantaleon, then the Emperor Alexander, who had come down to Warsawto open the Parliamentary Session, sent for the young genius, heard him play, and dismissed him with some august compliments and a diamond ring; while, finally, this approbation of men and gods was succeeded by the Horatian climax of publication. The Rondo in C minor, which was printed this year as Op. 1, is a singular example of Chopin's strength and weakness in composition. The themes are clear, pleasant and melodious, contrasted with great skill, and admirably suited to the pianoforte; but the form is redundant and ill-balanced, the exposition unduly prolonged, and the subsequent treatment hurried and inadequate. No doubt, a concert rondo should not be criticised with the same severity as the rondo movement of a sonata; yet even with all laxity of concession, we can find passages and even pages, through which Elsner ought to have drawn his pencil. That Chopin should have written them is no crime; youth is expected to be extravagant; but his master might have remembered that an artist who, in the phrase of Cherubini, 'puts too much cloth into his coat,' spoils the result, in addition to wasting the material.
The only other compositions which can be assigned to this year with any certainty are the two Mazurkas in G and B flat, which appear among the posthumous work in Breitkopf and Härtel's Edition. Indeed, it is pretty certain that Chopin was still attempting to do too many things at once. By the beginning of 1826 he had shown unmistakable signs of overwork, and in the next holidays he was ordered off to try the whey cure at Bad Reinerz in Prussian Silesia. His experiences of the place are recorded in a letter to his school-fellow Wilhelm Kolberg, and consist mainlyof approval of the scenery, criticisms of the visitors, and caricatures of the local band. The only incident, was a concert which he organised for the benefit of two orphans, the death of whose mother had left them without money enough to return home. For the rest he drank his whey, took sedate walks with his mother and sisters, and even succeeded in persuading himself that he was growing 'stout and lazy.'
The journey home was broken by two or three visits, of which the most important was a short stay at Antonin, the country residence of Prince Radziwill. The Prince was an enthusiastic patron of music, an able and meritorious composer, a good singer and violoncellist, and a pleasant cultivated man, who seemed to have been cast by Fate for the part of Mæcenas. Apparently he had met Chopin in Warsaw, and shared the interest which all Polish society felt in its new genius. Liszt asserts that he paid for the boy's education, but the statement, which is intrinsically improbable, is categorically denied by Fontana, while the still wilder report that he defrayed the expenses of Chopin's Italian tour, is best answered by the fact that Chopin never set foot inside Italy in his life. However, the tie of hospitality is not likely to have been weakened by the absence of a monetary basis, and the friendship between host and guest was quite as cordial as though they had been debtor and creditor.
Once back in Warsaw, Chopin set himself to prepare for his final examination at the Lyceum, which he passed with something less than his usual distinction, in 1827. The cause of this comparative failure is not hard to divine, for although the compositions of the winter are few and unimportant, therecan be no doubt that Chopin was devoting himself more and more to music, and allowing other interests to sink into the background. And there was another reason. On April 10, his sister Emily, the closest and dearest of all his companions, died of pulmonary disease. She had accompanied her brother to Reinerz, in the hope of checking a malady which medical skill is almost powerless to cure, she had returned with some alleviation of suffering and some hopes of reprieve—and then came the end. We may readily imagine the effect which her death must have produced on the sensitive, affectionate boy from whom, through all her short life, she had been inseparable. It was his first great sorrow, and he was never of a nature to take his sorrows lightly.
As soon as his work set him free, he tried to find solace in some short, fitful periods of travel, and paid a visit to his godmother's house in Posen, and a second to the brother of his old head-master, who was occupying some official post at Danzic. All the winter was spent at home, sketching, revising, polishing, and preparing his compositions for the publisher. By the autumn of the next year he had completed two or three Polonaises,[17]a Nocturne, a Piano Sonata, a brilliant Rondo for two pianos, the first movement of the G minor Trio, and, more important than all, the variations onLa ci darem, which were published in 1830 as Op. 2. It was this last-named work which evoked Schumann's first critical essay, and introducedthe world at large to Florestan and Eusebius. Sixty years have passed since the essay was printed, and we are in no mind to question its decision. 'Hats off, gentlemen, a genius,' is the only judgment which sums up that wonderful combination of grace and audacity, of delicacy and vigour, of technical display and poetic invention.
The course of the year's work was interrupted by a notable episode. One day at the beginning of September, Dr Jarocki, the zoology professor, came up to call; announced that he had been invited to attend a scientific congress at Berlin, and offered to take Chopin with him as travelling companion. The proposal was readily accepted. Nicholas Chopin, who had by this time entirely acquiesced in his son's choice of a career, was beginning to doubt whether a sufficiently wide field of action and opportunity could be obtained at Warsaw: and, in any case, it was advisable that the young man should see something of the world before he settled down to the duties of his profession. Frederick, too, was overjoyed at the prospect. He cared little for congresses and nothing at all for science, he refused his ticket of admission to the meetings, on the ground that he did not want to pose as 'Saul among the prophets,' but the chances of increasing his musical experience were far too precious to be lost. By the middle of the month he was established at the Hotel Kronprinz, hearingFernando Cortezat the Opera, revelling in Handel'sSt Cæciliaat theSingakademie, spending his days in the music library at Schlesinger's, and only idle when some enthusiastic scientist carried him off to spend a reluctant hour in the Zoological Museum.
Three of his letters, preserved by M. Karasowski, give us an amusing picture of his impressions. We can see him, shrinking with suppressed impatience, while the interminable dinner goes on, and Professor Lehmann rests an academic hand on his plate in order to converse across him with Professor Jarocki: we can see him at theSingakademielooking with awe-stricken eyes at Mendelssohn and Spontini, or burning with shame to discover that he has mistaken Alexander von Humboldt for a footman: we can see him making stealthy caricatures and carefully adding the names of the originals, 'in case they should prove to be celebrities.' Everything is noted with a good-natured criticism, the humours of the journey, the cleanliness and order of the streets, the bad taste of the ladies' dresses, and the great final banquet, at which all the sciences sat round the table singing convivial songs, while counterpoint, in the person of Zelter, stood behind a golden goblet and beat time.
It is unlikely that Chopin completed any musical work at Berlin. The first we hear of his Fantasia on Polish airs is that he played it at a little post town on the way home, while the diligence was changing horses, but it is more probable that he composed it earlier in the year than that he found time for it amid all the rush of new interests and new distractions. The real value of his visit was that it supplied the need, which every composer feels, of an occasional period of pure receptiveness. Not that the music heard presents itself in any way as a model for imitation: a man may be stimulated to write a string quartett by a course of opera, or be moved to song by a series of symphonies: but the very fact of production involves a certain wear and tearwhich is often most easily repaired from outside. And so it is not surprising that, when Chopin returned home, after stopping a couple of days at Posen, and paying his respects to Prince Radziwill, he at once finished his Pianoforte Trio and wrote the Krakowiak, which is the most carefully scored of all his orchestral compositions. His parents gave him a little back room, furnished with a piano and an old writing-desk, and there he sat and elaborated his phrases, complaining piteously when his solitude was invaded by inopportune visitors or unwelcome invitations. Society is the most delightful of patrons, until a man realises that he has his work to do. After that it tends to become something of a tyrant.
In the early part of 1829 Warsaw was visited successively by Hummel and Paganini. For the latter Chopin felt little more than the common admiration, the former he had long regarded as a special tutelary genius, whose exquisite precision of style was at once his ambition and his despair. He was far too modest to recognise the limitations of his hero, and the deeper and truer note which his own temperament was capable of sounding: as yet, if we except the great variations of the preceding year, he had attempted little more than the mastery of exact expression, and in this he regarded Hummel as the best of types with the same loyalty with which he had accepted Elsner as the best of teachers. We have no record of the interview between the two artists. We only know that they met, that they made a good impression on each other, and that their subsequent intercourse bears witness to much cordiality on the elder side, and to an unquestioning and unbroken hero-worship on the younger.
It is possible that this glimpse of the ideal served to bring into sharper relief the narrowness of the Warsaw horizon. In any case, as the summer approached, Chopin grew restless and began to pine for a larger atmosphere and more congenial surroundings. Naturally, his first thought was of Vienna. He had already sent three or four of his manuscripts to try their fortune with Haslinger: and as no answer had come, he found a reasonable excuse for going to attack the publisher in person. He therefore started from home about the middle of July, spent a few days in Cracow, and a few more in Polish Switzerland and Galicia, and finally arrived at his destination on the 31st. Haslinger received him courteously enough, promised to print theLa ci daremVariations, and strongly urged him to give a concert in order to familiarise the Viennese public with his manner of composition. It is characteristic that this obvious suggestion appeared to Chopin to be wholly impracticable. That he should venture to play in a city which had heard Mozart and Beethoven; that he, a mere provincial, should expect an audience in the metropolis of the musical world; the bare idea seemed an act of presumption beside which the challenge of Marsyas faded into insignificance: and it was only after continued pressure and reiterated encouragement that he finally nerved himself to the attempt. Acquiescence once extorted the arrangements went on smoothly; Würfel got out the bills, Count Gallenberg lent theKärnthnerthorTheatre, and on August 11—a memorable date in musical history—Chopin made hisdébutbefore a foreign public.
Of course there was the usual disaster at rehearsal. Like all young composers, Chopin insisted on copying his own band parts, and the result was that the Krakowiak had to be cut out of the programme, and the concert marred by an apology. However, the evening made amends. The audience was not numerous, but it was cordial and appreciative; applauded the variations so lustily, that thetuttiswere inaudible, and finally 'began a regular dance in the back benches,' when Chopin replaced his rondo with an improvisation. The only adverse criticism, from stalls to gallery, was an expression of disappointment, on the part of some unknown lady, that 'the lad had so little presence.' No doubt, like the wife of Charles Lamb's friend, she 'had expected to see a tall, fine, officer-looking man,' who would look well in uniform.
Fortified by his success, Chopin gave a second concert on August 18, at which the Krakowiak was produced, and the variations were repeated. This time the audience was larger, and the reception still more encouraging. Several of the musical notabilities of Vienna came to offer their applause—Gyrowetz, with the queer, wrinkled face and the kindly eyes, that belied the querulous mouth; Lachner, young, ardent and restless; Schuppanzigh, still chuckling at Beethoven's jests on his corpulence; Czerny, all high forehead, big spectacles and bland expression. Everybody was warm and friendly, full of congratulations on the triumph which, as the manager was careful to explain, 'could not be due to the ballet, because that had been given before,' and Chopin soon found himself arguing with a press of people who wanted him to fix the date for his third appearance. But on this point he was obdurate.He had only given his second concert lest the Warsaw public should think that he was dissatisfied with the first. The Viennese had been very kind, but he was quite sure that they had seen enough of him for one visit. He was full of gratitude, he had enjoyed himself immensely, but the fact was that he had made up his mind to start for Prague the next day, and he could not alter his arrangements. And so, in spite of all entreaties, he left Vienna on the evening of August 19, without even waiting for the newspaper reports of his two recitals.
It is interesting to compare his letters with the various notices and critiques that appeared after his departure. 'I was not hissed,' he writes on August 12, 'so don't be anxious about my artistic reputation.... My friends swear that they heard nothing but praise, and that, until the spontaneous outburst of applause, not one of them clapped or uttered a bravo.... I am curious to hear what Herr Elsner will say to all this. Perhaps he disapproves of my playing at all. But I was so besieged on all sides that I had no escape, and I don't seem to have committed a blunder by my performance.' And again, on August 19, 'My reception yesterday was still more hearty. I know I have pleased the ladies and the musicians. Only the thorough Germans seem to have been dissatisfied.... When I told the manager that I hoped to come back to Vienna for the purpose of improving myself, he answered that for such a reason I should never need to come, since I had nothing more to learn. Of course these are mere compliments; still, one does not listen to them unwillingly. At any rate, for the future, I shallnot be regarded as a student. Blahetka tells me that he wonders at my learning it all in Warsaw. I answered that from Zywny and Elsner even the greatest donkey must gain something.' In all this there is a tone of simple, unconscious modesty which is very pleasant to notice. There are not many men in Chopin's position who would have taken their first triumph so easily, and still fewer who would have been at the pains to disclaim the assistance of aclaque.
On the other hand, the newspapers speak with a much firmer tone. TheWiener Theaterzeitungnoted a touch of genius in the compositions, and gave special praise to the clearness and delicacy of their interpretation. 'He plays very quietly,' it said, 'with little emphasis, and with none of that rhetoricalaplombwhich is considered by virtuosos as indispensable.... He was recognised as an artist of whom the best may be expected as soon as he has heard more.... He knows how to please, although, in his case, the desire to make good music predominates noticeably over the desire to give pleasure.' Such commendation from the acknowledged leader of Viennese criticism at once set the tone to the minor journals; and the whole city swelled its voice into a full chorus of approval. Even the distantAllgemeine Musikalische Zeitungcaught an echo of the enthusiasm, and hailed Chopin as a 'brilliant meteor,' who had 'appeared on the horizon without any previous blast of trumpets.'
From Vienna he went on to Prague, where he met Pixis, Klengel and some other celebrities; and from Prague to Teplitz, where he spent an evening at Prince Clary's, and electrified the company byhis improvisations. The westernmost point of his travel was Dresden. As a devoted admirer ofDer Freischütz, he naturally felt an interest in the city where Weber had beenkapellmeister, and he bore with him letters of introduction which would ensure his admission into the centre of its artistic society. It is probably in consequence of his admiration for Weber that he writes rather cavalierly about his interview with Morlacchi. Musical enmities have a way of lasting, and Chopin was always more vehement in the quarrels of his heroes than he was in his own. For the rest, he paid his tribute of homage to the Gallery, stayed to see a performance ofFaustat the theatre, and then hurried homeward to supplement his letter with the thousand details that are always lost between pen and paper. Indeed, there was plenty to relate. He had left Warsaw with a reputation little wider than the limits of his native province: now, after two eventful months, he was returning to match the wreath of welcome with the laurels of a victorious campaign.
A few short weeks and the conqueror is in the dust. Nothing in all Chopin's life is more striking than the sudden and entire change which followed as a reaction from the excitements of the summer. His letters grew morbid, anxious, irritable; the clear-cut sentences wander off into vagueness and incoherence; the rapid judgment becomes hesitating and irresolute. Through all this dark time there runs the golden thread of an ideal friendship; but it is knotted and entwined with a love-story that can only seem to us singularly unreal and purposeless. Many of its details are absolutely unknown,but there is little need that we should know them. We are only concerned with its effect on Chopin's character; with the presage through which it may lead us to a better and fuller comprehension of his subsequent life. And herein the story, imperfect though it be, may serve us as a true guide. The two tragic episodes of Chopin's career, for all their unlikeness, have their explanation in a single point of temperament: the weakness which, in later years, lost the comradeship of George Sand, was but another form of that nervous sensibility which now called up, for its torment, the shadowy and fugitive vision of Constance Gladkowska.
Even at the outset there is no tone of hopefulness. 'I have, perhaps to my misfortune, already found my ideal,' he writes to his friend Woyciechowski; and a little later, 'It is bitter to have no one with whom one can share joy or sorrow, to feel one's heart oppressed, and to be unable to express one's complaints to any human soul.' All this time—it is a grotesque touch which somehow adds to the pathos—he had never spoken to her, and had only seen her occasionally as she was taking her lessons at the Conservatorium. At least six months had elapsed before he made her acquaintance, and even then we have no record of intimacy, no interchange of letters, no word of lover's vows; nothing but idle conjecture and a few wild confessions of doubt and despair. Warsaw had become intolerable to him. Come what may, he will not spend another winter at home. He will go to Berlin, to Vienna, to Paris, to Italy; anywhere to escape. And then comes a revulsion, and he fancies himself dying in a foreign land, with the unconcerned physician and the paid servants waiting beside his deathbed.Plans are made only to be reversed; projects are formed only to be abandoned; and every change is made the occasion for some fresh complaint, or some new exhibition of a self-inflicted wound.
This is not the manner of true passion. It is not love which degrades a chivalrous nature, which torments generosity with suspicion, and turns activity into a feverish impatience. Grant that the noblest character has its ignoble aspect; its concealed depths which an unforeseen storm may sometimes lash to the surface; yet we cannot look upon a current which is wholly turbid, and characterise it by the highest name in all man's vocabulary. Grant that every lover has his moments of unreason, fits of groundless ill-temper, of disproportionate remorse, of jealousy that is roused by a look and quieted by a word, yet we are here bidden to mistake the accidents for the substance, and to describe as love a shadow which is cast from no sun. The truth is that Chopin's passion was not a cause, but a symptom; not a power which influenced his life, but a direction of hectic energy that must itself be traced back to a remoter source. He was standing at the verge of manhood: always nervous and impressionable, he was come to the time when strength is weakest and courage the most insecure: he had just passed through the bewilderment of his first great enterprise, and had emerged to breathe an atmosphere electric with change and heavy with disquietude. It is little wonder that he lost his true self, and strayed from his appointed course. He would have been more than human if he had not felt some stress of uncertainty, or followed his restless impulses in the absence of a surer guide.
Yet the affection which is lacking to his romance is poured, in full and continuous profusion, upon his friend. 'You do not require my portrait,' he writes to Woyciecowski in November; 'I am always with you, and shall never forget you to the end of my life.' And later, 'You have no idea how much I love you. What would I not give to embrace you once again.' He suggests that they should travel abroad together, and then, by a refinement of sensibility, adds that it would be more delightful if they started separately, 'and met somewhere by chance.' All the compositions are discussed with entire frankness, all the plans submitted for advice and counsel; even omens and presentiments are called in and made to bear their witness to community of purpose. The very complaints take a brighter tone when we realise their absolute trust, and their certain expectation of sympathy. It is as though Chopin shrank from the thought of his passion as a child shrinks from the darkness, and turned to take refuge in the strong arms that he knew were waiting to protect him. He was never self-reliant, never strong enough to face the world alone. Now, in the time of his trouble, he looked to his friend for comfort, just as, ten years before, he would have taken some boyish sorrow to his mother.
It must not be supposed that this period of mental depression is entirely occupied with lamentations. Troilus may be 'weaker than a woman's tear' when he thinks of Cressida, yet he still has hours in which he can shake off his lethargy and take his place in the field or the council chamber; and even we must add, hours when he can find solace inthe company of the white-armed Helen. Indeed, in spite of his troubles, Chopin seems to have been fairly busy during the autumn of 1829. By October 3, the 'Adagio' of his F minor Concerto was completed;[18]by October 20, the Finale had been sketched, and at least one of the Études written: then came a week's visit to Prince Radziwill, from whose house we hear something of a new Polonaise for Violoncello, and something, also, about the beauty and intelligence of Princess Wanda. 'I should like her to practise my work,' writes this distracted lover; 'it would be delightful to have the privilege of placing her pretty fingers upon the keys.'
The winter was spent quietly at home. Chopin finished his Concerto, showed it to Elsner for approval, and then set about looking for some opportunity of performance. It was a long time since he had played in public at Warsaw, and the newspaper notices from Vienna had aroused fresh interest which he thought it advisable to satisfy. So in March 1830 he gave two concerts, both of which were conspicuously successful. At the first, indeed, there was some complaint that he did not play loud enough; but, on hearing it, he sent to Vienna for one of Graff's pianos, and disarmed even this effort of criticism at the second. It is noticeable, as an indication of musical taste in 1830, that at both concerts the F minor Concerto was divided, the Allegro given by itself as a separate piece, andthe Adagio and Rondo following later in the programme. We may remember that even in Paris it was the fashion of the time to give Beethoven's symphonies piecemeal, and to intersperse the movements withbravurasongs anddivertimentifor the French horn. It seems unlikely that a stage manager would ever present one of Shakespear's plays with portions of theSchool for Scandalbetween the acts; but music has always lagged behind the other arts in its appreciation of structure, and if Berlioz could mishandle Beethoven, we need not be surprised at Chopin's tearing his own work in pieces for fear that the audience should suspect it of continuity. In any case, he seems to have lost nothing by the sacrifice, for the house was crowded, the applause vehement, and the receipts, after all expenses had been paid, amounted to the respectable figure of 5000 florins.
Summer came, with its presage of revolution. The great wave rolling eastward from Paris did not break on Warsaw until November; but as early as May there were signs on the horizon, and a murmur of expectation in the air. The Diet, which had not met for five years, was suddenly convened; the irregularities of the Russian administration were more freely criticised: and although the Czar had prohibited the publication of debates, there still remained sufficient means to show the people at large that its discontent was finding official utterance. Naturally this assemblage of senators gathered after it all the pomp and circumstance of Polish society. As the months wore on, the city filled with a crowd of nobles, and, while the halls of audience were busy with political intrigue, the ballrooms opened their doorsto a music that seemed to have caught some echo from the night before Waterloo. War was almost certainly imminent; but until it came the hours uplifted their burden of song and dance, lest the silence should crave too ominously for the sound of cannon.
To Chopin, patriot as he was, the musical aspect of the season seems to have been the most important. Possibly in his seclusion rumours of wars found no space to enter: at any rate, there is no hint in his letters that he foresaw the storm, or that he was seriously occupied with anything more public than hissoiréesand his concerts. There was, indeed, plenty to hear and plenty to enjoy. Some of the greatest artists in Europe presented themselves at Warsaw:—Mdlle. de Belleville, immortalised by the praise of Schumann; Lipinski, the famous violinist; Henrietta Sontag, the acknowledged rival of Catalani and Pasta. Of all these Chopin writes with his usual generous appreciation, unaffectedly delighted with their successes, and 'not at all surprised' that he is not asked to play at a Court party when they are present. Then followed Constance Gladkowska'sdébutas an operatic singer, and the lover is divided between his pleasure in her triumph and his reawakened consciousness of a hopeless passion. Once more the old irresolution returns; he decides to go, but cannot tear himself away; he waits on aimlessly, wondering from day to day whether the morrow will bring counsel, despising himself for his chain, yet not strong enough to break it. The suspense was beginning to tell upon his health. Heller, who passed through Warsaw in 1830, speaks of him as pale and hollow-eyed, little more than a shadow of his former,brighter self. And yet it is uncertain whether he had spent an hour with 'his Constantia' since his return from Antonin, nearly a year before; while it is quite clear, from his own letters, that during all that time he had never visited her.[19]
Surely it is one of the most inexplicable of dramas. The whole period which it occupies is of less than two years: eighteen months have elapsed, and we have not yet seen the heroine. We only guess at her darkly from the hero's soliloquies, or the rare secrets which he commends to the bosom of his confidant. We are in the fourth act, and have advanced to no further situation than was disclosed in the opening scene. It is true that for a few weeks in the autumn of 1830 the two actors are brought into a closer relationship: that she sang for him at his concert in October, and that she gave him a ring on his departure from Warsaw: but then, just as we are beginning to attain to some comprehension of the plot, the curtain falls, and there has been neither recognition nor catastrophe. Nor is the epilogue any less inconclusive. The farewell gift, which should have been the beginning of a more intimate romance, is virtually the end of the whole story. After Chopin had left his home, he seems to have held no further communication, other than indirect, with the woman whom he believed himself to love; in a few months her name has dropped out of his letters: and when she married, about a year later, he is said to have heard the news with a momentary outburst of brief anger, and then to have dismissed it from his recollection. And even during the days of his thraldom, he can forget histroubles whenever he is interested in his work. It is only when he is wearied or overwrought that the image of his love recurs, with its invariable train of forebodings and regrets: forebodings that he will find inaccessible a height which he never tries to climb: regrets for lost opportunities which he has never attempted to seize. As to her own attitude in the matter, we are even more at fault. We have no means of determining to what extent she looked with favour upon his suit, or to what extent she even trusted in its sincerity. We have no right to impute blame to her: we have no standpoint for imputation. All we can say is, that if Chopin's passion had been wholly visionary, this is the way in which it would have expressed itself. Of the joy, the hope, the impetus of true love there is not one recorded word: his highest point of stimulation is the desire to 'tell his piano' of the sorrow that she has brought him: his brightest hope of communion with her is that when he dies his ashes may be spread out under her feet.
It is pleasanter to look upon the more active side of Chopin's last summer in Warsaw. In spite of the social distractions which the season inevitably brought in its retinue, he worked away steadily at his E minor Concerto, finished it by the middle of August, and produced it, with his usual good fortune, at his third and last concert, on October 11. In addition, he composed what he modestly calls 'a few insignificant pieces,' and sketched or projected some works of larger scale—a concerto for two pianos, a polonaise with orchestra, and the like. Whether these ever came into complete existence is a matter of dispute: here, as elsewhere, the record of Chopin's life is too broken and imperfect to admit any tone of certainty:but, in either event, they testify to some acceptance of the 'beatitude of labour.' The results of a man's effort are a free gift to succeeding generations; it is in the effort itself that he finds his own reward.
As the winter approached, plans for departure grew more definite and more concrete. Chopin had cried 'Wolf' so often that his friends might well be excused for doubting the reality of his intentions, but this time it appeared that he was actually in earnest, and at the beginning of November he started. Even now he had no very clear idea of his destination. It was to be Vienna first, so much was certain, but after Vienna it might be Berlin, where Prince Radziwill could ensure him introductions, or it might be Italy, where he could bear his credentials to royalty at Milan, or it might be Paris, which was then the goal of almost every artist in Europe. 'I am going out into the wide world,' he writes, with a touch of knight-errantry foreign to his usual nature. Curiously enough, he seems to have had from the beginning a presentiment that he would never return to Poland; and when, at the first stage from Warsaw, Elsner met him with the pupils of the Conservatorium, and presented him with a silver cup full of Polish earth, the strange little ceremonial must have added force and ratification to his thought. Moreover, the presentiment came true. The nineteen years of life which remained to him only widened his separation from his native country; his exile, though voluntary, proved to be none the less irrevocable; and as the towers of Warsaw sank behind him on the horizon, there faded with them all but the memory of a home which he was never to see again.
After the good leisurely fashion of the time, Chopin took nearly four weeks over his journey to Vienna. His first halting-place was Kalisz, where he was joined by his friend Woyciecowski, and thence the two travelled together through Breslau, Dresden and Prague, enjoying to the full that highest of human pleasures which is constituted by a clear road, brisk horses, and a single companion. The incidents, as recorded in his letters, are not of any great importance—impressions of the theatre at Breslau, renewal of old acquaintanceships at Dresden, and so forth—but the letters themselves are interesting, as showing how entirely he had recovered his spirits under the change of scene and circumstance. Everything is delightful, everybody is cordial, all prospects of the future career are painted in rose-colour, and the darkest moments of uncertainty are caused by his terror at the sight of the Saxon ladies, in their panoply of knitting-needles, or by the temptation, which he is at some pains to resist, of 'kicking out the bottom' from his first sedan chair. In a character so transparent, even these evanescent bubbles of humour acquire a certain significance. For the moment, Chopin's tone is equally free fromregret or apprehension; for the moment, this exile from his country has succeeded in escaping from his recent self.
And yet, it was a bold challenge to fortune. On the one side, a world which is usually too busy to occupy itself with new aspirants, which grants no favour that cannot be claimed as a right, and is even less ready to show mercy to the conquered than to offer its applause to the conqueror: on the other, a boy of twenty-one, with delicate and fastidious appetites, with no experience of privation, no conception of the value of money, no settled habits of prudence or circumspection, equipped, it is true, with a flashing weapon of genius, but singularly ill provided with the ordinary armour of defence. It would have been no wonder if he had thought the bastions impregnable and the towers impossible to scale: if he had looked upon the camp life as coarse and uncouth, if he had found its discipline intolerable, its hardships degrading, and its pleasures typified by the rude laughter and boisterous jests of the canteen. Small wonder, either, if his comrades had set him down as a carpet-knight; an exquisite, better skilled to pay compliments to the women than to bear his part among the men; a dandy, whose chief care was the set of his clothes and the fragrance of his violets; a precisian, who was altogether devoid of redeeming vices; an idealist, who spent his days in pursuit of the unattainable, instead of taking life as it came, and letting ready action compensate for defective strategy. And in such an estimate there would have been a certain measure of truth. If, in order to be a good man, it is first necessary to be a good animal, we may admit at once that Chopin's virility was imperfect.There is no doubt that, to the end of his life, he was characterised by a super-sensitive refinement, which, fifty years ago, would have been described as feminine. But now, at the outset of his career, it is well to notice that he was by no means unprovided with the means of success. He was already one of the best pianists in Europe. He had discovered a secret of musical expression more readily understood and appreciated than that of any contemporary composer, with the exception of Mendelssohn. He was gifted with a great charm of manner, and an unusual power of making friends. And when it is added that he was only once in any great stress of poverty, it will be seen that his equipment was less incomplete than is generally imagined. After all, the dandies have played their part in history. Claverhouse was a dandy; Lovelace was a dandy; Sir Philip Sydney himself was censured by Milton for being 'vain and amatorious': and if a man can be something of a fop, and yet bear himself gallantly in the battle of arms, how much more shall he do so in the battle of life.
At the same time, we must confess that, in his first encounter with destiny, the hero was visited with a signal defeat. Before he had been a week in Vienna, news came that Warsaw had risen in revolt against the Russians; there was word of riot in the streets, of danger to the house; and Chopin, after a few hours of irresolution, started off to follow his friend Woyciecowski, who had gone at once to join the insurgents. On the way his determination broke down: his presence could avail nothing; it would only add to the disquietude of his parents; he had better wait for further tidings, for somemessage or injunction which would relieve him from taking the initiative. Without further thought he changed his plans, and returned to Vienna, waiting there in a transport of grief and anxiety for the letters which a man of prompter courage would have forestalled. As the days wore on, the bulletins grew more reassuring; for a time, at any rate, the cloud of peril rolled away from the city: the Poles had an army of 60,000 men in the field, and, in spite of the enormous forces of the Emperor Nicholas, were confident of success. Still Chopin lingered on, ready to start at the lightest summons, but not strong enough to take the first step of his own motion, until the noise of battle had passed to the Russian frontier, and he could write once more about his life and his surroundings.
Apparently the outlook was less encouraging than it had been in 1828. Vienna, since the death of Schubert, was passing through a period of musical inactivity, and the prospects of concert-giving were not very bright. Managers who had been ready enough to welcome Chopin when he played gratuitously, began to hang back now that he demanded payment; and the public, after its golden age of the classics, professed itself satisfied with thekapellmeistermusikof Seyfried, and the dance-tunes of Strauss and Lanner. During the whole six months of Chopin's stay in the Austrian capital, he only gave one concert, and that, as we learn from M. Karasowski, was thinly attended and poorly paid. For the rest, his letters contain little more than the diary of a casual visitor:—operas at theKärnthnerthorTheatre, dinners with his friend Dr Malfatti, a few criticisms of Thalberg, a few words of enthusiasm forSlavik; the whole lightened, every now and again, by some amusing story or some half-dozen lines of quaint description. His tone changes with every varying mood: at one moment he breaks into passionate regret that he is still absent from his home: at another he speaks of himself as enjoying his enforced idleness, as wonderfully restored in health, and as finding many acquaintances and much pleasant companionship. But it is clear that, whatever his temper, he was in no way to replenish his resources or advance his existing reputation.
By the middle of 1831 he had made up his mind to proceed to Paris. To return home would be merely to confess himself beaten: Italy was put out of the question by its political troubles; Berlin, with all its opportunities, was hardly the ideal residence for a Polish artist. All reasons pointed to the land with which he was in the closest sympathy: the land which had given birth to his father, which had been the ally of his nation, which had always shown its warmest hospitality to his countrymen. Accordingly he started on July 20, travelled slowly through Munich and Stuttgart, and finally arrived at his destination about the end of the autumn. His two halting-places are both of some moment in the history of his life. At Munich he gave his last public concert to a German-speaking audience, playing his E minor Concerto and his Fantasia on Polish Airs: at Stuttgart he heard the news that Warsaw had been captured by the Russians, and that the hopes of the revolution were lying under the ruin of its walls. Fortunately his parents were safe. There was no personal anxiety to embitter his grief at the national disaster. But, none theless, the blow sank deep, and left a scar which lasted indelibly. With all his weakness, Chopin had an intense love for his country, and the dirge[20]in which he mourned her downfall remains as one of the truest and saddest utterances of despairing patriotism.
So ends a year which, on its artistic side, is little more than a line of cleavage between the two main divisions of the story. Before it, Chopin is a boy, studying with his masters, secure under the protection of his home, and looking with expectant eyes upon a great world of which he hardly knows the outskirts: after it, he is a man, holding his fate in his own hands, living in a foreign city, surrounded with new hopes, new occupations, and new friendships. As Warsaw in the first period, so Paris in the second is the centre on which every aspect of the life is focussed. Poland has played her part—she has ceased to be counted among the nations: for the future, it is French blood that claims its kindred, and French loyalty that offers its allegiance.
And, indeed, Chopin could have chosen no city which would give him less feeling of transference. He found Paris full of a cordial sympathy with everything Polish: dramas, founded on the insurrection, drawing crowds to the theatres; cries of 'Vive les Polonais' echoing in the streets; ovations to General Ramorino, who had taken arms against Russia, and had not despaired of the Republic. A few letters of introduction served to open the doors of artistic society: Paër, Baillot, even Cherubini offered a kindly welcome to the newcomer: Hillerand Franchomme were soon among his fast friends: and the early days were passed in a rush of concert and opera, in admiration of the fine Conservatoire Orchestra, or in open-eyed wonder at the roulades of Pasta and Malibran.
A short time after his arrival, he went to call upon Kalkbrenner, in hopes that the great teacher would consent to give him lessons. Kalkbrenner heard him play, approved, noted some deviations from the established method, and offered to take him as a pupil if he would promise to serve a full apprenticeship of three years. The condition was somewhat prohibitive, for Chopin had his own way to make, and his own living to earn; but with characteristic docility he undertook to consider the proposal, and wrote off at once to Elsner for advice. The old master's answer was, on the whole, dissuasive. It was unadvisable, he said, that Chopin should restrict himself too closely to the piano: there were other forms of the art—quartetts, symphonies, and, above all, operas—which might establish his name on a more lasting foundation. Besides, a too continuous adherence to one method, however perfect, would tend to destroy individuality of touch and substitute a mere mechanical proficiency for the freedom of original thought. A genius 'should be allowed to follow his own path and make his own discoveries.' So, fortunately for Music, Chopin decided to decline the offer; though the cordiality of his relation with Kalkbrenner is testified by many passages of intimacy, and by the dedication of the E minor Concerto. There can be no doubt that the proposal was made in good faith, and that it was rejected with some hesitation. The only mattersof comment are the modesty with which Chopin suggested a new period of studentship, and the grounds on which Elsner recommended him to dismiss the idea.
Early in 1832 Chopin made his first appearance before a Parisian public. The concert, organised for the benefit of the Polish refugees, was no great financial success, but it served to bring into notice the second concerto and some of the early mazurkas and nocturnes. One of the most interesting features in the programme was an enormous work of Kalkbrenner's for six pianofortes, played by the composer and Chopin inconcertino, together with Hiller, Osborne, Stamaty and Sowinski as accompanists: a disposition of forces which plainly indicates that the newcomer was already recognised as a leader by some of the best executants in Paris. We may add that, artistically speaking, thedébutwas a veritable triumph. The audience applauded heartily, Mendelssohn offered his warmest congratulations, even Fétis grew genial and appreciative; and when, at a charity concert in March, Chopin succeeded in scoring a second victory, it is little wonder that he found his position established beyond dispute. He might well write to his friends at home,—'Me voilà lancé.' The society of Paris lionised him with the same fervour as the society of Warsaw: evening after evening was occupied with visitors or filled with invitations: pupils began to present themselves; concert managers solicited his services; and before long he shared with Liszt the honour of being the most fashionable musician of the day. 'I move in the highest circles,' he writes, 'and I don't know how I got there. Butyou are credited with more talent if you have been heard at asoiréeof the English or Austrian Ambassador. Among the Paris artists I enjoy general esteem and friendship; men of reputation dedicate their compositions to me even before I have paid them the same compliment. Pupils from the Conservatoire—even private pupils of Moscheles, Herz and Kalkbrenner—come to me to take lessons. Really, if I were more silly than I am, I might imagine myself a finished artist; but I feel daily how much I have still to learn. Don't imagine that I am making a fortune: my carriage and my white gloves eat up most of the earnings. However, I am a revolutionary, and so don't care for money.'[21]Clearly, we are some way from the timid, apprehensive stranger, doubtful of his direction, uncertain of his future, who entered Paris a year before, with his country's sorrow still heavy upon his heart.
This fresh impulse of activity bore ample fruit, also, in composition. During the winter of 1832 were published the first two sets of Mazurkas; next year followed the first three Nocturnes, the first set of Études,[22]and the Variations on Herold'sJe vends des Scapulaires, graceful embroideries of an exceedingly poor texture: while in 1834 came three more Nocturnes, another set of Mazurkas, aGrande Valse Brilliante(Op. 18), and a Bolero. Besides these, Chopin arranged with Schlesinger for the publication of some of his existing manuscripts: the Pianoforte Trio, the Concerto in E minor, the Fantasia on Polish Airs, and the Krakowiak. Their success was almostinstantaneous. No doubt there were a few dissentient voices: Field, the great burly Englishman, laid aside his pipe to growl out that his new rival had 'un talent de chambre de malade:' Rellstab, the editor of the BerlinIris, practised a few of the vitriolic epigrams which he was afterwards going to launch at Schumann: but beyond these there was very little doubt expressed by any musician who read the works, and none at all by any who heard their composer play them.