Let the music speak for itself

Wansui

On November 14, 1849, two weeks after Chopin's funeral, LisztFerencz wrote to Chopin's sister, Ludwika, stating that he wanted to write a biography of his deceased friend and that he could consult his close relatives about some private information. Ludwika, who was busy with the aftermath of Chopin's legacy, was displeased with this, and his brother's bones were not cold, and Liszt was eager to establish his own authoritative interpretation of Chopin. There were almost as many people who exploited and detracted Chopin's reputation as there were people who loved and promoted Chopin's works, and her husband belonged to one of the former, so she had no time to take care of it, but her intuition told her that Liszt could not write a decent biography. Although he spent less time with his brother as an adult, Ludwika's judgment was not only quite predictable, but also fully in line with Chopin's long-term perception of Liszt.

Also a Central and Eastern European musical genius active in Paris, Chopin has been compared with Liszt since he was twelve years old, and the two have also spent a very close time in Paris, having the experience of four-handed combined playing. As a peer, Chopin did not have much criticism of Liszt's music, but Chopin, who focused on the creation itself, was extremely disgusted by Liszt's ostentatious style. In Liszt's pen, Chopin's concerts were more like a social party than a musical party. The more Liszt wrote about Chopin, the more Chopin felt that the former was a good teacher, and the two gradually drifted apart. Liszt's rhetorically stacked "Chopin" became a representative of the enhanced empty symbols of early musician biographies, and was repeatedly spat upon by later music historians, even Professor Alan Walker, who won the award for music history with the three-volume biography of Liszt. Alan Walker's familiarity with that era, writing Chopin's biography, has advanced to the handwriting characters in the musical score. This process of knowing Chopin began with the humble work of another musician of equal name, and continued through the disciplinary history of music studies, leaving details to be discerned.

Music as a native language

Chopin and Liszt's greatest difference was the way they interpreted music. Liszt ended his piano career a few years before Chopin's death, specializing in composition and conducting. In the first half of his career, he became famous at a young age, and he liked to appear in social circles, using poetic rhetoric to give music appeal. He was not alone, and both Mendelssohn and Schumann of his contemporaries liked to match music with pictures and seemingly deep words. Title music is one of the abuses of contemporary cross-media narratives, which may bring multi-dimensional enjoyment to the audience, or it may only be a patch of professionalism.

The emphasis on word making is the label of the Romantic music school, but Chopin, who is the "Prince of romantic pianos", is one of the outliers, a rare classicist. Throughout his life, most of Chopin's works were directly applied to his genre as titles, and rarely created thematic works. Because Georges San described Chopin as inspired by a heavy rain in a church fifteen years after his composition, the Prelude in D major was widely circulated in later generations as a "raindrop", while Liszt thought that the name was more suitable for the Concerto in F minor. This anecdote has made many later music critics popular, such as Alfred Denis Cortot, who claims to be able to smell death and shadows from the song. But in fact, not only did Chopin strenuously deny that his music was an imitation of nature or a projection of personal experience, the biography even mentioned an English poet who had lived in the scene of the incident for many years, claiming that the story did not fit the architectural structure of the church. Chopin believed in absolutist music and did not like to use non-musical elements such as titles to gold his works, hoping to let the music speak for itself.

Chopin's musical talent was almost self-explanatory. If you don't count his mother, who inspired him at the age of 4, his only piano teacher was Wojceh Zhweeney before he was 12 years old, and the only composer was Józef Elsner, the director of the Warsaw Conservatory of Music, both of whom had long allowed and encouraged Chopin's casual creation. Chopin's piano playing skills do not belong to any genre and do not follow any doctrine. Piano teaching circles generally reprimand piano children for playing black keys with their thumbs, but Chopin wrote the famous "Black Key Etudes", and the five fingers of his right hand only played black keys, and the thumb was no exception. The mainstream Cherny school was a firm believer in the "finger average theory", believing that ten fingers should be equally powerful, and his etude "seemed to break the fingers". Chopin did not shy away from the natural physiological linkage between the middle finger and the ring finger, and did not mind the portamento from the black key to the white key. This was perhaps the first time in piano history that the comfort of the hands was the focus of attention, and Chopin also allowed his genius hands to be released to the maximum. Judging from the hand models that have been preserved today, Chopin's palms are not very large, but Heine said that those hands are like giant pythons, and they will suddenly open and swallow several times their prey.

Liszt felt that Chopin's music in Mazouga in A major was illogical until he heard Chopin himself playing. Because of Chopin's own talent, some of his compositions were not easy to play, but he never hid his students. He once laughed at the guests who came to study, "Without my guidance, people can't play my songs, which is a little sad." "But his guidance is really very intimate, without the shelf of a famous pianist." He would graciously and spoil people to overcome their tension and praise the students. When the hand is spread over a large span on the keyboard, the support finger is not always the middle finger, and Chopin often encourages students to use the index finger support. CarlFiltsch, an 11-year-old genius from Hungary, came to Paris to study with him on a patronage of his own nobility, and was interrupted by Chopin as soon as the test was introduced. So impressed by Filch's talent, Chopin spent eighteen months cultivating and the only student he ever taught composition. In this child's public appearance, Chopin either sat in the front row or performed on the same stage. After a performance, he put his hand on Firch's shoulder and said, "Ladies, this is called talent. The genius died young a few years later, devastating Chopin.

Rather than words and doctrines, Chopin preferred to draw nourishment from sound. Chopin demanded that his funeral must have female singers sing Mozart's Requiem, and the funeral was delayed for two weeks in order to wait for the approval of the Bishop of Paris. Chopin's early Nocturne reflected his love of vocals, and he used great skill to assign all the notes to the five fingers of his right hand, imitating the phrases of the two voices. Chopin's main direction of late composition was the fusion of style and genre, and even the fusion of narrative tones at the end of the song. Like a singer, his music has breathing points. He thinks that composers who can't break sentences are fake musicians, as difficult to swallow as rote texts. Inspired by vocal music, his "Boat Song" wrote an Italian term from the flower cavity singing method in subsection 78 of the score, "sfogato", and Chopin told the players to relax and be "dolcesfogato".

However, relaxation is only the state of playing, not the attitude of creation. Chopin knew that the best place to play in a banqueting situation was a Haydn-style concerto that displayed fancy technique without requiring the listener's attention. Skilled in improvisation at banquets, he can even use the piano to imitate a broken music box, but he will never frivolously regard the sketch as a finished product and a work. His distinction between improvisation and composition is so clear that Jon Newsom once had a good comment: "The composer Chopin was cruel and ruthless to the improvist Chopin." Inspiration expressed casually on the piano must be rigorously considered, refined and modified before it can be written into the work. In order to catch a lesi, he would chase from major to minor, and sometimes it would take him six weeks to polish a page of music. On his deathbed, he instructed his relatives and friends to burn all his unpublished manuscripts: "I have always had great respect for the public, and everything I publish must be as perfect as possible." I don't want works with my name that disappoint the public to be spread around. Unfortunately or fortunately, Chopin's sister did not follow his own will, leaving a treasure to be unearthed for later music researchers. But in an era of excessive spread, perhaps Chopin's caution and sculpting are the more scarce qualities.

Polish Fantasia

For his contemporaries, Chopin's music was "Wang Xie Tang Qianyan", which was difficult to enter the homes of ordinary people. Chopin had already written many Polish dances and variations by the age of 7, and at the age of 8, a "Polish Dance in G minor" was transcribed and published by his teacher with the help of his teachers, which was reported by the local media. On February 24, 1818, Chopin, who was less than 8 years old, made his first famous performance for high society at a charity concert by the powerful in Warsaw. The Polish ruler at the time, Grand Duke Konstantin Pavlovich, was raised in the Spartan style of his grandmother Catherine the Great, was cruel and moody, and later secretly gave up the Tsar's succession in order to marry his Princess of Polish origin. Princess Joanna Grudz-ińska, in order to dispel the atmosphere of slaughter in the court, often asked her tutor to invite Chopin to the Belvedere Palace in Warsaw and ask the genius piano boy to appease her husband's unwarranted anger. Throughout his life, Chopin performed for the monarchs of England, France and Russia, and maintained a long-term relationship with the royal family of the July Dynasty. No matter how prominent the other person's identity is, it will not affect his near-perfect elegance. Berlioz, a fellow romantic, even complained, "Chopin was always alienated from people... If you're not a prince, don't get too hopeful about listening to him. ”

The reason for this is not that Chopin is inflammatory, but that he does prefer to play in small environments. When he first arrived in Paris, the mainstream pianists in the world of performance were still keen to show off their skills, and they were called the "Trapeze School" by industry insiders. In his early years, Liszt was one of them, and his douqin with Sigismond Thaleberg became famous, with hundreds of spectators. Georges Sand complained, "A two-hour concert and a few chords can earn six thousand francs in the praise of the audience, the chanting 'Encore' and the most moving girls in Paris, this scoundrel." Chopin, however, rarely gave concerts and avoided public attention, so much so that Sang mocked Chopin's pathological fear of public performances at concerts.

Perhaps by chance, Tsar Nicholas declared in 1837 that he would award Chopin the title of "Pianist of the Court of the Russian Empire" and a corresponding lifetime allowance. This identity is very much in line with Chopin's performance style, and it can also make him worry-free about food and clothing for a long time. But he preferred to teach and compose for a living, and flatly rejected the title. He is said to have replied unceremoniously to the Russian ambassador to France that the only honor he was willing to accept was the exiles: "Although I did not participate in the revolution of 1830, I supported those revolutionaries." It was only when it came to the topic of Polish patriotism that the calm and indifferent Chopin of the impression erupted into a bloody indignation and grandeur, playing the traditional patriotic song "Mazurek D. Brownskiego" in front of two Russian diplomats.

As mentioned earlier, Chopin rarely composes propositional compositions based on realistic themes, but the fate of the motherland is a minority exception. On November 28, 1837, the day before the anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising, Chopin signed his Funeral March, an elegy he wrote for his homeland. The piece was never played at a funeral during Chopin's lifetime, and the first time it was performed was at his own funeral. It was in this way that his fate was wonderfully intertwined with his motherland.

Chopin's father was actually from France, but Chopin Sr. himself rarely mentioned this, and music historians only implemented this many years later by examining the French county chronicles. Chopin's father, who had experienced the rout of the Napoleonic era, was very cautious about getting involved in politics. As an adult, Chopin was a Polish expatriate living in France, and his self-identification was entirely directed at Poland, even to the point of making jokes about "Jewish untouchables". His childhood belonged to the post-Napoleonic era and the reign of Tsar Alexander I. According to the political arrangements of the Vienna system, Tsarist Russia returned the lands of European countries and won public support for the partition of Poland and the annexation of Finland. However, the shadow left by the all-out war in the Napoleonic era has not yet faded away, and the "Parliamentary Kingdom of Poland" under the custody of Tsarist Russia is still dominated by Huairou. It was not until November 1830, just a month after Chopin left his homeland, that the Polish troops sent by the Tsar to Belgium and France to suppress the revolution mutinied, and the local military and civilian gentry joined in righteousness, and were finally suppressed by the Tsar. Chopin even bothered to go into the diary: "May the French who stand by and watch be punished by heaven."

Taking the Revolution of 1830 as the midpoint, Chopin lived in the first half of the Xiaoyangchun, which was indirectly ruled by Russia, and the second half during the cultural boom of the July Dynasty, which was less turbulent than most of his contemporaries.

Alfred Corto, an authority on early Chopin studies, argues that the Concerto in F minor, which tells the story of a treasure hunt in the Epic The Three Brothers by the Polish national poet Adam Mickiewicz, now seems unfounded and a natural grafting between cultural imagery. But before Chopin, the Polish totem was the Polish Goethe who wrote the national epic "PanTadeusz" (PanTadeusz). On December 22, 1840, Mickiewicz was invited to deliver the inaugural speech of the Professor of Slavic Literature at the Académie française, and the audience was full. Chopin, like the rest of the Polish diaspora, was encouraged and thankful that Poland had finally spoken out. Unfortunately, soon after, the national poet who wrote "My name is Millions of People" fell into messianism, which puzzled the Polish people, who believed in "self-help and god help". At the same time, Chopin was criticized by some music critics for refusing to sign the commemorative album of Mendelssohn's death. For Chopin, it was a tribute from a German musician to his own musicians, and it was not the turn of a Pole himself to mix. Around that time, Chopin and his music came to the fore and gradually became a symbol of the Poles.

This is, of course, a combination of many reasons. On the one hand, Chopin himself was one of the immigrants before and after the Warsaw Uprising of 1830, representing a generation, and he was also active in diaspora circles. Only in Eastern Europe, where national independence is difficult to produce, can the image of the exile transcend the barriers of class contradictions and become the common spiritual sustenance of compatriots. Although he himself lived with the literary scholar George Sand for many years, he never read except in newspapers, but on January 15, 1833, he was elected a member of the Polish Literary Association organized by the diaspora. In fact, the organization was a political association involved in everything but literature. On the other hand, it was only in the 19th century that novels, poetry and music had the appeal to penetrate time and space, and were the necessary dry wood and nourishment for nationalism. Compared with the literature that created the national culture, the instrumental music without language thresholds and positional expressions actually has a wider circulation, and also creates a cross-era popularity for Chopin, which is preserved as a cultural business card of a nation-state. Chopin's fiancée in his early years once wrote that she always regretted that his name was not "Chopinski", which may be the voice of the majority of Poles later. More crucially, thanks to Polish folk music, his repertoire does have a distinctly high Polish temperament. The more national, the more worldly.

Back in the heart of Poland

Illness and weakness may also be a feature that Chopin can be linked to the national fortunes of modern Poland. I don't know when artistic genius and infirmity have been linked, and the disease is a metaphor for the talent of heavenly jealousy. In Chopin's time, tuberculosis was still an incurable disease, and his sister died here when she was young. Chopin began to develop similar symptoms around the age of 16 and remained trapped throughout his life. "Coughing gracefully" became Chopin's first impression, and he also spent a lot of money seeking medical treatment, special recipes and leech blood sucking were his daily routines. In the case of the medicinal stone, go to the hot spring when things are undecided. The family took Chopin to a health resort where thousands of tuberculosis people gather every summer, greatly increasing the possibility of cross-infection and likely tamping chopin's root causes. After Chopin's trip to Paris, French doctors were helpless, saying that a warm climate would help him recover. Unfortunately, Chopin went to Mallorca in Spain for a holiday but encountered several days of rain, and because of his illness, he was driven out of his residence by the fearful locals, which almost killed him, "Three famous doctors on the island examined my body... The first said I was dying, the second said I was incurable, and the third said I was dead. However, I feel pretty much the same as usual..."

But Chopin was not as weak as rumors, weak enough to play in public, it was just his aesthetic and habits. Chopin's artistic personality was formed in the gilded mansions of celebrities and dignitaries, and his audience was a socialite who could appreciate the delicate charm of his playing, or at least pretend to be that way. Chopin's expression was subtle and restrained, and he did not like to sit on a higher bench and slam the keys. He scoffed at the high strength of the keys played by the pianists of his generation who were keen on showmanship, often saying that the rough sounds they made using brute force were like stupid dog barks. Some researchers claim that looking through his work has not found a single tremolo. In order to create a private playing environment for him, the organizers of Chopin's concert had his relatives and friends sit in the front row of the stage and surround chopin around the piano, and it is no wonder that the more popular Liszt accused Chopin's fans of being a church organization.

However, Chopin is not unable to maintain a suitable distance from celebrities. Liszt's pamphlets catered to the vassal style of literary lovers, but Chopin was also well aware of the temperament of the salon's regulars. According to Chopin's friends, once Chopin improvised a war song, the ladies present immediately gathered around and insisted on asking Chopin to adapt the song into a chorus for them to sing. Chopin said yes, then turned to his compatriots in Polish and said, "They will forget about it tomorrow." ”

Indeed, celebrities come to listen to songs and come to see people. Chopin's talent and temperament attracted him a large number of admirers, and the literary scholar George Sand was one of them. Flaubert's calling Georges-San "a prolific cow" is in fact a disparagement to her literary attainments. It is true that her excessive prolific writing did not help her to leave more heirloom works, and her literary history status was not solid, but in that era, she was an out-and-out avant-garde in European literary and artistic life. Due to the misfortunes of her original family and the failure of her married life, Ms. Amantine-Lucile-AuroreDupin divorced categorically, raised her children alone, and chose George Sand as her pen name to support herself in writing. She is equally sharp in life and politics, and is also a maverick, dare to love and hate, and be merciful everywhere. With a stable lover still in place, she did not shy away from handing Chopin a note that read, "I love you." However, George Sang's masculine attire and flamboyant mannerisms once left a bad impression on Chopin, leaving him as cold as ever. George Sang then erupted with astonishing emotion, took the initiative, and took the initiative to break off relations with his original lover with scumbag-like rhetoric - rising from a low-level lover to a pure friendship and companionship.

In July 1838, Chopin and George Sand became lovers. The love between the two is quite contemporary and is the free relationship that many urbanites dream of. The relationship began with Sang's active courtship and ended with Sang's family dispute, which was completely dominated by women. In the eyes of friends, Chopin is a little boy like a fake bag, more than most women pay attention to dress, before the performance must find tailors, hair stylists and personal male servants. Coupled with Chopin's frail health, Sang soon went from lover to nanny who volunteered to care for the sick. She was a typical night owl, always writing all night, and the frail Chopin could not have moved on to such a routine. During their time in Paris, the two lived under one roof, separated only by a wall, maintaining the sense of distance that modern people dream of. It was between 1839 and 1846, when the two lived together, that Sang published 12 novels, 6 short stories, and a play. Chopin also wrote immortal masterpieces including "Six Nocturnes" and "Lullabies", which consolidated his position in the music scene in Paris. Two people who support each other reach each other's creative peak, and their works are the most powerful proof.

Chopin was buried in France, but the heart was brought back to his homeland by his sister Ludwika, buried in the catacombs of the Church of Santa Croce. Exposed by a reporter, Chopin's heart quickly aroused the patriotic enthusiasm of the public. On February 29, 1880, his heart was moved into the Main Church and a formal consecration ceremony was held. In september 1944, when the Warsaw Uprising suffered military reprisals, a typical senior Nazi officer— a music-loving Jewish butcher — protected Chopin's heart from destruction, which was escorted by German soldiers to St. Hedwig's Church on the outskirts of Warsaw. On October 17, 1945, the 96th anniversary of Chopin's death, the new government, in order to unite patriotism, welcomed Chopin's heart back to his hometown with the etiquette of a head of state, and the road was lined with people on both sides of the 90-kilometer-long route, and every household planted the national flag. Near midnight on April 14, 2014, two forensic experts, witnessed by the Archbishop and the Polish Minister of Culture, removed the heart and secretly checked chopin's cause of death. For years, some people did not want to disturb the holy relic, and others applied to the government for genetic testing. Poland's Chopin, like Chopin's Poland, dreams of a beating heart.