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“best friends!”

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Let’s Talk!

A Reflection Upon Recent Events In Chopin Scholarship

Let’s review what has happened:

Swiss public broadcaster, SRF’s arts channel played a 2 hour long program called Chopin’s Men

Within this program, music journalist Moritz Weber talks about his ‘discovery’ of a “flood of declarations of love aimed at men”

The Fryderyk Chopin Institute in Poland, issued a statement saying, “If you read [the letters] in the Polish original, it sounds a little bit different,” he said. “The way Chopin uses language is so musical and complicated, to translate all that is madness.”

Rose Cholmondeley, the president of the UK’s Chopin Society spoke to CNN saying, “He is a symbol of Poland, but you’ve got a government now which is absolutely anti-gay – and were he to be gay, God knows what they would make of it,”

If we do some quick google search research we see that searches for simply ‘Chopin Gay’ have shot up.

And it was mostly searched in Poland itself.

What This Means To Me

Hi, I’m Jackie. and what this specific surge in Chopin media coverage means to me is complex. I have been in the stages of researching and writing a dual biography on Frederic Chopin and George Sand during their nearly 10 year relationship for the past three years. 

What is currently brushing me, a bisexual historian who was reinforced in my identity through the two historical figures I devote my free time to, is seeing Chopin referred to as only gay in this new media coverage. 

I have scoured many of the articles about this two hour special (which I have not been able to listen to firsthand because unfortunately I don’t speak nor understand German) and a lot of them portray Chopin’s relationships with women in the romantic sense in a negative light. We see his and Sand’s 10 year unorthodox relationship being simmered down to a part of the traditional story of Chopin’s love life. Or Weber not being able to find evidence of Chopin’s affections for Konstancja Gładkowska, nor his ill fated engagement to Maria Wodzińska.

Why must it be one or the other? Why can it not be both?

You can study Chopin’s relationships with women while still respecting his relationships with women. 

Just as well, saying that this was all new information, as if LGBT researchers and historians have been critiquing Alan Walker’s Chopin biography and many others like it for years without recognition. Why Weber, why only now?

This obviously barely scratches the surface on what this discussion means politically for Poland, which frankly deserves its own post. But if this is how the majority of reporting being for him being gay, I doubt normalization of bisexuality would be an easy public conversation either.

When one of Poland’s most foremost LGBTQ rights activists deems him “at leas” bisexual, I felt relieved.

Then I thought more about that phrasing. Why must it be “at least”? Is being bisexual not enough? 

Because his bisexuality is more than enough for me, it affirms me. If he can produce works of beauty, so can I.

Please feel free to ask me questions or reblog with your own thoughts, I’m interested to see everyone else’s thoughts. It is an interesting time to be a Chopin enthusiast. 

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violin concertos through the eras

baroque era: oh yes…sixteenth notes…third position…some vibrato…sequences…yes…

classical era: hey look the violin is pretty neat and it can play some hella high notes sometimes. look at that mozart dude go

romantic era: I just have so many FEELINGS and so much TECHNICAL ABILITY and I can only express my FEEELINGS with excessive octaves and tenths

modern era: we are upset and we will take it out on this screechy scratch instrument

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Apparently, I’ve been reincarnated

I decided to goof around and mess about with that Google Arts & Culture selfie feature and I… I don’t know what to make of this??

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Mod attempts to play part of the 1st ballade as a tribute to Chopin and the anniversary of his death. I love you, freddy the piano man.

(sorry for the terrible audio quality and playing)

#chopin

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“One wonders why the artist’s works are immortal whilst the genius who creates them must vanish at the dawn of his life.”

- Wojciech Grzymała to Auguste Léo, speaking of Chopin’s death, October 1849

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Flower arrangement from Chopin’s deathbed, collected by Solange Clésinger and attached to the setting of a medallion by Jean-François-Antoine Bovy depicting the composer’s face.

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Rest in Peace Frédéric Chopin: March 1, 1810-October 17, 1849

I have been thinking about this day for a while now. Today I mourn the loss of a man I have never even met, but oddly have felt close to almost all my life. The fact that I suffered a devastating loss of my own last fall makes this all the more poignant. 

I feel a real sadness today, as I do on October 17 of every year. It is a day ingrained in me, a day I will never forget the meaning of, even if it means I feel grief for a total stranger who has been gone long before I was even thought of. It doesn’t make any sense, and I’ve tried to make sense of it, but there is a love in my heart for Chopin that is so special - and if you’re reading this here, I bet you feel that same love. I honestly feel as if I actually knew him… never in my life have I ever felt that for anyone else I never knew.

Our lives could not be more different - and yet it does not matter. His music makes me feel a magnitude of equal joy and sadness I have not experienced elsewhere. It is deeply moving and makes me cry a decent amount of the time. 

It might seem silly, penning a letter to a man who never even knew my name, but I know his… and today, above all days, I will listen to his music and keep his memory alive, for he is always alive so long as we let him live through his music. Let his name never be forgotten among the crowd of talented composers. I like to think he watches us from Heaven and is overjoyed that his fans live on.

I am crying as I type this. Why does he affect me so? I don’t know. What I do know is that I’ll love him until the day I die, and I hope I can see him in Heaven someday.

Rest in peace, sweet Frédéric.

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Fryderyk’s last months

Paris, 1849

Fryderyk Chopin’s health had worsened rapidly during his last year. At the end of June, he started haemorrhaging dramatically, and his legs began to swell up, in addition to a persistent diarrhoea (these are all symptoms of the final stages of tuberculosis and cystic fibrosis). And although he tried being brave on the outside, telling people that he planned going to Poland next year, or meet up with Tytus in Germany, he knew that his end was near.

Fryderyk sent me, his sister Ludwika, a desperate letter, in which he begged me to come to Paris.

“My life. If you can, then come. I am very weak, and no doctors can help me as much as you can…”

He later wrote: “My friends and well-meaning acquaintances will find Ludwika’s arrival here the best medicine for me.”

He told me to bring my needle and thimble, for there would be much sitting at his bedside. But it wasn’t easy for me to get to Paris.

Princess Marcelina and Delfina Potocka, two of Fryderyk’s good friends and admirers, had already for two months used their influence and connections to try to obtain a passport for me, in their secret plan to bring me to Paris. But once that was settled, it would still take much persuading to convince my husband, Józef Kalasanty Jędrzejewicz, to let me go to Fryderyk in Paris. After a while he finally agreed to bring me there, but I still had to borrow the necessary funds for the journey.

In Paris, Fryderyk was ill, bored and lonely. He still gave a few lessons, but had great difficulties to play the piano himself, and hardly composed anything at all. The arrival of ”his Scottish ladies“, aka Jane Stirling and her sister, deeply annoyed him with all their fuss. A problem involving the sisters and a large sum of money that had disappeared, irritated and worried him so much that he could not sleep at night, as it had induced migraine. By early August, he felt even weaker, and longed for my arrival. ”I pant and cough and feel sleepy; I don’t do anything, I don’t want to do anything“.

The 9th of August I finally arrived in Paris, with my husband and my daughter. Fryderyk was delighted to see me. He now suffered from imsomnia, and he grew anxious when he was alone, so it was great help for him to have someone to talk to at night when he couldn’t sleep. I later wrote: ”He liked to talk at night, to tell me his sorrows and to pour into my loving and understanding heart all his most personal thoughts.“

My husband Józef went around Paris sightseeing, but got tired of it quickly, and returned to Poland. I did not go with him; I was determined to see my brother through his illness, still deluding myself that he would survive it. And so the weeks passed.

Fryderyk’s doctors stated that if he were to survive the winter, he would have to move to a warm and sunny apartment in central Paris, so his friends set out to find the right place. He moved from his old apartment in Square d’Orléans to a new one at No. 12 place Vendôme at the end of September. Once moved in and settled, he never left the flat again; he hardly had any energy to leave his bed at all.

(the last part will come in the next post)

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At Fryderyk’s deathbed

Rumours had began to spread in Paris that Fryderyk was dying. And so his appartment at No. 12 place Vendôme was filled with dozens of people; friends, who came to say farewell, pupils, to thank him while he encouraged them one last time, and a great number of mere aquaintances, who simply called in as a mark of respect. Fryderyk would hold a brave face while talking to them, but as soon as they left, he couldn’t hide his suffering anymore. His gasping breaths were hardly more than pitiful, stifled cries, horrifying sobs.

George Sand sent me a letter, in which she asked about Fryderyk’s condition. But the tone of the letter was ill-judged and jarring, filled with pompous insults and assumptions of ”motherly rights“, speaking of Fryderyk like a child who had abandoned and forgotten his mother. I never answered the letter.

It was important to Fryderyk to sort out his affaires befare he died, so he gave us careful instructions. He asked that all unfinished musical manuscripts in his portefolio must be destroyed, and that only completele pieces should be published. He asked that Mozart’s Requiem would be sung at his funeral. And he implored that his body would be cut open, so that he would not be buried alive, and that his heart would be brought back to Poland, where it belongs.

Delfina Potocka arrived from Nice the 15th of October to visit Fryderyk. He was moved by this gesture, and begged her to sing for him one last time. She obliged, and sang to him, accompanied by the piano that we rolled up by the bedroom door.

When the 16th came, Fryderyk asked again for music, so Princess Marcelina and Auguste Franchomme played him some Mozart. After they had finished, he asked them to play his own Sonata for Piano and Cello. But only after a few bars of this he began to suffocate, so they had to stop.

By now, most of the callers had gone, leaving only intimate friends. We spent the evening reciting litanies. Fryderyk was silent. Later, two doctors came to examine him. One of them took a candle and held it before Fryderyk’s face, who had become dark with suffocation. The doctor remarked that his senses had ceased to act. But when he asked Fryderyk if he was suffering, we quite distinctly heard his answer: ”No longer!“

The night came, and more people left, leaving only me, Princess Marcelina, Gutmann, Thomas Albrecht and Solange. The 16th became the 17th when midnight passed. It was silent. Around two o’clock in the morning, I had fallen asleep, but Fryderyk lay awake. Solange sat beside him, holding his hand.

”Don’t stay here, this will be ugly“, he suddenly said to her. ”You must not see it.“ He appeared to have a seizure, so the terrified Solange called Gutmann, who ran over and took Fryderyk in his arms. I woke. We wanted to give him a drink, but death prevented us.

”He passed away with his gaze fixed on me, he was hideous, I could see the tarnishing eyes in the darkness“, Solange later wrote. ”Oh, the soul had died too!“

Fryderyk Chopin, my dear brother, had passed away, after years of sickness and suffering. On the following day, the doctor came to carry out an autopsy, and Auguste Clésinger came to make Fryderyk’s death-mask. I was heartbroken; my world had fallen into darkness, but I stayed in Paris for several months in order to arrange his funeral and sort out his affaires. And when I finally returned to Poland, I brought Fryderyk’s heart with me home.

”The soul of an angel, cast down upon earth in a tortured body in order to accomplish some mysterious redemption“, was how Solange remembered him. ”Is it because his life was a thirty-nine-year agony that his music is so lofty, so sweet, so sublime?“ she wondered.

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“I leave all condolences aside, they seem poor things in the presence of great sorrows.”

—

Fryderyk Chopin, in letter to Solange Clésinger, on receiving the news of the death of her new-born daughter. 11th March 1848.

I felt it would be adequate to share this quote today, because today is the 169th anniversary of Chopin’s death. I am always lacking words on this day because what I feel for him is very difficult to describe. In fact, I feel like I cannot fully understand it myself. 

When I read his letters, I smiled at his joys and felt sad for his sorrows. Many times, when I look to his photograph, I look into his eyes and I feel my heart pressed in my chest. I feel like I miss him desperately, as if he had been indeed a friend of mine to whom I used to confide everything. In those moments, I have an urge to hug him and tell him that he made the world a more beautiful place. Through his music, he made me more aware of the beauty of nature, the beauty of the tiny little things that often go unnoticed; I truly realized how beautiful a flower can be in its simplicity, how graceful and tender is the swirling of the autumn leaves before they touch the ground, even the night sky would not have the same pearly and velvety feel to it if I had never heard the Nocturnes, and when I see a bird placidly hovering at dusk against a pink sky, I always hear the opening phrase of the 4th ballade in my mind. He’s not just my favorite composer, he is someone who, not having met me, somehow knew me, and in his art, he presented a portrait of myself to me.

A few months ago, I visited his grave, and when I first saw the head of Clésinger’s sculpture peeking through the trees, I felt a punch in my stomach and immediatly started sobbing. As I stood there, crying my eyes out, just a few feet above his bones, feeling ridiculous, I asked myself how could I be having such an intense reaction, how could I be crying so much, with genuine sorrow, if the person I was crying about had been dead for over a century before I was even born? I still don’t know how to answer this question, I still don’t know exactly why I love him this much, because it’s not just about the wonderful music he created, it’s something else which, despite not knowing how to describe exactly, I feel very intensely. But then, I realized that we should never feel ashamed or ridiculous if it is love that we are feeling; it empregnates our hearts with gratitude, it is what makes us good, it brings beauty to our lives and so we should always strive to have and to share more of it, rather than conceal it or feeling ridiculous about it. 

There was also a moment where I sat on the little stairs next to his grave while listening to some of his pieces. Although it was a cloudy day, at that moment the sky cleared and the sun shone through the trees. And there I was, listening to the work of his life, right beside him. I looked up to the sky and smiled. At that moment, I felt I was not just beside his silenced body, but with him. I felt so happy. 

I wish I could thank him exactly as my heart desires, for all the beauties and happiness he has given to me. Sometimes, I feel that words are insufficient, and so, I hope that, wherever he is, he can feel the intensity and sincerity of the love that I have for him, because that is the only real tribute I can pay him. I hope that he is free from his troubles and happy knowing that, even 169 years after his passing, he still has so many friends who love him dearly.

  What I wouldn’t give to hug him.

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When you keep making mistakes on the piece but the performance is coming up soon so at this point you have to practice playing through it without stopping no matter what

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teacher: so there’s this thing…it’s quite new…revolutionary, really…don’t know if you’ve heard of it…it’s called practicing

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Someone: “says something mean about chopin”

me: Don’t say that, you’ll hurt his feelings

Someone: He’s been dead for like 200 years

me: “starts crying”

someone: Why are you crying, you’ve never even meet him

me: “cries more”

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Exactly now go practice

Mendelssohn, stop being so difficult to relearn, I don’t get this kind of crap from Chopin

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Orchestra: *ready to tune, waiting for concertmaster*

Oboe, preparing to tune orchestra: I wonder what would happen if I just played an F. Would people care? Like it’s just a really flat A.

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being satisfied with my playing? what’s that