In the annals if his century Chopin is known as the "Poet of the Piano." The title is a valid one. His art, issuing from the heart of romanticism, constitutes the golden age of that instrument.
The national composer of Poland was half French. His father emigrated to Warsaw, where he married a lady-in-waiting to a countess and taught French to the sons of nobility. Frederic, who displayed his musical gifts in childhood, was educated at the recently founded Conservatory of Warsaw. His Student years were climaxed by a mild infatuation with young singer, Constantia Gladkowska, who inspired him with sight and tears in the best nineteenth-century manner. " it was with thoughts of this beautiful crreatur that i composed the adagio of my new concerto." The concerto was the one in F minor. Frederic was nineteen.
After a concert at which Constantia sang and he played, the young artist set forth to make a name in the world. His comrades presented him with silver goblet filled with polish earth. On reaching Paris he thought of continuing to London, even to America. But he was introduced by a polish prince into the aristocratic salons, and there created a sensation.
His decision was made, and rest of his career was linked to the art life musical succes was a complicated a matter in that day as in this. " I have got into the highest society. I sit with ambassadors, princes, ministers.... This is a most necessary thing for me, since one's succes is supposed to depend on it. At once you have a bigger talent if you have been heard at the English or Austrian Ambassador's. You play better if Princess Vaudmont was your patron--I can't say is, as the lady died a week ago.... I have five lessons to give today. You think I am making fortune? Carriages and white gloves cost more, and without them one would not be in good taste." The bantering tone should not mislead us. Chopin was a snob he remained.
Paris in the 1830 was the center of the new romanticism. The circle in which Chopin moved included as brilliant a galaxy af artists as ever gathered anywhere. Among the musicians were Liszt and Berlioz, Rossini and Meyerbeer. The literary figure included Victor Hugo and Balzac, Lamartine, Goerge Sand, de Musset, Alexandre Dumas. Heinrich Heine was his friend, as was the painter Delacroix. Althought Chopin was a man of emotions rather than ideas, he could not but be stimulated by his contact with the leading intellectuals of French.
He performed occasionally at concert. But his music was too personal, he felt, to capture the public. "The crowd embarrasses me," he told Liszt. "I feel stifled by their hurried breathing, paralyzed by their curious glances." More congenial to him were the salons of countesses, in which rarefied asmosphere he unbent, drawing from the piano harmonies and rhythms that electrified his hearers. He was saying things in music that had never been said before. The frail young Pole avowed his "Daring but noble resolve-to create a new era in art!" Only youth could set it self so lofty a goal; only genius achieve it.
Thought Liszt he met Mme. Aurore Dudevant, "the lady with the somber eye," known to the world as novelist George Sand. She was Thirty-four, Chopin twenty-eigth when the famous friendship began. Mme. Sand was brilliant and Domineering; her need to dominate found its counterpart in Chopin's need to be ruled. She left a memorable account of this fastidiuos artist at work.
"His creative power was spontancous, miraculous. It come to him without efffort or warning... but then began the most heartrending labor I have ever witnessed. It was a series of attempts, of fits of irresolution and impatience to recover certain details. He conceived a melody as a whole, but when tried to write it down he analyzed it too much, and his regret at not recovering it in clear-cut from plunged him-by his own account-into a sort of despair. He would shut himself in his room for days, pacing up and down, breaking his pens, repeating and modifying one bar a hundred times... He would spend six weeks over a page, only to end by writing it out finally just as he had sketched it in the original draft."
for the next eight years Chopin spent his summers at Mme. Sand's chateau at Nohant, where she entertained the cream of France's intelligentsia. These were productive years for him, althought his health grew progressively worse and his relationship with Mme. Sand ran its course from love to conflict, from jealousy to hostility and bitterness. She, born as aristocrat, had only contempt for her class. opposed to the reactionary monarchy, she took an active part in the events that led to the Revolution of 1848. She resented Chopin's haughty reserve, his conventional social views, his lack of sympathy with the radical cause. They parted in bitterness.
According to his friend Liszt, "Chopin felt and often repeated that in breaking this long affection, this powerful bond, he had broken his life." Chopin's creative energy, which had lost its momentum in his middle thirties, came to an end. The "illnes of the century," the lonely despair of the romantic artist pervades his last letters. "What has become of my art?" he write during a visit to Scotland. "And my heart, where have I wasted it? I scarce remember any more how they sing at home. That world slips away from me somehow. I forget. I have no strenght. if I rise a little I fall again, lower than ever."
He return to Paris suffering from tuberculosis and died some months later at the age if thirty-nine. His funeral was his greatest triumph. Princesses and artist joined to pay him homage. Meyerbeer, Berlioz, and Delacroix were among the mourners. Goerge Sand stayed away. His heart was returned to Poland. the rest of him remained in Paris. And on his grave a friendly hand scattered the Polish earth from the silver goblet he had carried with him when he set fourth on his solitary journey.
references :
"The Enjoyment of Music" by Joseph Machlis
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar