Frédéric Chopin (1810 – 1849): Four Mazurkas op 33
Musical revolutionary, political exile, reluctant virtuoso, personal enigma: Frédéric Chopin was all of these things and more. Although famous across Europe by his early twenties, he was not a typical celebrity. Beneath a well-polished aristocratic charm lurked a somewhat detached and ironic man who seldom revealed his true feelings. He could manifest an odd indifference to his contemporaries and even to the latest musical trends of the day.
He wrote some of the most distinctive piano music of the nineteenth century, and to this day some of the most popular. He also wrote in a style so different to anything that had preceded him that one might have supposed his musical training had taken place on another planet. He was almost unique, among the major composers of his day, in not being directly affected by the towering shadow of Beethoven. His musical inspirations (such as they were) came from elsewhere.
He was one of the finest pianists in Europe and also one of the most unusual. His understated performing style divided opinion, infuriating those who hoped for showy pyrotechnics while delighting others for his delicate and nuanced interpretations. Many of his own compositions reflected his way of playing as he explored startling new textures and sonorities on the piano, creating a style that was at once highly complex and yet piercingly translucent. He was the first man, in the words of biographer Alan Walker, to write “music that emerged from the piano, as opposed to music that was merely played on it”.
Pale and slender and something of a delicate flower, you would not have guessed Chopin’s fiery temperament from first meeting him. “I am only able to pour out my grief at the piano”, he once admitted. Much of his inner turmoil remained hidden behind impeccable, patrician manners and a graceful restraint that suggested his descent from old Polish nobility.
Those aristocratic genes were inherited from his mother, Justyna Krzyżanowska, a member of a prominent family though not personally wealthy herself. By contrast, Frédéric’s father Nicolas was originally from France, having come to Poland as a young man to work as a bookkeeper and tutor before marrying Justyna and settling in Warsaw. For most of Frédéric ’s childhood they lived in lodgings in the sumptuous Saxon Palace, where Nicolas taught French at the Warsaw Lyceum (then housed in the palace). Although Frédéric would receive a wide-ranging education, from a young age he was recognized as a child prodigy on the piano (an instrument his mother also played) and received every encouragement thereafter.
By the time he was studying at the Warsaw Conservatory in his late teens, he was already regarded as a genius in the making. Chopin would later pay generous tribute to the two teachers who had helped him realise his talent – the Czech born Wojciech Żywny (for piano), and Polish composer Józef Elsner (for theory and composition) – claiming that “even the greatest jackass would learn” with them. Elsner, in particular, knew how to handle his precocious pupil, often allowing him to do his own thing and develop at his own pace. It was under Elsner’s supervision that Chopin wrote many of his earliest works, including his C Minor Piano Sonata, his Piano Trio, his Introduction and Polonaise Brillante (for cello and piano) and finally his two majestic Piano Concertos, all demonstrating a rare talent already in full blossom by the age of 21.
But his first composition to make a splash on the European music scene was his Variations on “Là ci darem la mano” (a popular duet from Mozart’s Don Giovanni) for piano and orchestra, with Chopin taking the solo part in performances*. By 1829 one reviewer had already noticed Chopin’s distinctively original style: “this is a young man who goes his own road, on which he knows how to please, and which differs widely from all other concert forms.” With his reputation as performer and composer quickly spreading beyond the borders of Poland, Chopin embarked on a major tour of Europe in November 1830.
*This was the very piece that a young Robert Schumann had reviewed and declared, “hats off, gentlemen! A genius!”
The timing of his departure would however prove to be deeply poignant. The Poland of Chopin’s youth, although partly under the rule of imperial Russia, had in recent years been granted its own constitution and allowed a level of independence. But many in the country still dreamed of a complete emancipation from their foreign masters. Just three weeks after Chopin left Poland, the country erupted into civil war, with a major uprising taking place against the Russian authorities.
Already delicate in health, and no warrior, Chopin was strongly advised by friends and family not to return to the country. Chopin did as he was told but suffered great anguish as a result, not least when the uprising was crushed a year later and Poland was duly punished, stripped of its constitution and remaining independence, while Warsaw was turned into a Russian military garrison. In a private diary entry, Chopin imagined ghastly scenes, with all his loved ones having been either slaughtered or left starving in the streets. Thankfully his worst fears proved unfounded, even as his family would end up in straitened circumstances, with his father losing his livelihood after the Warsaw Lyceum was shut down.
Although not physically present for the uprising, Chopin would make his feelings on the matter clear enough in the years ahead. When Tsar Nicholas later offered him a lucrative position as Pianist to the Imperial Russian court, Chopin sent the Tsar’s messenger packing with a biting refusal. As his sympathies were with his oppressed fellow Poles, “therefore I consider myself an exile: it is the only honour to which I am entitled.” But by such admissions, Chopin made any prospect of returning to his Russian-occupied homeland much more difficult.
Chopin’s unintended exile had started with a year in Vienna, a city he had performed in once before to great acclaim. But in the autumn of 1831, he moved on to Paris, describing it thus to his family, “you find here the greatest splendour, the greatest squalor, the greatest virtue, the greatest vice.” It would become his main residence for the rest of the life.
Chopin’s ending up in Paris was however no accident. Aside from the city laying claims to be Europe’s musical capital of the 1830s, it had also become something of a satellite state for displaced middle and upper class Poles, with 7000 of Chopin’s countrymen arriving in the city after the failed uprising, including notable figures such as Adam Jerzy Czartoryski, at that point regarded as the unofficial ruler of Poland in exile. Chopin, who always moved easily among nobility, quickly become acquainted with his well-heeled fellow expats, who in turn provided him with much support, financial and otherwise.
But Chopin also recognized his role and responsibilities as an unofficial ambassador for his country. Aside from his involvement in fund-raising and charitable concerts, he would promote Polish culture in other ways. Not least it would shape his music. While still living in Warsaw in 1830, one music critic had already noted, “Chopin knows what sounds are heard in our fields and woods, he has listened to the song of the Polish village, has made it his own and has united the tunes of his native land in skillful composition and elegant execution.” Chopin would often use Polish dance forms for many of his shorter piano pieces, including the extensive sets of Mazurkas and Polonaises which he would compose over his lifetime.
But Chopin’s outlook was equally cosmopolitan, and he was soon mixing with the greatest musicians then living in Paris, such as éminence grise Luigi Cherubini, young firebrand Hector Berlioz, and the popular opera composers Gioachino Rossini and Giacomo Meyerbeer. But the most striking of his Parisian contemporaries was surely his fellow virtuoso, Franz Liszt, with the two great pianists first appearing together in a charity concert for Berlioz, playing a four-movement piano sonata by George Onslow. Although outwardly on friendly terms, there would remain a mutual wariness and even occasional jealousy between them. Something of that came out in their surprisingly different performance styles. While Liszt was already developing the very physical, flambouyant manner that would make him a pan-European sensation in the 1840s, Chopin was heading in a very different direction. He had already told his family that he didn’t care to be just another “piano pounder”, like so many other virtuosi of his day. He and Liszt would end up gently mocking one another’s efforts – Chopin’s private recitals, listened to in awed silence by his polite, genteel followers, were dubbed “the Church of Chopin” by Liszt, while Chopin made scurrilous reference to Liszt’s staged extravaganzas as “the triumph of spectacle”.
Their rivalry could show itself in other ways. When one of Chopin’s pupils first approached him for lessons, Chopin gave him a suspicious look after learning that his previous teacher had been Liszt. When the same pupil then played one of Chopin’s own mazurkas in their first lesson, adding in some ornamentation he’d been taught by Liszt, Chopin came over with a glint in his eye and whispered, “that little bit is not your own, is it? He showed you that! He must have his hand in everything! Well, he may dare. He plays to thousands, I seldom to one!”
Chopin did not care for crowds, for theatrics, for needlessly showy embellishments. Nor was he much interested in performing on the most powerful instruments of the day. He gravitated instead to those with the lightest touch and the best tone balance. He eventually found the French firm of Pleyel pianos (founded by composer Ignaz Pleyel) best suited to his style.
There were plenty who greatly appreciated Chopin’s pianism. After first hearing him play, Felix Mendelssohn told his sister Fanny, “there is something so profoundly original and at the same time so very masterly in [Chopin’s] piano playing that he may be called an absolutely perfect virtuoso”. The German poet Heinrich Heine, also a fan, described him as “the Raphael of the piano”, a reference to Chopin’s love of balance and delicate colours.
Henrietta Voigt, the wife of a businessman and owner of a salon in Leipzig (a good amateur pianist herself), heard Chopin play in 1836 and recalled, “the lightness with which those velvet fingers glide, or rather flit, across the keyboard is astonishing. He captivated me, I cannot deny it, in a way that I have never known before. What enchanted me most was the freedom of both his bearing and his playing.”
For London’s Musical World, Chopin was “par éminence, the most delightful of pianists in the drawing-room. The animation of his style is so subdued, its tenderness so refined, its melancholy so gentle, its niceties so studies and systematic, the tout ensemble so perfect, and evidently the result of an accurate judgement and most finished taste, that when exhibited in the large concert-room or the thronged salon, it fails to impress itself on the mass.”
But others could still be left disappointed, with one eminent musician complaining that Chopin had played an entire concert at a barely audible volume. Le Courier Francais added, “the charms of [Chopin’s] playing are simply microscopic. His talent is always best assessed by those seated next to the piano.”
It should also be pointed out that Chopin was not a natural performer. He had a visceral dislike of playing at public concerts, and it is thought that he only gave around thirty such recitals during his entire lifetime. He would dread the days of preparation before each concert, once admitting to Liszt, “I am not fitted to [it]… the public frightens me; I feel suffocated by its panting breath, paralyzed by its curious glance, mute before unknown faces.”
Although Chopin undoubtedly denied himself a considerable economic bounty by not following Liszt into the grandest concert halls of Europe, he was still able to make a decent income from piano teaching, with wealthy amateurs queuing up to receive instruction from him. Having priced his lessons (rather steeply) at 20 francs each, Chopin was soon able to afford salubrious quarters, a manservant and a carriage. Many of his students were young ladies, with one (male) visitor recalling a visit to the composer’s apartment and having to wait for several hours, while a stream of female students “each one more beautiful than the last” came and went from Chopin’s music room.
Further money came from publications of his music, with Chopin forging close connections with three important publishing houses based in London, Paris and Leipzig (the vagaries in copywriting laws of the time allowing him to sell his music to all three simultaneously). Although he composed some of the most technically challenging piano music ever written, he also created a good deal for less experienced hands – while never compromising on his creative powers – and in this way created a broad appeal that has lasted to this day.
He was also quickly recognized as a composer who stood apart from so many others. After his debut recital in Paris, the Belgian music critic François-Joseph Fétis had observed presciently:
Here is a young man, abandoning himself to his natural impressions and taking no model, has found, if not a complete renewal of pianoforte music, at least of that which we have long sought in vain – namely an abundance of original ideas of a kind to be found nowhere else…I speak here of pianists’ music, and it is by comparison with the latter that I find in M Chopin’s inspirations an indication of a renewal of forms which may exercise in time much influence over this department of the art.
And as Fétis suggests, Chopin did indeed have no obvious models. He respected Beethoven without ever being particularly enamoured by his music. Despite friendships with both Mendelssohn and Schumann, Chopin was politely unmoved by their offerings (too symphonic, too Germanic). He might have felt a closer kinship with Liszt, except that Chopin, like so many others, could not take him seriously as a composer (in fairness, Liszt would only write much of his best music after Chopin’s death).
So who did inspire Chopin? From his old piano teacher, Wojciech Żywny, he inherited a lifelong love of Mozart, particularly the latter’s clarity, economy of means and his architectural grace and balance. But his other primary inspiration was the keyboard music of JS Bach, with its endlessly intricate counterpoint and complex harmonic allusions (Bach would especially influence Chopin’s later music). Aside from these two eighteenth century masters, Chopin surely inherited something from near contemporary pianist-composers such as Johann Nepomuk Hummel, John Field and Maria Szymanowska. He would absorb the stile brillante salon music of the latter two but then develop it into something entirely of his own.
The Four Mazurkas op 33, from 1838, are a vivid demonstration of how much musical artistry and emotional tension Chopin could generate from a non-virtuosic form rooted in Polish folk music. And it is perhaps through music like this – rather than a stormy Étude or dramatic character piece – that we might more closely glimpse Chopin the performer.
Although the Mazurkas contain nostalgic echoes of rural Poland – Chopin’s beloved country which he had left behind for ever – yet they are full of subtle inflections and strangely subdued half-lights. They are also imbued with the most exquisite melancholy.
The First Mazurka (in G Sharp Minor), marked “mesto” (sadly), is the shortest of the four, and with its slowish tempo and curious rhythmical dislocations, it sets the mood for the whole set. By contrast, the Second (in D Major) is bucolically cheerful, although its upbeat mood is this time offset by a disquieting middle section in B Flat Major/Minor.
The Third Mazurka (in C Major) is characterised by a slightly hiccupping rhythm in the melody, constantly stressing the second beat of each bar but not the third. Hard though it may be to believe, this gentle little piece once led Chopin into a ferocious argument with the German opera composer Giacomo Meyerbeer, who questioned whether Chopin had written the piece in the correct time signature.
Chopin was at the time teaching the piece to one of his illustrious pupils, the Russian diplomat Wilhelm von Lenz, who takes up the story:
“That is two-four time”, said Meyerbeer. In reply, Chopin told me to repeat it, and kept time by tapping loudly upon the instrument with his pencil. His eyes glowed. “Two-four”, repeated Meyerbeer quietly. I only once, in all the time I knew him, saw Chopin angry. A delicate flush covered his pale cheeks – he looked very handsome. “It is three-four”, he said loudly – he who always spoke so softly! “Let me use it”, said Meyerbeer, “as ballet for my opera. Then I will show you.”
“It is three-four”, Chopin almost screamed, and he played it himself. He played it several times, counting loudly, and stamping the time with his foot in rage. It was no use. Meyerbeer insisted it was two-four. They parted not on the best terms! It was anything but agreeable to me to have been present at this little scene. Chopin disappeared into his room, without saying a word, leaving me alone with Meyerbeer.
Although Meyerbeer’s two-four would just about work mathematically, it certainly does not fit the shape of Chopin’s melody, so it is hard to see what he was driving at. One suspects Meyerbeer may have just wanted to wind up his sensitive and sometimes touchy colleague.
The Fourth Mazurka (in B Minor), again marked “mesto”, is the longest and perhaps most impressive of the op 33 set. Set in a loose rondo structure, a simple but haunting melody keeps appearing and then being interrupted – by a strange flourish in the bass, by sudden dramatic outbursts in remote keys, by a soothing major section. The music finally winds down to almost nothing and ends with the sweetest, saddest simplicity, of a kind only Frédéric Chopin was capable of writing.
By the time he was writing these Mazurkas, Chopin’s career was somewhere near its peak. It was also a period during which found himself appearing with unusual regularity in various Parisian concerts, often as a personal favour to a friend or for some charitable cause.
Those who got to hear him had no doubts as to his position in the musical world. One critic, writing about an 1838 concert, ended his piece by personally addressing the pianist: “put an end to the great debate that divides the artists; and when it shall be asked who is the first pianist of Europe… Let all the world reply, like those who have heard you – ‘it is Chopin’”.
His light was shining bright, even if he had been suffering from a worsening cough over the last couple of years.
And just when his life appeared to have found a measure of stability and success, it was about to be turned upside down by a flamboyant French novelist, along with a disastrous holiday on a primitive, rain-soaked island in the Mediterranean.
Suggestions for further listening
A complete recording of Chopin’s Mazurkas can be found here.