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Among the luminaries of 19th-century European music, Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849) stands out as the undisputed ‘poet of the piano.’ He deliberately focused on the piano, the king of instruments, to delve into and elevate the nuanced emotions of Romantic music — ranging from passion and melancholy to rebellion, despair, and exuberance. His musical vision was enriched with bold sensitivities, a melancholic charm, lyrical outpourings, the intoxication of rhythm and passion, a resplendent heroic fervor, as well as precious and tender harmonies. “One recognizes him even in the silences by his breathless respiration,” as Robert Schumann noted. Furthermore, Chopin affirmed himself as the bard of Poland, his native country, suffering under oppression during the 19th century. Thus, Chopin’s musical genius became a poignant voice in Poland’s quest for freedom and national identity, echoing the nation’s aspirations and struggles. Beyond his musical genius and revolutionary impact, it is the masterful fusion of virtuosity with profound expressiveness that characterizes Chopin’s unparalleled legacy in the classical music world.
On the occasion of the commemoration of Chopin’s birth on March 1st, Swiss musicologist Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger, one of the world’s most eminent specialists on the Polish composer, pays tribute in an exclusive interview with Ici Beyrouth to the messiah of Romantic music.
In the obituary dedicated to Chopin, written by Hector Berlioz and published in the Journal des Débats on Saturday, October 27, 1849, a particular term immediately stands out, that of “poet.” This qualification, immensely powerful and of a refinement decidedly too exquisite to be accorded to all composers of the Romantic era, holds a singular relevance when applied to the Polish master. What elements underpin this distinction? Is it the heavy oppression on his native Poland, the torments that punctuated his sentimental life, his faltering health, or his incessant quest for a personal musical identity? Did these factors collectively forge the poetic aura surrounding his work?
“Chopin the poet of the piano” is a topos that took hold during his lifetime (Balzac, Heine, Berlioz, etc.) and has resonated with us to this day: the musician’s most famous biography, continuously reissued for a century, by Guy de Pourtalès, is not titled ‘Chopin’ or ‘the Poet’ for nothing.
Yet, this qualification seems to refer as much to the image of the musician’s personality as to his compositions and his pianistic playing. A genius improviser, Chopin turned his back, from the age of 25, on a career as a virtuoso (his works with orchestral accompaniment testify to this first ambition), to devote himself exclusively to composition and teaching his instrument. It was his inexhaustible talent for improvisation that contributed to making him the soul of selected musical gatherings in Warsaw, Vienna, and especially Paris, where salons eagerly requested his Mazurkas, tinted with national pride and pain, and his Nocturnes, that opened infinite spaces of reverie and melancholy.
Yet Berlioz noted as early as 1833: “There is hardly anyone but Chopin himself who can play his music and give it that original twist, that unpredictability, which is one of its main charms. His execution is marbled with a thousand nuances of movement, of which he alone holds the secret and which one could not indicate.” A poet of the moment, of kairos, whose demanding notation does not render all the nuances of playing — hence for us, his editors (A New Critical Edition, Peters, London), the near impossibility of proposing a unique, definitive text of his works in perpetual becoming.
Speaking of Chopin’s playing, Balzac wrote: “It was a soul that manifested itself through divine sounds dominated by a melancholic sweetness.” A poet’s soul.
Ludwig van Beethoven is often celebrated for his revolutionary and heroic approach, highlighting his art in expressing the struggle against fate through his compositions. Franz Schubert explores melodic purity and emotional depth, but adopts a less tormented perspective than that of Chopin. Conversely, Franz Liszt’s work reflects flamboyant virtuosity, thus pushing the limits of piano execution. As for post-Romantic composers, they assimilate the mosaic complexity of the Romantic era while adding their own colors. What distinguishes Chopin from all these composers?
Chopin is the only genius of his century to have composed exclusively for the piano, to the point that Liszt or George Sand had to defend the title of “composer” for someone who had written neither operas, oratorios, nor symphonies like many contemporaries. But Chopin does not belong to the category of pianist composers who multiply potpourris and other pieces designed to showcase the virtuosos of concerts. His status remains singular, unique, and isolated. With that, he remains the most secretive musician of his time.
Apart from Rossini, whom he knew by heart from adolescence, Bellini revealed in Paris in 1831 that Chopin was relatively uninterested in the musical movements of his time. Unlike Liszt, Berlioz left him rather cold, Mendelssohn lukewarm, and Schumann totally silent. Nothing is more foreign to him than the grand effects of program music. It is that he never ceased to venerate the gods that his teachers in Warsaw had instilled in him: J. S. Bach and Mozart, whose study constantly vivified his stylistic evolution. “Chopin was classical in sentiment and opinion while being romantic in imagination,” declared Georges Mathias, one of his students. To this aesthetic balance is added the dual parental orientation: a reflection of the Enlightenment spirit inherited from his father and the Slavic poetry of Polish songs hummed by his mother. On one side, a firm and radical logic is embodied in his innovative teaching of the piano, and on the other, creative fibers weave a work in the shadow of the żal (sorrow) national.
Chopin remains closely associated with the image of the composer who brilliantly celebrated the piano in most of his work, dedicating himself exclusively to this instrument except for a few compositions (the Grande Fantaisie on Polish Airs, the Krakowiak, and the Variations on La ci darem) and his two piano concertos. What is the secret of the Polish composer’s attachment to the piano?
I attempted to evoke the mystery in these terms:
“The piano is in some ways Chopin’s alter ego: the medium of his communication with other worlds, with himself, and with others. It is the reflection of his being, the confidant of his soul, the place of his creation, the intermediary of his link with society — through the concert, the life of the salons, and teaching. The instrument also serves him as catharsis. “In salons, I seem calm, but once home, I rage on the piano,” he wrote from Vienna on Christmas Day 1830. In the collective consciousness, Chopin represents the quintessential incarnation of the piano; he is synonymous with the piano. There is no known composition of his that does not include a piano part (he leaves fewer than twenty melodies, all on Polish poems, which he did not intend for publication). But he made the piano sing like no one before or after him. The instrument is his voice, in the truest sense. Seated at the piano, he simply is, he does not play; that is why he remains inimitable and incomparable. ‘”It’s something so apart that one does not recognize the instrument under his fingers,” notes a Russian student. “The instrument one heard when Chopin played has never existed except under Chopin’s fingers,” confirms a French student.
(Chopin ou l’œuvre en progrès in Chopin et son temps, Berne, Peter Lang, 2016, p.15-16).
