[edit]
Career in Paris
Chopin first visited Vienna in early 1829, where he gave a piano performance and received his first favourable reviews. The following year he returned to Warsaw and performed the premiere of his Piano Concerto in F Minor at the National Theatre on March 17. By 1831 Chopin had left Poland for good and settled in Paris. He began work on his first scherzi and ballades as well as the first book of études. It is also at this time that he began his lifelong struggle with tuberculosis.
The early and mid-1830s in Paris were a productive time for the composer. He completed several of his most famous works and also performed regular concerts, to rave reviews. By 1838 Chopin had become a famous figure in Paris. Among his closest friends were opera composer Vincenzo Bellini (beside whom he is buried in the Père Lachaise), and painter Eugène Delacroix. He was also friends with composers Hector Berlioz, Franz Liszt and Robert Schumann, and although he was at times critical of their music, Chopin dedicated some of his own compositions to them.
[edit]
Chopin and George Sand
In 1836 Chopin was secretly engaged to a seventeen-year-old Polish girl named Maria Wodzinska. The engagement was later called off. In that same year, at a party hosted by Countess Marie d'Agoult, mistress of fellow composer Franz Liszt, Chopin met Amandine Aurore Lucie Dupin, Baroness Dudevant, better known by her pseudonym as George Sand. She was a French Romantic writer, noted for her numerous love affairs with such prominent figures as Prosper Merimée, Alfred de Musset (1833–34), Alexandre Manceau (1849–65), and others.
The composer did not first consider her attractive. "Something about her repels me," he said to his family. Their relationship ended in 1847 when Sand began to suspect that he had fallen in love with her daughter, Solange. It is also possible that behind the breakup was Sand's treatment of her daughter.
Sand's correspondence suggests that Chopin was asexual; that is, that he had no inclination to have sexual relations with anyone, male or female. Even so, his relationship with Sand lasted for ten years until they parted after arguments over Sand's children Maurice and Solange.
A notable episode in their time together was a turbulent and miserable winter on Majorca (1838–1839) living in unheated peasant huts and in the then-abandoned (and equally cold) Valldemossa monastery. [1] Chopin would also later complain of having to go to great lengths to obtain a piano from Paris and of the difficulty of moving it uphill to the monastery. Chopin reflected much of the mood of this desperate time in the twenty-four préludes, Op. 28, the majority of which were written in Majorca. The weather had such a serious impact on Chopin's health and his chronic lung disease that he and George Sand were compelled to return to Paris to save his life. He survived but never recovered from this bout.
Chopin and Sand's illustrious relationship is explored in the movie Impromptu which stars Hugh Grant as Chopin and Judy Davis as George Sand. Like the movie, Amadeus, however, it does not focus on fact as much as fiction.
Career in Paris
Chopin first visited Vienna in early 1829, where he gave a piano performance and received his first favourable reviews. The following year he returned to Warsaw and performed the premiere of his Piano Concerto in F Minor at the National Theatre on March 17. By 1831 Chopin had left Poland for good and settled in Paris. He began work on his first scherzi and ballades as well as the first book of études. It is also at this time that he began his lifelong struggle with tuberculosis.
The early and mid-1830s in Paris were a productive time for the composer. He completed several of his most famous works and also performed regular concerts, to rave reviews. By 1838 Chopin had become a famous figure in Paris. Among his closest friends were opera composer Vincenzo Bellini (beside whom he is buried in the Père Lachaise), and painter Eugène Delacroix. He was also friends with composers Hector Berlioz, Franz Liszt and Robert Schumann, and although he was at times critical of their music, Chopin dedicated some of his own compositions to them.
[edit]
Chopin and George Sand
In 1836 Chopin was secretly engaged to a seventeen-year-old Polish girl named Maria Wodzinska. The engagement was later called off. In that same year, at a party hosted by Countess Marie d'Agoult, mistress of fellow composer Franz Liszt, Chopin met Amandine Aurore Lucie Dupin, Baroness Dudevant, better known by her pseudonym as George Sand. She was a French Romantic writer, noted for her numerous love affairs with such prominent figures as Prosper Merimée, Alfred de Musset (1833–34), Alexandre Manceau (1849–65), and others.
The composer did not first consider her attractive. "Something about her repels me," he said to his family. Their relationship ended in 1847 when Sand began to suspect that he had fallen in love with her daughter, Solange. It is also possible that behind the breakup was Sand's treatment of her daughter.
Sand's correspondence suggests that Chopin was asexual; that is, that he had no inclination to have sexual relations with anyone, male or female. Even so, his relationship with Sand lasted for ten years until they parted after arguments over Sand's children Maurice and Solange.
A notable episode in their time together was a turbulent and miserable winter on Majorca (1838–1839) living in unheated peasant huts and in the then-abandoned (and equally cold) Valldemossa monastery. [1] Chopin would also later complain of having to go to great lengths to obtain a piano from Paris and of the difficulty of moving it uphill to the monastery. Chopin reflected much of the mood of this desperate time in the twenty-four préludes, Op. 28, the majority of which were written in Majorca. The weather had such a serious impact on Chopin's health and his chronic lung disease that he and George Sand were compelled to return to Paris to save his life. He survived but never recovered from this bout.
Chopin and Sand's illustrious relationship is explored in the movie Impromptu which stars Hugh Grant as Chopin and Judy Davis as George Sand. Like the movie, Amadeus, however, it does not focus on fact as much as fiction.
