Part I: Warsaw

   On March 1, 1810,  Frydeyk Franciszek Szopen, the second child and only son of Nicolas and Justyna Chopin, was born in their cottage on Countess Ludvika Skarbek’s country estate at Zelazowa Wola, Poland. Or,  as most of the world knows him, Fréderic François Chopin.  

French-born Nicolas Chopin had come to Poland as a teenager in 1787, and went quite native, to the extent that he adopted Mikolaj, the Polish spelling of his Christian name, and joined the Polish army to fight the Russians during the Polish revolt of 1794.  He survived the Pole’s crushing defeat by the Russians at the battle of Matsyevhovitse that October, which simultaneously broke the back of Polish resistance for years to come.

Mikolaj met his future wife in 1802, when he joined Countess Skarbek’s household as tutor to her five sons.  Justyna Kryzanowska was then a poor relation serving Countess Skarbek as her companion and housekeeper.  She was also twenty, a pretty blue-eyed blonde and an accomplished amateur pianist. Mikolaj, a decade older, was an attractive, well-educated man who played the flute and violin.  It was their mutual duty to play duets after supper for Countess Skarbek and any guests. Justyna and Mikolaj married at Zelazowa Wola in 1806, and their first daughter, Ludvika, was born in Warsaw in April 1807. Napoleon was then marching through Poland, and everyone had fled to the comparative safety of Warsaw. Polish patriots who had hoped Napoleon would liberate Poland from foreign rule were bitterly disillusioned by the Treaty of Tilsit in 1807. Under it, Napoleon created the Duchy of Warsaw to be ruled by the King of Saxony, but left the rest of Poland under joint French and Russian administration.

Peace, however disappointing, allowed the Skarbek’s and the Chopin’s to return to Zelazowa Wola in 1808.  Isolated back in the country however, Mikolaj  missed the culture and stimulation of Warsaw. He therefore accepted a position as French Professor at the Warsaw Lyceum in the fall of 1810.  The family moved into a suite of rooms in the Saxon Palace which housed the school. Justyna bore two more daughters; Justyna Izabela in July 1811, and Emilia in November 1812.  While Mikolaj taught his classes at the Lyceum, Justyna cared for her family and gave piano lessons to Ludvika and  the six Lyceum students she and Mikolaj had accepted as boarders.  They continued playing duets after supper, but to their dismay, little Fryderyk often cried loudly when he heard them. By age three, he could finally explain; he was not crying because he hated the music; he cried in his frustration at not yet being able to make music himself.

Called Frycek (Fritsek) by his family and friends, Chopin had a happy, secure childhood. He was an affectionate, well-loved son and brother, particularly close to Ludvika with whom he often played piano duets.  Frycek enjoyed a loving, trustful bond with Mikolaj who was an authoritarian, but understanding father who truly had his family’s best interests at heart. For her part, Justyna was an adoring mother and her son’s first piano teacher. When it became evident early on that Frycek was an exceptional pianist and composer, Mikolaj was proudly supportive, but much to his credit, he never tried to exploit his son’s talent for his own financial gain or even the family’s benefit.  He did see to it that Frycek got an excellent education at the Lyceum. Frycek spoke both French and Polish  with his family at home; he learned Latin, German and Italian at school, and became conversant in English in adulthood. Growing up in Russian-ruled Warsaw, Frycek understood but always disliked Russian, being an ardent Polish patriot.

The only real worry Frycek gave his parents was for his health. Surviving infancy gave him a leg-up in the Darwinian survival stakes. But his well-being was always precarious.   He was prone to low-grade fevers, a troublesome cough, terrible headaches and persistent dental problems all of  which often kept him out of school. His doctors forbade him to play running games outdoors with the other boys. In 1826, both Frycek and his sister Emilia fell seriously ill and were sent to a spa in southern Poland.   Frycek recovered, but Emilia died of consumption at age fourteen. Tuberculosis was then rampant in Poland; one person in every hundred died of it.  The unfortunate Chopin’s took a double hit from it, even if twenty-three years passed between Emilia’s death and Frycek’s in 1849.

Frycek’s emotional health was also a fragile balance. In his best moods, he was  witty, warm, generous and funny; he loved to make people laugh.  He easily made friends with the other boys boarding with his family and among his schoolmates, and all his life, he inspired devotion in those who knew him. He was always sensitive and moody; a modern psychologist might diagnose him as a manic-depressive, as he displayed many of the symptoms, including extreme mood swings, periods of profound despair, and increasing irritability in adulthood. Losing his younger sister to tuberculosis could only have contributed to his morbid fear of death.

Chopin and the Piano

Growing up in Warsaw, Frycek could hardly help falling in love with the piano; most Warsovians already had. There were at least five piano manufacturers busily at work in the city during Chopin’s boyhood. Any Polish family with an interest in culture and the means to buy a piano owned one, and at least one person in each household could play it competently. Chopin was to keep the many sheet music publishers in the city very busy all his life, and once his fame was established, he appeared prominently in the several musical journals circulating in the capital, as well.  The piano could fairly be called Chopin’s greatest, most lasting love.  He was never without a piano, whereas his romantic life with actual women was often problematic.  The piano repaid his devotion to it with fame and fortune.  

At home, Frycek was surrounded by pianists; as a toddler the sound of anyone playing brought him running. Since any attempt to exclude him lead to tears and tantrums, Justyna did the obvious and sensible thing in teaching Frycek as well as Ludvika.  By his sixth birthday, he had learned everything his mother could teach him, so she found him a new teacher, the Czech expatriate, Wojciech Zwyny. Zwyny quickly realized his new pupil was exceptional, and very likely a musical genius. He wisely did not interfere or correct Frycek’s unusual and intricate methods of fingering chords, realizing that Chopin was evolving the art of piano playing rather than doing it ‘wrong.’ Another important gift Zwyny gave Frycek were the two volumes of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier.  Chopin loved them, and played at least parts of them daily all his life. He always considered Bach one of his greatest musical influences with Mozart being the second. Those two volumes were discovered among Chopin’s own scores when he died in Paris, and it is believed they inspired Chopin to write his own twenty-four Préludes.

 The eighteenth century pianoforte as J.S. Bach knew it,  was comparable in size and volume to the harpsichord. It had no pedals, and the chief difference between it and the harpsichord was that the strings were hammered rather than plucked.  By Beethoven’s lifetime, the piano was larger, the frame sturdier, and the sound and dynamic range were larger and richer.   The piano as Chopin knew it was about 9/10ths of the way to being the modern piano; it was larger still, with a heavier, better braced metal harp frame allowing more and thicker strings, a larger sounding board and a longer keyboard.  The three foot pedals had been added to regulate the quality and volume of the sound.

            Frycek wrote his first polonaise at around age seven; he made his debut performance at age eight. If Europeans loved anything, they loved a musical child prodigy, and the pale, solemn Frycek, dressed in his velvet suit with a lace collar was an instant hit in Warsaw.  His health allowing, his evenings were frequently spent playing  in the salons of wealthy and titled Poles and Russians all over Warsaw. He much preferred that sort of performing to playing for fees in public concert halls, although he did both.  His early exposure to a well-dressed aristocracy with polished manners living in large elegant houses  represented normality to Frycek.  It gave rise to one of his less endearing qualities; he could be a terrible snob.

        By age 12, Frycek  had outgrown Wojciech Zwyny as a teacher although never as a friend. Mikolaj entrusted the next stage of  Frycek’s musical education to  one Jozef Elsner, head of the newly created Warsaw Conservatory.  By age 16, Frycek was enrolled at the Conservatory proper, rather than continuing at the Lyceum. One of the most important aspects of music theory that Chopin learned from Elsner was counterpoint, which added immensely to Chopin’s ability weave his melodies and harmonies around each other.

Chopin’s performances in public halls were both rare and in great demand, for his fame was spreading wildly all over Poland; he had become a symbol of huge national pride to a country which did not have much to be proud of. Everyone wanted to hear Chopin play.  His most patriotic fans even combed through Mikolaj's French family tree in the hopes of discovering some hidden Polish ancestry there since they wanted Frycek to be as Polish as possible. The  Chopins of Marainville France yielded no overlooked Poles, so Chopin's fans consoled themselves with Mikolaj being the closest thing to a native that any foreigner could be.

Chopin’s early works were much inspired by the Polish melodies he heard his mother play at home although he did not literally transcribe them into his own compositions. He was equally inspired  by indigenous Polish dances; the polonaise, an eighteenth century court dance,  mazurkas, which were more of a Polish folk dance although they were being heard more and more often  in Warsaw ballrooms; and the increasingly fashionable waltz.  Chopin wrote his waltzes and mazurkas as concert pieces to be listened to rather than ballroom music for actual dancing.  It is best to let Chopin himself explain the distinction with his Grande Valse Brillante op. 18 and the  help of of Pianist Dinu Lipatti: 

            Imagine the state of anyone’s feet after they try dancing to that.  What fascinated  Frycek most about Polish folk tunes was their emotional mix of merriment and sadness.  He was perpetually trying to capture that mood in his own music through the use of minor keys and unusual chromatic harmonies, particularly in his mazurkas. Here is Yundi Li, playing one of the more cheerful of Chopin’s Mazurkas, Op. 33 no. 2 in D. Major:

Chopin was never so well-rounded a composer as Mozart or Schubert, who were both excellent pianists in their own right.   He always and very nearly only wrote for the piano.  88 piano keys laid out on a horizontal plane   made spatial and tonal sense to him; confronted with writing music for smaller  instruments requiring a different playing technique, his natural facility deserted him.  Chopin’s orchestral music in his two piano concertos has been described as “piano music badly distributed among other instruments.”  But with all that Chopin contributed to piano literature in his lifetime, perhaps he didn’t need to contribute anything more.

             Chopin was also experimenting with Nocturnes, inspired by the work of the Irish pianist, John Field, and started writing the twelve Études  of his Opus 10 cycle while visiting Vienna in 1829.  He wrote them  to address specific issues of piano technique;  speed, strength, dexterity, tone, dynamic control etc etc. Any pianist tackling them will soon  appreciate what kind of pianist Chopin  himself must have been. To make all the Chopin Études   of his opus 10 and opus 25 cycles sound the way Chopin intended is a major  accomplishment requiring months of study.  Etude no. 3, of the Opus 10 cycle, nicknamed Tristesse, seemingly simpler music to play than the other eleven, is filled with subtle pitfalls, as the dynamics demand the sensitive touch of a master.  The pianist is Valentina Igoshina:

At age 19, Chopin traveled first to Berlin and then to Vienna, performing outside Poland for the first time, to great acclaim in both cities. Returning home to Warsaw afterwards, he understood that, when compared with Vienna and Berlin, his beloved Warsaw was a cultural backwater; he could not stay. Before leaving home for the last time, Frycek   met a young woman many believed was his first great love; the pianist and singer, Konstantsja Gladkowska. Frycek may have been more in love with the idea of being in love than he was with Konstantsja herself.  Nevertheless, he worked hard to convince himself, and admired Konstantsja so much, he very nearly told her so. The two were on friendly terms but apparently no more at the time Chopin left Warsaw in 1830.  Konstantsja married someone else soon after his departure, and Frycek did not waste much time in regret over her.

Warsaw was also filled with political unrest when Chopin returned from Vienna in 1829. There was constant talk of another anti-Russian uprising among Chopin’s contemporaries in the taverns and coffee houses of the city.  Chopin was supportive, being as full of patriotic fervor as his compatriots, but unlike Mikolaj had done  in 1794, he did not fight when the uprising came in November, 1830;  his poor health made military life an absolute impossibility for him.  He had already left Warsaw by then, and was in Stuttgart, Germany when the news reached him that once again, the Poles had been easily defeated by the Russians. Which  left Warsaw even more oppressively under Russian control than before. Typically, Chopin’s response was musical. The twelfth of his opus 10 Études, completed in  Paris in 1831, is called “The Revolutionary.” In it, he spills out all the patriotic rage he didn't have the strength to express more physically. Here is Georges Cziffra and  Etude  no 12 Op. 10:

But Chopin did not  turn back, even in his anxiety for his family. When he left Warsaw for the last time in 1830, his decision and his departure were both permanent.

Part II is here:

http://open.salon.com/blog/shiral/2010/03/08/chopin_warsaw_to_paris_ii

Part III is here

http://open.salon.com/blog/shiral/2010/03/15/chopin_warsaw_to_paris_iii