Bright Lights, Big City

From the moment he arrived in Paris--in September 1831--to the day he died there 18 years later, and ever since, Frederic Francois Chopin has been, both in musical circles and among historians, the subject of much interest, admiration and misunderstanding. Even the name of his birthplace in Poland, the little village of Zelazowa Wola outside of Warsaw, at one time acquired a misplaced significance in the lore surrounding its most famous son. Translated erroneously as “Iron Will,” it was taken by some to be a kind of portent, a cosmic harbinger of one of the elements that would play most noticeably in the composer’s character. In fact, Zelazowa Wola was plain old “Ironville.”

But very little in the life of Chopin was plain, especially after he settled in Paris, which by the 1830s had become the undisputed center of European culture, a hotbed of new thinking in arts and letters and the focal point of Romanticism in music. After a sensational debut at the Salle Pleyel, the concert hall of the Pleyel piano company, early in 1832 (with Liszt, Mendelssohn and Cherubini among those in the audience), the young Pole, a week shy of his 22nd birthday, instantly took his place as one of the most celebrated figures in the rich cultural life of the French capital. He would never again return to his native country, and Poland’s loss was to be Paris’ gain.

During his remaining years, in spite of emotional ups and downs and recurrent illness, Chopin produced a remarkable body of compositions for the piano, works unrivaled both in their poetic feeling and in their sensitive exploration of the instrument’s tonal capacities. Chopin’s talents as a pianist were beyond emulation and had an impact on other musicians out of all proportion to the number of concerts he gave. As a creator, he interacted with the great artists of the day, forming particularly close friendships with Delacroix and Liszt. His own art reached a new plateau in the late 1830s as a result of his involvement with the writer Baroness Aurore Dudevant, a woman six years older than he who in 1832 had taken to calling herself George Sand. Some of Chopin’s greatest works emerged as a result of the emotional contentment he felt in the early days of their nine-year liaison.

Yet of all his generation, which included Berlioz, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Liszt, Wagner and Verdi--the vanguard and main army of Romanticism--Chopin was, and remains, the most mysterious and impenetrable, as great a challenge to would-be biographers as to the generations of pianists who have sought, with occasional success, to interpret his music. So it is interesting that where music historians have largely feared to tread, the ubiquitous Tad Szulc has stepped in with a portrait of the composer’s life and times that pulls a great many hitherto loose threads together. Despite the Byronic ring of its title, “Chopin in Paris” is a sober, well-researched and carefully constructed chronicle of the events and experiences that figured most prominently in the composer’s life, at once a biography of the artist and a history of the social setting within which his art emerged. Without doing much to elucidate Chopin’s music, it sheds new light on the man and his milieu.

Szulc set himself a difficult task in this undertaking as the author of books on John Paul II and Fidel Castro, he is used to big challenges. Less is known about Chopin than about any of his major musical contemporaries. Chopin, the expatriate, traveled less than they did. He wrote fewer letters, and fewer of the letters he wrote survived. He was neither a cult figure, as was Liszt, nor a feuilletonist, as was Berlioz--let alone a combination of both, as was Wagner. As Szulc points out, Chopin gave only 30 public performances in 30 years of concertizing, and much of his music was not published until after his death. When it comes to his life and work, then, the solid documentary evidence that musicologists customarily rely on is in short supply. This lack of material, combined with the fact that he was guarded even with his friends, makes it hard to know what went on in Chopin’s mind, hard to answer some of the questions that have persistently nagged musicians and biographers about his character, emotional makeup and sexuality.

That’s where Paris comes in. Paris of the 1830s and ‘40s paid attention to its artists, and its artists paid attention to each other. One could run, as Liszt eventually did, or hide, as Chopin tried to do. But if one had talent, one could not escape scrutiny. Among the literati, where Chopin circulated from the start, one’s friendships and private life were grist for the mill. Everything happened in writing, and everyone of importance was written about. Part of what Szulc has done is find what Chopin’s friends and acquaintances, many of whom were Polish, said about him. He has also done a good job of putting it in context. He delves into the relationship between opposition politics and the artistic circles to which Chopin and Sand belonged. He explores Chopin’s ambivalence toward women, along with the complex emotions Chopin felt as a patriotic Pole and devoted son who, putting his art above all things, left his country just as it came under the Russian heel. We get a taste of the nostalgia and guilt that haunted Chopin throughout his years in Paris, of the remorse expressed by the Polish word zal, and of the grief Chopin felt at the loss of love. Although he tells us that Chopin was “sentimental” about these things, Szulc allows us to believe he was also sincere.

Perhaps it was inevitable that the lives of Chopin and Sand should intersect and eventually collide. Sand herself thought so, as Szulc notes, and wrote at one point that Chopin was “created” for her by “Providence.” In most ways, the two were so opposite in nature as to seem irreconcilable. Sand was masculine, assertive, independent, a collector of men. Chopin was effeminate, passive, indecisive (in matters of the heart), a charmer of women. Sand was a workaholic who found time to socialize, Chopin a socialite who found time to work. Sand may have been bisexual and was certainly a predator. Chopin may have been bipolar and was most likely a virgin when Sand claimed him.

But both were creative, ambitious, driven to succeed and determined to get their way (with respect to his art, at least, Chopin did possess an “iron will”). Most important for the two, Sand was powerfully maternal in her attitude toward lovers, while Chopin sought the maternal in women, language, lifestyle, everything. Sand needed to nurture. Chopin needed to be nurtured. That was where they connected. To Szulc’s credit, he devotes as much attention to Sand’s character as to Chopin’s because the relationship they had was the central experience in Chopin’s adult life. Even though Sand’s work has lost nearly all of its importance, while Chopin’s has grown ever more important, her impact on him, in human terms, was tremendous.

Szulc gives a detailed account of the experiences Sand and Chopin shared in Paris, on Majorca and at Sand’s country home at Nohant. Wisely, Szulc avoids trying to build a case for artistic influence, noting quite correctly that Chopin’s finished works emerged from a process of filtering and refinement that took place over months and years and were not a response to specific moods he may have felt or to outside stimuli. Unfortunately, when Szulc does talk about the music and musical history in general, he has a tendency to get things muddled.

He tells us first, for example, that Chopin was “occupied with composing” the Preludes, Opus 28, during the years 1834-35 (unlikely); later, that he “may have begun outlining” the cycle in 1836 (possible); and, finally, that he “expected to complete them” on Majorca during the winter of 1838-39 (true). His comment that these pieces “enhance Chopin’s skill as an innovator” is meaningless. Szulc discourses at considerable length on the “intricacy” of, and “extreme physical strength” required by, the A-major Polonaise, Opus 49, which is actually rather easy to play, particularly in comparison with the Polonaise in A flat, Opus 53, technically a much more challenging piece.

One might wish that a book about Chopin could be as elegantly written as Chopin’s music, but Szulc’s style is coarse and at times rather clumsy in its attempt to pack unnecessary facts and parenthetical erudition into the narrative. Too often, these attempts backfire. For instance, in a discussion of patronage and employment related to Chopin’s situation in 1837, specifically an invitation to become pianist to Czar Nicholas I, Szulc states: “Even Liszt had become music master to the German court of Saxe-Weimar.” But that did not happen until 1848. And it happened partly as a consequence of Liszt’s disenchantment with the bourgeois Revolution of 1830, to say nothing of his positive horror at the disruptions caused by the revolutions of 1848. This undercuts Szulc’s point, which seems to be that the Romantic (that is, revolutionary) artist of the day was reluctant to become “a ruler’s employee.”

Small but significant mistakes also crop up--Berlioz’s wife, Harriet, was Irish, not English, for example--betraying an unfortunate carelessness in the writing and editing of the book. Still, Szulc’s account of the most important years in the life of one of Romanticism’s most important composers conveys much that is valuable and useful, in the end illuminating not only the everyday world in which Chopin lived but the inner world of thoughts and feelings that lived in Chopin.