Chopin was good friends with Marie’s mother Camille Pleyel who took an unfavorable view of Liszt using Chopin’s lodgings to carry his affair with Marie. Things began to sour somewhat between the composers in 1835 following a poorly judged dalliance Liszt had with Marie Pleyel. They played one another’s compositions and even though they were not what could be thought of as close friends, they were collegial and united in their admiration for each other. In these early days, each was heralded as a great virtuoso of equal merit and distinction. This was the start of many performances that Liszt and Chopin gave that across the fashionable salons of Paris. At Chopin’s first performance in February of 1832 at the famous Salle Pleyel in Paris, was where these two composers had their first meeting. Through regular concert performances to the influential and powerful people of the day, the composers each secured themselves a career and a devoted following. The reputation grew all be it in two separate countries of Chopin and Liszt. Only then did the composer pull his attention back towards traditional Hungarian music and his roots. Unlike Chopin who always felt a deep connection with his homeland, Liszt left Hungary behind until disaster struck with the flooding of 1838. Liszt focused solely on the piano leaving his broader education to another calmer time. From the age of sixteen, Liszt lived in Paris and became embroiled in the excitement that surrounded him. For Liszt, his early years more closely resembled those of a pop star. Chopin not only nurtured his composition and pianistic skills but his love for Polish literature and poetry. He was able to study and develop his musical skills largely uninterrupted by the troubles of the world. Until the age of twenty, home life for Chopin remained supportive and stable. Each composer recognized this influence and showed lasting gratitude towards their mentors. For the developing pianists, these teachers proved to be immensely valuable, cultivating the formidable techniques each eventually had as well as their compositional styles. As their talents grew, Chopin was sent to Warsaw study with Zywny and Elsner Liszt had the enviable opportunity to learn with Czerny. Chopin was born in Zelazowa Wola in Poland in 1810 Liszt in Döblingen, Austria in 1811. For the families of Liszt and Chopin, this meant a sacrifice as neither were considered to be wealthy. Each family was highly supportive of their young pianists and ensured that they received the best available tuition and were able to learn on instruments of quality. Chopin Vs LisztĪs emerging pianists, Liszt and Chopin were quickly recognized by their respective families as exceptional. Pianists who were able to display ever more extreme levels of technique were fast becoming favored by audiences who eagerly awaited the next Wunderkind who could dazzle them with virtuosity. The more reserved, streamlined tastes of the Classical period were being replaced by music whose purpose was as a vehicle for intense expressions of emotion. Sad but kindly tears! What a strange emotion! Sad but blessed.Both Liszt and Chopin were born at a time in musical history when the piano was already established as a popular instrument with composers and audiences not least because of its generous range and expressive capabilities. It is therefore right of me to be angry that I was ever born into this world! Why was I not prevented from remaining in a world where I am utterly useless? What good can my existence bring to anyone? … But wait, wait! What’s this? Tears? How long it is since they flowed! How is this, seeing that an arid melancholy has held me for so long in its grip? How good it feels - and sorrowful. Oh how many people have become corpses at this moment! Mothers have been torn from their children, children from their mothers - how many plans have come to nothing, how much sorrow has sprung from these depths, and how much relief!… Virtue and vice have come in the end to the same thing! It seems that to die is man’s finest action - and what might be his worst? To be born, since that is the exact opposite of his best deed. Why do we live on through this wretched life which only devours us and serves to turn us into corpses? The clocks in the Stuttgart belfries strike the midnight hour. A corpse has ceased to live, and I too have had enough of life…. A corpse is cold, just as I am cold and indifferent to everything. “How strange! This bed on which I shall lie has been slept on by more than one dying man, but today it does not repel me! Who knows what corpses have lain on it and for how long? But is a corpse any worse than I? A corpse too knows nothing of its father, mother or sisters or Titus.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |