The Project Gutenberg Etext of Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician, Volume 1 by Frederick Niecks

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Title: Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician, Volume 1

Author: Frederick Niecks

Edition: 10

Language: English

Release Date: November, 2003 [Etext #4681]
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[This file was first posted on February 27, 2002]

The Project Gutenberg Etext of Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician, Volume 1
by Frederick Niecks
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Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician, Volume 1 (of 2)

Frederick Niecks

Third Edition (1902)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION (1888) PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION (1890) PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION (1902) PROEM: POLAND AND THE POLES CHAPTERS I-XIX

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

While the novelist has absolute freedom to follow his artistic instinct and intelligence, the biographer is fettered by the subject-matter with which he proposes to deal. The former may hopefully pursue an ideal, the latter must rest satisfied with a compromise between the desirable and the necessary. No doubt, it is possible to thoroughly digest all the requisite material, and then present it in a perfect, beautiful form. But this can only be done at a terrible loss, at a sacrifice of truth and trustworthiness. My guiding principle has been to place before the reader the facts collected by me as well as the conclusions at which I arrived. This will enable him to see the subject in all its bearings, with all its pros and cons, and to draw his own conclusions, should mine not obtain his approval. Unless an author proceeds in this way, the reader never knows how far he may trust him, how far the evidence justifies his judgment. For— not to speak of cheats and fools—the best informed are apt to make assertions unsupported or insufficiently supported by facts, and the wisest cannot help seeing things through the coloured spectacles of their individuality. The foregoing remarks are intended to explain my method, not to excuse carelessness of literary workmanship. Whatever the defects of the present volumes may be—and, no doubt, they are both great and many—I have laboured to the full extent of my humble abilities to group and present my material perspicuously, and to avoid diffuseness and rhapsody, those besetting sins of writers on music.

The first work of some length having Chopin for its subject was Liszt's "Frederic Chopin," which, after appearing in 1851 in the Paris journal "La France musicale," came out in book-form, still in French, in 1852 (Leipzig: Breitkopf and Hartel.—Translated into English by M. W. Cook, and published by William Reeves, London, 1877). George Sand describes it as "un peu exuberant de style, mais rempli de bonnes choses et de tres-belles pages." These words, however, do in no way justice to the book: for, on the one hand, the style is excessively, and not merely a little, exuberant; and, on the other hand, the "good things" and "beautiful pages" amount to a psychological study of Chopin, and an aesthetical study of his works, which it is impossible to over- estimate. Still, the book is no biography. It records few dates and events, and these few are for the most part incorrect. When, in 1878, the second edition of F. Chopin was passing through the press, Liszt remarked to me:—

"I have been told that there are wrong dates and other mistakes in my book, and that the dates and facts are correctly given in Karasowski's biography of Chopin [which had in the meantime been published]. But, though I often thought of reading it, I have not yet done so. I got my information from Paris friends on whom I believed I might depend. The Princess Wittgenstein [who then lived in Rome, but in 1850 at Weimar, and is said to have had a share in the production of the book] wished me to make some alterations in the new edition. I tried to please her, but, when she was still dissatisfied, I told her to add and alter whatever she liked."

From this statement it is clear that Liszt had not the stuff of a biographer in him. And, whatever value we may put on the Princess Wittgenstein's additions and alterations, they did not touch the vital faults of the work, which, as a French critic remarked, was a symphonie funebre rather than a biography. The next book we have to notice, M. A. Szulc's Polish Fryderyk Chopin i Utwory jego Muzyczne (Posen, 1873), is little more than a chaotic, unsifted collection of notices, criticisms, anecdotes, &c., from Polish, German, and French books and magazines. In 1877 Moritz Karasowski, a native of Warsaw, and since 1864 a member of the Dresden orchestra, published his Friedrich Chopin: sein Leben, seine Werke und seine Briefe (Dresden: F. Ries.—Translated into English by E. Hill, under the title Frederick Chopin: His Life, Letters, and Work," and published by William Reeves, London, in 1879). This was the first serious attempt at a biography of Chopin. The author reproduced in the book what had been brought to light in Polish magazines and other publications regarding Chopin's life by various countrymen of the composer, among whom he himself was not the least notable. But the most valuable ingredients are, no doubt, the Chopin letters which the author obtained from the composer's relatives, with whom he was acquainted. While gratefully acknowledging his achievements, I must not omit to indicate his shortcomings—his unchecked