Chopin Quotations

Frédéric Chopin

Frédéric Chopin (22 February 1810 – 17 October 1849) was a Polish pianist and composer of classical music who lived in Paris from age 21. He wrote almost solely for piano and remains the most widely played composer for that instrument. He also wrote for violin and viola. His music ranged from patriotic, melancholy, passionate to simple and beautiful, and he was known as a great teacher of piano.

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• My piano has not yet arrived. How did you send it? By Marseilles or by Perpignan? I dream music but I cannot make any because here there are not any pianos . . . in this respect this is a savage country.
  • Letter to Camille Pleyel (21 November 1838); published in Fryderyk Chopin, Korespondencja Fryderyka Chopina (1955), edited by Bronisław Edward Sydow, (2 vols.), Vol. 1, p. 443

• I'm a revolutionary, money means nothing to me.
  • Quoted in Arthur Hedley, Chopin (1947)

• I wish I could throw off the thoughts which poison my happiness, but I take a kind of pleasure in indulging them.
  • As quoted in Chopin (1978) by George Richard Marek, Arthur Maling, and Maria Gordon-Smith
  • Variant translation: I wish I could throw off the thoughts which poison my happiness. And yet I take a kind of pleasure in indulging them.

• One needs only to study a certain positioning of the hand in relation to the keys to obtain with ease the most beautiful sounds, to know how to play long notes and short notes and to [attain] certain unlimited dexterity... A well formed technique, it seems to me, [is one] that can control and vary a beautiful sound quality.
  • As quoted in Chopin : Pianist and Teacher as Seen by His Pupils (1986) by Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger, Roy Howat, Naomi Shohet, and Krysia Osostowicz, p. 16

• Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art.
  • As quoted in If Not God, Then What? (2007) by Joshua Fost, p. 93

• 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. Nor has a corpse a sweetheart. A corpse, too, is pale, like me. A corpse is cold, just as I am cold and indifferent to everything. A corpse has ceased to live, and I too have had enough of life.... 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. 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. 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. Sad but kindly tears! What a strange emotion! Sad but blessed. It is not good for one to be sad, and yet how pleasant it is - a strange state...
  • As quoted by his fellows when he was in deathbed, a several hours before he died^{[citation needed]}

• Here you doubtless observe my tendency to do wrong against my will. As something has involuntarily crept into my head through my eyes, I love to indulge it, even though it may be all wrong.
  • As quoted when he talked about his piano concerto, op.11^{[citation needed]}

• I could express my feelings more easily if they could be put into the notes of music, but as the very best concert would not cover my affection for you, dear daddy, I must use the simple words of my heart, to lay before you my utmost gratitude and filial affection
  • As quoted in Chopin's Letter (1988) by Henryk Opieński,E. L. Voynich, p. 4

• How great a joy I feel in my heart. That a day so pleasant, so dear and glorious begins, a day that I greet with the wish. That long years may pass in happiness. In health and vigour, peacefully, successfully. May the gift of heaven fall richly upon you
  • As quoted in his letter to his father, dated December 6th 1817^{[citation needed]}

• You already know when I'm writing, so don't be surprised if it's short and dry, because I'm too hungry to write anything fat
  • As quoted in his letter to Jan Bialoblocki, written in Zelazowa Wola and dated back to December 24th 1826^{[citation needed]}

• But why should one be ashamed of writing badly in spite of knowing better – it’s results that shows errors^{[citation needed]}

Quotes about Chopin

Alphabetized by author

• Music was his language, the divine tongue through which he expressed a whole realm of sentiments that only the select few can appreciate... The muse of his homeland dictates his songs, and the anguished cries of Poland lend to his art a mysterious, indefinable poetry which, for all those who have truly experienced it, cannot be compared to anything else... The piano alone was not sufficient to reveal all that lies within him. In short he is a most remarkable individual who commands our highest degree of devotion.
  • Franz Liszt ^{[citation needed]}

• His creation was spontaneous, miraculous. He found it without searching for it, without foreseeing it. It came to his piano suddenly, complete, sublime, or it sang in his head during a walk, and he would hasten to hear it again by, tossing it off on his instrument. But then would begin the most heartbreaking labor I have ever witnessed. It was a series of efforts, indecision, and impatience to recapture certain details of the theme he had heard: what had come to him all of a piece, he now over-analyzed in his desire to write it down, and his regret at not finding it again "neat," as he said, would throw him into a kind of despair. He would shut himself up in his room for days at a time, weeping, pacing, breaking his pens, repeating and changing a single measure a hundred times, writing it and effacing it with equal frequency, and beginning again the next day with a meticulous and desperate perseverance. He would spend six weeks on one page, only to end up writing it just as he had traced it in his first outpouring.
  • George Sand, Oeuvres autobiographiques, ed. Georges Lubin, 2 vols. (Paris, 1978); Vol. 2: Histoire de ma vie, p. 446. I (Jeffrey Kallberg) have modified somewhat the English translation printed in George Sand, Story of My Life: The Autobiography of George Sand, group translation ed. Thelma Jurgrau (Albany, 1991), p. 1109. The chapter on Chopin dates from August or September 1854.

• Hats off, gentlemen — a genius!
• If the mighty autocrat of the north knew what a dangerous enemy threatened him in Chopin's works in the simple tunes of his mazurkas, he would forbid this music. Chopin's works are canons buried in flowers.
  • Robert Schumann, 1831 ^{[citation needed]}

• After playing Chopin, I feel as if I had been weeping over sins that I had never committed, and mourning over tragedies that were not my own.
  • Oscar Wilde, 1891 ^{[citation needed]}

External links

• Chopin: the poet of the piano
• Internet Chopin Information Centre
• Chopin 2010: The Chopin Currency
• Online biography of Chopin
• Brief Chopin essay at Classical Music Pages
• The Frederick Chopin Society in Warsaw
• Biography with Image Gallery and Citations at Chopin Music
• Fryderyk Chopin: Poet of the Piano
• Life of Chopin, by Franz Liszt
• Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician, by Frederick Niecks
• Chopin: The Man and his Music, by James Huneker

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