STORIES ABOUT MUSIC

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 100, 30 April 1938, Page 20

STORIES ABOUT MUSIC

("Lucienne" writes about Frederick Chopin.)

ABOUT a hundred years ago there was living in Paris a young man with a pale delicate face who carried himself with a rare distinction, this was Frederick.Chopin, a young ;Pole who had brought to Paris a new kind of music and a new kind of playing. He was only seen for a few years, but in that short time he has achieved immortality. Here and there he lived in Europe, spoke a few languages. Now he is a citizen of the world. . < Frederick was born in a village near Warsaw (the capital of Poland) in 1809 When he was an infant his father was made French professor at the new Lyceum of Warsaw, and there his family settled- on a very small income, but though his people were poor they were intellectual and affectionate. Frederick adored his mother, a charming woman who loved her home and quiet happy things: He started playing the piano when he was very young, and at the age of twelve his master said he could teach him no more, and this accounts for the curious personality which developed in his playing and made such an impression on those who heard him in his prime.He was of course always composing, he began even before he could hold a pen and when he was sixteen his first book of work was published,' By that time he had played before Kings and Queens and all the intellectual Society of the day recognised him. At eighteen, his'schooling finished, he went travelling with friends in Poland, and his happiest hours were spent listening to the peasants singing and playing and watching them dance. From those travels he gleaned a precious harvest of Polish airs and folk songs, the influence of which can be traced in all his.greatest works. It was a delicate listening face that moved in and out among the people of the remote parts of Poland Clean-rcut, with delicate brows, thin, sensitive lips a melancholy expression when thoughtful, and brjght and animated in conversation. A critical eye would have seen in Frederick Chopin's frail body, which housed such a burning spirit, a very real warning of disease! Through the next few years we see him pass from triumph after triumplk Paris, Vienna, Warsaw, all th«i great musical. centres of the..world did him honour. . , „ , :, A . In 1830 he was plunged into real misery when the war. broke out on, Poland. He could not arrange concerts when his country was torn with strife, and finally he decided to go to Paris, where he forgot his misery about Warsaw being taken by the Russians, when he had heard that his dear ones were out of danger. Presently he was the darling of Paris, and everybody wanted to be taught by him and to be friends with him, but he never made any real, friends in Paris except 6ne. He does not say anything now about his lack of strength, of the hacking cough which drags through the winter, but his.letters are full of his friendship with George Sand (the famous French woman writer). A few years later he went to London, but by this, time his health was failing fast, and it was a very thin wav young man who at last arrived in the London he had so long talked of visiting. He had put off the journey too long unfortunately, for now he had no vitality to adjust himself to the English temperament, not that his visit was.a iailure, but it was not the success that he had anticipated. He had brought a new kind of music to a country very happy and contented with Beethoven and Mendelssohn—it was not the battle for a dying man. His works were only for the piano, but they have been arranged since for orchestra, and. the stringed instruments. Many of his dainty, delicate airs will be familiar to you. . - "LUCIENNE." City. .