Frederick Chopin, as a Man and Musician Part 38

It is interesting to compare this description with that of another poet, a poet who sent forth his poetry daintily dressed in verse as well as carelessly wrapped in prose. Liszt tells us that Chopin had in his imagination and talent something "qui, par la purete de sa diction, par ses accointances avec La Fee aux Miettes et Le Lutin d'Argail, par ses rencon-tres de Seraphine et de Diane, murmurant a son oreille leurs plus confidentielles plaintes, leurs reves les plus innommes," [FOOTNOTE: The allusions are to stories by Charles Nodier. According to Sainte-Beuve, "La Fee aux Miettes" was one of those stories in which the author was influenced by Hoffmann's creations.] reminded him of Nodier. Now, what thoughts did Chopin's playing call up in Heine?

Yes, one must admit that Chopin has genius in the full sense of the word; he is not only a virtuoso, he is also a poet; he can embody for us the poesy which lives within his soul, he is a tone-poet, and nothing can be compared to the pleasure which he gives us when he sits at the piano and improvises. He is then neither a Pole, nor a Frenchman, nor a German, he reveals then a higher origin, one perceives then that he comes from the land of Mozart, Raphael, and Goethe, his true fatherland is the dream-realm of poesy. When he sits at the piano and improvises I feel as though a countryman from my beloved native land were visiting me and telling me the most curious things which have taken place there during my absence...Sometimes I should like to interrupt him with questions: And how is the beautiful little water-nymph who knows how to fasten her silvery veil so coquettishly round her green locks? Does the white-bearded sea-G.o.d still persecute her with his foolish, stale love? Are the roses at home still in their flame-hued pride? Do the trees still sing as beautifully in the moonlight?

But to return to Liszt. A little farther on than the pa.s.sage I quoted above he says:--

In his playing the great artist rendered exquisitely that kind of agitated trepidation, timid or breathless, which seizes the heart when one believes one's self in the vicinity of supernatural beings, in presence of those whom one does not know either how to divine or to lay hold of, to embrace or to charm. He always made the melody undulate like a skiff borne on the bosom of a powerful wave; or he made it move vaguely like an aerial apparition suddenly sprung up in this tangible and palpable world. In his writings he at first indicated this manner which gave so individual an impress to his virtuosity by the term tempo rubato: stolen, broken time--a measure at once supple, abrupt, and languid, vacillating like the flame under the breath which agitates it, like the corn in a field swayed by the soft pressure of a warm air, like the top of trees bent hither and thither by a keen breeze.

But as the term taught nothing to him who knew, said nothing to him who did not know, understand, and feel, Chopin afterwards ceased to add this explanation to his music, being persuaded that if one understood it, it was impossible not to divine this rule of irregularity. Accordingly, all his compositions ought to be played with that kind of accented, rhythmical balancement, that morbidezza, the secret of which it was difficult to seize if one had not often heard him play.

Let us try if it is not possible to obtain a clearer notion of this mysterious tempo rubato. Among instrumentalists the "stolen time" was brought into vogue especially by Chopin and Liszt. But it is not an invention of theirs or their time. Quanz, the great flutist (see Marpurg: "Kritische Beitrage." Vol. I.), said that he heard it for the first time from the celebrated singer Santa Stella Lotti, who was engaged in 1717 at the Dresden Opera, and died in 1759 at Venice. Above all, however, we have to keep in mind that the tempo rubato is a genus which comprehends numerous species. In short, the tempo rubato of Chopin is not that of Liszt, that of Liszt is not that of Henselt, and so on.

As for the general definitions we find in dictionaries, they can afford us no particular enlightenment. But help comes to us from elsewhere.

Liszt explained Chopin's tempo rubato in a very poetical and graphic manner to his pupil the Russian pianist Neilissow:--"Look at these trees!" he said, "the wind plays in the leaves, stirs up life among them, the tree remains the same, that is Chopinesque rubato." But how did the composer himself describe it? From Madame Dubois and other pupils of Chopin we learn that he was in the habit of saying to them: "Que votre main gauche soit votre maitre de chapelle et garde toujours la mesure" (Let your left hand be your conductor and always keep time).

According to Lenz Chopin taught also: "Angenommen, ein Stuck dauert so und so viel Minuten, wenn das Ganze nur so lange gedauert hat, im Einzelnen kann's anders sein!" (Suppose a piece lasts so and so many minutes, if only the whole lasts so long, the differences in the details do not matter). This is somewhat ambiguous teaching, and seems to be in contradiction to the preceding precept. Mikuli, another pupil of Chopin's, explains his master's tempo rubato thus:--"While the singing hand, either irresolutely lingering or as in pa.s.sionate speech eagerly antic.i.p.ating with a certain impatient vehemence, freed the truth of the musical expression from all rhythmical fetters, the other, the accompanying hand, continued to play strictly in time." We get a very lucid description of Chopin's tempo rubato from the critic of the Athenaeum who after hearing the pianist-composer at a London matinee in 1848 wrote:--"He makes free use of tempo rubato; leaning about within his bars more than any player we recollect, but still subject to a presiding measure such as presently habituates the ear to the liberties taken." Often, no doubt, people mistook for tempo rubato what in reality was a suppression or displacement of accent, to which kind of playing the term is indeed sometimes applied. The reader will remember the following pa.s.sage from a criticism in the "Wiener Theaterzeitung" of 1829:--"There are defects noticeable in the young man's [Chopin's]

playing, among which is perhaps especially to be mentioned the non-observance of the indication by accent of the commencement of musical phrases." Mr. Halle related to me an interesting dispute bearing on this matter. The German pianist told Chopin one day that he played in his mazurkas often 4/4 instead of 3/4 time. Chopin would not admit it at first, but when Mr. Halle proved his case by counting to Chopin's playing, the latter admitted the correctness of the observation, and laughing said that this was national. Lenz reports a similar dispute between Chopin and Meyerbeer. In short, we may sum up in Moscheles'

words, Chopin's playing did not degenerate into Tactlosigkeit [lit., timelessness], but it was of the most charming originality. Along with the above testimony we have, however, to take note of what Berlioz said on the subject: "Chopin supportait mal le frein de la mesure; il a pousse beaucoup trap loin, selon moi, l'independance rhythmique."

Berlioz even went so far as to say that "Chopin could not play strictly in time [ne pouvait pas jouer regulierement]."

Indeed, so strange was Chopin's style that when Mr. Charles Halle first heard him play his compositions he could not imagine how what he heard was represented by musical signs. But strange as Chopin's style of playing was he thinks that its peculiarities are generally exaggerated.

The Parisians said of Rubinstein's playing of compositions of Chopin: "Ce n'est pas ca!" Mr. Halle himself thinks that Rubinstein's rendering of Chopin is clever, but not Chopinesque. Nor do Von Bulow's readings come near the original. As for Chopin's pupils, they are even less successful than others in imitating their master's style. The opinion of one who is so distinguished a pianist and at the same time was so well acquainted with Chopin as Mr. Halle is worth having. Hearing Chopin often play his compositions he got so familiar with that master's music and felt so much in sympathy with it that the composer liked to have it played by him, and told him that when he was in the adjoining room he could imagine he was playing himself.

But it is time that we got off the shoals on which we have been lying so long. Well, Lenz shall set us afloat:--

In the undulation of the motion, in that suspension and unrest [Hangen und Bangen], in the rubato as he understood it, Chopin was captivating, every note was the outcome of the best taste in the best sense of the word. If he introduced an embellishment, which happened only rarely, it was always a kind of miracle of good taste. Chopin was by his whole nature unfitted to render Beethoven or Weber, who paint on a large scale and with a big brush. Chopin was an artist in crayons [Pastellmaler], but an INCOMPARABLE one! By the side of Liszt he might pa.s.s with honour for that master's well-matched wife [ebenburtige Frau, i.e., wife of equal rank]. Beethoven's B flat major Sonata, Op. 106, and Chopin exclude each other.

One day Chopin took Lenz with him to the Baronne Krudner and her friend the Countess Scheremetjew to whom he had promised to play the variations of Beethoven's Sonata in A flat major (Op. 26). And how did he play them?

Beautifully [says Lenz], but not so beautifully as his own things, not enthrallingly [packend], not en relief, not as a romance increasing in interest from variation to variation. He whispered it mezza voce, but it was incomparable in the cantilena, infinitely perfect in the phrasing of the structure, ideally beautiful, but FEMININE! Beethoven is a man and never ceases to be one!

Chopin played on a Pleyel, he made it a point never to give lessons on another instrument; they were obliged to get a Pleyel. All were charmed, I also was charmed, but only with the tone of Chopin, with his touch, with his sweetness and grace, with the purity of his style.

Chopin's purity of style, self-command, and aristocratic reserve have to be quite especially noted by us who are accustomed to hear the master's compositions played wildly, deliriously, ostentatiously. J. B. Cramer's remarks on Chopin are significant. The master of a bygone age said of the master of the then flourishing generation:--

I do not understand him, but he plays beautifully and correctly, oh! very correctly, he does not give way to his pa.s.sion like other young men, but I do not understand him.

What one reads and hears of Chopin's playing agrees with the account of his pupil Mikuli, who remarks that, with all the warmth which Chopin possessed in so high a degree, his rendering was nevertheless temperate [ma.s.svoll], chaste, nay, aristocratic, and sometimes even severely reserved. When, on returning home from the above-mentioned visit to the Russian ladies, Lenz expressed his sincere opinion of Chopin's playing of Beethoven's variations, the master replied testily: "I indicate (j'indique); the hearer must complete (parachever) the picture." And when afterwards, while Chopin was changing his clothes in an adjoining room, Lenz committed the impertinence of playing Beethoven's theme as he understood it, the master came in in his shirt-sleeves, sat down beside him, and at the end of the theme laid his hand on Lenz's shoulder and said: "I shall tell Liszt of it; this has never happened to me before; but it is beautiful--well, BUT MUST ONE THEN ALWAYS SPEAK SO Pa.s.sIONATELY (si declamatoirement)?" The italics in the text, not those in parentheses, are mine. I marked some of Chopin's words thus that they might get the attention they deserve. "Tell me with whom you a.s.sociate, and I will tell you who you are." Parodying this aphorism one might say, not without a good deal of truth: Tell me what piano you use, and I will tell you what sort of a pianist you are. Liszt gives us all the desirable information as to Chopin's predilection in this respect. But Lenz too has, as we have seen, touched on this point. Liszt writes:--

While Chopin was strong and healthy, as during the first years of his residence in Paris, he used to play on an Erard piano; but after his friend Camille Pleyel had made him a present of one of his splendid instruments, remarkable for their metallic ring and very light touch, he would play on no other maker's.

If he was engaged for a soiree at the house of one of his Polish or French friends, he would often send his own instrument, if there did not happen to be a Pleyel in the house.

Chopin was very partial to [affectionnait] Pleyel's pianos, particularly on account of their silvery and somewhat veiled sonority, and of the easy touch which permitted him to draw from them sounds which one might have believed to belong to those harmonicas of which romantic Germany has kept the monopoly, and which her ancient masters constructed so ingeniously, marrying crystal to water.

Chopin himself said:--

When I am indisposed, I play on one of Erard's pianos and there I easily find a ready-made tone. But when I feel in the right mood and strong enough to find my own tone for myself, I must have one of Pleyel's pianos.

From the fact that Chopin played during his visit to Great Britain in 1848 at public concerts as well as at private parties on instruments of Broadwood's, we may conclude that he also appreciated the pianos of this firm. In a letter dated London, 48, Dover Street, May 6, 1848, he writes to Gutmann: "Erard a ete charmant, il m'a fait poser un piano. J'ai un de Broadwood et un de Pleyel, ce qui fait 3, et je ne trouve pas encore le temps pour les jouer." And in a letter dated Edinburgh, August 6, and Calder House, August 11, he writes to Franchomme: "I have a Broadwood piano in my room, and the Pleyel of Miss Stirling in the salon."

Here, I think, will be the fittest place to record what I have learnt regarding Chopin's musical taste and opinions on music and musicians, and what will perhaps ill.u.s.trate better than any other part of this book the character of the man and artist. His opinions of composers and musical works show that he had in a high degree les vices de ses qualites. The delicacy of his const.i.tution and the super-refinement of his breeding, which put within his reach the inimitable beauties of subtlest tenderness and grace that distinguish his compositions and distinguished his playing, were disqualifications as well as qualifications. "Every kind of uncouth roughness [toutes les rudesses sauvages] inspired him with aversion," says Liszt. "In music as in literature and in every-day life everything which bordered on melodrama was torture to him." In short, Chopin was an aristocrat with all the exclusiveness of an aristocrat.

The inability of men of genius to appreciate the merit of one or the other of their great predecessors and more especially of their contemporaries has often been commented on and wondered at, but I doubt very much whether a musician could be instanced whose sympathies were narrower than those of Chopin. Besides being biographically important, the record of the master's likings and dislikings will teach a useful lesson to the critic and furnish some curious material for the psychological student.

Highest among all the composers, living and dead, Chopin esteemed Mozart. Him he regarded as "the ideal type, the poet par excellence."

It is related of Chopin--with what truth I do not know--that he never travelled without having either the score of "Don Giovanni" or that of the "Requiem" in his portmanteau. Significant, although not founded on fact, is the story according to which he expressed the wish that the "Requiem" should be performed at his funeral service. Nothing, however, shows his love for the great German master more unmistakably and more touchingly than the words which on his death-bed he addressed to his dear friends the Princess Czartoryska and M. Franchomme: "You will play Mozart together, and I shall hear you." And why did Chopin regard Mozart as the ideal type, the poet par excellence? Liszt answers: "Because Mozart condescended more rarely than any other composer to cross the steps which separate refinement from vulgarity." But what no doubt more especially stirred sympathetic chords in the heart of Chopin, and inspired him with that loving admiration for the earlier master, was the sweetness, the grace, and the harmoniousness which in Mozart's works reign supreme and undisturbed--the unsurpa.s.sed and unsurpa.s.sable perfect loveliness and lovely perfection which result from a complete absence of everything that is harsh, hard, awkward, unhealthy, and eccentric. And yet, says Liszt of Chopin:--

His sybaritism of purity, his apprehension of what was commonplace, were such that even in "Don Giovanni," even in this immortal chef-d'oeuvre, he discovered pa.s.sages the presence of which we have heard him regret. His worship of Mozart was not thereby diminished, but as it were saddened.

The composer who next to Mozart stood highest in Chopin's esteem was Bach. "It was difficult to say," remarks Mikuli, "which of the two he loved most." Chopin not only, as has already been mentioned, had works of Bach on his writing-table at Valdemosa, corrected the Parisian edition for his own use, and prepared himself for his concerts by playing Bach, but also set his pupils to study the immortal cantor's suites, part.i.tas, and preludes and fugues. Madame Dubois told me that at her last meeting with him (in 1848) he recommended her "de toujours travailler Bach," adding that that was the best means of making progress.

Hummel, Field, and Moscheles were the pianoforte composers who seem to have given Chopin most satisfaction. Mozart and Bach were his G.o.ds, but these were his friends. Gutmann informed me that Chopin was particularly fond of Hummel; Liszt writes that Hummel was one of the composers Chopin played again and again with the greatest pleasure; and from Mikuli we learn that of Hummel's compositions his master liked best the Fantasia, the Septet, and the Concertos. Liszt's statement that the Nocturnes of Field were regarded by Chopin as "insuffisants" seems to me disproved by unexceptionable evidence. Chopin schooled his pupils most a.s.siduously and carefully in the Nocturnes as well as in the Concertos of Field, who was, to use Madame Dubois's words, "an author very sympathetic to him." Mikuli relates that Chopin had a predilection for Field's A flat Concerto and the Nocturnes, and that, when playing the latter, he used to improvise the most charming embellishments. To take liberties with another artist's works and complain when another artist takes liberties with your own works is very inconsistent, is it not? But it is also thoroughly human, and Chopin was not exempt from the common failing. One day when Liszt did with some composition of Chopin's what the latter was in the habit of doing with Field's Nocturnes, the enraged composer is said to have told his friend to play his compositions as they were written or to let them alone. M. Marmontel writes:--

Either from a profound love of the art or from an excess of conscience personelle, Chopin could not bear any one to touch the text of his works. The slightest modification seemed to him a grave fault which he did not even forgive his intimate friends, his fervent admirers, Liszt not excepted. I have many a time, as well as my master, Zimmermann, caused Chopin's sonatas, concertos, ballades, and allegros to be played as examination pieces; but restricted as I was to a fragment of the work, I was pained by the thought of hurting the composer, who considered these alterations a veritable sacrilege.

This, however, is a digression. Little need be added to what has already been said in another chapter of the third composer of the group we were speaking of. Chopin, the reader will remember, told Moscheles that he loved his music, and Moscheles admitted that he who thus complimented him was intimately acquainted with it. From Mikuli we learn that Moscheles' studies were very sympathetic to his master. As to Moscheles'

duets, they were played by Chopin probably more frequently than the works of any other composer, excepting of course his own works. We hear of his playing them not only with his pupils, but with Osborne, with Moscheles himself, and with Liszt, who told me that Chopin was fond of playing with him the duets of Moscheles and Hummel.

Speaking of playing duets reminds me of Schubert, who, Gutmann informed me, was a favourite of Chopin's. The Viennese master's "Divertiss.e.m.e.nt hongrois" he admired without reserve. Also the marches and polonaises a quatre mains he played with his pupils. But his teaching repertoire seems to have contained, with the exception of the waltzes, none of the works a deux mains, neither the sonatas, nor the impromptus, nor the "Moments musicals." This shows that if Schubert was a favourite of Chopin's, he was so only to a certain extent. Indeed, Chopin even found fault with the master where he is universally regarded as facile princeps. Liszt remarks:--

In spite of the charm which he recognised in some of Schubert's melodies, he did not care to hear those whose contours were too sharp for his ear, where feeling is as it were denuded, where one feels, so to speak, the flesh palpitate and the bones crack under the grasp of anguish. A propos of Schubert, Chopin is reported to have said: "The sublime is dimmed when it is followed by the common or the trivial."

I shall now mention some of those composers with whom Chopin was less in sympathy. In the case of Weber his approval, however, seems to have outweighed his censure. At least Mikuli relates that the E minor and A flat major Sonatas and the "Concertstuck" were among those works for which his master had a predilection, and Madame Dubois says that he made his pupils play the Sonatas in C and in A flat major with extreme care.

Now let us hear Lenz:-- He could not appreciate Weber; he spoke of "opera," "unsuitable for the piano" [unklavierma.s.sig]! On the whole, Chopin was little in sympathy with the GERMAN spirit in music, although I heard him say: "There is only ONE SCHOOL, the German!"

Gutmann informed me that he brought the A flat major Sonata with him from Germany in 1836 or 1837, and that Chopin did not know it then. It is hard enough to believe that Liszt asked Lenz in 1828 if the composer of the "Freischutz" had also written for the piano, but Chopin's ignorance in 1836 is much more startling. Did fame and publications travel so slowly in the earlier part of the century? Had genius to wait so long for recognition? If the statement, for the correctness of which Gutmann alone is responsible, rests on fact and not on some delusion of memory, this most characteristic work of Weber and one of the most important items of the pianoforte literature did not reach Chopin, one of the foremost European pianists, till twenty years after its publication, which took place in December, 1816.

That Chopin had a high opinion of Beethoven may be gathered from a story which Lenz relates in an article written for the "Berliner Musikzeitung"

(Vol. XXVI). Little Filtsch--the talented young Hungarian who made Liszt say: "I shall shut my shop when he begins to travel"--having played to a select company invited by his master the latter's Concerto in E minor, Chopin was so pleased with his pupil's performance that he went with him to Schlesinger's music-shop, asked for the score of "Fidelio," and presented it to him with the words:--"I am in your debt, you have given me great pleasure to-day, I wrote the concerto in a happy time, accept, my dear young friend, the great master work! read in it as long as you live and remember me also sometimes." But Chopin's high opinion of Beethoven was neither unlimited nor unqualified. His att.i.tude as regards this master, which Franchomme briefly indicated by saying that his friend loved Beethoven, but had his dislikes in connection with him, is more fully explained by Liszt.

However great his admiration for the works of Beethoven might be, certain parts of them seemed to him too rudely fashioned.

Their structure was too athletic to please him; their wraths seemed to him too violent [leurs courroux lui semblaient trop rugissants]. He held that in them pa.s.sion too closely approaches cataclysm; the lion's marrow which is found in every member of his phrases was in his opinion a too substantial matter, and the seraphic accents, the Raphaelesque profiles, which appear in the midst of the powerful creations of this genius, became at times almost painful to him in so violent a contrast.

I am able to ill.u.s.trate this most excellent general description by some examples. Chopin said that Beethoven raised him one moment up to the heavens and the next moment precipitated him to the earth, nay, into the very mire. Such a fall Chopin experienced always at the commencement of the last movement of the C minor Symphony. Gutmann, who informed me of this, added that pieces such as the first movement of the Moonlight Sonata (C sharp minor) were most highly appreciated by his master. One day when Mr. Halle played to Chopin one of the three Sonatas, Op. 31 (I am not sure which it was), the latter remarked that he had formerly thought the last movement VULGAR. From this Mr. Halle naturally concluded that Chopin could not have studied the works of Beethoven thoroughly. This conjecture is confirmed by what we learn from Lenz, who in 1842 saw a good deal of Chopin, and thanks to his Boswellian inquisitiveness, persistence, and forwardness, made himself acquainted with a number of interesting facts. Lenz and Chopin spoke a great deal about Beethoven after that visit to the Russian ladies mentioned in a foregoing part of this chapter. They had never spoken of the great master before. Lenz says of Chopin:--

He did not take a very serious interest in Beethoven; he knew only his princ.i.p.al compositions, the last works not at all.

This was in the Paris air! People knew the symphonies, the quartets of the middle period but little, the last ones not at all.

Chopin, on being told by Lenz that Beethoven had in the F minor Quartet antic.i.p.ated Mendelssohn, Schumann, and him; and that the scherzo prepared the way for his mazurka-fantasias, said: "Bring me this quartet, I do not know it." According to Mikuli Chopin was a regular frequenter of the concerts of the Societe des Concerts du Conservatoire and of the Alard, Franchomme, &c., quartet party. But one of the most distinguished musicians living in Paris, who knew Chopin's opinion of Beethoven, suspects that the music was for him not the greatest attraction of the Conservatoire concerts, that in fact, like most of those who went there, he considered them a fashionable resort. True or not, the suspicion is undeniably significant. "But Mendelssohn," the reader will say, "surely Chopin must have admired and felt in sympathy with this sweet-voiced, well-mannered musician?" Nothing, however, could be farther from the truth. Chopin hated Mendelssohn's D minor Trio, and told Halle that that composer had never written anything better than the first Song without Words. Franchomme, stating the case mildly, says that Chopin did not care much for Mendelssohn's music; Gutmann, however, declared stoutly that his master positively disliked it and thought it COMMON. This word and the mention of the Trio remind me of a pa.s.sage in Hiller's "Mendelssohn: Letters and Recollections," in which the author relates how, when his friend played to him the D minor Trio after its completion, he was favourably impressed by the fire, spirit, and flow, in one word, the masterly character of the work, but had some misgivings about certain pianoforte pa.s.sages, especially those based on broken chords, which, accustomed as he was by his constant intercourse with Liszt and Chopin during his stay of several years in Paris to the rich pa.s.sage work of the new school, appeared to him old-fashioned.

Mendelssohn, who in his letters repeatedly alludes to his sterility in the matter of new pianoforte pa.s.sages, allowed himself to be persuaded by Hiller to rewrite the pianoforte part, and was pleased with the result. It is clear from the above that if Mendelssohn failed to give Chopin his due, Chopin did more than apply the jus talionis.

Schumann, however, found still less favour in the eyes of Chopin than Mendelssohn; for whilst among the works which, for instance, Madame Dubois, who was Chopin's pupil for five years, studied under her master, Mendelssohn was represented at least by the Songs without Words and the G minor Concerto, Schumann was conspicuous by his total absence. And let it be remarked that this was in the last years of Chopin's life, when Schumann had composed and published almost all his important works for pianoforte alone and many of his finest works for pianoforte with other instruments. M. Mathias, Chopin's pupil during the years 1839-1844, wrote to me: "I think I recollect that he had no great opinion of Schumann. I remember seeing the "Carnaval," Op. 9, on his table; he did not speak very highly of it." In 1838, when Stephen h.e.l.ler was about to leave Augsburg for Paris, Schumann sent him a copy of his "Carnaval"

(published in September, 1837), to be presented to Chopin. This copy had a t.i.tle-page printed in various colours and was most tastefully bound; for Schumann knew Chopin's love of elegance, and wished to please him.

Soon after his arrival in Paris, h.e.l.ler called on the Polish musician and found him sitting for his portrait. On receiving the copy of the "Carnaval" Chopin said: "How beautifully they get up these things in Germany!" but uttered not a word about the music. However, we shall see presently what his opinion of it was. Some time, perhaps some years, after this first meeting with Chopin, h.e.l.ler was asked by Schlesinger whether he would advise him to publish Schumann's "Carnaval." h.e.l.ler answered that it would be a good speculation, for although the work would probably not sell well at first, it was sure to pay in the long run. Thereupon Schlesinger confided to h.e.l.ler what Chopin had told him--namely, that the "Carnaval" was not music at all. The contemplation of this indifference and more than indifference of a great artist to the creations of one of his most distinguished contemporaries is saddening, especially if we remember how devoted Schumann was to Chopin, how he admired him, loved him, upheld him, and idolised him. Had it not been for Schumann's enthusiastic praise and valiant defence Chopin's fame would have risen and spread, more slowly in Germany.

"Of virtuoso music of any kind I never saw anything on his desk, nor do I think anybody else ever did," says Mikuli.. This, although true in the main, is somewhat too strongly stated. Kalkbrenner, whose "noisy virtuosities [virtuosites tapageuses] and decorative expressivities [expressivites decoratives]" Chopin regarded with antipathy, and Thalberg, whose shallow elegancies and brilliancies he despised, were no doubt altogether banished from his desk; this, however, seems not to have been the case with Liszt, who occasionally made his appearance there. Thus Madame Dubois studied under Chopin Liszt's transcription of Rossini's "Tarantella" and of the Septet from Donizetti's "Lucia di Lammermoor." But the compositions of Liszt that had Chopin's approval were very limited in number. Chopin, who viewed making concessions to bad taste at the cost of true art and for the sake of success with the greatest indignation, found his former friend often guilty of this sin.

In 1840 Liszt's transcription of Beethoven's "Adelaide" was published in a supplement to the Gazette musicale. M. Mathias happened to come to Chopin on the day when the latter had received the number of the journal which contained the piece in question, and found his master furious, outre, on account of certain cadenzas which he considered out of place and out of keeping.

We have seen in one of the earlier chapters how little Chopin approved of Berlioz's matter and manner; some of the ultra-romanticist's antipodes did not fare much better. As for Halevy, Chopin had no great opinion of him; Meyerbeer's music he heartily disliked; and, although not insensible to Auber's French esprit and liveliness, he did not prize this master's works very highly. Indeed, at the Italian opera-house he found more that was to his taste than at the French opera-houses.

Bellini's music had a particular charm for Chopin, and he was also an admirer of Rossini.