{"id":11616,"date":"2020-09-06T16:28:28","date_gmt":"2020-09-06T16:28:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lediemchihue.com\/?p=11616"},"modified":"2020-09-06T16:28:31","modified_gmt":"2020-09-06T16:28:31","slug":"paul-kildea-its-time-to-leave-chopin-in-peace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lediemchihue.com\/?p=11616","title":{"rendered":"Paul Kildea-It\u2019s time to leave Chopin in peace"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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There\u2019s a scene early on in A Song to Remember<\/em> \u2014 Charles Vidor\u2019s clunky Technicolor film of 1945 \u2014 in which the young Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Chopin (Cornel Wilde) provides background music for a banquet hosted by Count Wyszynska in his Warsaw palace, plates of rubbery pig and candy-colored vegetables in heady supply. Chopin plays his own Fantaisie-Impromptu, five years or so before composing it, and then, having insulted the Russian governor of Poland (\u2018I do not play for czarist butchers!\u2019), he avoids arrest by hastily rowing to Paris, so it seems, dressed like a military cadet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our real-life hero has borne an awful lot since his premature death in 1849, though this particular film \u2014 with its mushy soundtrack, red-cheeked wholesomeness and hateful portrayal of the brilliant George Sand \u2014 is a definite nadir. A Song to Remember <\/em>was not even the only picture on this very subject in these decades: the same troop of characters grimaces its way through Henry Roussel\u2019s silent film La valse de l\u2019adieu<\/em> (1928), released nine years after the Germans had first raised their flag with Nocturno der Liebe<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It seems at the very least ironic that a figure as blurry as Chopin during his lifetime should be brought into keen focus following his death. Probably it\u2019s this very blurriness that encourages such ventures: documentation can be imagination\u2019s most unforgiving suitor, after all. So people continue to foist on Chopin their own fantasies and desires, some more lurid than others. And in the same way that the meaning of Chopin and his music has shifted in the 170 years since his death, so too have depictions of him in popular culture mutated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nor is it simply in popular culture. The implementation of railway lines throughout Europe during Chopin\u2019s lifetime initiated a slow homogenization in the perception and performance of his music \u2014 a process intensified by recordings in the next century, and the internet in the one that followed. Yet before this homogeneity there were fiercely delineated national schools of Chopin playing: the Russian Anton Rubinstein\u2019s approach to Chopin \u2014 monumental, muscular, imperious \u2014 could not be more different from the French Alfred Cortot\u2019s wayward, intimate readings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Annik LaFarge<\/a> shares none of Vidor\u2019s license or excesses, none of Roussel\u2019s silent-film theatrics. The clue is in her subtitle<\/a>, for she has indeed written an intensely personal journey through time, place and politics. Using the March fun\u00e8bre from Chopin\u2019s Piano Sonata No. 2 as a useful companion, LaFarge constructs a sort of travel diary through which to explore what this piece meant to Chopin (politics and place) and what it means today (time). Along the way she takes in jazz players\u2019 riffing on Chopin; Cole Porter\u2019s sucker-punch harmonic juxtapositions; Henry Purcell\u2019s solemn, sparse response to the death of Queen Mary; Andr\u00e9 Gide\u2019s long and ultimately consummated relationship with Chopin and his music (\u2018Chopin proposes, supposes, insinuates, seduces, persuades; he almost never asserts\u2019, which was Chopin\u2019s explanation of how he approached the variations in Beethoven\u2019s Sonata No. 12); contemporary video games; political subjugation and revolution; the fate of Paderewski\u2019s heart (mirroring that of Chopin\u2019s, though the parallel is left unexplored in this text, a curious omission); and the sheer audacity of Sand\u2019s one-of-a-kindness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LaFarge is weighty (and great) on the importance and singularity of Chopin\u2019s friend and patron Astolphe de Custine, though she\u2019s not right on the significance of the small local piano Chopin had with him in his primitive quarters in Majorca. (Though LaFarge is streets ahead of Vidor, who places Chopin and Sand in an opulent Majorcan villa, replete with gold candlesticks, beautiful tapestries, a gilt-detailed piano and heavy drapes.) It\u2019s certainly true that for a few weeks before Chopin dispatched the manuscripts of the Sonata, the Preludes and a few more things besides he had access to the Pleyel instrument that had made its way reluctantly from Paris to Majorca, yet in the months prior \u2014 the time in which he chipped away at these astonishing pieces \u2014 he worked methodically (his wont) on the local piano.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other quibbles? Well there\u2019s a scene in which a young pianist inside these same quarters communes a little too emotionally with his hero. Also, it remains unclear whether it was Chopin or Sand who suggested they make their relationship chaste, so LaFarge\u2019s assertion that it was the latter is at best half true. Yet mostly she has a good eye and ear for her subject, choosing her anecdotes with care. When J\u00f3zef Elsner, the young Chopin\u2019s teacher, is asked why he gives his pupil such a free hand, he replies: \u2018Leave him in peace. His is an extraordinary path, for he has an extraordinary gift. He does not follow the old rules, because he seeks those of his own.\u2019 Though this sounds like a corny line from A Song to Remember<\/em>, it actually comes from a letter Elsner wrote to another of his students. We live today with the glorious ramifications of this gentle rebuke.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s a scene early on in A Song to Remember \u2014 Charles Vidor\u2019s clunky Technicolor film of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11617,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-letters-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lediemchihue.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/10.jpeg?fit=730%2C486&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7bhGG-31m","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lediemchihue.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lediemchihue.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lediemchihue.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lediemchihue.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lediemchihue.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11616"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lediemchihue.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11616\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11618,"href":"https:\/\/lediemchihue.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11616\/revisions\/11618"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lediemchihue.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lediemchihue.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lediemchihue.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lediemchihue.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}