by Emily E. Hogstad

It’s one of the most romanticized love affairs in music history: dashing cross-dressing woman novelist George Sand becomes obsessed with, and then seduces, the sickly consumptive pianist-composer Frédéric Chopin.

But how much of this story is real, and how much of it is just mythologizing?

Today we are looking at the real story behind the love affair between George Sand and Frédéric Chopin.

George Sand’s Childhood and Marriage

George Sand

Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin de Francueil was born on 1 July 1804 in Paris.

As a girl, she lived with her grandmother at the family manor house in Nohant, roughly three hundred kilometers from Paris.

In 1821, her grandmother died, and Aurore inherited the manor. The house at Nohant became a home base for her throughout her life.

In 1822, at the age of eighteen, Dupin married a man named Casimir Dudevant, whose biggest accomplishment in life ended up being George Sand’s ex.

They had two children together: a son named Maurice in 1823 and a daughter named Solange in 1828. (That said, Solange’s paternity is questioned.)

After almost a decade, the marriage deteriorated. Mrs. Dudevant left her husband in 1831 and, scandalously, began seeing other men. In 1835, she separated from him legally and took custody of her two young children.

George Sand’s Writing Career

In her twenties, the former Mrs. Dudevant embarked on romantic relationships with a wide variety of accomplished artistic men, including novelist Jules Sandeau, writer Prosper Mérimée, dramatist Alfred du Musset, and others. (She also developed intense romantic feelings for actress Marie Dorval. The two would remain friends for the rest of their lives.)

The former Mrs. Dudevant’s writing career began in the early 1830s, when she began collaborating on stories with her lover Jules Sandeau. They signed their joint efforts “Jules Sand.”

It quickly became obvious that she was a very talented writer. In 1832, at the age of twenty-eight, she wrote a novel on her own and published it under the pseudonym George Sand.

It wasn’t long before this divorced mother of two was one of the most respected authors in Europe. Her work was actually more popular in England than either Hugo’s or Balzac’s!

As her career progressed, she didn’t restrict herself to just novels: she also wrote literary criticism, theatrical works, political commentary (she was a socialist), and more.

The Meeting of George Sand and Frédéric Chopin

Josef Danhauser: Franz Liszt Fantasizing at the Piano

Apparently, Sand was intrigued by Chopin even before they met. It is believed she encouraged their mutual friend Franz Liszt to arrange an introduction.

On 24 October 1836, in the salon of fellow author (and Liszt’s mistress) Marie d’Agoult, George Sand and Frédéric Chopin met each other for the first time.

Chopin was initially repulsed by Sand, reportedly asking Liszt, “Is she really a woman?”

Despite this rocky first impression, Sand still remained intrigued by him.

It seems they were not close before 1838. In May of that year, she asked a mutual friend in a letter if he was still engaged (at one point, he had been betrothed to his former pupil Maria Wodzińska). If so, Sand wrote, she would back off. However, it turns out that the relationship with Wodzińska was well and truly over.

It’s unclear exactly how, but eventually Chopin and Sand became friends, and then lovers. 

Their Trip to Majorca

To celebrate their new partnership, Sand planned a trip to Majorca, Spain, over the winter of 1838. She was hopeful that the change in climate would help Chopin’s declining health.

The trip started off on a high note. “The sky is like turquoise, the sea is like emeralds, the air as in Heaven,” he wrote in a letter.

Chopin ended up composing some of his best-known works in Majorca, including his 24 Preludes. The work tied most closely to this place in time is undoubtedly the Raindrop Prelude, said to be inspired by the rain dripping off the eaves of their lodgings.

Frédéric Chopin: Prelude in D flat major Op. 28 No. 15 

The trip became a struggle when, as the Raindrop Prelude suggests, the winter weather turned damp. Instead of improving, his health deteriorated. The couple’s gloomy accommodations didn’t help matters: they had sought refuge in a deserted monastery in Valldemossa.

Soon Catholic locals began viewing the unmarried divorcée and her invalid partner with suspicion. The couple’s reputation grew even worse when rumors spread that Chopin’s cough would spread communicable disease. In the end, the locals grew so impossible to work with that Sand was eventually forced to lug a handcart to the capital city of Palma just to load up on basic supplies.

Their nightmare came to an end ten weeks after they arrived, but unfortunately their return voyage to Barcelona occurred during rough seas, and Chopin suffered from seasickness on the way home.

Life in France

Portrait of Frédéric Chopin and George Sand by Eugène Delacroix

A much more agreeable destination turned out to be Sand’s country home in Nohant. Chopin and Sand settled into a schedule of spending half the year in Nohant and the other half in Paris (albeit in separate apartments).

Although they never officially moved in together full-time, in 1842, they did take the step of renting adjacent apartments.

Chopin ended up writing many great works at Nohant. Today the home is a museum. 

The Breakup

So why did these two titans of the Romantic Era break up?

One blow was Sand’s novel Lucrezia Floriani, which starred a sickly Eastern European prince being cared for by Lucrezia, the protagonist. The Polish Chopin grew increasingly resentful of this particular creative choice, feeling that his health troubles had become nothing but grist for Sand’s creative mill.

A second blow came when Chopin sided with Sand’s daughter, Solange, in various fierce mother-daughter arguments. Sand interpreted Chopin’s loyalty to Solange as his being in love with her. It didn’t help matters that Sand’s other child, Maurice, didn’t like Chopin, either.

Ultimately, after almost a decade together, the two great artists split up for good.

On July 28, 1847, Sand wrote to him: “Goodbye, my friend. May you soon be cured of all your ills, as I hope that now you may be…. If you are, I will offer thanks to God for this fantastic ending of a friendship which has, for nine years, absorbed both of us. Send me your news from time to time. It is useless to think that things can ever again be the same between us.”

Backlash to the Breakup

Sand herself predicted the backlash that would come: “His own particular circle will, I know, take a very different view [of the breakup],” she wrote. “He will be looked upon as a victim, and the general opinion will find it pleasanter to believe that I, in spite of my age, have got rid of him in order to take another lover…” Her predictions about public opinion turned out to be cannily accurate.

It’s also noteworthy that their relationship is often boiled down – wrongly – as one between nurse and caretaker. In his own writings, Liszt, for whatever reason, enjoyed emphasizing Chopin’s weakness and medical troubles, and therefore Sand’s role as his patient helper. However, Sand seemed to chafe against the idea. The relationship was simply more complex than that. She wrote of the Majorca disaster, “It was quite enough for me to handle, going alone to a foreign country with two children…without taking on an additional emotional burden and a medical responsibility.”

Sand and Chopin’s Final Meeting

Both Chopin and Sand left accounts of their final meeting. Comparing them is fascinating.

“I saw him again briefly in March 1848,” Sand wrote in her autobiography. “I clasped his trembling, icy hand. I wanted to talk to him; he vanished. It was my turn to say he no longer loved me.”

Chopin, on the other hand, wrote a longer account in a March 1848 letter to Solange: “Yesterday… I met your Mother in the doorway of the vestibule….” He asked whether Sand had any news about Solange, and let Sand know that Solange had had a baby, since mother and daughter weren’t on good terms at the time. He “bowed and went downstairs.” Then he decided he had more to say, so he asked a servant to bring her to him again. They talked some more. “She asked me how I am; I replied that I am well, and asked the concierge to open the door.”

Chopin died a little more than a year later. Sand opted not to attend his funeral. She lived many more years and wrote many more books.

Despite that tragic end to their love affair – or maybe because of it – George Sand and Frédéric Chopin remain one of the most iconic couples of the Romantic Era.

Pianists and Their Composers: Chopin

by Frances Wilson, Interlude

The music of Frédéric Chopin is perennially popular – it has never lost its universal appeal and Chopin remains one of the greatest composers for the piano. Virtuosic, imaginative, and emotionally profound, Chopin’s music offers pianists a wealth of expressivity, requiring a combination of superior technique, which always serves the music (rather than as an end in itself), refined touch, a beautiful cantabile (singing) tone, highly nuanced dynamic shading, supple phrasing and rubato, and an appreciation of the interior architecture of this multi-layered music. Chopin is also symbolic of Poland, the country of his birth, whose musical idioms are evident in almost all his music, most obviously, the Mazurkas and Polonaises.

Frédéric Chopin

When asked, the great Chopin player Arthur Rubinstein could not explain why Chopin’s music spoke to him, but like the music of J.S. Bach (which Chopin greatly admired and studied), it expresses universal humanity which, combined with a certain vulnerability, speaks to so many of us, and on many different levels.

Arthur Rubinstein

Arthur Rubinstein

“When the first notes of Chopin sound through the concert hall there is a happy sign of recognition. All over the world men and women know his music. They love it. They are moved by it. When I play Chopin I know I speak directly to the hearts of people.”

An unrivalled authority and one of the greatest interpreters of the music of Chopin, Rubinstein brought great dignity and refinement to the music, avoided unnecessary mannerisms and sentimentality, and revealed the structural logic of Chopin’s writing. His playing is memorable for its elegant vocal phrasing, beauty of tone, and natural yet sophisticated shaping.

Arthur Rubinstein Plays Chopin’s Polonaise in A Flat Major, Op.53 

Dinu Lipatti

Dinu Lipatti playing at his last recital © Michel Meusy

“A master of the keyboard” (Harold C Schonberg), Dinu Lipatti was the pupil of an older Chopin master, Alfred Cortot.

Lipatti’s immaculate performances of the waltzes, in particular, are spontaneous, light and nimble, lyrical and suitably dancing, with subtle rubato and great charm.

Maria João Pires

Maria João Pires © classicosdosclassicos.mus.br

“It’s very inner music and very deep,” Maria João Pires has said of Chopin. For her, he is “the deep poet of music”. That depth is really evident in Pires’ playing of the Nocturnes – intimate, refined and passionate, her interpretations eschew drawing room night-time sentimentality and capture all the drama and emotional intensity of these much-loved pieces.

Maurizio Pollini

Maurizio Pollini

Described by one critic as “the greatest Chopin player to have emerged from Italy since the Second World War”, Maurizio Pollini’s association with Chopin goes right back to the beginning of his professional career when he won the Chopin Competition in Warsaw when he was just 18. His unsentimental, cultivated interpretations are notable for their clarity of expression, perfectly judged poetry, and close attention to the bel canto melodic lines which make Chopin’s music so immediately appealing.

Alfred Cortot

Alfred Cortot © Commentary

Cortot is one of the most celebrated Chopin interpreters, combining flawless technique with a deep appreciation of the structure, voicing, and textures of Chopin’s music. His recordings are acclaimed to this day, and his detailed, annotated editions of Chopin’s music remain highly prized among pianists and teachers.

Janina Fialkowska

Janina Fialkowska

Hailed by her mentor Arthur Rubinstein as “a born Chopin interpreter”, Polish-Canadian pianist Janina Fialkowska captures the soul of Chopin, in particular in her performances of the Mazurkas, works which reveal Chopin’s patriotism and innermost sentiments towards his homeland. Fialkowska is sensitive to both the humble, peasant origins of the Mazurka and Chopin’s elevation of the genre into concert pieces. She really captures the poetry, poignancy, and whimsical emotions of these Polish folk dances, and her rubato is perfectly judged, especially important in these pieces where suppleness of pace lends greater emphasis to the emotional depth of the music.

A new piece by Chopin has been discovered after almost 200 years

28 October 2024, 13:09 | Updated: 29 October 2024, 10:53

Chopin. Picture: Alamy

By Will Padfield

Star pianist Lang Lang has given the first performance of the previously unheard Chopin waltz. 

An unknown waltz by Frédéric Chopin has been discovered in a library in New York, leading to an outpouring of excitement across the classical music world.

According to the New York Times, Robinson McClellan was sorting through a collection of cultural memorabilia in the vault of the Morgan Library and Museum in Manhattan when he found a pockmarked manuscript the size of an index card with a distinctive name written on the top write corner: Chopin.

He shared a photo of his discovery with Jeffrey Kallberg, a leading Chopin scholar at the University of Pennsylvania.

“My jaw dropped,” Kallberg told the Times. “I knew I had never seen this before.” 

After a thorough analysis of the paper, ink, handwriting and musical style, the Morgan Museum has concluded that the work is indeed an unknown waltz by the great Polish composer. The momentous discovery is the first of its kind in more than half a century.

Frederic Chopin by Wodzinska. Picture: Alamy

As reported in the New York Times, the manuscript is dated between 1830 and 1835, when Chopin was in his early 20s, and the music differs in many ways from the composer’s usual style.

Though believed to be complete, the work is shorter than Chopin’s other waltzes – only 48 measures long with a repeat, or about 80 seconds. The piece, in the key of A minor, has unusual dynamic markings, including a triple forte, signifying maximum volume, near the start.

Star pianist Lang Lang has given the first performance of the work. Picture: Getty

The star pianist Lang Lang, who has recently recorded the waltz for the Times at Steinway Hall in Manhattan has said the work felt like Chopin to him. The jarring opening, he said, evokes the harsh winters of the Polish countryside.

“This is not the most complicated music by Chopin,” he told the publication, “but it is one of the most authentic Chopin styles that you can imagine.”

Watch the first performance via The New York Times here.

Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849) “I Tell My Piano the Things I Used to Tell You”

by Georg Predota, Interlude

As we commemorate the passing of Frédéric Chopin on 17 October 1849, we are once again reminded that he was one of the greatest pianists the world has ever known. But what is more, Chopin also left the finest body of music for his instrument. “In my music,” he once remarked, “one can divine the restlessness of the artist.”

Chopin’s romantic intensity was amply reflected in his music, which combined a gift for melody, an adventurous harmonic sense, an intuitive understanding of formal design, and a brilliant piano technique. He started his career as a pianist but abandoned concert life early on to explore the expressive and technical characteristics of the instrument. Chopin, more so than any other composer of his day, went on a journey of infinite discovery. 

Formative Years

Frédéric Chopin in 1849

The biography of Chopin’s early years is pretty well established, as he was born in Żelazowa Wola and grew up in Warsaw. He clearly was a child prodigy and started giving public concerts at the age of 7. Remarkably, around this time, he also started to compose by focusing on polonaises, variation sets, and rondos. The Chopin scholar Jim Samson writes, “these works show the influence of the brilliant style of post-Classical pianism associated with composers such as Hummel, Weber, Moscheles, and Kalkbrenner.” 

The young composer managed in a very short time to assimilate many of the standard gestures and figuration, and he already created pieces of considerable accomplishments. It has often been suggested that Chopin’s unique sound world emerged fully formed from the start, yet much of his idiomatic figurations are closely modelled on common devices used by pianist-composers. The young Chopin was clearly preparing himself for a career on the concert platforms and salons of Europe’s cultural capitals. 

Warsaw

Manor house in Żelazowa Wola, Chopin’s birthplace

The young pianist-composer also looked toward the traditional music of the Mazovian plains of central Poland, encoding the rhythmic and modal patterns and the characteristic melodic intonations in his early mazurkas. Although he had some personal contacts with Polish folk music, Chopin mediated the genre through salon dance pieces and the world of the traditional folk ensemble. As Samson writes, “At a very early stage, Chopin made this genre his own, and even the earliest efforts project the unmistakable character of the mature mazurka.” 

To complete his years of apprenticeship, Chopin started a process of radically reworking the forms, procedures, and materials drawn from the Viennese Classical composers. We find his first Piano Sonata Op. 4 and the Piano Trio Op. 8. However, the two major works of the last Warsaw periods are the piano concertos, the first extended compositions that established a place in the repertory.

A critic commented on Op. 11 as follows, “On the whole, the work was brilliant and well written but without any particular originality or depth except for the main theme and middle second of the Rondo, which display a unique charm in their peculiar combination of melancholy and light-hearted passages.” 

Paris

Henryk Siemiradzki: Chopin concert

By the time Chopin arrived in Paris in the autumn of 1831, the primary genres of his oeuvre, the mazurka, nocturne, etude, and waltz, were already in place. The mazurka, in particular, now took on some added meaning. Chopin claimed the genre for art music, “investing the salon dance piece with the complexity and sophistication that immediately transcended its peasant origins.”

It becomes a stylised folk idiom, and as Jim Samson writes, “it is fitting that his nationalism should have expressed thus, through the renovation of a simple dance piece rather than through the more usual channels of opera and programmatic reference.”  

Chopin’s engagement with an expressive aesthetic emerged most prominently in the piano nocturne. In fact, it was the genre that launched Chopin’s entire musical career in the fashionable salons of the city. This glimpse into the highly expressive world of Chopin’s music was greatly facilitated by the development of the sustaining pedal, “enabling those wide-spread arpeggiations supporting an ornamental melody which we recognise today as the archetype of the style.”

As such, Chopin was able to draw uniquely delicate and seductive sonorities, extraordinary bel canton elaboration of melody, and rich harmonic subtlety from the instrument. Chopin set the standard with his Op. 9, but already in the Op. 15, it becomes clear that the title “nocturne” could be attached to music of highly varied formal and generic schemes. 

Chopin composed his set of 12 Etudes Op. 10 in Warsaw, Vienna, and his early Paris years. This major achievement turned mundane and boring finger exercises into a veritable art form. Chopin changed the entire meaning of what an etude should actually be. Of course, each one explores a different pianist problem area like arpeggios, scales, crossing fingers and hands, and all kinds of finger busters, but these pianistical problems are encased within musical shapes and ideas that transcended the previous meaning.

The significance of the Chopin Op. 10 is twofold. Chopin clearly transcended the brilliant style and directly confronted virtuosity while showcasing and encapsulating his unique musical style. Chopin achieved a balance between technical and artistic aims, or as Robert Schumann put it, “imagination and technique share dominion side by side.” 

Consolidation

Chopin’s Polonaise autograph score

Chopin’s piano music acquired its characteristic sound through the mazurkas, nocturnes, and etudes. As his personal style matured, Chopin sought to place his conception of melody, figuration, and harmony into more extended forms. We find the result in the 2 Polonaises Op. 26, the first Scherzo, Op. 20, and the first Ballade, Op. 23. For each of these three genres, Chopin followed up with three additional opuses. We also must mention the 24 Preludes of Op. 28, the first set of pieces by that name, which are presented as a cycle of self-contained pieces, each of which can stand alone.

Chopin’s handwriting on his Nocturnes, Op. 62

While Chopin had consolidated some of the genres established during the Vienna and early Paris years in his pre-Nohant years, his relationship with George Sand gave the music a new tranquillity. Working primarily in Nohant during the summer, Chopin composed more deliberately and with a sense of growing self-doubt. Scholars suggest that the early 1840s “have often been described as a turning point in his creative evolution, marked by a renewed interest in counterpoint, by a more sparing and structurally focused ornamentation and by a strengthening command of structure.” 

Eloquent Simplicity

Chopin’s last piano displayed at the Fryderyk Chopin Museum in Warsaw

Chopin had suffered from serious and chronic health problems throughout his short life. In his teens, he suffered from frequent respiratory infections and countless episodes of bronchitis and laryngitis. He suffered through a bout of influenza in 1837, and although his doctor assured him that he was not suffering from tuberculosis, Chopin’s health rapidly deteriorated after 1840, with the composer weighing only 45 kilograms.

An army of doctors tended to his physical ailments, including cough, fever, painful wrists and ankles, haemoptysis, hematemesis and ankle oedema. Chopin’s condition deteriorated further at the beginning of October 1849, and he died on the morning of October 17, 1849, “after having been unconscious for 24 hours.” Despite his constant health struggles, “Chopin reached a new plateau of creative achievement, marked by an eloquent simplicity which severely excludes the extraneous and the gratuitously ornamental.”

11 October: Frédéric Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 1 Was Premiered

by Georg Predota

Frédéric Chopin, 1873

On 22 September 1830, Frédéric Chopin invited all of musical Warsaw to his home for a dress rehearsal of his E-minor Concerto. The rehearsal was enormously successful and a press review announced, “I hasten to bring a piece of good news to all friends of music and of native talent: Frédéric Chopin has completed his second grand piano Concerto. It is a work of genius, original, gracefully conceived with an abundance of imaginative ideas and perfect orchestration. The performance was masterfully executed… and we must add that Mr. Chopin will rob the Warsaw public of great pleasure if he departs without having publically produced this second Concerto.” Glowing accolades none withstanding, let us clear up some possible confusion. The referenced E-minor Concerto was the first of Chopin’s two piano concertos to be published, and it was subsequently given the opus number 11. It was composed immediately after the premiere of the F-minor concerto, which took place on 17 March 1830. This composition was published as his Piano Concerto No. 2 and given the opus number 21. As such, the E-minor concerto was composed and performed second but published first. The public premiere performance took place on 11 October 1830 at the Teatr Narodowy (National Theatre) in Warsaw, Poland, with the composer as the soloist.

Chopin playing piano © reddit

Chopin writes about his performance, “I was not the slightest bit nervous and I played as I play when I am alone. It went well. The hall was full. Goerner’s Symphony came first. Then My highness played the first allegro of the E minor Concerto, which I reeled off on a Streicher piano. The bravos were deafening… It seems to me that I have never been so much at ease when playing with an orchestra. The audience enjoyed my piano playing.” Rising political tensions prevented extended press reviews, and the local newspaper merely describes it as “one of the most sublime of all musical works,” but hardly the ecstatic tribute paid to the F-minor concerto earlier that year. Chopin performed the “Rondo” of the E-minor in Breslau 14 days later, and wrote to his family that the Germans had declared, “How light his touch as a pianist was.” However, Chopin complained, “that there was not a word written about the composition itself.” One local critic, however, “praised the novelty of the form, saying that he had never yet heard anything quite like it. “Perhaps” Chopin opined, “he understood better than any of them.” And a Munich performance in 1831 prompted the reviewer to write, “A lovely delicacy along with a beautiful and individualistic interpretation of the themes was characteristic of his cultivated style. On the whole, the work was brilliant and well written but without any particular originality or depth except for the main theme and middle second of the Rondo, which display a unique charm in their peculiar combination of melancholy and light-hearted passages.”

François-Joseph Fétis

Once the E-minor concerto had made its way to Paris, François-Joseph Fétis, one of the most influential music critics of the 19th century writes, “M. Chopin performed a concerto that caused as much astonishment as pleasure because of the novelty of its melodic ideas as well as its figuration, modulations, and form in general. His melodies are soulful, his keyboard writing imaginative, and originality prevails throughout. But mixed in with the qualities I have just identified are such weaknesses as over-rich modulations and a disordered succession of phrases, so that sometimes one had the impression of listening to an improvisation rather than composed music.” These early reviews decidedly colored the reception of the E-minor Concerto in the early twentieth century.

Frédéric Kalkbrenner, 1829

James Huneker dismissed it claiming “not Chopin at his very best,” and specifically writing on the E-minor he observed that “the first movement is too long, too much in one set of keys, and the working out section too much in the nature of a technical study.” And Donald Francis Tovey writes in the 1930’s that “the first movement of the E minor is built on a suicidal plan,” suggesting that it lacked “an essential element of harmonic contract and was therefore deficient from a structural point of view.” Critics initially might also have been guided by the dedication of the E-minor concerto to Frédéric Kalkbrenner, who was after all in the running to become Chopin’s teacher in Paris. However, today we understand that Chopin used virtuosity of differentiated intensity, inviting fluid interpretation and expression from his most technical writing. As has been observed, the E-minor concerto derives its “energy and momentum not from the contract of tonal centers, but from the contrast of lyric and virtuosic sections in the piano writing.”