Life of Chopin: The Controversial Chopin Biography by Liszt

by Emily E. Hogstad, Interlude

A Mysterious Envelope Arrives.

On 14 November 1849, Ludwika Jędrzejewicz opened an envelope.

Ludwika Chopin Jędrzejewicz

Ludwika Jędrzejewicz was having a bad month. Her marriage was in shambles because she had left Poland to be at her brother Frédéric Chopin’s deathbed.

She had just attended his final illness and funeral and was going through his papers and other personal effects.

She was even preparing to smuggle his heart in a cognac bottle underneath her coat so it could be buried in Poland.

It turns out that the envelope had been sent by no one other than Franz Liszt.

Inside was a questionnaire full of various inquiries about Chopin’s life. Liszt wanted the answers because he was interested in writing a book about Chopin’s life.

On top of the inconsiderate timing, Liszt had included personal questions about her brother’s love life, such as his multi-year liaison with authoress George Sand.

It is believed that the gesture irritated her – or at the least overwhelmed her. She didn’t know what to do with the envelope, so she gave it to Jane Stirling, the wealthy woman who had been serving as Chopin’s concert agent and secretary and who had subsidised Jędrzejewicz’s travels and Chopin’s large funeral.

The fastidious Jane Stirling returned Liszt’s questionnaire to him, but she brushed over some facts in the process. Ultimately, Liszt never used Stirling’s answers.

The First Liszt/Chopin Meetings

Franz Liszt in 1870

Franz Liszt had known Chopin for many years.

We don’t know when exactly they met, but in December 1831, Chopin wrote a letter to his best friend back in Poland suggesting that he had met Liszt. Liszt would have been twenty and Chopin almost twenty-two at the time.

A few months later, Liszt was in the audience for Chopin’s Parisian debut, which happened at the Salle Pleyel in February 1832.

“We remember his first appearance in the salons of Pleyel, where the most enthusiastic and redoubled applause seemed scarcely sufficient to express our enchantment for the genius which had revealed new phases of poetic feeling and made such happy yet bold innovations in the form of musical art,” Liszt wrote years later in his biography. 

Frédéric Chopin

The two young men became friends and eventually near-neighbours, living a few blocks apart.

They also made a splash performing together in Paris. (Their debut as a duo happened in 1833 at a benefit concert for the bankrupt Harriet Smithson, the actress who Hector Berlioz had written his Symphonie Fantastique and who had since become his fiancée.)

However, they went through their rough patches, too. In 1835, Liszt asked Chopin if he could borrow his apartment while Chopin was away. Chopin agreed. When he returned home, he found out that Liszt had used it for an amorous encounter with the great pianist Camille Marie Pleyel, who had just separated from her husband on account of her infidelities.

On a professional note, there was a certain amount of jealousy, too. Chopin once wrote to a friend, “I should like to rob [Liszt] of the way he plays my studies.” However, he also protested against the way that Liszt added improvisatory elements to a performance of one of his nocturnes. Chopin was so upset that Liszt had to apologise. 

Liszt and Chopin’s Romantic Interests

Portrait of Marie d’Agoult by Henri Lehmann, 1843

In 1836, Liszt and his lover, the Countess Marie d’Agoult, hosted a party that would prove fateful to Chopin.

The countess was a great fan of Chopin and extended an invitation to him. She also invited another friend, the radical writer Aurore Dupin, better known by her pen name George Sand, who was arguably the most popular writer in Europe.

Although Chopin was initially put off by the strong-willed Sand, the two eventually fell in love and were a couple for ten years.

Not long after Chopin and Sand paired up, Liszt and the Countess Marie d’Agoult had a protracted and acrimonious breakup.

His next long-term partner was a woman named Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein, an unhappily married noblewoman who fell in love with Liszt and remained his partner for forty years. Sayn-Wittgenstein was an extremely prolific author and letter writer, and she encouraged Liszt to also focus on writing, both prose and music.

The Origins of the Chopin Biography

Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein

It is believed that after Chopin’s death, Liszt and Sayn-Wittgenstein worked together on the manuscript of the Chopin biography.

The biography began appearing in installments in La France Musicale in 1851.

It turns out that the book was a bit of a disaster. The worshipful Jane Stirling, for one, wasn’t satisfied with how Liszt had described her former boss’s musicianship.

Meanwhile, his Polish friends and family were upset that a non-Pole had published a biography before them, gotten the subtleties of Chopin’s Polish identity wrong, and sucked up all the oxygen in the room when it came to the subject of a Chopin biography. It would be difficult, they believed, for a work by one of them to be taken more seriously than one by Franz Liszt, the internationally renowned musical celebrity…and they were probably right.

George Sand offered her measured thoughts about Liszt’s biography of her ex: “a little exuberant in style but filled with good things and very beautiful pages,” she allowed.

In 1879, Liszt and Sayn-Wittgenstein returned to the project, creating an even longer version, this time, with additional emphasis on Polish politics and identity.

Sayn-Wittgenstein was apparently the driver behind many of the changes, and unfortunately the changes – and her turgid writing style generally – has proven to be unpopular with modern scholars and historians. 

The Biography’s Legacy

Life of Chopin by Franz Liszt

Of course, given Liszt’s fame, some of the facts in his biography were distributed in other later biographies.

One of the ideas that gained traction was Chopin’s perceived aristocratic nature.

For instance, it was reported in Liszt’s book that Chopin’s education had been financed by Prince Radziwill (it had not been) and that the friends who he spent the most time with were members of the Polish aristocracy (they were not).

Conclusion

Today, the historians brave enough to wade into the messy, complicated subject of Liszt’s Chopin biography generally believe that while the biography is a helpful document for understanding how Liszt and his Parisian contemporaries viewed Chopin, there’s much about it that’s misleading or even flat-out wrong.

That said, as long as you keep all of that in mind, it’s definitely worth a read, as the English translation has long been in the public domain. So why don’t you download a copy and see what you think?

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.