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Franz Liszt and Frederic Chopin’s friendship Part 1

Frederyk Chopin
 
I’m a long time fan of Chopin’s music since when I was a teenager. Started loving his music from hearing his Polonaise, then Noctunes, Etudes





Frederyk Chopin

I was using one of Chopin’s Nocturnes as my background music for my answering machine when I was in my 20s.

In Japan, many of his music is famous and used in many TV dramas, commercials, movies, and mostly wealthy bourgeois family scenes.
My image of many of Chopin’s music that I’ve listened to is of a cozy, bourgeois world. From almost all his music I’ve ever heard, I often pictured an elegant, wealthy family’s world or a story about a family who are living in a luxury antique style house.

Many of Mozart’s music reminds me of a social life in an older generation, a story about bourgeois world in a gorgeous luxury palace.

For Liszt’s music, his music is very variety, ranging from an image of a sweet passionate love story for couples, all the way to nightmare horror story type of music, and for this wide range of styles of music, I think the only way to describe Liszt’s music is to describe each of his compositions individually.
I feel it also shows their own world and personalities from their music.

There must be many more Chopin’s music I’ve never listened to, so I can’t definitely say that all his music will give me same impression or not, but most of his famous music are already familiar to me since as I said earlier, many of his music are used in so many occasions, movies, TV drama, TV commercials, etc..

So for a while I’m taking a break from his music right now but it will never change that he is one of my all time favorite composers. 




 
Franz Liszt
 

Since I started getting into Franz Liszt’s life and music, there are many discoveries about Liszt and Chopin’s friendships which I never knew.




Franz Liszt

Although I knew them, I never checked their life stories and their friendships until recently.

We are ordering Franz Liszt’s long bio books written by Allan Walker now, and look forward to reading them. 


Until then, from what I have researched so far, the impressions I have about them are the following :

I’ve read about that similar frequency level spirits are often attracted each other,
And in Liszt and Chopin’s case, both are amazing geniuses, and kind-hearted,
but with different personalities.

Many people who have ever read about their bio have said that Chopin and Liszt are two of the sweetest , most kind-hearted music composers in history.

They were good rivals and also were good friends with each other.

I suppose they also pushed each other to improve even more of their natural talent that they were born with.



It seems to me,

For
Chopin, his composing talent, his creativity sounded effortless, and unlimited. I get the same impression with Tchaikovsky and Saint Saens.

In Chopin’s case, after he imagined the music in his mind, there then followed much effort in writing it down.

His girlfriend, Amantine Dupin ( author name George Sand ), describes scenes where Chopin would be walking in a park, suddenly get inspiration of a complete music composition, and rush home, to make sure he did not forget some of it.

After arriving home, a tedious but determined process of writing the music score for what he had imagined, began.


If he forgot any part of the music, he would pace back and forth, fretting and worrying that he had forever forgotten some beautiful piece of music.

Then, upon, remembering it again, he would rush back to the piano, play it and write the music score.

Chopin, ever being the perfectionist, would not stop this process until every single music note was exactly as he had imagined it.


Sometimes he would shut himself in his room for days, frustrated but determined, breaking pens, going over and over the music score until it was as perfect as he had envisioned it.

For performing in public, when Chopin was healthy, he could hold an audience spellbound.


And although he was a piano playing virtuoso, there were times when he was not feeling healthy or was sick he would sometimes feel frustrated and not able to play how he wanted, and once when he heard Liszt playing his music,
Chopin said -
" How I would like to play my own Etudes the way Liszt plays them"
 

For Liszt, his virtuoso piano playing and performing in concerts are legendary. 

His talent and ability to wow an audience sounds really amazing.


On the other hand, sometimes Liszt may have felt a little envy at Chopin’s seemingly effortless talent at composition.

Liszt said this to Carl Reinecke, composer-conductor, after he had finished playing Chopin's Etude in E major, Op. 10, Liszt said rather sadly,


"I would give four years of my life to have composed those four pages." (1848)
But as Camille Saint Saens also said, Liszt was not only an amazing performer and a pianist but also an absolutely fantastic composer as well.


Just I suppose Liszt felt that his imagination with music coming to his mind was not quite as effortless like Chopin.

However, it’s clear that when Liszt was inspired he could compose music as beautiful and timeless as any.
They both envied each other for what each felt the other may have had more of, or what each felt they didn’t have as much of and what the other had.

They are both very interesting music geniuses. 



Franz Liszt and Frederic Chopin  



Here’s a little bio about each of them and their mutual admiration and frienship.
Chopin was born on 1st March, 1810 in, Zelazowa Wola, Poland.

His father was Nicolas Chopin , a Frenchman from Lorraine, France who had emigrated to Poland in 1787 at the age of sixteen.


While living in Poland, he used the Polish form of his given name, Mikolaj.

Chopin’s mother was a Polish lady, Justyna Krzyżanowska.

Chopin's father played the flute and violin; his mother played the piano and gave piano lessons.


Franz Liszt was born on October 22, 1811, to Marie Anna Lager and Adam Liszt , in the village of Doborjan in the Kingdom of Hungary.

Liszt's father played the piano, violin, cello, and guitar. He had been in the service of Prince Nikolauss II Esterhazy and he knew Haydn, Hummel and Beethoven, personally.


Both Chopin and Liszt grew up in supportive families.

Their parents quickly realized their sons’ unusual talents and made sure that the young prodigies receive the appropriate education and training.

The two families were also willing to make sacrifices in order to support the boys’ talents.


The fathers, Adam Liszt and Mikolaij Chopin, purchased musical instruments, which was expensive under the circumstances in which they lived, and they paid for first-rate private instruction. 

In search of the finest music teachers , Chopin’s family ended up sending the boy to Warsaw to study with Zywny and later Elsner.


These two composers / music teachers, of whom Chopin always spoke with the greatest veneration, shaped his approach to music and his relationship to the arts.

Liszt’s parents spared no expense in their strivings to ensure their brilliant son receive only the finest music instruction.


Liszt thus became the student of Carl Czerny, from whom he learned foundations of music and piano technique that were to last him a lifetime.

Yet if one compares the early years of Liszt and Chopin’s education, Chopin’s schooling could perhaps be said to have been more favorable.



Until the age of twenty he was able to learn and develop in familiar surroundings without interruption or upheaval.

Though his father was French, he always held a passionate attachment to his Polish roots.

He had a thorough knowledge of Polish literature and poetry, as well as Polish folk music.

Liszt, by contrast, was quickly swept up by the lifestyle of a musical prodigy, which made it impossible for him to study or learn anything (except piano performance) like a regular education.



Liszt realized this early on and as a result he became a voracious reader, and became self taught, reading many books, and so despite his lack of a normal education, he was well known as a person with impressively broad knowledge.

From age sixteen Liszt lived in Paris, so French literature and culture played a significant role in shaping his interests.


French quickly became his most natural language of self-expression.

As he had no relatives or friends remaining in Hungary with whom he might have maintained a relationship, the Hungarian language and any sense of Hungarian cultural identity were pushed into the background until the floods of 1838, after which he began to rediscover both his own Hungarian identity and Hungarian folk music.

Chopin and Liszt performed in public as child prodigies and the contemporary press immediately began to compare them.


According to a review printed in the January, 1823 issue of the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung of Leipzig of a concert held by Liszt in Vienna on 1st December, 1822,

“ it seems a young virtuoso has fallen from the heavens, who moves us to the most profound state of wonder, and considering his age, this boy’s performance borders on unbelievable.” 

A few months later a review printed in the Kuryer dla Peci Pilknej of a concert held by Chopin in Warsaw on 24th February, 1823 read,


“After this evening we certainly no longer need envy Vienna for her Hochwohlgeborener Herr Liszt (sic!), since our capital boasts his equal, or perhaps a pianist more perfect: the Hochwohlgeborener Herr Chopin.” 

Liszt and Chopin later met in Paris.
Liszt attended Chopin’s concert of 26th February, 1832. This was Chopin’s first performance in the Salle Pleyel.

From that point on, they often appeared together in concerts and as part of events organized for charity, and their performances were always the center of attention.

Reviews refer to them as the two greatest virtuosos of the day, artists ,


“both of whom have attained the same lofty standard and sense with equal depth the essence of art.” 
 
Both were frequent guests of the famous Parisian salons.


They performed together for prince Adam Czartorisky, perhaps the most important figure of circles of Polish emigrés, in the salon of countess Delfina Potocka, and for the Austrian ambassador to Paris, Antal Apponyi.

As their relationship as friends and fellow artists developed, they always held shared admiration for each other’s talent. 

The letter written by Liszt, Chopin, and Auguste Franchomme to Ferdinand Hiller in June 1833 offers an example of this.


Chopin at one point writes,

“I hardly even know what my pen is scribbling, since at the moment Liszt is playing one of my etudes and distracting my attention from my thoughts. I would love myself to acquire from him the manner in which he plays my [etudes].”


In another famous letter written to Carolyne Sayn-Wittgenstein , twenty-seven years after Chopin’s death,


Liszt wrote,  
“no one compares to him ( Chopin ): he shines lonely, peerless in the firmament of art.” 

In 1835 the relationship between the two artists suffered when, according to anecdote, Liszt used Chopin’s lodgings during his friend’s absence for an affair with Marie Pleyel. 


Chopin was a close friend of Camille Pleyel, Marie’s mother, so Liszt’s conduct left him in a very uncomfortable position.


After Liszt moved to Geneva in the summer of 1835 and then to Italy, the friendship between the two grew a bit more distant.

Changes in their personal lives also did not help make closer ties.

A rivalry began to form between their girlfiriends, Amantine Aurore Lucile Dupin, ( better known by her author nname George Sand ), and Marie d’Agoult, ( otherwise known by her author name Daniel Stern) , and the two women both used the composers as a kind of trump card against each other.

There is an interesting parallel between the lives of George Sand and Daniel
Stern.

They each traveled to an abandoned monastery on a romantic island, Sand to Valldemossa and Stern to Nonnenwerth, with their young lovers, Sand with Chopin, and Liszt with Stern.

When their relationships with the composers had ended, both women wrote novels about their famous romances , taking care to deny all responsibility for any issues, and put themselves in a favorable light.




The biographical information is from the article linked below. Keep in mind, the original article is a translation from Hungarian and may be difficult to read.

http://www.hungarianreview.com/article/liszt_on_chopin

Continue to Part 2.

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