Chopin. Adam Zamoyski
at the bottom of the list of performers simply as ‘Herr Chopin – pianist’. He played his E minor Concerto as a piano solo and passed unnoticed. His only other public appearance in Vienna took place on 11 June, when he played the same piece. ‘I feel so indifferent about it that I would not care if it never took place…’ he wrote in his diary before the concert, for he had long before this shed his sanguine hopes of a couple of triumphal months in Vienna.24 At least this time he was mentioned in the press, which called him a ‘sincere worshipper of true art’.25
In the circumstances, there seemed little point in prolonging his sojourn, and he wrote to his parents asking whether he should go to Italy straight away: ‘Please write and tell me what I should do.’26 Nicolas Chopin refused to make up his son’s mind for him, so after a few weeks Chopin wrote to Matuszyński. ‘My parents tell me to make up my own mind, but I am afraid to,’ he wrote. ‘Should I go to Paris? People here advise me to wait a little longer. Should I come back? Should I stay herę Should I kill myself? Should I stop writing letters to you? You tell me what to do!’27
As nobody told him what to do, he lingered in Vienna. He took every opportunity to hear a new work or a new musician, went to the opera every time the programme changed, and cultivated other musicians. Amongst these were two whose acquaintance he found particularly rewarding and who undoubtedly contributed to the development of his ideas at this crucial stage.
One was Joseph Merk, the first cellist in the Imperial Orchestra and a teacher at the Vienna Conservatoire, with whom Chopin spent much time playing duets. Chopin had a particular affection for the cello, the only instrument aside from the piano for which he wrote memorable music, and with Merk’s help he composed an Introduction to the Polonaise for Cello and Piano he had written at Antonin in 1829. They were published together later that year by Mechetti as op.3, dedicated to Merk.
The other friend Chopin made at this time was the violinist Josef Slavik, four years his senior and already a virtuoso. ‘Apart from Paganini, I have never heard anything like it,’ he wrote, ‘ninety-six staccato notes with one stroke of the bow; incredible!’28 Chopin’s high opinion of his new friend was shared by Paganini himself, and had Slavik not died two years later, he would certainly have made a name for himself. Chopin and Slavik spent whole afternoons playing together, and intended to write a set of variations for piano and violin on a theme by Beethoven. Chopin is known to have been working on the Adagio at one moment, but no trace of it survives.
Chopin’s output during the Vienna period was strongly marked by the uncertainties of his position. With the Valse Brillante (op.18), the Five Mazurkas (op.7) and other pieces which are pretty and relatively easy to play, he was probably trying to cater to the Viennese market. This does not mean that the pieces are in any sense trivial. The Mazurkas are something of a breakthrough, along with the Études he was working on, in the process of divesting himself of the more superficial characteristics of the brilliant style.
The situation in Poland also affected his output. Now that Matuszyński, Tytus, Fontana and other friends had taken the field with the Polish army, Chopin longed to unite himself with them at least in spirit. ‘Oh, why can I not be with you, why can I not at least be your drummer-boy!!!’ he wrote to Matuszyński after Christmas.29 On another occasion, he spoke of trying ‘somehow to grasp and capture those songs whose shattered echoes still drift here and there on the banks of the Danube – the songs that Jan’s army sang’. (A reference to King Jan Sobieski’s relief of Vienna in 1683.)30
He set more of Witwicki’s poems to music, but in a letter expressing his gratitude, Witwicki suggested that Chopin make a weightier contribution to the cause by writing a national opera. The propaganda value of an opera based on some theme from Polish history being staged in European capitals would be immense, for opera at that time attracted a broader audience than any other cultural genre. ‘The mountains, forests, waters and meadows have their own inner voice, though not every soul can hear it,’ Witwicki wrote. ‘I am convinced that a Slav opera, conceived by a true talent, by a composer who thinks and feels, will one day rise in the musical world like a brilliant new sun.’31 Chopin was not averse to the idea in principle, and his godfather Count Skarbek had even sketched out a couple of libretti for him.
But as he struggled on with larger works – a third piano concerto, a concerto for two pianos and orchestra, the variations for piano and violin, and the Grande Polonaise Brillante (op.22), the last piece he ever wrote for the orchestra – he found the work increasingly taxing. At the same time he was working on his first set of Études, and on two works which belong amongst his greatest: the Scherzo in B minor (op.20) and the Ballade in G minor (op.23), the Ballade being the first piece he wrote in this form, his own invention. And it is these which announce Chopin’s ultimate aim.
Although he had already composed some of the greatest music in the Romantic canon, he was still searching for a way forward. It was his work on the Études, lasting from 1829 to 1832, that, more than anything else, allowed him to develop his groundbreaking ideas, to revolutionise piano playing and to achieve new depths of sound and feeling with his instrument. He abandoned all thoughts of composing an opera and further orchestral works. He would henceforth do exactly what Witwicki suggested, but with the piano as sole medium. As he drew further away from his native land, he strove more and more to recapture its essence and that of its people in his work.
By mid-May Chopin had at last decided to continue his tour. Italy being still troubled by revolutionary unrest, Paris seemed the obvious next stop. The situation in Poland was encouraging, as the Poles had won the first round of military operations, and he no longer needed to feel anxiety for his family. Having made a firm decision to leave Vienna, however, he found himself beset by a multitude of difficulties. Quailing at the prospect of a journey on his own, Chopin had found himself a travelling companion, a young man called Norbert Kumelski, but the latter promptly fell ill and their departure was delayed by several weeks. When Kumelski had recovered, Chopin was informed by the Vienna police that his passport had been mislaid and that he must obtain a new one from the Russian Embassy (he was formally a Russian subject, and passports, both internal and external, were already obligatory in that state). After a few more weeks the police found his original passport, but the Russian Embassy would not endorse it for travel to Paris, which was considered a hotbed of revolutionary activity, so he pretended he would only be passing through on his way to London. Having successfully negotiated the Russian bureaucracy, Chopin and Kumelski now came up against the Austrian: there was a cholera epidemic sweeping through central Europe, and health certificates were required in order to travel.
Chopin took advantage of these delays to see the remaining sights and attractions of Vienna, and went on a pilgrimage to the Kahlenberg Heights where King Jan Sobieski had pitched camp and heard Mass before riding down to do battle with the Turks in 1683. He plucked a leaf from the spot and sent it to his sister Izabela for her album. The delays and the uncertainty enervated him, and his mood swung violently. ‘I don’t lack anything – except perhaps a little more life, more spirit; I feel weary, and then sometimes I feel as merry as I used to at home,’ he wrote to his parents. ‘When I feel sad I usually go to Mrs Szaszek’s, where I always find several Polish ladies whose sincere and comforting words inevitably cheer me up so much that I then start mimicking Austrian generals – this is my new act. You haven’t seen it yet, but those who do always fall about laughing. But then again there are days when you cannot get through to me or squeeze a word out of me. On those days I spend 30 Kreuzers on going to Heitzing or some such place in order to distract myself. I have grown side-whiskers on the right, and they’re nice and bushy. You don’t need them on the left, as you always have the audience on your right.’32
The memory of Konstancja kept cropping up in his thoughts,