Chopin biography buchserie

Walker explains why the affair eventually fell apart after 6 years. Also, other individuals who played a prominent part in Chopin's life are described by Walker. I can highly recommend this biography to anyone who has an interest in Chopin's life and wants to better understand why he has had such a prominent position in the history of the piano.

Noah Goats. Author 8 books 31 followers.

Chopin biography buchserie

Chopin was perhaps the greatest pianist of his time and he wrote some of the most beautiful music of all time. In this biography, Alan Walker relates his life with respect and care, and he gives us a Chopin who was not only a musical genius, but a likable man who spent much of his life suffering from the tuberculosis that would kill him.

Chopin was, predictably, a child prodigy. Was there any great composer who wasn't? When it comes to composing classical music, you either have it right off the bat, or you're never going to get it all all. He was born and raised in a Poland that was oppressed, occupied, and sometimes torn by violence. Despite living almost his entire adult life in France, he was always a patriot, proud of his Polish heritage and the friend of Polish refugees.

He spent most of his life living as an exile who was dying of tb, but he struggled on, composing one lovely piece of music after another. Walker gives us the story of Chopin's music, but doesn't neglect to tell us about his personal life, which had its interesting moments. The big romance of Chopin's life was with the French writer George Sand.

Sand was quite a character in her own right, wearing men's clothing, smoking big cigars, refusing to be relegated to second class status because of her sex. Chopin was more conservative, but they spent nine happy years together before their relationship abruptly exploded. This is a solid biography for lovers of classical music, or for anyone who is interested in the history of Europe in the first half of the 19th century.

I listened to this in the audiobook format, and it was very well read, although I would have loved it if the audiobook could have incorporated snippits of the relevant music, as some audiobooks about classical composers do. There is a lot of good information in this book about the life of this great composer, but I have to say, if I were not a musician, I would have given up on it.

Any biographer needs to be thorough, and Dr. Walker was that! I enjoyed most of what he had to say, but even for me, the minutiae became a little overwhelming. So I was most surprised to find that he labored over every bit of music he wrote, even sometimes spending weeks on one measure. He was a perfectionist who asked that all of his unpublished music be burned upon his death, because he did not have a chance to go over and over it to make sure it was up to his high standards.

His untimely death at age thirty-nine would have left a treasure-trove of music to be destroyed, had it not been for his sister, who did not allow that to happen, but rather made sure that those yet-to-be-published masterpieces be published. Blessings on your head, my dear! One cannot help but wonder what masterpieces were left unwritten, but we can all thank heaven for the ones we have.

He truly left the world a better place. Andrew H. Walker's biography is lucid and finely written in a literary style without lots of flourishes. His view of Chopin is based on a view that he was a gentle pianist, not given to thunder and over-elaboration, and this is the style adopted, in tribute. Walker is a competent biographer, well able to sort out fiction from fact, with an added dimension-- he is perfectly suited to the task of analysing Chopin's musical achievements.

The only false note in the book is his explanation of the The Preludes and a mistaken notion that they were composed on a quality Pleyel piano: some were and some were not and this has a bearing on the tonal qualities of the pieces. Walker examines the Sand-Chopin relationship rationally, accepting that prime sources are lost: Sand burnt all of her correspondence to Chopin having acquired all of his letters after his death.

This is a sympathetic biography with grace and attention to detail, a masterpiece, superior to much of what appears in this genre today. David Koerner. As a pianist returning to the keyboard later in life, I am perforce returning to Chopin. This is almost certainly the definitive modern biography of Chopin. The meaning and interpretation of Chopin's music is brought into the light of his "Life and Times" as meticulously documented by Alan Walker.

Chopin's music was forged as respite from revolutions, epidemics, and social chaos. The need for such solace has never waned even if styles have changed. Chopin's music has never been more compelling than in this challenging year of and I re-listened to all of it while reading this book. Walker compellingly reveals Chopin the person in a continuing series of crises that extend from his youth to his expatriation and on to his death in The genius and emotional impact of his music was, for me, greatly enhanced by reading this book.

For those not already enamored of or possibly besotted with Chopin's music, this massive book might just get you there. Walker toggles between close readings of some of Chopin's major, and most revolutionary compositions and descriptions of his life and "times". Those without any music training might find the close reading passages difficult, but they are deftly woven into accounts of Chopin's activities beyond the keyboard, whether in his native Poland, France where he came into his fame, and where he diedor Scotland where he performed some of his final concerts.

Walker is especially adept at bringing to life not only Chopin but the composer's family, his many friends and some enemiesand, importantly, his decade-long relationship with the French author George Sand, which though tempestuous was also the period in which he composed most of his greatest works. One quibble is the relative inattention to Chopin's intellectual life that he was agnostic, or at least became so, is something one learns only very late in the book.

But this is a quibble. A fantastic read. Ally Betts. My conclusion is the same at the finish as it was at the start: Fryderyk Chopin was a human in need of a hug! He music continues to captivate us and always will, for in its depths it expresses a man in pain and turmoil. For ages to come, we will always be able to relate. His life was a continuous nocturne, a sweet, sorrowful song that rings out in the depths of the night.

Thank you Chopin, and thank you Alan Walker for you marvelous work yet again! Paul Lou. The balance between narrative storytelling and a meta-discussion on the uncertain facts about Chopin's life could not be better, and the musicology was amazing. There were several Chopin pieces that, when put into the context of Chopin's life, felt incredibly more meaningful.

This book is a must read for any Chopin lover. I highly recommend listening to a performance of the compositions as they chronologically arise in the narrative. Rachel L. Fascinating look at the life, times, and music of one of my favorite composers. Biography, history and music analysis. An excellent biography, researched well and in depth.

It seems that, as historical figures fall further back into the past, we lose touch with their humanity. Particularly with Chopin, whose esteemed reputation has also helped to render him somewhat impenetrable as a biographical subject. Putting his work in its time and place helps to appreciate the music and associate it with the living, breathing human being responsible for bringing it into existence.

Certainly in its time it was a plaything for the rich, inaccessible to the vast majority of people; but that is more of a social commentary than a criticism of Chopin himself, who was simply born in 19th century Poland and had to get on with his life. Nathan Hatch. What I liked Understanding Chopin's musical priorities. In a letter to Mikuli, Chopin writes about the effect of bad phrasing: It is as if someone chopin biography buchserie reciting in a language not understood by the speaker, a speech carefully learned by rote, in the course of which the speaker not only neglected the natural quantity of the syllables, but even stopped in the middle of words.

The pseudo-musician shows in a similar way, by his wrong phrasing, that music is not his mother tongue. Chopin attaches similar importance to quiet dynamics. Of Jenny Lind's dynamics control, he said, "her piano is as smooth and even as a thread of hair. It was once "reported to Chopin that one of the ladies in the audience expressed regret that he looked somewhat unimpressive on the stage.

Doubtless they were used to seeing more 'activity' at the keyboard and Chopin's repose disconcerted them. In the "Chopin and the Keyboard" chapter, Walker points out Chopin's careful attention to fingerings, his limited use of metronome markings, the strong similarities between his piano writing and techniques used by opera singers such as trills and portamentoand the limited range of older pianos which leads some modern performers to modify parts of Chopin's scores.

Other chapters also include interpretive tidbits. This quote from George Sand makes me feel better about how slowly I composed in college: [Chopin's] composing was spontaneous, miraculous. He found ideas without looking for them, without foreseeing them. They came to his piano, sudden, complete, sublime—or sang in his head while he was taking a walk, and he had to hurry and throw himself at the instrument to make himself hear them.

But then began a labor more heartbreaking than I have ever seen. This was a series of efforts, of irresolution and impatience to grasp again certain details of the themes he had heard: what he had conceived as a whole he overanalyzed in putting on paper, and his retreat in not recapturing it whole according to him threw him into a kind of despair.

He shut himself up in his room for whole days, weeping, walking about, breaking his pens, repeating or altering a measure a hundred times, writing it down and erasing it as often, and starting over the next day with a scrupulous and desperate perseverance. He would spend six weeks on one page, only to return to it and write it just as he had on the first draft.

Chopin insisted that his unfinished compositions be burnt after his death, saying, "I have always had a great respect for the public and whatever I have published has always been as perfect as I could make it. In the "Chopin and the Keyboard" chapter, Walker points out several techniques that Chopin didn't include in his compositions. Learning about Chopin's teaching process.

A proud, independent thinker, Chopin stood by his decisions. He accepted some formal instruction: namely, piano lessons at ages 6 to 12 from the parochial teacher Zwyny, and a few years of harmony, counterpoint, and composition instruction from Elsner at the Warsaw High School for Music. After that, he consciously and determinedly forged his own path.

Even on his deathbed, he refused the Catholic last rites, because "For many years he had neglected his Catholic faith and thought it hypocritical to return to its final rituals in his hour of desperation. Model relationships. Mikolaj Chopin is a wonderful father—the kind who could bring out the talents of a son like Fryderyk. Eugeniusz Skrodzki tells us that while living under the guidance of Mikolaj Chopin one was taught to be civilized, to be polite, and to develop good work habits: 'The belief was that if one was not a good human being, whatever awards one possessed were worthless.

Chopin also had a heartwarming friendship with the cellist Auguste Franchomme: They dined often together, enjoyed occasional outings to the theater or the opera, and once made a joint excursion to Enghien-les-Bains to take the waters. Above all, they played chamber music together. Franchomme admired Chopin's nuanced piano playing and found in him a perfect partner, responsive to the inflections in his own performance.

He was one of the pallbearers at Chopin's funeral. Bibliographical details. After arriving at Chopin's death, Walker relates how Chopin's letters and living acquaintances went on to contribute or not contribute to his early biographies. He also explains which parts of those early biographies and letters are still considered reliable sources, and why.

Historical context. The book shows how artists were patronized back then, and the influence of disease, epidemics, and political revolutions. What I didn't like It's rather too long. If you want a book that contains just about every known fact about Chopin, Walker's your guy. For my taste, though, the book is too densely packed with musically irrelevant detail.

I don't care exactly which little towns Chopin visited on his travels, or who he almost met while he was there. In the bibliographical chapter, I do not need a complete chronological review of the scholarly arguments for and against some of Chopin's letters being hoaxes. I made so many highlights that my Kindle eventually bugged out and will not allow me to scroll all the way to the end of my highlights.

Walker's citation format for quotes from letters does not include the addressee of the letter. I'm sure I could eventually figure that out by tracking down the cited work, but that's too much effort. It makes me a bit sad when I'm extremely curious about the addressee, such as for some of Chopin's spicier criticisms of contemporary pianists like Liszt.

He notes that Chopin's Funeral March from the Sonata in B flat minor "would be used to mark [Chopin's] own passing from this vale of tears. I was similarly bemused by Walker's final sentence: "The composer's posthumous Odyssey will meanwhile continue on its journey into the boundless realms of the future, while his music brings pleasure and solace to generations as yet unborn.

But it's clear that Walker really, truly, deeply loves Chopin. Evan Hurley O'Dwyer. This book was a great biography of the great composer. It does the job so well that there seems to be no need for another biography for the time being. Walker artfully blends the events of Chopin's life with musicological examples and discussions of his music.

He brought attention to some references within Chopin's music to some of his other pieces, ones I had never noticed before. Walker is a great scholar and left no stone unturned in his effort to piece together the composer's life. One can't help but feel sad at the story of Chopin's life. There is rarely any moment post adolescence where the spectre of TB is far away.

It is one of the great injustices of music history that he died so young, especially when one considers the majesty of his later compositions, such as the Barcarolle, the Sonata no 3 and the Polonaise-Fantasie. If this were a novel, it would not be a satisfying ending - that the composer die in the middle of such a productive decade. Liszt lived into old age, to a time where he could reflect on his life in it's entirety, whereas Chopin left "in the middle of the play.

If there is any flaw that seems most glaring, it is his general disregard for other people who were devoted to him. He was generally had nothing good to say about many of the composers who he was friends with that adored him in turn. The most glaring example is probably of Liszt - Chopin had many disparaging things to say about him, whereas one gets the impression that Liszt held Chopin in the highest regard.

It also seemed unfair how much work Chopin expected his friend Fontana to carry out copying manuscripts, etc for little in return. The description of his time with George Sand was interesting and the relationship dynamic described is very difficult to define. This book is a very pleasant journey in which we get to know a man who was allowed to develop his own style in his early age, and followed his natural instinct.

To the end, he stayed true to his own style. The style of delicate key touching, and not pounding. Even when he tried to disguise himself with a different name, once he started playing, people knew right away what his real name was. It is a remarkable story of an extraordinary man who was forced into exile, but continued to introduce his genius to the world.

Truly impressive and inspiring story. Adam Zamoyski's biography of the brief but eventful life of the great Romantic composer Frederic Chopin, from Polish child prodigy to Paris dandy, his turbulent relationship with George Sand and his early death, penniless in Paris. Chopin's prodigious talent as a pianist is recognised early on. But despite being lauded as the great nationalist hope in his native Poland, where his polonaises and mazurkas are inspired by the harmonies of Polish folk songs, the teenage Chopin soon becomes stifled by the provincialism of Warsaw.

At 19, he leaves Poland for the temptations of bohemian Paris, never to live in his homeland again. Abridged by Doreen Estall. This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers. Show full review. Douglas Larson. Well I have mixed chopins biography buchserie about it. Author Zamoyski has researched his subject well and he portrays Chopin and those around him clearly.

At various points in the biography Zamoyski relates common public opinion from Chopin's contemporaries as well as opinions of Chopin's biographers and states his own well researched opinion, at times in disagreement with the commonly held belief. So I appreciated the author's clear prose style, thoroughly researched as it was but at the same time I found it somewhat tedious to read and a bit dry because he often goes into great detail about day to day events in the composer's life and sprinkles it liberally with quotes taken from letters of Chopin's friends and contemporaries.

I am glad I have read this none the less, as it gave me a clearer picture of Chopin and his life, whose music I love. The book has corrected some of the mistaken beliefs I had about Chopin. I didn't realize that he had made quite a name for himself in his youth in Poland. He was born there and moved away at age 19 never to return, though he did make initial plans to return a couple of times.

Those plans never materialized. But before leaving Poland he had left quite a mark on the musical scene of that country. I had always believed that he was virtually unknown before he came to Paris. I am glad to have a clearer picture. Also it is interesting to see how the Polish culture influenced his various genre i. Polonaises, Mazurkas, etc.

Another interesting tidbit was that Chopin's teacher in Poland, not remembering his name right nowgave to Chopin what may be the best gift he ever received and may be the core of Chopin's musical genius. That gift was that he the teacher gave Chopin mostly free reign on what to explore and how to do it in his compositions. The teacher broke with the tradition at least in Poland of giving students definite and fairly strict compositional guidelines.

Also, most other biographies of Chopin have usually stated that the composer died penniless. While true in some respects, Zamoyski paints a slightly different picture. Immediately after his death Chopin's sister, who was present at his death, found among his affects a moderately large sum of cash. Zamoyski doesn't state how much but it was apparently much more than anyone expected to find and it was enough to pay off nearly all of Chopin's outstanding debts.

So while Chopin wasn't fabulously wealthy nor did he leave any money to his friends or family, he did have more money than most people thought given his habit to spend so freely during his lifetime. Chopin was a poor money manager as Zamoyski clearly portrays but this somewhat unexpected chopin biography buchserie after his death was interesting.

This book is a biography only and the author does not talk in much depth about Chopin's music. He mentions many of Chopin's works but mostly in reference to when they were written or published with an occasional comment about how the mood of a given piece matches Chopin's at the time it was written. Zamoyski does include quite a few quotes from Chopin's contemporaries about particular pieces but there is no musical assessment or analysis that a musician or musicologist would appreciate.

As a musician I was hoping for that. The book also clarified for me the cause of Chopin's death at age While in retrospect it can't be confirmed definitively, all the available evidence was that he had Tuberculosis or Consumption as it was called back then. Apparently he had it for several years prior to his death in spite of the fact that some of the doctors who treated him stated that he didn't.

Also it would have helped to have a glossary of people in the back. I understand that isn't common in biographies but there were so many people in Chopin's day to day life that I found it confusing to keep track of which were which. I had no problem with all the musicians e. Liszt, Schumann, Berlioz, etc. George Sand, Fontana. But everyone else, especially all the Polish names and some of the French names, were difficult to keep track of.

So a glossary of people would have been helpful. Worth reading for a clear portrayal of Chopin's life. I was raised on rock music — I had never heard anything by Chopin. Curious, I started reading this biography — thinking this would be the perfect timing, as I am now also enrolled in a course about Romanticism. I cannot tell you how glad I am I did this — I cannot explain how much I appreciate Chopin and his work and cannot put it into words.

I highly recommend it. But this is where my happiness end, because through that book, I learned how sad and painful his life was. I am very melancholic after and was during, too reading the book and might torture myself a bit more with his letters which i am planning to read next. A most interesting book. It's written in good scholarly prose - clear, to the point, and readable without being flamboyant.

Only the occasional slip in idiom betrays that the author was perhaps not always thinking exclusively in English. The research looks fairly thorough, and appears to have been derived from a great many contemporary documents, including substantial collections of letters. Zamoyski does not try to hide the fact that he has a thesis - that Chopin was by no means the ultra-Romantic that the common image suggests.

But he does not seem to be doing anything Procrustean to the facts to fit that thesis, although to a certain extent we always have to trust the author's general interpretation, based as it is on far wider reading than he can conveniently present to us. Chopin himself emerges as a human and almost commonplace creature, except for the extraordinary gift of music in his head and fingers.

Fryderyk Chopin: A Life and Times. Add to Basket. Date Published. All orders are sent via Royal Mail and are tracked: choose from standard or premium delivery. Alan Walker. Also Recommended. Testimony Dmitri Shostakovich. The Book of Lieder Richard Stokes. Temperament Stuart Isacoff.