William Murdoch: Genealogy of Chopin

The name of Chopin has been a household word for the last hundred years; it will continue to be so for the next hundred, and will remain unchallenged as long as the art of music lives. Chopin’s genius was immediately recognized, and not only did he quickly achieve fame - an accomplishment unusual for a composer - but his fame has continued to increase. The beauty of his melodies, the richness of his harmonies, the depths of passion revealed, the elegance of line, the charm so simply expressed in the fioriture , the dignity and refinement so characteristic of the Polish race, the fervour and the undying patriotic faith that are the backbone of nearly every composition all these produced on his amazed hearers an irresistible effect which they could not forget; nor are we, musicians and public alike, any less amazed a century later. Although some of his harmonies may have struck harshly on contemporary ears, the originality of his writing enabled the hitherto banal and ugly pianoforte to be raised to the level of a true musical instrument; for no-one had conceived such tone-colours before.

Some will say that Chopin’s lasting fame can be attributed to his uhhappy existence, to the illness that held him in bondage for most of his adult life and eventually killed him, to the torment he suffered for the Poland that he worshipped, and to the chagrin of an incomplete life - for he never achieved the domestic happiness that he yearned for. Though these causes give grounds for such assertions, and unquestionably have won the sympathy of the feminine world, only the qualities of the music itself could have placed him amongst the greatest composers. His music is more popular and more necessary now than ever it was.

Others who belittle Chopin’s genius maintain that his sentimentality is more fitted for the sick-room, the school-room and the boudoir than for the concert-room and the study, that its appeal is to the slighter and more mundane feelings rather than to the intellect and the grander emotions. But Chopin wrote little that can be labelled weakly sentimental, and very much that is heroic. These cavillers only think of the Nocturnes and of a few other salon pieces, remembering certain exaggerated performances; they fail to remember the ardour of the Polonaises , the Sian of some of the Mazurkas, the jjoetry and passion combined in the Preludes, the exaltation of the Ballades, the fire of the Scherzi , the consummate genius of the £tudes, the patriotism of the F minor Fantaisie, the exquisiteness of the Barcarolle. If they would only devote a short time to examining some of these major works of Chopin they would discover the falsity of their accusation and perhaps gain a few moments of unexpected bliss. Even if this is denied them, they will be forced to admit the originality of his genius, for if they are sincere and their knowledge is secure they will see that his methods, whether technical or colourful, are entirely his own and entirely novel.

This is not the place intimately to discuss or diagnose the aspects of Chopin’s art, for a second volume will be devoted to his work as composer, pianist and teacher; but in passing a word should be said about him as an innovator. Chopin may have been influenced by Hummel in his youth, by Field in his early manhood; but the moment he felt that his own legs were strong enough to support him, that his technical equipment could sustain his desire for self-expression, he pursued his own course, which was unlike that of anyone else, and created and fashioned a technique both of pianoforte-playing and of composition which has affected every subsequent composer and school. The influence of Bach, of Beethoven, or of Wagner has not been greater in the evolution of music, although Chopin wrote almost exclusively for the pianoforte. In many respects he can be called the founder of modern music. He may not have discovered chromatic harmony -J. S. Bach had written the Chromatic Fantaisie ninety years before Chopin was bom but no earlier composer had been bold enough to enrich his harmonic palette by such free use of chromatic colours. He himself began by being afraid of them, but his fear did not last long. Soon we find him moving these dangerous chords with the freedom of a Protestant contrapuntist, and setting the fashion for their universal adoption. Did not Wagner admit the power of these progressions and continue developing them almost to their extremity? Liszt, who is generally credited with being the founder of the modern orchestra, of the tone-poem, of many developments in musical evolution, was astute enough to recognize the strokes of genius in the early works of this frail young Pole, and was able to turn them to his own advantage. It is not only in the pianoforte writings of Liszt that we find the influence of Chopin; it permeates almost all his works. On the other hand, try as we may, we shall discover no other style in Chopin’s music but his own, melodically, harmonically, pianistically or colourfully. His greatness lies in his absolute individuality. I will even assert that Chopin was the most original of all the great composers.

Although he never had to wait long for an inspiration, he nearly always had to work exceptionally hard to bring it up to his fastidious standard of perfection. He would prune and chisel with the utmost laboriousness, with a patience like that of Leonardo da Vinci, before disposing of his manuscript; and often this would be altered and re-shaped, as was Balzac’s wont, when the proofs arrived for correction. This accounts for the lack of uniformity in the various editions. All through his life Chopin was a most indeterminate creature, and nowhere was this trait more pointedly shown than in the revisions of his works. His was a curious nature - a mixture of a marked sense of jnferjority in all matters concerning others, and a selfconfidence that insisted on succeeding in the face of every difficulty. This will to succeed enabled him to develop in musical stature, and each fresh composition showed a continuity of growth. Notwithstanding his personal vanity he was extraordinarily timid and shy, diffident and taciturn to an exasperating degree; devoted to his family and to his few Polish friends, passionately adoring his country and everything pertaining to it. But this very adoration was so vehement that it prevented any close attachment to foreigners, and among his innumerable circle of acquaintances and admirers he made, apart from his countrymen, very few intimate friends. Whether his malady was the cause, or his frequent disappointments in his affaires de coeur , or his bitter fight to earn money (he cannot have earned much more than 25,000 francs during his whole life), one cannot say; but he was a miserable man in more ways than one. He was too self-centred to interest himself in the affairs of others; nor did he shine in his dealings with his publishers and other men of business. He was not a stoic, for, though his sufferings were great, he was evidently a most distressing patient. But for his music he will be forgiven everything. He will always be counted amongst the greatest, because he was a poet, an artist, and a genius with the divine gift of inspired melody.

M. Edouard Ganche has at last elucidated the mystery of Chopin’s ancestry. The numerous biographers had each given their versions and mentioned other problematical theories, until it was impossible, out of such a conglomeration, for any student to form more than a hazy idea of Chopin’s origin. Now, thanks chiefly to M. Ganche’s efforts, we are no longer in doubt.

Throughout his life Nicolas Chopin, the father of Frederic, divulged nothing concerning his- family or his youth. He admitted having been born near Nancy in Lorraine, France, and the date of his birth was believed to be August 1 7, 1 770. With the knowledge that Lorraine had been annexed by France and that Louis XV had offered the dukedom of thd new province to his father-in-law, the twice exiled King Stanislas Leszczynski of Poland, the general conviction of the various Chopin biographers was that Nicolas had Polish blood in his veins. They romantically pictured him as being the soi> of 9ne of the courtiers in the Duke’s entourage, and imagined that it was only natural for him to wish to visit the land of his people. But all these romances and fancies have been shattered by the discovery among some old documents in Russia of a dossier relating to the services of Nicolas Chopin to Poland, at that time under Russian rule. When Nicolas sought to retire from his professorship at the Military School in Warsaw, it was necessary for him to fill in certain facts as to the names of his father and mother, and the date and place of his birth. From this source the following information was obtained: his father was Francois Chopin, and his mother Marguerite, and he was born in the tiny village of Marainville (Vosges) on April 17, 1770.

Once his birthplace was known, it was comparatively easy to probe into his ancestry. The register of births and deaths is carefully kept in France, and genealogical facts are not difficult to trace. The certificates were found and examined, and agreed in every detail except one - the date of birth - with the Warsaw declaration. Nicolas was born on the 15th and baptized on the 16th April, 1771, his father Francois Chopin being described as a charron (wheelwright) and his mother as Marguerite Deflin. It was then discovered that Nicolas had two sisters, one older and one younger than himself. The elder, Anne, who had married Joseph Thomas, died on March 22, 1845, aged 75; the younger, Marguerite, widow of Nicolas Bastien, died twelve days earlier, aged 69. As Nicolas himself had only died the previous year at the age of 73, the family could be called healthy and long-lived. Further proof of stability can be found in the fact that Nicolas’s father, Francois, born on November 11, 1738, remarried at the age of 62 after the death of Marguerite, and died on January 31, 1814, at the age of 75; his second wife, Marguerite Laprevote, was also 62 and was the widow of Francois Mortefer. After his second marriage Francois Chopin forsook his calling of wheelwright, and became a vigneron (vine-grower) like his father. Many years later, after his retirement, Frederic’s father in Warsaw fondly cultivated the vine, and wrote with enthusiasm to his son of his success in rearing fruit which the family enjoyed; his Jher^ditary instincts were not obliterated.

According to M. Ganche, whose important article appeared in the review La Pologne on January 15, 1927, it has not been possible to trace farther back than Frederic’s great-grandfather, Nicolas Chopin, who married Elisabeth Bastien. But this is sufficiently far for France to be able to claim half the credit for the great musician. The family was absolutely French. What then was the reason that Nicolas, after migrating to Poland, never referred to his family, never communicated with them, and apparently never told Frederic of their existence? Was he ashamed of his birth? He became a respected citizen of Warsaw, and rose from the position of a humble teacher of French to that of a professor of literature. Perhaps he was afraid of his Polish friends hearing of his peasant origin? Not once was he known to have expressed a wish to revisit France, even to see his idolized son. It has been suggested that as he ran away to Poland about the beginning of the French Revolution, served in the Polish army, and later accepted posts under the Polish government, he might be considered a renegade in the country of his birth. It would be interesting to know whether Fr6d6ric was ever aware that his father was a full-blooded Frenchman, or whether he suspected, when he was the idol of fashionable Paris, that he had two old aunts living in obscurity in Lorraine.

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