Part 10: List of Chopin's Pupils I (pp. 235-252)

Part 10 of chopin-pianist-and-teacher-as-seen-by-his-pupils (pp. 235-252).

Question this unit answers

Who exactly were the pupils whose testimony the book is built on, and how reliable is each of them? This opening stretch of the biographical appendix — alphabetical from “Anonymous Scottish lady” through “Peru” — gives, for each witness, their background, the dates and number of lessons taken with Chopin, the repertoire studied, the documents in which their recollections survive, and Eigeldinger’s own verdict on their trustworthiness. It is the source-criticism layer that underpins every quotation in the main text.

Key terms

Named pupils (biographical entries) in page order:

• Anonymous Scottish lady (p. 235) — distant cousin of Jane Stirling; entry unnamed by her own wish.
• Cheriemietieff, Countess Elizavieta Sergueïevna (p. 235)
• Courty, Mme de (General de Courty’s widow) (p. 236)
• Czartoryska, Princess Marcelina, née Radziwiłł (1817–94) (p. 237)
• Dubois, Camille, née O’Meara (1830–1907) (p. 238)
• Gretsch, Emilie, née von Timm (1821–77), also von Brülow (p. 239)
• Gutmann, Adolf (1819–82) (p. 241)
• Harder, Maria Alexandrowna von (1833–after 1880) (p. 242)
• Lenz, Wilhelm von (1809–83) (p. 243)
• Mathias, Georges-Amédée-Saint-Clair (1826–1910) (p. 245)
• Mikuli, Karol (1821–97) (p. 248)
• Peru, F.-Henry (1829/1830?–1922) (p. 251)

Supporting names recurring across the entries (not themselves given entries here): Jane Stirling, Marie de Krudner, Mme Rubio (née de Kologrivoff), Mme Peruzzi, Princess Catherine Souzzo, Countess Potocka, Friederike Streicher-Müller, Filtsch, Tellefsen, Franchomme, Kalkbrenner, Aleksander Michałowski, Raoul Koczalski, Edouard Ganche.

Recurring source-abbreviations in these entries: GPV / GPV 1872 / UB (Lenz), PM (Projet de méthode), RGMP (Revue et gazette musicale de Paris), F-Pn (Bibliothèque nationale, Paris), PC / VC (Marmontel), FCI (Kleczyński), DSFC (Ganche).

Propositions

• The anonymous Scottish lady was introduced to Chopin by her distant cousin Jane Stirling in March 1846 and, though a relative beginner, received a few lessons; her letter of reminiscences is dated 27 March 1903 and was printed by J. C. Hadden (pp. 157–9) (p. 235).
• Eigeldinger defends her credibility because her account is corroborated by Gretsch, Mikuli and Streicher, and rejects Hedley’s dismissal of it (p. 235).
• Cheriemietieff, chaperoned by her elder sister Anna, spent the winter of 1842–3 in Paris and was first brought to Chopin’s lessons as a mere listener by her compatriot Marie de Krudner (p. 235).
• She then took Marie de Krudner’s slot: twelve lessons between 16 December 1842 and 20 January 1843, two then three hours weekly, in the afternoons at Chopin’s home (p. 236).
• Her repertoire was Clementi, assorted exercises, a Beethoven sonata, plus a Waltz, Nocturnes and Preludes of Chopin (p. 236).
• On 8 December 1842 Chopin wrote into her album the first sixteen bars of the future Nocturne op. 55/1 — notated in F# minor and marked Andante; the autograph is now in the Central Archives for Literature and Art, Moscow (p. 236).
• Mme de Courty is barely identifiable; her recollections survive only in a letter written for Louis Aguettant (published pp. 195–6), and their burden is that simplicity and naturalness are the essentials of playing (p. 236).
• Czartoryska studied with Czerny in Vienna before Chopin in Paris, and exemplifies the aristocratic pupil whose rank barred a professional career (p. 237).
• Her contemporaries — Liszt, Delacroix, the RGMP critics, Sowiński — unanimously judged her playing the most faithful reflection of Chopin’s, especially in phrasing and accentuation (p. 237).
• She nursed Chopin at the end of his British stay and was at his death-bed; Gavard reports his words to her commending Franchomme and Mozart to her (p. 237).
• Her Hôtel Lambert salon was the hub of the Polish emigration, and after Chopin’s death she convened a “Club des Mozaristes” with Franchomme, Tellefsen and the young Gounod (p. 237).
• She transmitted the tradition onward: to Emilia Borzęcka (1846), to Kleczyński, to Cecylia Działyńska, and in Kraków to Natalia Janotha and A. Michałowski (pp. 237–8).
• Camille O’Meara worked with Kalkbrenner from age nine to thirteen, then studied five years with Chopin (1843–8), and became his assistant around 1847–8 (p. 238).
• With Mathias she was Chopin’s best “French” pupil, and — apart from Pauline Viardot — the only one to take a professional career; she debuted under the sponsorship of Alard and Franchomme (p. 238).
• Her own annotated printed Chopin scores, used at her lessons and now in F-Pn, are the most important accessible source of Chopin’s performing indications (p. 239).
• Emilie Gretsch learned first with Dorn in Riga, then Henselt in St Petersburg, and took precisely 33 lessons with Chopin during a Paris stay of almost two years (1842 to May 1844) (pp. 239, 241).
• Chopin made her study principally Bach, Beethoven and his own works, and praised her Beethoven op. 31/2 extravagantly (p. 241).
• Her letters to her father, only partly surviving, were compiled by her niece Maria von Grewingk; their value lies both in technical detail and in showing Chopin’s psychological perceptiveness (p. 241).
• Gutmann arrived in Paris from Heidelberg in 1834, worked five years with Chopin, and was the pupil Chopin knew most intimately — uniquely addressed as tu (p. 241).
• He was, with Emile Gaillard, one of only two male pupils to receive a dedication (op. 39), earned by his premiere performance of it before Moscheles (p. 241).
• Yet his playing resembled Thalberg’s rather than Chopin’s, and both Mikuli and Lenz record contempt for his rough treatment of the instrument (pp. 241–2).
• His recollections, transmitted via Stavenow, are unreliable; Niecks catalogued their inaccuracies. His presence at Chopin’s death-bed, denied later by Chopin’s niece, is nevertheless confirmed by contemporary letters from Grzymała and Pauline Viardot and by Gavard (p. 242).
• Maria von Harder travelled from St Petersburg to Vienna at fourteen to consult Meyerbeer, who — against her expectation of being sent to Liszt — recommended Chopin (p. 242).
• Chopin at first refused her — “Je ne donne pas de leçons à des enfants,” he told her mother — then gave her almost daily lessons, exceptional for him, until his departure for London in April 1848 (p. 242).
• By then Chopin often taught lying down in the adjoining study, yet could name the wrong finger by ear alone from the next room (p. 243).
• Her recollections were written down by her friend Sophie von Adelung; Bülow’s 1853 sneer at her as a soi-disant pupil of Chopin is, Eigeldinger says, unfounded (p. 243).
• Lenz was a Counsellor of State to the Russian Imperial Court and author of Beethoven et ses trois styles; he reached Chopin in early October 1842 on Liszt’s recommendation (pp. 243–4).
• Chopin capped him at two lessons a week and refused him works beyond his means (Polonaise op. 26/2, Scherzo op. 31), but let him sit in on Filtsch’s lessons (p. 245).
• Despite his self-serving mise-en-scène, Lenz supplies the most abundant and detailed information of any pupil on Chopin’s interpretative wishes; his sources are UB and GPV (GPV 1872 being the revised book version) (p. 245).
• Mathias studied with Kalkbrenner then Chopin from around 1838–9 for five to eight years depending on the witness (Niecks, Fétis/Pougin, Marmontel) — among the longest-taught of all (p. 245).
• Clara Wieck, meeting him in March 1839, called the twelve-year-old “a second Liszt” and noted he practised no more than an hour a day (pp. 245–6).
• From 1862 Mathias taught over thirty years at the Paris Conservatoire, implanting the Chopin tradition in official French institutions; his pupils included Raoul Pugno, Isidore Philipp, Ernest Schelling and Teresa Carreño (p. 246).
• He left over fifty works spanning chamber, concerto, symphonic and sacred music — unusual among Chopin’s pianist-composer pupils — and recorded memories of Chopin in his preface to Philipp’s Exercices quotidiens tirés des oeuvres de Chopin (p. 248).
• Mikuli, of Armenian descent, born in Czernowitz, came to Paris in 1844 expressly to study with Chopin; the master’s reserve melted on hearing him play the Scherzo op. 31 (p. 248).
• He was Tellefsen’s fellow-student, both being set to study composition with Reber and both serving as Chopin’s official copyists (though no copies have been traced); he studied until the 1848 Revolution — Koczalski’s “seven years” is an error (p. 248).
• Mikuli’s 17-volume collected edition (Leipzig, Kistner, January 1880) rests on his own annotated French first editions plus the annotated scores of Countess Potocka, Princess Czartoryska and Streicher-Müller, with advice from Mme Dubois, Mme Rubio, Hiller and Franchomme (pp. 248–9).
• The edition is faulted mainly for its fingerings; Mikuli openly admitted departing from Chopin’s, and Eigeldinger’s real reproach is that he did not typographically distinguish his own fingerings from Chopin’s (pp. 249, 251).
• The preface to that edition is the most comprehensive surviving source on the tenor of Chopin’s teaching (p. 251).
• Mikuli’s Lwów pupils included Aleksander Michałowski (teacher of Bronislaw von Pozniak), Maurycy Rosenthal, Heinrich Schenker, and above all Raoul Koczalski, whom he made his heir to the tradition (p. 251).
• Peru claimed Kalkbrenner handed him to Chopin in 1847 at eighteen, and that he was taught until 1849 — hence his self-description during the First World War as Chopin’s “last pupil” (p. 251).
• If genuine, he might be the “Mr. P.” of Plan de la méthode dicté à Mr. P. par Ch[opin] in Ludwika Jędrzejewicz’s copy of the PM (p. 251).
• Peru is the only witness to make the infinitely varied attack on a single key the starting point of Chopin’s teaching, and he stresses Chopin’s constant variation between repeated performances of a work (p. 251).
• Peru’s documented 11 December 1913 Salle Pleyel lecture-recital programme included Etudes op. 25/1, 2, 7, 9, 10, Nocturnes opp. 15/2 and 37/1, and Waltzes op. 34/1 and 3 (p. 252).
• Ganche branded him an impostor — the Papiers E. Ganche contain a dossier Affaire Peru marked “imposteur” — after Peru evaded a request for proof; Eigeldinger concludes there is currently neither proof nor disproof (p. 252).

Arguments

Corroboration, not status, decides credibility. Eigeldinger repeatedly overrides earlier scholars’ judgements by cross-checking. The anonymous Scottish lady is a beginner with no name, yet her account stands because it agrees “in various respects” with Gretsch, Mikuli and Streicher — so Hedley’s dismissal is refused (p. 235). Conversely Gutmann, the acknowledged favourite with a dedication and an intimate tu, is the least trustworthy narrator, because his stories conflict with everyone else’s (pp. 241–2). Bülow’s dismissal of Harder is overturned the same way (p. 243). Lenz’s theatrical self-promotion is discounted while his substance is retained: “particularly since they are often confirmed by other sources” (p. 245).

Favouritism and fidelity are independent variables. The entries quietly separate whom Chopin liked from who transmitted him accurately. Gutmann is “Chopin’s favourite pupil, if hardly his best one!” (p. 241) while Czartoryska, Dubois, Mathias and Mikuli — the actual carriers of the tradition — are praised for phrasing, “scrupulous fidelity” and institutional transmission (pp. 237, 238, 246, 248).

The transmission chains are explicitly mapped. Each entry names downstream heirs, so the appendix doubles as a genealogy of the Chopin tradition: Czartoryska → Kleczyński, Działyńska, Janotha, Michałowski; Mathias → Paris Conservatoire, Pugno, Philipp; Mikuli → Michałowski, Rosenthal, Schenker, Koczalski. The argument is that Chopin’s pedagogy survives as documented lineage rather than as a written method.

Annotated scores outrank memoirs. Where a pupil left marked-up music, Eigeldinger ranks it above narrative recollection: Dubois’s lesson scores are “the most important source presently accessible of performing indications in Chopin’s music” (p. 239), and Mikuli’s edition derives its authority from a stack of such annotated copies (pp. 248–9).

Evidence

• Documentary archives: the Cheriemietieff sisters’ diaries, family letters and the op. 55/1 album-leaf autograph in the Central Archives for Literature and Art, Moscow, with fragments published in Russian translation (Niesmieyanova–Siemienovski, Siemienovski) and short passages quoted here from the unpublished French original (p. 236).
• Annotated printed scores: Mme Dubois’s Chopin editions in F-Pn (p. 239); Mikuli’s own annotated French first editions plus those of Potocka, Czartoryska and Streicher-Müller (pp. 248–9).
• Correspondence: Emilie Gretsch’s partly surviving letters to her father, edited by Maria von Grewingk (p. 241); Jane Stirling’s letter to Ludwika Jędrzejewicz of 26 November 1851 (copy by Ganche in F-Pn) (p. 238); Bülow to Liszt, 5 November 1853 (p. 243); Lenz to Balzac, 10 October 1842 (p. 244); Stephen Heller’s letter of 2 September 1842 on Lenz (p. 243).
• Press: RGMP notices on Gutmann (1844/12, 24 March, p. 104) and on Camille O’Meara’s debut (1852/6, 8 February, p. 42) (pp. 238, 241).
• Concert programmes: the two Salle Pleyel Peru events of 11 December 1913 and 30 April 1914, preserved in the Affaire Peru dossier among the Papiers E. Ganche (F-Pn) (pp. 251–2).
• Recorded sound: a Welte Mignon piano roll (1905) of Teresa Carreño playing the Nocturne op. 48/1, reissued on Telefunken SLA 25057-T/4, cited as an indirect trace of Mathias’s teaching (p. 246).
• Iconography: Ary Scheffer’s 1851 oil painting of Camille O’Meara (plate 7, p. 240); Cossmann’s lithograph of Mathias, c. 1850 (plate 8, p. 247); Mazur and Roszkiewicz’s photograph of Mikuli, Lwów (plate 9, p. 251).

Quotes

• “He explains each note scrupulously but with great delicacy.” (p. 235)
• “His playing is out of this world, something airborne, misty: one imagines angels when listening to this music” (p. 236)
• “an amateur too may reach the highest summits and be at home in the sanctuary of great masters’ thoughts” (p. 237)
• “I’ve heard Melle Meara, whose playing is as good as ever. I ardently wish her to preserve the tradition” (p. 238)
• “You understand Beethoven marvellously, just as he should be understood and as nobody at present seems able to do” (p. 241)
• “Chopin often prolonged the lesson so that eventually Emilie had heard him play almost all of his works.” (p. 241)
• “Gutmann, for example, never took account of his teacher’s tastes, slashing and thumping the piano unconcernedly” (p. 242)
• “he had nothing of Chopin’s art, yet the latter had gone to incredible pains to try and shape an image from this block of wood” (p. 242)
• “Je ne donne pas de leçons à des enfants,” (p. 242)
• “even from a distance, and out of her sight, not the slightest detail of her playing escaped him” (p. 243)
• “All right, I’ll give you lessons, but only twice a week, that’s my maximum; it will be hard for me to find three-quarters of an hour.” (p. 244)
• “Be punctual, my house is like a dovecote [pigeonnier] and my time is planned by the minute.” (p. 244)
• “he has never worked more than one hour [per day], is very sickly (just like Chopin) and has never been healthy” (p. 245)
• “As far as he was concerned, Chopin represented the supreme musical authority,” (p. 248)
• “the infinitely varied types of attack on one individual key” (p. 251)

Tensions and links

• Gutmann’s status vs. his sound. Chopin “praised him as his favourite interpreter of his own compositions” while Lenz and Filtsch “loathed” him and Mikuli recorded his thumping (pp. 241–2). Either Chopin’s own aesthetic was broader in practice than his pupils’ testimony suggests, or — Lenz’s reading — affection blinded him: “This student was Chopin’s invention!” (p. 242).
• Mikuli’s leniency claim. Mikuli says Chopin “seemed to him far more lenient and understanding with other students” than with himself (p. 242), which cuts against the picture, drawn in the Harder entry, of uncompromising and excessive demands (p. 243). The teaching was evidently calibrated per pupil, complicating any single account of “Chopin’s method”.
• Fingering: doctrine or personal fit? Mikuli suppressed some of Chopin’s own fingerings on the grounds that fingering “is inseparably tied up with the interpretative individuality of the pianist” (p. 249), yet the main text of the book treats Chopin’s fingerings as central inventions. Links to the parts on technique and to Dubois’s annotated scores as the counter-source (p. 239).
• Peru unresolved. Peru offers the single most distinctive pedagogical claim in the list — varied attack on one key as the starting point — while being the one witness whose pupillage may be fabricated for money (pp. 251–2). His possible identity as the “Mr. P.” of the PM Plan de la méthode links directly to the Projet de méthode material (p. 90, note 1).
• Cross-references into the main text are dense here: Chopin playing the op. 26 first-movement variations at the Cheriemietieff salon (pp. 55, 277–8), Działyńska’s codification of Chopin’s precepts (p. 99, note 28), Michałowski’s advice from Czartoryska (p. 94, note 13), Emile Gaillard’s dedication (p. 276, note 12), and the outline for studying Dubois’s scores (pp. 212–19).

Open questions

• Who was the anonymous Scottish lady? Neither Hadden nor A. E. Bone attempted an identification, and Eigeldinger does not either (p. 235).
• Mme de Courty remains almost entirely unidentified beyond one letter to Aguettant — is there more of her correspondence (p. 236)?
• Which “Valse mélancolique” did Cheriemietieff hear? Eigeldinger himself hesitates between opp. 34/2, 69/2 and 70/2 (p. 236).
• Was Peru genuinely Chopin’s pupil? Eigeldinger states flatly that no proof or disproof exists, leaving the “Mr. P.” identification of the Plan de la méthode hanging (pp. 251–2).
• Where are Mikuli’s and Tellefsen’s copies of Chopin’s works, made as official copyists? None have been traced (p. 248).
• How much of Emilie Gretsch’s correspondence is lost, and does the unpublished remainder survive anywhere beyond Grewingk’s excerpts (p. 241)?
• Does a systematic edition-critical study of Mme Dubois’s annotated scores exist? Eigeldinger explicitly defers it as “beyond the scope of the present book” (p. 239).