Part 11: List of Chopin's Pupils II (pp. 253-269)

Part 11 of chopin-pianist-and-teacher-as-seen-by-his-pupils (pp. 253-269).

Question this unit answers

Who were the pupils in the second half (P-Z) of Eigeldinger’s alphabetical biographical register of the Chopin pupils quoted in this book, and what, for each of them, is documented about the dates and shape of their lessons, their repertoire, their reliability as witnesses, and the material traces (annotated scores, letters, diaries, editions) through which their testimony reaches us?

Key terms

Named pupils with a biographical headword entry in this page range, with the page the entry starts on:

• Peru (entry begins on p. 252, previous unit; the assessment of his credibility concludes on p. 253) — Eigeldinger is “inclined to accept Peru’s claim to be a Chopin pupil” while urging caution (p. 253).
• Peruzzi, Countess Elise, née Eustafiew — p. 253.
• Roche, Emily, née Moscheles (1827-89) — p. 254.
• Roubaud, Marie, née de Cournand (1822-1916/17?) — p. 255.
• Rubio, Vera, née de Kologrivoff (1816-80) — p. 256.
• Schiffmacher, Joseph (1827-88) — p. 257.
• Stirling, Jane Wilhelmina (1804-59) — p. 257.
• Streicher, Friederike, née Müller (1816-95) — p. 259 (entry runs to p. 263; portrait plate, Fig. 10, lithograph by Anton Hähnisch, 1847, on p. 263).
• Tellefsen, Thomas Dyke Acland (1823-74) — p. 263.
• Thun-Hohenstein, Count Bedřich (1810-81) — p. 264 (headword; entry text on pp. 265-266).
• Viardot, Pauline, née García (1821-1910) — p. 265 (entry runs to p. 268; Fig. 11, Maurice Sand’s ink drawing of Chopin teaching her, on p. 267).
• Zaleska, Zofia, née Rosengardt (1824-68) — p. 268.

Additional pupils named inside these entries but without headwords of their own in this range:

• Anna Thun-Hohenstein (1812-85) and Juza (Juža) Thun-Hohenstein (1815-95), Bedřich’s youngest sisters, both taught by Chopin in October-November 1834 (p. 265).
• Catherine Maberly, Jane Stirling’s friend, “also Chopin’s pupil”, dedicatee of the Mazurkas op. 56 (p. 258).
• Lindsay Sloper, English pianist and Chopin pupil, who taught Jane Stirling before introducing her to Chopin (p. 258).
• Arthur Kalkbrenner, for whom his father requested “quelques conseils” from Chopin in 1845 (p. 255).
• Ludwika Ostrzyńska, pupil of Peru (not of Chopin), whose report is used to test Peru’s credibility (p. 253).

Recurring apparatus terms: OFE (the “old French edition” of Chopin’s works, the format in which Stirling preserved the annotated corpus, p. 257); RGMP (Revue et gazette musicale de Paris, the concert-review source cited throughout); Mikuli’s Preface and Mikuli’s edition (invoked as the destination of Friederike Müller’s annotated scores and letters, pp. 260-261, and as the successor to Tellefsen’s Richault edition, p. 264).

Propositions

Peru (concluded, p. 253). The reminiscences contain “manifest inexactitudes of date, place and deed”, and no early contemporary mentions his name; Gille’s listing of him among Chopin’s pupils is “anything but proof”, and Marie Roubaud’s letter confirming him as a friend is no better. Against this: Elie Poirée’s Chopin (Paris, Laurens [1907], p. 59) already used his reminiscences, well before the 1911-14 press campaign; and the traits Ostrzyńska relates fit Chopin’s known aesthetic (no unmarked tempo change, no excessively prolonged forte, no spurious virtuosic cadenzas). Decisive for Eigeldinger is Peru’s insistence on Chopin’s multiple ways of performing a single work — attested by others, and hard for an impostor to fabricate.

Peruzzi (pp. 253-254). Friend of both Liszt and Herz; met Chopin around 1836, closer from 1837, documented by an autograph copy of the Waltz op. 69/1 with dedication. Chopin valued her sight-reading and played piano-duet and two-piano repertoire with her; they improvised question-and-answer dialogues at the keyboard. She performed op. 21 and op. 11 in matinées (RGMP 1843/5, 29 January; 1844/16, 21 April). She was among the first to whom Chopin showed the Berceuse. At Niecks’ request she wrote down her reminiscences (Niecks, II, pp. 338-9, new Appendix VIII in the third English edition).

Roche/Moscheles (pp. 254-255). Eldest daughter of the pianist Moscheles, trained principally by her father. First heard Chopin in autumn 1839 at her uncle Auguste Leo’s house; days later, at Chopin’s own house, she was moved by his Prelude op. 28/17 — but no lessons then. By fifteen she already owned opp. 10, 12, 13, 14, 18, 20, 21, 22, 23, 25, 28, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36 plus the 3 Nouvelles Etudes; the 1842 Moscheles-Schlesinger letter (F-Pn) requesting the missing opus numbers documents her Chopin collection and level. Schlesinger’s deletions on that autograph mark the items he did not publish or stock, so the rest were presumably sent. On returning to Paris in 1843 she studied briefly with Stephen Heller, who dedicated to her the fifth of his Pensées fugitives op. 30. Married J. A. Roche in September 1846; took some lessons with Hallé in spring 1848; on 3 May 1848 Moscheles wrote asking Chopin to teach her (CFC, III, p. 340), and Bülow’s testimony confirms lessons followed — Belotti estimates ten, at most twelve (p. 255).

Roubaud (pp. 255-256). Born in St Petersburg of French descent; studied in Paris with Osborne (pupil and occasional assistant of Kalkbrenner). In winter 1847-8 Chopin gave her exactly eighteen lessons, one hour weekly on Thursdays at one o’clock (Papiers E. Ganche, F-Pn). Ganche collected her reminiscences; she did not know her own year of birth. Chopin let her copy for personal use an unpublished manuscript of the [Fantaisie-]Impromptu, later issued by Fontana as op. 66. Her debut (1852), sponsored by Alard and Franchomme, was cut short by nerves: she left the piano mid-performance of some Chopin Etudes (RGMP 1852/5, 1 February, p. 37), which Jane Stirling’s letter to Ludwika Jędrzejewicz independently confirms. A second concert in 1858 was called “one of the most beautiful of the season” (RGMP 1858/13, 28 March, p. 107).

Rubio (pp. 256-257). Russian, precocious (first concert at eight); recommended to Chopin by the violinist Artôt, 10 May 1841 (CFC, III, p. 49); an unpublished Charlotte Moscheles letter of 12 July 1842 has her coming to Paris “pour y étudier la musique sous la direction de Chopin”. Lessons therefore began no earlier than autumn 1842 and ran to 1846, the year she married the painter Luigi Rubio. She is the pupil to whom Chopin addressed the maxim about singing. She served as Chopin’s teaching assistant in 1846 and again in 1849, in which year she taught Jane Stirling. Rubio was to paint a miniature oil portrait of Chopin (per her letter, summarized in Karłowicz, p. 138), now unknown; he did paint René Franchomme c. 1847. Cortot’s attribution of Kwiatkowski’s c. 1844 Chopin portrait to Luigi Rubio is wrong (p. 257).

Schiffmacher (p. 257). Alsatian pianist-composer and teacher; studied piano successively with Rosenhain, Schulhoff, Gottschalk and Chopin, harmony with Reber. Dates of his Chopin study unknown, probably around 1847 (the year the Waltz op. 64/2 he mentions was published). Delacroix reportedly said of him that he alone recalled Chopin. Published more than 130 piano genre pieces up to 1887; taught with a strong reputation in Strasbourg, Lyon, Geneva and Paris; his preparatory notes for a didactic work were published posthumously by his student Aline Tasset. He was one of the child André Gide’s piano teachers — Gide’s Notes sur Chopin never mention him.

Stirling (pp. 257-259). From a distinguished Scottish family; posterity’s “first Chopin ‘musicologist’” through her preservation of the complete works, mostly in the OFE, with inscriptions, variants and autograph annotations, probably toward the revised complete edition Chopin projected during his Scottish stay (see Appendix II, pp. 200-11). She bought most of Chopin’s estate, sorting autographs, letters, papers, drawings and objects — some given to friends, some kept, some forwarded to the family in Warsaw, including the last hired piano bought back from Pleyel after the Place Vendôme apartment was sealed. Her love for Chopin was unreciprocated. Dating the meeting: Bone’s claim of 1832 is unsupported; Sloper (Niecks, II, p. 291) taught her before introducing her to Chopin and lived in Paris 1841-46, giving 1841 as terminus a quo; the first mention in Chopin’s hand is a dedication of 3 January 1844 on the Nocturnes op. 9, a terminus post quem non; op. 55 (dedicated to her) and op. 56 (dedicated to Maberly) appeared August 1844. Eigeldinger infers c. 1843, or at the latest 3 January 1844, agreeing with Harasowski. Chopin thought well of her talent yet handed her to Mme Rubio in 1849; after his death she studied with Tellefsen. She organized the Scottish stay and concerts with her inseparable elder sister Mrs Erskine; Chopin’s “mes braves Ecossaises” eventually became exasperation at their over-solicitude and religious proselytism (SC, 324, 326, 344-5, 349, 351-3). She helped him financially in 1849, supervised Clésinger’s Père-Lachaise monument, and argued with Fontana over the posthumous works. Her correspondence with Ludwika Jędrzejewicz is “a mine of information, still partly unexplored”: Karłowicz summarizes 46 letters (1849-1854); Ganche reproduces long extracts but tacitly alters turns of phrase; PL-Wtifc holds 25 originals, published by Hanna Wróblewska-Straus (LSJ).

Streicher/Müller (pp. 259-263). One of Chopin’s best professional students; gave up her career after 1849, the year she married J. B. Streicher of the Viennese piano-making family. Came to Paris in 1839 expressly to work with Chopin, bearing a recommendation from Countess Appony (dedicatee of the Nocturnes op. 27). Lessons ran uninterrupted for a year and a half, end of October 1839 to spring 1841, two hours a week — and Sunday sessions could stretch from one o’clock to four or five, with Chopin then playing himself, including other masters’ music to show how it should be done, and once fourteen Bach Preludes and Fugues from memory. Chopin gave her the Etudes and Preludes from the start, implying an exceptional level. Marmontel counted her among Chopin’s “disciples affectionnées”; Chopin dedicated the Allegro de Concert op. 46 to her, prompting Liszt’s nickname “Mademoiselle opus quarante-six”. She knew Ludwika Jędrzejewicz (in Vienna) and Pauline Viardot. At her last lesson, spring 1841, Chopin gave her the autograph of the Etudes op. 10/3 and 4. She reappeared in Vienna in 1842 (RGMP 1842/18, 1 May, p. 197) and it was she who recommended Filtsch to Chopin (Karłowicz, p. 141). She met Chopin again in Paris between end 1844 and February 1845, delighting him with op. 46.

• Source-critical point of first importance (pp. 260-261): Mikuli used scores annotated by Chopin during Friederike Müller’s lessons among the sources for his edition, and she answered his request on 8 January 1879 describing corrections in Chopin’s hand in her scores plus letters to her aunts in Vienna recording the order in which she studied his works (Federhofer, p. 96, note 30). Those scores and letters are in no Viennese library or public archive. Eigeldinger argues that the “diary extracts, 1839-1841” printed by Niecks are in fact probably a reworking, made after 1880, of a text she had originally prepared for Mikuli — Niecks, unusually, does not say the testimony was drafted at his request.
• Even so, Eigeldinger grants that the reworked text constitutes “a living source of information on Chopin’s teaching” (p. 263); the German edition of Niecks (II, pp. 366-70) may preserve her original German.

Tellefsen (pp. 263-264). Norwegian pianist-composer-teacher, in Paris from 1842, from a musical family and schooled in Bach and the Baroque (he once played Bach fugues on an early eighteenth-century harpsichord: RGMP 1853/52, 25 December, p. 447). He waited two and a half years for Chopin, meanwhile taking lessons from a compatriot pupil of Kalkbrenner and from early 1843 attending Kalkbrenner’s classes without enthusiasm. Henri de Latouche, a literary friend of George Sand, introduced him in December 1844. He then had three lessons weekly, two of them free, and appears to have been one of Chopin’s copyists (per Mikuli, his fellow student in Reber’s composition class). He accompanied Chopin to Britain and toured England in the first half of 1849. Chopin on his deathbed named him as the future teacher of Ludwika’s daughter Ludka (later Mrs Ciechomska) and asked him to finish the Pianoforte Method — which, though Jane Stirling refers to it in June 1850 (Ganche, DSFC, p. 116), was never completed or published (see p. 90, note 1). The letter implies he returned the original sketches to Ludwika Jędrzejewicz before she passed them to Marcelina Czartoryska in 1850. He stayed close to Czartoryska, Franchomme and Stirling, whom he taught after Chopin’s death; became a highly respected Paris teacher and concertized there through 1850-60 (RGMP 1851/18, 3 May, p. 141, on his Hôtel Lambert evening). In 1860 Richault published his twelve-volume Collection des Œuvres pour le piano par Frédéric Chopin, justified by his possession of scores corrected by Chopin’s hand; Mikuli’s Preface (p. 1) calls it incomplete because of the editor’s poor health — probably a tactful euphemism, since the text is unsatisfactory. He left 44 opus numbers, about ten dedicated to Chopin’s students and friends; his family letters are rich on Parisian musical life but silent on Chopin’s teaching methods.

Thun-Hohenstein (pp. 264-266). Bohemian aristocrat; arrived in Paris autumn 1834 with parents and four siblings, and met Chopin at the home of Thomas Albrecht, secretary to the Saxon embassy and dedicatee of the Scherzo op. 20. The senior Countess called Chopin the children’s “maître de clavecin [!]” (Simonides, p. 80). Three of the five children were taught by him: Anna and Juza took some lessons in October-November 1834 (two short autograph Chopin letters, see p. 137, note 142), while Bedřich, staying longer, received just under twenty weekly hour lessons between end November 1834 and March 1835, often generously prolonged. He is the only pupil besides Mme Peruzzi to record sight-reading duets as part of Chopin’s teaching (p. 265). He also reports Hiller’s concert of 22 February 1835, where Chopin played in a Hiller Duo for two pianos. Chopin stayed at the family château in Děčín in mid-September 1835, copying into a sister’s album a first version of the Waltz op. 34/1, dedicated — as in the final fair copy — to the young Countess Juža, who was tenderly attached to him. Bedřich’s last letter (Prague, 8 May 1845) recommends a young compatriot and shows his happy memories (Karłowicz, p. 181).

Viardot (pp. 265-268). Daughter of Manuel García and younger sister of Malibran, whose fame unjustly overshadowed her early career; as remarkable a pianist as a singer. Taught for two years as a child by Liszt, who predicted a virtuoso career; Chopin questioned her so insistently about those years that she wrote out Liszt’s programme of studies for him (Alice Viardot, in Desternes-Chandet, pp. 244-5). Friendship with George Sand formed in winter 1839-40; she was the model for Consuelo, whose Chapter 55 thoughts on popular song and music’s evocative power reflect Chopin’s views by Sand’s own admission. She and Chopin were bound by shared worship of Mozart, love of bel canto, and taste for Spanish and Berry folk music (both transcribed Berry songs). She received not lessons in the strict sense but informal pianistic advice, in Paris and above all at Nohant in summers 1841, 1842, 1843 and 1845 — the sessions behind Maurice Sand’s drawing (Fig. 11, p. 267; its handwritten date of June 1844 does not tally with her visits). As a singer she took part, with Franchomme, in Chopin’s important Paris concert of 21 February 1842, Chopin accompanying her own setting of La Fontaine’s Le chêne et le roseau. She fitted Spanish and French lyrics to several Mazurkas and sang them in London, apparently to Chopin’s pleasure — though his letter to Marie de Rozières of 30 June 1848 records his irritation that her programmes had demoted “Mazurkas of Chopin” to “Mazurkas arranged by Mme Viardot”. Gérard published six such arrangements [1866] (opp. 50/2, 33/3, 6/1, 7/1, 68/2, 24/1); Gebethner & Wolff published fifteen in Warsaw in 1899. She sang in Mozart’s Requiem at Chopin’s funeral at La Madeleine. Saint-Saëns, a regular at her salon, compiled fragments of her recollections of Chopin’s playing and teaching (EV, QM).

Zaleska (pp. 268-269). Warsaw pianist, in Paris from 1843, married the Polish poet Bohdan Zaleski (1802-86) in 1846. She came to study with Chopin and at once joined the Polish émigré literary circle (Mickiewicz, Słowacki, Zaleski, Witwicki, Klementyna Hoffman-Tańska); Witwicki’s introduction opened her lessons, ten in all, from early November 1843. Her diary (Chopin/émigré passages in Hordyński) records eight lessons to mid-March 1844, normally monthly, with two in November 1843 and three in March 1844. The sparseness came less from her money troubles than from her nervous, “somewhat manic and disordered” disposition, which unsettled Chopin — Eigeldinger suggests some of his mood swings may have been precipitated by her. Bohdan Zaleski had to intercede in December 1844 to resume the interrupted lessons (CFC, III, pp. 184-5); the diary notes one lesson in April 1845 and another in May 1846. Repertoire: studies by Clementi and Moscheles, one Impromptu, the Nocturne op. 9/2, possibly a Polonaise. Chopin was a witness at her marriage (28 November 1846, Saint-Roch) and — uniquely — composed two religious pieces for it, including a Veni creator whose autograph is thought to be with the Bourbon-Parme family. A dedication of 16 January 1848 on the first edition of the Sonata op. 65 (F-Ppo) shows continued contact. Jane Stirling called her “la Sophisette”; Kleczyński sought her advice in Paris (1859-66). Her scores at F-Ppo pose hard problems of attribution, the annotations being in several hands (Appendix II, pp. 234-8).

Arguments

1. Testimony is authenticated by internal consistency with Chopin’s known aesthetic, not by external endorsement. For Peru, Eigeldinger dismisses both a printed listing among Chopin’s pupils and a friend’s confirming letter as worthless, then admits the témoignage largely because its content — variability of performance of a single work, refusal of unmarked tempo change, distrust of prolonged forte and interpolated cadenzas — matches evidence gathered elsewhere in the book, and because such detail is implausible for a fabricator (p. 253).

2. Undated relationships can be bracketed by material documents. The Stirling entry is a worked example: a biographer’s undocumented 1832 claim is rejected, Sloper’s Paris residence supplies a terminus a quo of 1841, and a dated autograph dedication supplies a terminus post quem non of 3 January 1844, yielding “around 1843” (p. 258).

3. The great editions of Chopin descend from pupils’ annotated scores, and therefore inherit the pupils’ limitations. Tellefsen’s authority for the Richault edition was precisely his possession of scores corrected by Chopin (p. 264); Mikuli’s superseding edition drew on scores annotated during Friederike Müller’s lessons (p. 260); Zaleska’s scores at F-Ppo cannot even be securely attributed (p. 269). Mikuli’s stated reason for Richault’s incompleteness (the editor’s health) is read as a euphemism for textual inadequacy (p. 264).

4. Published “diary extracts” may be retrospective constructions, and the editorial silence is the tell. Eigeldinger dates the Streicher-Müller text after 1880 and derives it from a draft for Mikuli, resting the case partly on Niecks’ departure from his usual practice of stating when a testimony was solicited (pp. 260-261, 263).

5. Non-lesson relationships can still be pedagogically informative. Viardot is included even though she “seems not to have received lessons from Chopin in the strict sense” (p. 266), because the informal Nohant advice — captured in a contemporaneous drawing with a spoken correction attached — documents Chopin’s aesthetic of the singing line as directly as any lesson record.

Evidence

• Archival: Moscheles to Schlesinger, London, 2 November 1842, with Schlesinger’s deletions (F-Pn), p. 254; Charlotte Moscheles to Schlesinger, London, 12 July 1842 (F-Pn), p. 256; Papiers E. Ganche (F-Pn) for Roubaud’s eighteen Thursday lessons, p. 255; Heller to Eugénie de Froberville, October 1843, private collection, p. 255; Friederike Müller to Mikuli, 8 January 1879, in Federhofer, p. 96 note 30, p. 260; Tellefsen to his mother, 28 December 1849, p. 263; Bedřich Thun-Hohenstein, 17 December 1834 and Prague, 8 May 1845, in Simonides and Karłowicz, pp. 265-266; Zofia Rosengardt’s diary and letters in Hordyński, pp. 268-269; 25 Stirling-Jędrzejewicz letters at PL-Wtifc, published by Wróblewska-Straus (LSJ), p. 259.
• Press: RGMP 1843/5 and 1844/16 (Peruzzi’s concerto matinées, p. 254); RGMP 1842/18, 1 May, p. 197 (Müller’s Vienna debut, p. 260); RGMP 1852/5, 1 February, p. 37 and 1858/13, 28 March, p. 107 (Roubaud, pp. 256); RGMP 1851/18, 3 May, p. 141 and 1853/52, 25 December, p. 447 (Tellefsen, pp. 263-264).
• Iconography: Hähnisch’s 1847 lithograph of Friederike Müller (Fig. 10, p. 263); Maurice Sand’s ink drawing of Chopin teaching Viardot, Nohant, dated June 1844 (Fig. 11, p. 267); Rubio’s portrait of René Franchomme, c. 1847 (Pénicaud collection); Kwiatkowski’s Chopin portrait c. 1844, misattributed by Cortot (p. 257).
• Musical dedications as dating evidence: Waltz op. 69/1 to Peruzzi (1837); Nocturnes op. 9 inscribed to Stirling, 3 January 1844; Nocturnes op. 55 to Stirling and Mazurkas op. 56 to Maberly, August 1844; Allegro de Concert op. 46 to Friederike Müller; Waltz op. 34/1 to Countess Juža Thun-Hohenstein; Etudes op. 10/3 and 4 autograph given to Müller at her final lesson.

Quotes

• “This virtuosa had no less talent than the Princess Marcelline Czartoryska” (p. 254) — Gustave Chouquet to Niecks, on Elise Peruzzi.
• “she played Chopin’s music in the true style and with all the unpublished traits of the master” (p. 254) — Chouquet, of hearing Peruzzi at Florence in 1852.
• “paid special attention to sound quality and legato, did not write annotations on the score, and always demonstrated at the piano” (p. 255) — Marie Roubaud on Chopin’s manner of teaching.
• “She was so nervous at playing in public for the first time that she was unwell” (p. 256) — Jane Stirling to Ludwika Jędrzejewicz on Roubaud’s debut.
• “You must sing if you wish to play” (p. 256) — Chopin to Mme Rubio.
• “he’s the only one who reminds me of Chopin” (p. 257) — Delacroix, reportedly, on Schiffmacher.
• “Vous jouerez un jour très, très bien” (p. 258) — Chopin to Jane Stirling.
• “During lesson-times at the master’s house, one would often come across two long persons, of Scottish origin and size, thin, pale, ageless, solemn, dressed in black, never smiling” (p. 258) — Solange Clésinger-Sand on Stirling and Mrs Erskine.
• “Many a Sunday I began at one o’clock to play at Chopin’s, and only at four or five in the afternoon did he dismiss us” (p. 259) — Friederike Müller.
• “One morning he played from memory fourteen Preludes and Fugues of Bach’s” (p. 259) — Friederike Müller.
• “I heard him often preluding in a woderfully-beautiful manner” (p. 259) — Friederike Müller (sic, as printed).
• “In some of my scores there are corrections in his hand; I can also remember many more” (p. 260) — Friederike Müller to Mikuli, 8 January 1879.
• “Vous êtes un peu schwärmerisch, mais c’est bien, comme tous les gens du Nord” (p. 263) — Chopin to Tellefsen at their first meeting.
• “He also expressed the wish that I should finish his Pianoforte Method; I am working at it already, with great enthusiasm” (p. 263) — Tellefsen to his mother, 28 December 1849.
• “He has inherited the master’s tradition and has become imbued with his spirit” (p. 264) — RGMP on Tellefsen.
• “Il est très attentif et donne toujours presque une heure et demie” (p. 265) — Bedřich Thun-Hohenstein on Chopin, 17 December 1834.
• “Pauline and Chopin read entire scores at the piano” (p. 268) — George Sand, 1841.
• “He has plenty of wit and natural wisdom, also some wild, painful, nasty and angry moments when he breaks chairs and stamps his feet” (p. 269) — Zofia Rosengardt to her parents, winter 1843-4.

Tensions and links

• Mikuli has no headword entry in this range. Despite being the pivotal transmitter of Chopin’s text and teaching, Karol Mikuli falls in the alphabetical stretch covered by the previous unit (M); here he appears only as the recipient of pupils’ materials and the successor editor (pp. 260-261, 263, 264). The same holds for Lenz and Mathias, absent from pp. 253-269. This unit therefore documents the inputs to Mikuli’s edition rather than his own testimony — worth pairing with the earlier unit’s Mikuli entry when building person pages.
• Two chains of custody for Chopin’s textual legacy converge here. Stirling’s annotated OFE set and projected revised edition (p. 257, Appendix II) run parallel to Tellefsen’s corrected scores (Richault, 1860) and Müller’s lesson-annotated scores (Mikuli). The Müller scores are lost; the Zaleska scores survive but are unattributable. The editorial history of Chopin is thus a history of pupils’ bookshelves.
• The unfinished Pianoforte Method reappears as a relay race. Chopin asks Tellefsen to complete it (p. 263); the original passes from Tellefsen to Ludwika Jędrzejewicz to Marcelina Czartoryska in 1850; Stirling still refers to it in June 1850; nothing is ever finished or published. Links to the Method sketches discussed at p. 90, note 1.
• Reliability spectrum inside one register. Peru is admitted only under caution (p. 253); Bedřich Thun-Hohenstein’s letters are contemporaneous with the lessons and thus prime evidence (p. 265); Müller’s “diary” is a late reconstruction (pp. 260-261); Tellefsen writes copiously and says nothing about method (p. 264). The register is implicitly a source-criticism exercise, not a roll of honour.
• Chopin as human being. Zaleska’s report of broken chairs and stamped feet (p. 269) and Chopin’s exasperation with his “braves Ecossaises” (p. 259) sit against the courteous, restrained teacher of the main text — and both are tied to periods of illness or conflict with Sand.
• Sight-reading duets as a documented teaching device survive on the testimony of exactly two pupils, Peruzzi and Bedřich Thun-Hohenstein (pp. 253, 265) — a reminder of how thin the evidential base for individual pedagogical practices can be.

Open questions

• Where are Friederike Müller’s Chopin-annotated scores and her letters to her Viennese aunts? They are in no Viennese library or public archive (p. 260), yet they underlie Mikuli’s edition.
• Does the German edition of Niecks (II, pp. 366-70) in fact preserve the original German of Streicher-Müller’s text, and can its relation to the lost Mikuli draft be established (p. 263)?
• Was Rubio’s miniature oil portrait of Chopin ever painted, and if so where is it (p. 256)?
• Where is the autograph of the Veni creator Chopin composed for Zaleska’s wedding, and what was the second religious piece (p. 269)?
• Whose hands wrote the annotations in Zaleska’s scores at F-Ppo (p. 269, cf. Appendix II, pp. 234-8)?
• How much of the Stirling-Jędrzejewicz correspondence remains unpublished, given that Karłowicz summarized 46 letters but only 25 originals are at PL-Wtifc (p. 259)?
• Did Peru actually study with Chopin? Eigeldinger’s verdict is explicitly provisional and rests on a presumption of innocence (p. 253).