Part 17: Appendix IV - Contemporaries' Descriptions I (pp. 368-383)

Part 17 of chopin-pianist-and-teacher-as-seen-by-his-pupils (pp. 368-383). The appendix’s section header and Eigeldinger’s introductory paragraph (p. 368) are covered in 16-appendix-iii-ii; this unit begins with the Mendelssohn extract, which opens at the foot of p. 368.

Question this unit answers

What did Chopin’s playing actually sound and look like, according to people who heard him — not only his pupils but rival virtuosos, composers, critics, salon hosts and friends? Appendix IV is organised under four headings — Composers and Pianists; Pupils; Associates; Music Critics — with two sub-headings, ‘Chopin playing Beethoven’ (under Pupils) and ‘Chopin as improviser’ (under Associates). This unit covers the first three headings and both sub-headings; the Music Critics dossier falls to unit 18.

Key terms

• Mendelssohn (pp. 368-369) — fellow composer; two letters, one from the Düsseldorf days with Hiller and Chopin, one defending Chopin against Fanny’s cooler verdict.
• Rebecka Dirichlet (p. 369) — Mendelssohn’s sister, whose attempt to extract a private mazurka from Chopin failed.
• Schumann (pp. 369-370) — diary entry of 12 September 1836 and letter to Dorn, 14 September 1836; also the later Gesammelte Schriften recollection.
• Henriette Voigt (pp. 370-371) — Leipzig amateur and salon hostess; diary, 13 September 1836.
• Hiller (p. 371) — composer-friend from the Paris years; the most sustained descriptive portrait in this section.
• Hallé (p. 372) — Charles Hallé, then a young pianist newly arrived in Paris; letter of 2 December 1836 and later autobiography.
• Berlioz (p. 373) — critic in Le Rénovateur (1833) and, much later and much more sharply, in the Mémoires.
• Moscheles (pp. 373-374) — senior pianist of the German school; letter, Paris, mid-October 1839.
• Liszt (pp. 374-375) — recollection transmitted via Strelezki.
• Marmontel (p. 375) — Paris Conservatoire professor; on touch, colour and pedalling.
• Mikuli (pp. 376-377) — pupil and editor; the classic summary of Chopin’s technique, tone and rubato.
• Emile Gaillard (p. 377) — pupil; “thumping is not playing”.
• Mathias (pp. 377-378) — pupil; on Chopin’s short-lived but real power.
• Anonymous Scottish lady (pp. 378, 379-380) — letters to J. C. Hadden, 27 March 1903.
• Lenz (pp. 378-379) — Wilhelm von Lenz; the one substantially critical account, on Chopin playing Beethoven op. 26.
• Elizavieta Cheriemietieff (p. 379) — pupil; letter to her mother, 11 November 1842.
• Sophie Leo (p. 380) — Parisian memoirist; on Chopin’s platform manner.
• Solange Clésinger (pp. 380-381) — George Sand’s daughter; on the range of Chopin’s expression and Liszt’s failure with his music.
• Fontana (pp. 381-382) — pupil-copyist; preface to the posthumous works, on improvisation.
• Delacroix, George Sand, Bohdan Zaleski, Ferdynand Dworzaczek (pp. 382-383) — witnesses to Chopin improvising.
• note bleue (p. 382) — Sand’s term for the moment Chopin’s improvisation found its colour.

Propositions

1. Chopin’s playing was recognised by professional musicians as sui generis rather than as a variant of an existing school: he “may truly be called a perfect virtuoso” yet with “something entirely his own” (Mendelssohn, p. 369), an “artist apart, bearing no point of resemblance to any other musician I know” (Berlioz, p. 373), “unique in the piano world” (Moscheles, pp. 373-374).
2. His tone was small in absolute volume but flawless in quality — Liszt: “though small, was absolutely beyond criticism” (p. 375); Hiller explicitly notes the absence of the “imposing sonorous strength” of Liszt and Thalberg and reframes that lack as charm (p. 371).
3. Yet pupils insist the tone was large in cantabile: Mikuli calls it always immense and compares only Field (p. 376); Cheriemietieff describes his sounds as full and large despite their transparency (p. 379). The contradiction is one of register, not of fact — small in mass, immense in singing projection.
4. The characteristic dynamic zone was extreme softness used as a structural resource, not an effect. Berlioz describes the hammers “merely brushing the strings” in the mazurkas (p. 373); Moscheles notes that Chopin’s piano was so soft “he needs no vigorous forte to produce the desired contrasts” (pp. 373-374) — i.e. the whole dynamic scale was transposed downward.
5. Legato and continuity of sound were the technical core: “The tones melted into one another, as wonderfully as in the most beautiful singing” (Mikuli, p. 376), and the piano “needed to envy neither the violin for its bow nor wind instruments for their living breath” (p. 376).
6. Evenness and independence of the hands placed him technically in the Clementi line (Marmontel, p. 375), and his hand was supple rather than large, allowing wide arpeggiated spans without fatigue (Mikuli, p. 376).
7. Pedalling was singled out as a distinct art: Marmontel claims “No pianist before him employed the pedals alternately or simultaneously with so much tact and skill” (p. 375), contrasting Chopin’s constant-but-clean use with the “capital defect” of modern virtuosos.
8. Colour and half-light are the recurring metaphors: Marmontel’s painterly analogy of modulating sound “much as skilled painters treat light and atmosphere” and enveloping phrases in “a half-tint which has something of both dream and reality” (p. 375); the Scottish lady’s alternations of light and shade in Beethoven’s finale (p. 378); Sand’s note bleue (p. 382).
9. On rhythm the testimony genuinely splits. Berlioz: “Chopin could not play in time” (p. 373). Moscheles brokers the dispute: what degenerates into mere Tactlosigkeit with others is “the most graceful and original feature of the discourse” in Chopin’s hands (p. 373). Mikuli insists Chopin was inexorable in keeping time and that the metronome never left his piano, rubato consisting of a strict-time accompanying hand against a melodically free one (p. 376). Cheriemietieff agrees with Berlioz’s observation but approves of it, saying he sometimes played far from strict time, following his inspiration (p. 379).
10. Freedom of declamation coexisted with rhythmic firmness: Hiller pairs them explicitly, so that melodies “would seem to have occurred to him at that very moment” (p. 371).
11. His playing suppressed the listener’s analytic faculty. Hallé: “In listening to him you lost all power of analysis” (p. 372). The Scottish lady says one never thought of execution, marvellous though it was (p. 379), and Gaillard that virtuosity disappeared behind the emotion, so that one was less dazzled than moved (p. 377).
12. Force was rejected as a means. Gaillard: “Thumping is not playing… Chopin never flattened his piano” (p. 377). Solange Clésinger insists it was not a matter of hitting hard, and that the terrible accents of wrath had to be drawn from an intractable instrument without thumping, hitting or breaking (p. 381) — power as expressive category, not as pressure.
13. Real power nonetheless existed, but briefly. Mathias: “what power! yes, what power! though it would only last for a few bars” (p. 377) — consistent with the chronic ill-health Mikuli cites as limiting his concert-hall range (p. 376).
14. Chopin’s playing belonged to the salon, not the hall. Berlioz recommends hearing him “from close by, in the salon rather than the concert hall” (p. 373); Liszt says the execution was by no means fitted for the concert room (p. 375); Mikuli notes he played rarely and reluctantly in public and could not thereby win universal fame as a pianist (p. 376).
15. His platform manner was deliberately anti-theatrical: Sophie Leo stresses simple dress, whatever seat was provided, no introduction — “He offered art, not artifice” (p. 380).
16. His repertoire and taste were classical: Bach above all, then Mozart, Beethoven, Weber, Hummel, Field — and virtually none of the fashionable virtuoso literature (Mikuli, pp. 376-377).
17. In Beethoven he was interpretively partial rather than deficient. The Scottish lady heard op. 26 “like a revelation” with “grand, orchestral, powerfully dramatic effect” (p. 378); Lenz heard the same sonata as beautiful but “feminine”, unrivalled only in cantilena (p. 378). Chopin’s own defence is a stated aesthetic: he indicates, and leaves it to the listener to parachever the picture (p. 379).
18. Improvisation was, on this testimony, his highest state, and the published works its residue. Fontana: the finished compositions are “merely reflections and echoes of his improvisations” (p. 382); Delacroix reports Grzymała saying the improvisations were “far bolder” than the works (p. 382).
19. Improvisation was tied to Polish national material and memory: Zaleski’s evening ends with “Poland is not [yet] dead” in a “whole gamut of different forms and voices” (p. 383); Dworzaczek recognises a cradle-song Chopin insists he never heard (p. 383).
20. A recurring physical detail closes performances: Schumann’s glissando of one finger down the keyboard “as though to tear himself forcibly away from his dream” (p. 370), and Gaillard’s Chopin remaining silent at the keyboard, pursuing a dream of his own (p. 377).
21. Mendelssohn’s earliest verdict already places Chopin at the top of the profession: “as a pianist Chopin is now one of the greatest of all” (p. 368).
22. The one reservation from that same letter is stylistic and cultural rather than technical: Chopin was “doing things as original as Paganini does on the violin”, but he and Hiller both “labour somewhat under the Parisian tendency of overdoing passion and despair, and too often lose sight of calm, discretion and the purely musical” — a north-German classicist’s complaint that anticipates Berlioz’s later objection and sits oddly against Mikuli’s chaste, measured, at times severely reserved Chopin (p. 369).

Arguments

• The “small tone” is not a defect but a premise. Eigeldinger’s arrangement lets Hiller and Liszt (small, unforcible tone) sit beside Mikuli and Cheriemietieff (immense, full sound), so that the reader is pushed to conclude that Chopin’s dynamic world was internally consistent and simply pitched lower than that of the Liszt-Thalberg school — with the extreme pianissimo establishing the reference level against which everything else read as large.
• Grouping by witness class is itself an argument. Fellow musicians (competitors with no motive to flatter), then pupils (technically informed but partisan), then associates (unmusical but candid): the convergence of all three on the same features — legato, softness, colour, absence of thumping, salon scale — is offered as corroboration stronger than any single account.
• Berlioz’s two texts are printed together to expose critical drift. The 1833 review is enraptured; the Mémoires verdict is flat condemnation of rhythmic licence. Placing them adjacently suggests that Berlioz’s later judgement reflects his own hardening classicism, and warns against reading any single contemporary verdict as neutral observation.
• Lenz is included precisely because he dissents. His “feminine!” verdict on Chopin’s Beethoven, immediately followed by Chopin’s own “I indicate” reply, converts an apparent failure into a documented aesthetic position — Chopin declining to over-determine the listener’s experience.
• The improvisation dossier reframes the printed text as secondary. By closing with Fontana, Delacroix, Sand, Zaleski and Dworzaczek, the appendix argues that the scores are traces of a lost improvisatory practice, which bears directly on how much interpretive latitude a performer may claim.

Evidence

• Dated, independent, non-overlapping documents: Mendelssohn’s letters (1834, 1835), Schumann’s diary and letter (both September 1836), Voigt’s diary (13 September 1836 — the same Leipzig visit as Schumann’s), Hallé’s letter (2 December 1836) and his autobiography c. 1894-5 describing the same evening, Berlioz’s review (15 December 1833), Moscheles’ letter (October 1839), Cheriemietieff’s letter (11 November 1842), Delacroix’s journal (20 April 1853), Zaleski’s diary (2 February 1844).
• Two-source pairs on a single occasion strengthen the record: Schumann and Voigt on the Leipzig days of September 1836; Hallé’s contemporaneous letter and his fifty-year-later memoir on 30 November 1836.
• Specific repertoire is named, anchoring the descriptions to particular pieces: Schumann’s list of new Etudes op. 25, mazurkas, a Nocturne in D flat and the Ballade (p. 370); Liszt’s account of the Nocturne op. 37/2 composed that morning, the Prelude in F sharp minor and the B flat Variations (pp. 374-375); Moscheles hearing the Preludes (p. 374); Zaleski’s Prelude, Berceuse, Mazurka, Polonaise and improvisation (p. 383).
• Negative evidence is preserved too: Rebecka Dirichlet’s rebuffed request — “Impossible, nervous strain, bad piano” (p. 369) — documents the reluctance to play that Mikuli later generalises.
• Comparative benchmarks recur: Kalkbrenner “compared to Chopin is a child” (Hallé, p. 372); Field alone comparable in cantabile tone (Mikuli, p. 376); Liszt “played these adorable melodies badly. He botched them” (Solange, p. 381).

Quotes

• “as a pianist Chopin is now one of the greatest of all” (p. 368)
• “doing things as original as Paganini does on the violin, and bringing about miracles that one would never have believed possible” (p. 369)
• “labour somewhat under the Parisian tendency of overdoing passion and despair, and too often lose sight of calm, discretion and the purely musical” (p. 369)
• “There is something entirely his own in his piano playing, and at the same time so masterly that he may truly be called a perfect virtuoso” (p. 369)
• “It was stirring just to watch him at the keyboard.” (p. 370)
• “It was already an unforgettable picture to see him sitting at the piano like a clairvoyant, lost in his dreams” (p. 370)
• “interesting man and still more interesting playing; he moved me strangely” (p. 370)
• “Nobody before had stirred the keys of a grand piano like that, nor known how to release such countless sonorities from it.” (p. 371)
• “What in the hands of others was elegant embellishment, in his hands became a colourful wreath of flowers; what in others was technical dexterity seemed in his playing like the flight of a swallow.” (p. 371)
• “Even the lack of that imposing sonorous strength familiar from Liszt, Thalberg and others, appeared as an element of charm” (p. 371)
• “There is nothing to remind one that it is a human being who produces this music. It seems to descend from heaven – so pure, and clear, and spiritual.” (p. 372)
• “In listening to him you lost all power of analysis; you did not for a moment think how perfect was his execution of this or that difficulty” (p. 372)
• “he has found how to render them doubly interesting by playing them with the utmost degree of softness, piano to the extreme, the hammers merely brushing the strings” (p. 373)
• “Chopin could not play in time.” (p. 373)
• “his piano is breathed forth so softly that he needs no vigorous forte to produce the desired contrasts” (p. 373)
• “The tone, though small, was absolutely beyond criticism, and although his execution was not forcible, nor by any means fitted for the concert room, still it was perfect in the extreme.” (p. 375)
• “He had a completely individual manner of touching the keyboard, a supple, mellow touch, creating sound effects of a misty fluidity whose secret he alone knew.” (p. 375)
• “No pianist before him employed the pedals alternately or simultaneously with so much tact and skill.” (p. 375)
• “In every kind of touch the evenness of his scales and passage work was unsurpassed, indeed phenomenal; under Chopin’s hands the piano needed to envy neither the violin for its bow nor wind instruments for their living breath.” (p. 376)
• “In keeping time Chopin was inexorable, and some readers will be surprised to learn that the metronome never left his piano.” (p. 376)
• “Thumping is not playing” (p. 377)
• “Virtuosity disappeared behind the emotion; one was less dazzled than moved.” (p. 377)
• “what virtuosity! what power! yes, what power! though it would only last for a few bars” (p. 377)
• “He played that Marche funèbre of Beethoven’s with a grand, orchestral, powerfully dramatic effect, yet with a sort of restrained emotion which was indescribable.” (p. 378)
• “it’s up to the listener to complete (parachever) the picture” (p. 379)
• “He appeared hardly to touch the piano; one might have thought an instrument superfluous.” (p. 380)
• “He offered art, not artifice, and gave it a dignified setting, not a grotesque one.” (p. 380)
• “Under the flexible and responsive fingers of Chopin’s pale and frail hand the piano became the voice of an archangel, an orchestra, an army, a raging ocean” (p. 381)
• “Chopin’s most beautiful finished compositions are merely reflections and echoes of his improvisations.” (p. 382)

Tensions and links

• Rubato: pupil doctrine vs outside ear. Mikuli’s strict-accompaniment / free-melody formulation (p. 376) is the pupil-side account also reported in the technique and style units (03-musical-style, 07-notes-ii). Berlioz’s flat verdict that Chopin could not play in time (p. 373) is what the same practice sounded like to a listener with no access to the mechanism. Moscheles (p. 373) is the bridge: the licence was audible, but organised. The outside testimony therefore does not refute the pupils’ rule; it shows how thoroughly the rule was disguised.
• Suppleness over strength corroborated from outside. The souplesse principle taught in the technique unit (02-basic-technique) — no forcing, no thumping, weight rather than blows — is independently described by Marmontel’s “supple, mellow touch” (p. 375), by Gaillard’s refusal of thumping (p. 377), by Sophie Leo’s Chopin who barely seems to touch the piano (p. 380) and by Solange’s insistence on power without hitting or breaking (p. 381). Four witnesses of different competence converge on a doctrine none of them was taught.
• Cantabile / bel canto model confirmed. The pupils’ singing-tone ideal is echoed by Mikuli’s melting tones and violin/wind comparison (p. 376), by Moscheles’ image of a singer who gives full rein to his feelings untroubled by the accompaniment (p. 374), and by the Scottish lady’s report that in his hands the piano did sing, in many tones (p. 379).
• Pedalling gains weight it lacks in the pupil record. The teaching material transmits comparatively little explicit pedal instruction, yet Marmontel (p. 375) and Liszt (p. 374) both make pedalling central to the sound. This is genuine new information from outside testimony, not corroboration.
• A dynamic-range tension left open. Hiller and Liszt report an unforcible, small tone; Mikuli and Mathias report immense cantabile and real (if short-lived) power. The likeliest reconciliation is chronology — the healthy Chopin of the mid-1830s versus the declining Chopin of the 1840s — but neither the appendix nor the pupil chapters state this outright.
• Improvisation vs the printed text. Fontana (p. 382), Delacroix (p. 382) and Sand (p. 382) make the scores secondary to a practice we cannot recover, which sharpens the pupils’ reports of Chopin varying his own pieces from one hearing to the next and improvising fioriture into Field’s Nocturnes (p. 377).
• Solange’s transmission claim. Her assertion that only Chopin’s favourite pupils — Czartoryska, O’Meara, de Rozières (p. 381) — convey what the music is about ties directly to the transmission-lineage question raised in the pupil biographies, and asserts a specifically non-athletic line of descent.

Open questions

• Is the small-tone / immense-cantabile split chronological (health), acoustic (period instruments and small salons), or a difference in what each witness meant by tone?
• Mikuli’s metronome-on-the-piano claim is unique in this dossier — is it corroborated elsewhere in the book, or is it apologetics aimed at critics like Berlioz?
• Solange’s “Liszt played these adorable melodies badly” (p. 381) contradicts Liszt’s own reverent recollection of Chopin (pp. 374-375) and his reputation as an interpreter; how much is 1840s-Sand-circle partisanship?
• The Scottish lady’s letters date from 1903, describing 1848 — how much reshaping has the intervening half-century and the published Chopin literature done to her memory? Hallé raises the same problem, though his contemporaneous letter allows a partial check.
• What exactly did Chopin mean by “I indicate” (p. 379) — a claim about Beethoven specifically, about his own music, or a general performance aesthetic of understatement?
• Sand’s note bleue (p. 382) is a literary construction of an improvisation; can any of the described colour-search be mapped onto a surviving piece, or is it irrecoverable?