The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1Hughes, Rupert
History
The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1
Hughes, Rupert
Composers -- Biography
It chanced that Chopin and Slovaki, whose works showed most startling
similarity, were also much alike in looks, in slenderness, dreaminess of
feature, and even in expression of countenance. Their very fates were
like: both left their country never to return. In their wandering
through Europe, they stopped in the same capitals; both at last took up
their residence in Paris, where both died of consumption. It was these
twins of fate whom fate put in love with the same teasing girl.
The "black-eyed demoiselle," as she was called by the poet and the
musician, managed so well, that her two admirers never met at the same
time. She travelled through Europe with her mother and brothers, and
found an opportunity to meet Chopin in one, and Slovaki in another town,
and to pass several weeks with each.
It was Slovaki's turn to meet her in Geneva. Here she inspired him to
much verse, especially his "In der Schweiz." But all this while the
little vixen corresponded with Chopin. He improvised in Paris on themes
she composed, and then she repeated his inspirations to keep Slovaki
hovering at her piano.
When Chopin met the Wodzinskis in Dresden, he composed for Maria his
F-minor Étude which he called "the soul-portrait" of the comtesse. A
year later he passed a month with the family at Marienbad, where he
proposed for her hand and was accepted. In his bridegroom mood he
composed the graceful F-minor Waltz, and later the C-sharp minor
Nocturne.
In the meantime, Slovaki travelled on in blissful ignorance, glorifying
Chopin's fiancée in poetic songs full of passionate admiration. The
distant Slovaki finally learned that Chopin had won his muse, and he
wrote to his mother:
"They say that Chopin and 'my Maria' are to be a pair. How sentimental
to marry a person who is the image of one's first love. Swedenborg says
that in a case of this kind, after death, not out of two of the souls
but out of all three only one angel can be created."
But this tripartite angel died unborn, for in 1837 Chopin found himself
deserted by her. So much we learn from Hoesick. And now we may return to
Chopin's immortal, if immoral, affair with George Sand.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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