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Chopin, Frộdộric (Francois)
Life.
Chopin's father, Nicholas, a French ộmigrộ in Poland, was employed as a tutor to various aristocratic families, including the Skarbeks, at Zelazowa Wola, one of whose poorer relations he married. When Frộdộric was eight months old, Nicholas became a French teacher at the Warsaw lyceum. Chopin himself attended the lyceum from 1823 to 1826.

All the family had artistic leanings, and even in infancy Chopin was always strangely moved when listening to his mother or eldest sister playing the piano. By six he was already trying to reproduce what he heard or to make up new tunes. The following year he started piano lessons with the 61-year-old Wojciech (Adalbert) Zywny, an all-around musician with an astute sense of values. Zywny's simple instruction in piano playing was soon left behind by his pupil, who discovered for himself an original approach to the piano and was allowed to develop unhindered by academic rules and formal discipline.

Chopin found himself invited at an early age to play at private soirộes, and at eight he made his first public appearance at a public charity concert. Three years later he performed in the presence of the Russian tsar Alexander I, who was in Warsaw to open Parliament. Playing was not alone responsible for his growing reputation as a child prodigy. At seven he wrote a Polonaise in G Minor, which was printed, and soon afterward a march of his appealed to the Russian grand duke Constantine, who had it scored for his military band to play on parade. Other polonaises, mazurkas, variations, ecossaises, and a rondo followed, with the result that, when he was 16, his family enrolled him at the newly formed Warsaw Conservatory of Music. This school was directed by the Polish composer Joseph Elsner, with whom Chopin already had been studying musical theory.

No better teacher could have been found, for, while insisting on a tra***ional training, Elsner, as a Romantically inclined composer himself, realized that Chopin's individual imagination must never be checked by purely academic demands. Even before he came under Elsner's eye, Chopin had shown interest in the folk music of the Polish countryside and had received those impressions that later gave an unmistakable national colouring to his work. At the conservatory he was put through a solid course of instruction in harmony and composition; it was only in piano playing itself that he was practically self-taught.

Despite the lively musical life of Warsaw, Chopin urgently needed wider musical experience, and so his devoted parents found the money to send him off to Vienna. After a preliminary expe***ion to Berlin in 1828, Chopin visited Vienna and made his performance debut there in 1829. A second concert confirmed his success, and on his return home he prepared himself for further achievements abroad by writing his Piano Concerto No. 2 in F Minor (1829) and his Piano Concerto No. 1 in E Minor (1830), as well as other works for piano and orchestra designed to exploit his brilliantly original piano style. His first ộtudes were also written at this time (1829-32) to enable him and others to master the technical difficulties in his new conception of piano playing.

In March and October 1830 he presented his new works to the Warsaw public and then left Poland with the intention of visiting Germany and Italy for further study. He had gone no farther than Vienna when news reached him of the Polish revolt against Russian rule; this event, added to the disturbed state of Europe, caused him to remain profitlessly in Vienna until the following July, when he decided to make his way to Paris. Soon after his arrival in what was then the centre of European culture and a focal point of the Romantic movement, Chopin realized that he had found the exact milieu in which his genius could flourish. He quickly established ties with many Polish ộmigrộs and with a younger generation of composers, including Franz Liszt, Hector Berlioz, Vincenzo Bellini, and Felix Mendelssohn. The circles to which Chopin's talents and distinction admitted him quickly acknowledged that they had found the artist whom the moment required, and after a brief period of uncertainty Chopin settled down to the main business of his life-teaching and composing. His high income from these sources set him free from the strain of concert giving, to which he had an innate repugnance.

Initially, there were problems, professional and financial. After his Paris concert debut in February 1832, Chopin realized that his extreme delicacy at the keyboard was not to everyone's taste in larger concert spaces. But an introduction to the wealthy Rothschild banking family later that year suddenly opened up new horizons. With his elegant manners, fastidious dress, and innate sensitivity, Chopin found himself a favourite in the great houses of Paris, both as a recitalist and as a teacher. His new piano works at this time included two startlingly poetic books of ộtudes (1829-36), the Ballade in G Minor (1831-35), the Fantaisie-Impromptu, and many smaller pieces, among them mazurkas and polonaises inspired by Chopin's strong nationalist feeling.

Chopin's youthful love affairs with Constantia Gladkowska in Warsaw (1830) and Maria Wodzinska in Dresden (1835-36) had come to nothing, though he actually became engaged to the latter. In 1836 he met for the first time the free-living novelist Aurore Dudevant, better known as George Sand. She fell in love with him and offered to become his mistress. Chopin eventually succumbed to her persuasions, and their liaison began in the summer of 1838. That autumn he set off with her and her children, Maurice and Solange, to winter on the island of Majorca. They rented a simple villa and were idyllically happy until the sunny weather broke and Chopin became ill. When rumours of tuberculosis reached the villa owner, they were ordered out and could only find accommodations in a monastery in the remote village of Valldemosa.

The cold and damp, malnutrition, peasant suspiciousness of their strange mộnage, and the lack of a suitable concert piano hindered Chopin's artistic production and further weakened his precarious physical health. Indeed, the privations that Chopin endured brought on the slow decline in his health that ended with his death from tuberculosis 10 years later. Sand realized that only immediate departure would save his life. They arrived at Marseille in early March 1839, and, thanks to a skilled physician, Chopin was sufficiently recovered after just under three months for them to start planning a return to Paris. The summer of 1839 they spent at Nohant, Sand's country house about 180 miles (290 km) south of Paris. This period following the return from Majorca was to be the happiest and most productive of Chopin's life, and the long summers spent at Nohant bore fruit in a succession of masterpieces. As a regular source of income, he again turned to private teaching. His method permitted great flexibility of the wrist and arm and daringly unconventional fingering in the interests of greater agility, with the production of beautiful, singing tone a prime requisite at nearly all times. There was also a growing demand for his new works, and, since he had become increasingly shrewd in his dealings with publishers, he could afford to live elegantly.

Health was a recurrent worry, and every summer Sand took him to Nohant for fresh air and relaxation. Close friends, such as Pauline Viardot and the painter Eugốne Delacroix, were often invited, too. Chopin produced much of his most searching music at Nohant, not only miniatures but also extended works, such as the Fantaisie in F Minor (composed 1840-41), the Barcarolle (1845-46), the Polonaise-Fantaisie (1845-46), the Ballade in A-flat Major (1840-41) and Ballade in F Minor (1842), and the Sonata in B Minor (1844). Here, in the country, he found the peace and time to indulge an ingrained quest for perfection. He seemed particularly anxious to develop his ideas into longer and more complex arguments, and he even sent to Paris for treatises by musicologists to strengthen his counterpoint. His harmonic vocabulary at this period also grew much more daring, though never at the cost of sensuous beauty. He valued that quality throughout life as much as he abhorred descriptive titles or any hint of an underlying "program."

Family dissension arising from the marriage of Sand's daughter Solange caused Chopin's own relationship with Sand to become strained, and he grew increasingly moody and petulant. By 1848 the rift between him and Sand was complete, and pride prevented either from effecting the reconciliation they both actually desired. Thereafter Chopin seems to have given up his struggle with ill-health.

Broken in spirit and depressed by the revolution that had broken out in Paris in February 1848, Chopin accepted an invitation to visit England and Scotland. His reception in London was enthusiastic, and he struggled through an exhausting round of lessons and appearances at fashionable parties. Chopin lacked the strength *****stain this socializing, however, and he was also unable to compose. By now his health was deteriorating rapidly, and he made his last public appearance on a concert platform at the Guildhall in London on Nov. 16, 1848, when, in a final patriotic gesture, he played for the benefit of Polish refugees. He returned to Paris, where he died the following year; he was buried at the cemetery of Pốre Lachaise.


Works.
As a pianist Chopin was unique in acquiring a reputation of the highest order on the basis of a minimum of public appearances-few more than 30 in the course of his lifetime. His original and uninhibited approach to the keyboard allowed him to exploit all the resources of the piano of his day. He was inexhaustible in discovering colourful new passage work and technical figures; he understood as no one before him the true nature of the piano as an expressive instrument, and he had the secret of writing music that is bound up with the instrument for which it was conceived and which cannot be imagined apart from it. His innovations in fingering, his use of the pedals, and his general treatment of the keyboard form a milestone in the history of the piano, and his works set a standard that is recognized as unsurpassable.

Chopin's works for solo piano include about 55 mazurkas; 16 polonaises; 26 preludes; 27 ộtudes; 21 nocturnes; 20 waltzes; 3 sonatas; 4 ballades; 4 scherzos; 4 impromptus; and many individual pieces, such as the Barcarolle, Opus 60; the Fantasia, Opus 49; and the Berceuse, Opus 57; as well as 17 Polish songs.

As a composer Chopin has acquired increased stature after a period in the late 19th century when his work was judged by academic standards that were in fact inapplicable to its individual character. In keyboard style, harmony, and form, he was innovative according to the demands of each specific compositional situation. He had the rare gift of a very personal melody, expressive of heartfelt emotion, and his music is penetrated by a poetic feeling that has an almost universal appeal. Although "romantic" in its essence, Chopin's music has none of the expected trappings of Romanticism-there is a classic purity and discretion in everything he wrote and not a sign of Romantic exhibitionism. He found within himself and in the tragic story of Poland the chief sources of his inspiration. The theme of Poland's glories and sufferings was constantly before him, and he transmuted the primitive rhythms and melodies of his youth into enduring art forms. At the same time, he subtly differentiated, for example, the intimate poetic inspiration of the mazurka from the more outward-looking, ceremonial aspect of the polonaise, which in works like the Polonaise-Fantaisie he expanded to the proportions of symphonic poems for the piano. The waltz, meanwhile, offered him a courtly dance medium on a smaller scale, and he responded not by expanding it but by bringing it to unprecedented levels of polish and grace. From the great Italian singers of the age he learned the art of "singing" on the piano, and his nocturnes reveal the perfection of his cantabile style and delicate charm of ornamentation. His ballades and scherzos, on the other hand, have a dramatic turbulence and passion, as well as a symphonic scope, which effectively dispel the notion that Chopin was merely a drawing-room composer.

Chopin's small output was mostly confined to solo piano; yet within its limited framework its range is seen to be vast, comprehending every variety of intensely experienced emotion. Though Chopin squandered too much time on the drawing-room Parisian aristocracy and disappointed critics who valued artistic worth only in terms of large-scale achievement, he was immediately recognized at his true worth by more discerning contemporaries, who were astounded by the startling originality he reconciled with exquisite craftsmanship. Present-day evaluation places him among the immortals of music by reason of his insight into the secret places of the heart and because of his awareness of the magical new sonorities to be drawn from the piano.


Arthur Hedley
The E***ors of the Encyclopổdia Britannica

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211 bài đã gửi Posted - 28/04/2001 : 12:44:19
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Sand, George
born July 1, 1804, Paris
died June 8, 1876, Nohant, Fr.


George Sand

pseudonym of Amandine-Aaurore-Lucile (Lucie) Dudevant, nộe DupinFrench Romantic writer, noted both for her so-called rustic novels and numerous love affairs.

She was brought up at Nohant, near La Chõtre in Berry, the country home of her grandmother. There she gained the profound love and understanding of the countryside that were to inform most of her works. In 1817 she was sent to a convent in Paris, where she acquired a mystical fervour that, though it soon abated, left its mark.

In 1822 Aurore married Casimir Dudevant. The first years of the marriage were happy enough, but Aurore soon tired of her well-intentioned but somewhat insensitive husband and sought consolation first in a platonic friendship with a young magistrate and then in a passionate liaison with a neighbour. In January 1831 she left Nohant for Paris, where she found a good friend in Henri de Latouche, the director of Le Figaro, who accepted some of the articles she wrote with Jules Sandeau under the pseudonym Jules Sand. In 1832 she adopted a new pseudonym, George Sand, for Indiana, a novel in which Sandeau had had no part. This novel, which brought her immediate fame, is a passionate protest against the social conventions that bind a wife to her husband against her will and an apologia for a heroine who abandons an unhappy marriage and finds love. In Valentine (1832) and Lộlia (1833) the ideal of free association is extended to the wider sphere of social and class relationships. Valentine is the first of many Sand novels in which the hero is a peasant or a workman.

Meanwhile, the list of her lovers was growing; eventually it included, among others, Prosper Mộrimộe, Alfred de Musset, and Frộdộric Chopin. Yet it would be a mistake to accept the popular impression of her as a nymphomaniac who changed her philosophy and politics *****it the views of each successive lover. When she thought she had found something approaching perfection in a man, she lived with him for years, caring for him with a love that was more that of a mother than of a mistress: she stayed eight years with Chopin, for example, until he left her after a quarrel. She remained impervious to Musset's skeptical views and Chopin's aristocratic prejudices, while the man whose opinions she adopted wholeheartedly, the philosopher Pierre Lerous, was never her lover. The fact remains, however, that most of her early works, including Lộlia, Mauprat (1837), Spiridion (1839), and Les sept Cordes de la lyre (1840), show the influence of one or another of the men with whom she associated.

Eventually, she found her true form in her rustic novels, which drew their chief inspiration from her lifelong love of the countryside and sympathy for the poor. In La Mare au diable (1846), Franỗois le Champi (1848), and La Petite Fadette (1849), the familiar theme of George Sand's work-love transcending the obstacles of convention and class-in the familiar setting of the Berry countryside, regained pride of place. These rustic tales are probably her finest works. In later life she produced a series of novels and plays of impeccable morality and conservatism. Probably the only later works that are likely to endure are her autobiography, Histoire de ma vie (1854-55; "Story of My Life"), and Contes d'une grand'mốre (1873; "Tales of a Grandmother"), stories she wrote for her grandchildren.

When, after a peaceful old age, she died, she was mourned as a great writer, but, with a few exceptions, her works soon fell into neglect. It is said that she wrote too much and too quickly; certainly she wrote with astonishing fluency. It is also said that as a writer she was an idealist, that in her memoirs she shut her eyes to the unpleasant aspects of reality while in her novels she created characters of unbelievable innocence and charm. She was, however, a born storyteller, and, with her childlike optimism and ingenuous faith in life, it was natural that her stories should be fairy tales, her peasants good and kind, her endings happy. "The novel," she declared, "need not necessarily be the representation of reality."



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211 bài đã gửi Posted - 28/04/2001 : 12:46:26
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Liszt, Franz
Youth and early training.
Liszt's father, dỏm Liszt, was an official in the service of Prince Nicolas Eszterhỏzy, whose palace in Eisenstadt was frequented by many celebrated musicians. dỏm Liszt was a talented amateur musician who played the cello in the court concerts. By the time Franz was five years old he was already attracted to the piano and was soon given lessons by his father. He began to show interest in both church and Gypsy music. He developed into a religious child, also because of the influence of his father, who during his youth had spent two years in the Franciscan order.

Franz began to compose at the age of eight. When only nine he made his first public appearance as a concert pianist at Sopron and Pozsony (now Bratislava, Slovakia). His playing so impressed the local Hungarian magnates that they put up the money to pay for his musical education for the next six years. dỏm obtained leave of absence from his post and took Franz to Vienna, where he had piano lessons with Karl Czerny, a composer and pianist who had been a pupil of Ludwig van Beethoven, and studied composition with Antonio Salieri, the musical director at the Viennese court. He gave several concerts in Vienna, with great success. The legend that Beethoven attended one of Liszt's concerts and kissed the prodigy on the forehead is considered apocryphal-but Liszt certainly met Beethoven.

Liszt moved with his family to Paris in 1823, giving concerts in Germany on the way. He was refused admission to the Paris Conservatoire because he was a foreigner; instead, he studied with Anton Reicha, a theorist who had been a pupil of Joseph Haydn's brother Michael, and Ferdinando Paer, the director of the Thộõtre-Italien in Paris and a composer of light operas. Liszt's Paris debut on March 7, 1824, was sensational. Other concerts quickly followed, as well as a visit to London in June. He toured England again the following year, playing for George IV at Windsor Castle and also visiting Manchester, where his New Grand Overture was performed for the first time. This piece was used as the overture to his one-act opera Don Sanche, which was performed at the Paris Opộra on Oct. 17, 1825. In 1826 he toured France and Switzerland, returning to England again in the following year. Suffering from nervous exhaustion, Liszt expressed a desire to become a priest. His father took him to Boulogne to take seabaths to improve his health; there dỏm died of typhoid fever. Liszt returned to Paris and sent for his mother to join him; she had gone back to the Austrian province of Styria during his tours.

Liszt now earned his living mainly as a piano teacher, and in 1828 he fell in love with one of his pupils. When her father insisted that the attachment be broken off, Liszt again became extremely ill; he was considered so close to death that his obituary appeared in a Paris newspaper. After his illness he underwent a long period of depression and doubt about his career. For more than a year he did not touch the piano and was dissuaded from joining the priesthood only through the efforts of his mother. He experienced much religious pessimism. During this period Liszt took an active dislike to the career of a virtuoso. He made up for his previous lack of education by reading widely, and he came into contact with many of the leading artists of the day, including Alphonse de Lamartine, Victor Hugo, and Heinrich Heine. With the July Revolution of 1830 resulting in the abdication of the French king Charles X and the coronation of Louis-Philippe, he sketched out a Revolutionary Symphony.

Between 1830 and 1832 he met three men who were to have a great influence on his artistic life. At the end of 1830 he first met Hector Berlioz and heard the first performance of his Symphonie fantastique. From Berlioz he inherited the command of the romantic orchestra and also the diabolic quality that remained with him for the rest of his life. He achieved the seemingly impossible feat of transcribing Berlioz' Symphonie fantastique for the piano in 1833, and he helped Berlioz by transcribing other works of his and playing them in concert. In March 1831 he heard Niccolũ Paganini play for the first time. He again became interested in virtuoso technique and resolved to transfer some of Paganini's fantastic violin effects to the piano, writing a fantasia on his Campanella. At this time he also met Frộdộric Chopin, whose poetical style of music exerted a profound influence on Liszt.


Years with Marie d'Agoult.
In 1834 Liszt emerged as a mature composer with the solo piano piece Harmonies poộtiques et religieuses, based on a collection of poems by Lamartine, and the set of three Apparitions. The lyrical style of these works is in marked contrast to his youthful compositions, which reflected the style of his teacher Czerny. In the same year, through the poet and dramatist Alfred de Musset, he met the novelist George Sand and also Marie de Flavigny, Countess d'Agoult, with whom he began an affair. In 1835 she left her husband and family to join Liszt in Switzerland; their first daughter, Blandine, was born in Geneva on December 18. Liszt and Madame d'Agoult lived together for four years, mainly in Switzerland and Italy, though Liszt made occasional visits to Paris. He also taught at the newly founded Geneva Conservatory and published a series of essays, "On the Position of Artists," in which he endeavoured to raise the status of the artist-who up to then had been regarded as a kind of superior servant-to that of a respected member of the community.

Liszt commemorated his years with Madame d'Agoult in the first two books of solo piano pieces collectively named Annộes de pốlerinage (1837-54; Years of Pilgrimage), which are poetical evocations of Swiss and Italian scenes. He also wrote the first mature version of the Transcendental ẫtudes (1838, 1851); these are works for solo piano based on his youthful ẫtude en 48 exercices, but here transformed into pieces of terrifying virtuosity. He transcribed for the piano six of Paganini's pieces-five studies and La campanella-and also three Beethoven symphonies, some songs by Franz Schubert, and further works of Berlioz. He made these transcriptions to make the work of these men more available and thus spread the appreciation of their music, which was still greatly neglected at that time. Liszt also wrote a number of fantasias on popular operas of the day and dazzled audiences with them at his concerts.

His second daughter, Cosima, was born in 1837 and his son, Daniel, in 1839, but toward the end of that year his relations with Madame d'Agoult became strained and she returned to Paris with the children. Liszt then returned to his career as a virtuoso to raise money for the Beethoven Memorial Committee in Bonn for the completion of its Beethoven monument.

For the next eight years Liszt traveled all over Europe, giving concerts in countries as far apart as Ireland, Portugal, Turkey, and Russia. He continued to spend his summer holidays with Madame d'Agoult and the children on the island of Nonnenwerth in the Rhine River until 1844; then they finally parted, and Liszt took the children to Paris. Liszt's brilliance and success were at their peak during these years as a virtuoso. Everywhere he was received with great adulation; gifts and decorations were showered on him, and he had numerous mistresses, including the dancer Lola Montez and Marie Duplessis. Nevertheless, he still continued to compose, writing songs as well as piano works.

His visit to Hungary in 1839-40, the first since his boyhood, was an important event. His renewed interest in the music of the Gypsies laid the foundations for his Hungarian Rhapsodies and other piano pieces composed in the Hungarian style. He also wrote a cantata for the Beethoven Festival of 1845, his first work for chorus and orchestra, and some smaller choral works.



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211 bài đã gửi Posted - 28/04/2001 : 12:47:30
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Paganini, Niccolũ
born Oct. 27, 1782, Genoa, republic of Genoa [Italy]
died May 27, 1840, Nice, Fr.


Paganini, etching by Luigi Calamatta after a drawing by J.-A.-D. Ingres, 1818

Italian composer and principal violin virtuoso of the 19th century. A popular idol, he inspired the Romantic mystique of the virtuoso and revolutionized violin technique.

After initial study with his father, Paganini studied with a local violinist, G. Servetto, and then with the celebrated Giacomo Costa. He made his first appearance in 1793 and then studied with Alessandro Rolla and Gaspare Ghiretti at Parma. In 1797, accompanied by his father, he toured Lombardy, where with each concert his reputation grew. Gaining his independence soon after, he indulged excessively in gambling and romantic love affairs. At one point he pawned his violin because of gambling debts; a French merchant lent him a Guarneri violin to play a concert and, after hearing him, gave him the instrument.

Between 1801 and 1807 he wrote the 24 Capricci for unaccompanied violin, displaying the novel features of his technique, and the two sets of six sonatas for violin and guitar. He reappeared in Italy as a violinist in 1805 and was appointed director of music at Piombino by Napoleon's sister, ẫlisa Bonaparte Baciocchi. He later gave recitals of his own compositions in many towns in Italy and in 1815 formed his long attachment with the dancer Antonia Bianchi.

In 1828 Paganini experienced great success in Vienna, and his appearances in Paris and London in 1831 were equally sensational. His tour of England and Scotland in 1832 made him a wealthy man. In 1833 he settled in Paris, where he commissioned Hector Berlioz to write his symphony Harold en Italie. Paganini thought that the challenge of its viola solo was too slight, however, and he never played it. Following the failure of the Casino Paganini, a gambling house in which he had invested, he went to Marseille in 1839, then to Nice.

Paganini's romantic personality and adventures created in his own day the legend of a Mephistophelean figure. Stories circulated that he was in league with the devil and that he had been imprisoned for murder; his burial in consecrated ground was delayed for five years. He was long regarded as a miser, but a more accurate portrait would consider his desire to be free from a train of dependent followers and their importunities for his largesse. His gift of 20,000 francs to the struggling composer Berlioz was an act of generosity seemingly uncharacteristic; possibly Paganini, recognizing in "Beethoven's successor" a worthy talent, thought it was his duty to come to the composer's aid.

His violin technique, based on that of his works, principally the Capricci, the violin concertos, and the sets of variations, demanded a wide use of harmonics and pizzicato effects, new methods of fingering and even of tuning. In performance he improvised brilliantly. He was also a flamboyant showman who used trick effects such as severing one or two violin strings and continuing the piece on the remaining strings. His technical innovations were imitated by later virtuosi, notably Pablo Sarasate and Eugốne Ysae. His other works include 6 violin concertos, of which the first, in D major, is especially popular; 12 sonatas for violin and guitar; and 6 quartets for violin, viola, cello, and guitar. The influence of his virtuosity extended to orchestral as well as to piano music. His influence on Franz Liszt was immense. Themes from the Capricci inspired works by Liszt, Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms, and Sergey Rachmaninoff.


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