Chopin Quotes - page 2
Above all, Chopin was the greatest master of counterpoint since Mozart. This will appear paradoxical only if we equate counterpoint with strict fugue, and Chopin wrote no formal fugues except as an academic exercise. His chief training, in both composition and keyboard playing, however, came from a study of Bach, and it was a study that engaged him all his life and which he always recommended to his pupils.
Charles Rosen
The secret of avoiding monotony with the four-bar module was to vary the accent and the weight of the bars to avoid giving a similar emphatic accent on the first bar of every group, as if one were accenting a downbeat. After Beethoven and before Brahms, perhaps the greatest master of the technique was Chopin, as one can see from the opening of the Nocturne in D flat Major, Op. 27, no. 2, of 1836 ...
Charles Rosen
Some of the Etudes in the first set, opus 10, were written by the time Chopin was twenty. It is with these pieces that Chopin's style was fully revealed in all its power and subtlety. Later works are sometimes more ambitious and, in a few cases, more audacious, but there were no radical changes of style, nothing to compare to the later revolutions we find in the careers of Haydn and Beethoven, or even in the shorter lives of Mozart and Schubert. Chopin's mastery was proven with the twelve Etudes of opus 10.
Charles Rosen
Technical display in Chopin, after the early works, is transmuted into tone color or dramatic gesture-we may say, to accept the prejudices of Chopin's own generation, that it has been ennobled. This is the source of much of the poetry in Chopin's music: it comes from the transformation of the vulgar into something aristocratic.
Charles Rosen
Such abstruse ideas are totally alien to Chopin. The Romantic interweaving of music and literature that was characteristic of Schumann and Liszt was a negligible source of inspiration. Schumann dedicated Kreisleriana to Chopin, but in fact Chopin's consciousness for classical strength and form had nothing in common with the exalted, torn, eccentric and confused character of the work.
Burkard Schliessmann
Chopin's biography remains obscure. He withheld himself all his life, in diametrical contrast to the openness and accessibility of his contemporary Franz Liszt. Chopin always conveyed the impression of a suffering soul, not to say a martyr, almost as if this was to nourish or even underpin his inspiration. Striving for crystalline perfection, he never ventured outside his own domain. You know, the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard is said to have given, as a child, "martyr” as his chosen career. Chopin must have shared this cult of the ‘Pater dolorosus.'
Burkard Schliessmann
To approach Chopin, you have to separate him completely from Schumann. Schumann admired Chopin very much and saw him as friend, but - what only few people know - Chopin himself had much less interest in and esteem for Schumann. In detail: Schumann's works follow on from a transitional period determined by the successors of Viennese Classicism, particularly Beethoven. Just as the sons of Bach espoused the ‘galant,' ornamented style of their generation, so the pupils of Mozart and Beethoven - Hummel, Ries, Czerny, Moscheles - took pains to compensate for a thinner musical substance with increased instrumental brilliance and thus prepared the ground for the golden age of the piano and the era of the Romantic virtuoso. Among the multitude of composers writing for the piano at that time, only two - Weber and Schubert - stand out as original creative forces.
Burkard Schliessmann
Herz, Thalberg, Heller, Felicien David and others were great virtuosos of their time, more famous than Chopin himself. They had their own personal styles, but the essence of their music was time-bound, nothing that could occupy generations after them. Chopin, in contrast, was someone special, someone who was completely different from all other artists, composers, and pianists. So too with his style. As a result, the aesthetic in approaching Chopin is distinctive: interpreting his music is the most difficult of all. For me personally, it's the crowning of playing piano. Bach, Mozart, Chopin: these are the three who definitely created musical art in an all-embracing and overwhelming way.
Burkard Schliessmann
I'm very interested in the ‘Culture of Interpretation.' I'm convinced that each great artist has his own personal style, but it is his artistic responsibility in developing this style to respond other interpretations, either prior or at the same time. I'm convinced that Rubinstein would have presented us another Chopin if Cortot had not existed. Cortot presented very romantic Chopin interpretations - really masterly, outstanding, but confused. Rubinstein's immediate answer was a very classical Chopin. He was really the first to point out the classical line and structure in his oeuvre.
Burkard Schliessmann
Find a beautiful piece of art. If you fall in love with Van Gogh or Matisse or John Oliver Killens, or if you fall love with the music of Coltrane, the music of Aretha Franklin, or the music of Chopin - find some beautiful art and admire it, and realize that that was created by human beings just like you, no more human, no less.
Maya Angelou
I am not shooting at immortality through my books, no. Nor do I think Chopin was shooting at immortality through his music. That strikes me as a very selfish goal, and I don't think Chopin was particularly selfish. I would also say that I think that music comes much closer to capturing the essence of a composer's soul than do a writer's ideas capture the writer's soul. Perhaps some very emotional ideas that I express in my books can get across a bit of the essence of my soul to some readers, but I think that Chopin's music probably does a lot better job.
Douglas Hofstadter
I grew up in Deptford in south London, and at that time I used to wear toppers, loon pants and tonic suits from shops like Take 6 and Topman. I was a bit of a soul boy, but I had a very eclectic taste in music - I was into James Brown and Bowie; and I was the only kid in the neighbourhood who would also be listening to Chopin.
Gary Oldman
