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So let us accept without too much questioning as did Balzac, a reader of souls, the Sand-Chopin partnership and follow its sinuous course until 1847. Chopin met Sand at a musical matinee in 1837. Niecks throttles every romantic yarn about the pair that has been spoken or printed. He got his facts viva voce from Franchomme.
Rather is Niecks more to my taste: "No. 12, C minor, in which the emotions rise not less high than the waves of arpeggios which symbolize them." Von Bulow is didactic: The requisite strength for this grandiose bravura study can only be attained by the utmost clearness, and thus only by a gradually increasing speed.
The medallion made for the tomb by Clesinger the son-in-law of George Sand and the watch given by the singer Catalan! in 1820 with the inscription "Donne par Madame Catalan! a Frederic Chopin, age de dix ans," have incited a conflict of authorities. Karasowski was informed by Chopin's sister that the correct year of his birth was 1809, and Szulc, Sowinski and Niecks agree with him.
This precise description is by Niecks. Liszt said he had blue eyes, but he has been overruled. Chopin was fond of elegant, costly attire, and was very correct in the matter of studs, walking sticks and cravats. Not the ideal musician we read of, but a gentleman. Berlioz told Legouve to see Chopin, "for he is something which you have never seen and some one you will never forget."
There he met Hiller and Mendelssohn at the painter Schadow's and improvised marvellously, so Hiller writes. He visited Coblenz with Hiller before returning home. Professor Niecks has a deep spring of personal humor which he taps at rare intervals.
I, but Karasowski is nearer right when he calls it "broad and most imposing with its powerful intermediate movement, a thorough departure from the nocturne style." Willeby finds it "sickly and labored," and even Niecks does not think it should occupy a foremost place among its companions. The ineluctable fact remains that this is the noblest nocturne of them all.
Both Franchomme and Gutmann whispered to Niecks at different times that each was the particular soul, the alter ego, of Chopin. He appeared to give himself to his friends but it was usually surface affection. He had coaxing, coquettish ways, playful ways that cost him nothing when in good spirits. So he was "more loved than loving."
Niecks quotes Stephen Heller's partiality for this very study. In the "Gazette Musicale," February 24, 1839, Heller wrote of Chopin's op. 25: What more do we require to pass one or several evenings in as perfect a happiness as possible?
And what an irresistible moment it is, this delightful territory, before the darker mood of the C sharp minor part is reached! Niecks becomes enthusiastic over the insinuation and persuasion of this composition: "the composer showing himself in a fundamentally caressing mood." The ease with which the entire work is floated proves that Chopin in mental health was not daunted by larger forms.
'A tyrant commands' the first two chords he said, 'and the other asks for mercy." Of course Niecks means the F sharp minor, not the C sharp minor Nocturne, op. 48, No. 2, dedicated, with the C minor, to Mlle. L. Duperre. Opus 55, two nocturnes in F minor and E flat major, need not detain us long. The first is familiar. Kleczynski devotes a page or more to its execution.
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