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Updated: May 12, 2025
There is something really tragic, and comic too, in the fact that every friend of Chopin's thought that he had more of the composer's love and confidence than any other friend. Thus, for instance, while Gutmann told me that Franchomme was not so intimate with Chopin that the latter would confide any secrets to him, Franchomme made to me a similar statement with regard to Gutmann.
A critic, writing in the Gazette Musicale of March 11, 1855, of a concert given by the Princess at which she played an andante with variations for piano and violoncello by Mozart, a rondo for piano and orchestra by Mendelssohn, and Chopin's F minor Concerto, being assisted by Alard as conductor, the violoncellist Franchomme, and the singers Madame Viardot and M. Fedor praised especially her rendering of the ADAGIO in Chopin's Concerto.
Now, how are you? and Madame Franchomme and her dear children? Look at my erasures! I should not end if I were to launch out into a chat with you, and I have not time to resume my letter, for Eug. Delacroix, who wishes much to take charge of my message for you, leaves immediately. He is the most admirable artist possible I have spent delightful times with him.
Heller, I must tell the reader parenthetically, was both a great reader and an earnest thinker, over whom good books had even the power of making him neglect and forget mistress Musica without regret and with little compunction. But to return to Chopin. Franchomme excused his friend by saying that teaching and the claims of society left him no time for reading.
No, I shall not do it!" and he did not do it, and yet he knew that this creature whom he adored would not forgive it him. Poor friend, how I have seen him suffer! Of the quarrel at Nohant, Franchomme gave the following account: -There was staying at that time at Nohant a gentleman who treated Madame Clesinger invariably with rudeness.
Indeed, we may say speaking generally, and not only with a view to Franchomme that Chopin was more loved than loving. But he knew well how to conceal his deficiencies in this respect under the blandness of his manners and the coaxing affectionateness of his language.
Then Chopin played studies, preludes, mazurkas, waltzes; he performed afterwards his beautiful sonata with Franchomme. Do not ask us how all these masterpieces small and great were rendered. We said at first we would not attempt to reproduce these thousands and thousands of nuances of an exceptional genius having in his service an organisation of the same kind.
Leo kept house together with his brother-in-law Valentin. Chopin kept his intention of going with Madame Sand to Majorca secret from all but a privileged few. According to Franchomme, he did not speak of it even to his friends. There seem to have been only three exceptions Fontana, Matuszynski, and Grzymala, and in his letters to the first he repeatedly entreats his friend not to talk about him.
Madame Clesinger, I may say in passing, was one of those in loving attendance on Chopin, and, as Franchomme told me, present, like himself, when the pianist-composer breathed his last. From the above we gather, at least, that it is very uncertain whether Chopin's desire to see George Sand was frustrated by her heartlessness or the well-meaning interference of his friends.
I ask your pardon for troubling you with all these things. I love you, and apply to you as I would to my brother. Embrace your children. My regards to Madame Franchomme. Your devoted friend, F. Chopin. A thousand compliments from Madame Sand. Chateau de Nohant, Indre, August 2 .
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