Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 31, 2025
This in itself inclines me to believe they were written at the time named." This is all very well, but Chopin was faint and febrile in his music before he went to Majorca, and the plain facts adduced by Gutmann and Niecks cannot be passed over. Henry James, an old admirer of Madame Sand, admits her utter unreliability, and so we may look upon her evidence as romantic but by no means infallible.
Still, thus much at least we may assume to be certain: Gutmann played the Scherzo, Op. 39, on this occasion, and his rendering of it was such as to induce his master to dedicate it to him.
His letters at this period are interesting for the Chopinist but for the most part they consist of requests made to his pupils, Fontana, Gutmann and others, to jog the publishers, to get him new apartments, to buy him many things. Wagner was not more importunate or minatory than this Pole, who depended on others for the material comforts and necessities of his existence.
"The first comprehension of the piece," says Schumann, in speaking of the German edition of the Tarantella, "is, unfortunately, rendered very difficult by the misprints with which it is really swarming." Those who assisted Chopin in the work incident to publication more especially by copying his autographs were Fontana, Wolff, Gutmann, and in later years Mikuli and Tellefsen.
On that occasion he related to them that the next day he would have to meet a bill of 30,000 francs, but that he had not a sou in his pocket. Gutmann asked what he intended to do? "Well," replied Balzac, "what shall I do? I wait quietly. Before to-morrow something unexpected may turn up, and give me the means to pay the sum." Scarcely had he said this when the door bell rang.
But what of Ballin, Heineken, von Gwinner, Gutmann, Thyssen, Rathenau, and other captains of industry and finance? Some of them have expressed opinions in interviews, but what do they really think? I am not going to indulge in any guesswork on this matter.
I spared him this infliction, and entrusted all to the hands of Providence and the future. I was not to see him again. There were bad hearts between us. There were good ones too who were at a loss what to do. There were frivolous ones who preferred not to meddle with such delicate matters; Gutmann was not there.
Had genius to wait so long for recognition? If the statement, for the correctness of which Gutmann alone is responsible, rests on fact and not on some delusion of memory, this most characteristic work of Weber and one of the most important items of the pianoforte literature did not reach Chopin, one of the foremost European pianists, till twenty years after its publication, which took place in December, 1816.
Gutmann, Mikuli and other pupils declare for the E flat; Klindworth and Kullak use it. Xaver Scharwenka has seen fit to edit Klindworth, and gives a D natural in the Augener edition. That he is wrong internal testimony abundantly proves. Even Willeby, who personally prefers the D natural, thinks Chopin intended the E flat, and quotes a similar effect twenty-eight bars later.
George Sand, Chopin, and Gutmann looked at each other with a smile, and thought "Another one!" George Sand to her son; Paris, September 4, 1840: We have had here great shows of troops. They have fione the gendarme and cuisse the national guardsman. All Paris was in agitation, as if there were to be a revolution. Nothing took place, except that some passers-by were knocked down by the police.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking