United States or Brunei ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Kwiatkowski told me that George Sand hated Chopin's Polish friends, and that some of them were consequently not admitted at all and others only reluctantly. Now suppose that she disliked also some of the non-Polish friends, musicians as well as others, would not her influence act in the same way as in the case of the Poles?
I prefer the latter version, which is reconcilable with George Sand's letters, confirmed by the testimony of several of Chopin's friends, and given by an honest, simple-minded man who may be trusted to have told a plain unvarnished tale. On this point all agree Franchomme, Gutmann, Kwiatkowski, Madame Rubio, Liszt, &c.
M. Kwiatkowski informed me that this was not so. For some weeks after, from the 18th October onwards, the French press occupied itself a good deal with the deceased musician. There was not, I think, a single Paris paper of note which did not bring one or more long articles or short notes regretting the loss, describing the end, and estimating the man and artist.
In addition to the friends who were then mentioned, I may name here the Polish poet Stephen Witwicki, the friend of his youth as well as of his manhood, to whom in 1842 he dedicated his Op. 41, three mazurkas, and several of whose poems he set to music; and the Polish painter Kwiatkowski, an acquaintance of a later time, who drew and painted many portraits of the composer, and more than one of whose pictures was inspired by compositions of his friend.
I know no pianist like him, no composer for the piano like him. Visit me when you come to Berlin. Are we not now comrades? When one has met at the house of so great a man, it was for life. Kwiatkowski told me a pretty story which se non vero is certainly ben trovato.
I have not been able to ascertain what Chopin's sentiments were with regard to Kwiatkowski, but the latter must have been a frequent visitor, for after relating to me that the composer was fond of playing in the dusk, he remarked that he heard him play thus almost all his works immediately after they were composed.
Word Of The Day