My
first piano recital piece—I was 9 years old—was Chopin's prelude in C# minor,
Opus 28, No.7 When I returned to the formal study of the piano in retirement I
kept running into Chopin. The first time
was during the marvelous 2000 exhibit, "Piano 300," on the history of
the piano at the Smithsonian in Washington, DC. which I explored three times in
as many days. Among so many other
treasures in that exhibit were compositions, some in their own hand, some by
copyists, of Mozart, Liszt, Haydn, Gershwin, and Chopin. The most beautiful handwriting of all was
Chopin's. Each page of his composition
on display, the Impromptu in G flat major, op 51, was a work of art.
I began reading biographies of Chopin,
the best of which I found to be Siepmann’s Chopin,
the Reluctant Romantic. The book was so good I read it twice and the second
time made many notes. But it was mostly
in Paris, the city in which he spent much of his short life, that I kept
running into Frederick Francois Chopin. I sought out and visited his
residences, including the one on the Place Vendome near my office where he
died. I ran into Chopin again as I
walked above the quays of the Left Bank.
I looked up at the delicate steeple of Saint Chapelle and up river to a
clear view of Notre Dame in the near distance.
Crowds of tourists milled around the green stalls of book and print
vendors, babbling in many languages, taking pleasure in the warmth and sunlight
and the boats and the architectural beauty of the grand buildings along the
Seine. Sunlight flooded the western tip
of the island that is in the heart of Paris, the Isle de la Cite.
I looked for Chopin portraits and
books among the stalls. =I was below the Pont Neuf Bridge and not far from the
Place St. Michel. A vendor in his late
40s with a full but neatly trimmed salt and pepper beard had just finished
unloading the contents of the green metal box that held his wares and was
fussing over their arrangement. Propped
up in front of rows of his old books was a full-length portrait, not more than
seven inches tall. It had the greenish
tints found in some old daguerreotypes and was clearly authentic 19th Century.
The face looked familiar.
"Chopin," the vendor said.
He was now standing beside me.
"A
daguerreotype. Taken in 1849, a few
weeks before he died at age 39."
In the photo Chopin is in the final
stages of tuberculosis. It wasn't any
Chopin I had ever seen, certainly not the young, frail handsome romantic. He
looked old and tired, with dark circles under his eyes. He seemed to be barely
holding on to life and perhaps was surprised at what the disease was doing to
his body. Death, I thought, already has
her arms around him. Perhaps the vendor
saw the dismay in my face.
"Look
at his eyes." he said. "Look
at the soul in his eyes and he hummed a brief passage from one of Chopin's
works. Such beauty!"
But I saw pain where the vendor saw
beauty in the face of the man who composed such exquisite music. I walked away but I could not forget that
portrait as I sat in a cafe on Place St. Michel with an espresso coffee,
thinking about the photo. I liked it
very much, I said to myself, and it is not expensive. But could I live with it? I finally decided no, I could not.
Chopin requested Mozart's requiem mass
be performed at his funeral service. The
funeral was delayed because there were major parts for female voices in
Mozart's mass and the Madeleine had never permitted female singers in its
choir. The church relented on the
condition that the women would be invisible behind a black velvet curtain. Also played at his funeral were Chopin's
preludes Opus 28, No 4 in E minor and No 6 in B minor, both mournful keys. Chopin's funeral was the first public
funeral in the temple built by Napoleon as a monument to his victorious armies
that later became a church, the Madeleine.
Thousands followed the Chopin funeral cortege, walking from the
Madeleine to Pere Lachaise cemetery where he was buried.
For some months I walked frequently from my
office across the northern edge of the Place de la
Concorde and up the rue Royale to the Madeleine. I walked through bouquets of flowers on the
lower steps and trotted up into the church almost every day to spend a few
minutes remembering Chopin and my French assistant, Anne Marie-Migeot. For two and one half years Anne-Marie and I
were the USIS Paris support for our regional offices in the major consular
cities in France. We had endured much
frustration in a poorly organized USIS program together. Anne-Marie died at 47, quite unexpectedly,
while visiting her brother in Brazil. While at the beach. A blood clot on the brain. Anne-Marie occasionally complained of
migraine headaches but there were no other symptoms or warning signs. We were all in shock. Anne-Marie's funeral mass was held at the
Madeleine. Gabriel Faure's much-loved requiem was first performed in the
Madeleine for a funeral mass in l888 and he became the organist at that church
from 1896 to 1905.
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