A concept familiar to American students of writing is that of ‘compensating merit’: nonstandard syntax, tone, even spelling may only be considered if a benefit that would otherwise be impossible to achieve results therefrom. This principle comes to mind as I read Mieczysław Tomaszewski’s gigantic Chopin book, a vastly expanded version of the author’s 1999 German-language Chopin biography, Frédéric Chopin und seine Zeit.Footnote ¹ It represents, in a way, the sum-total of his life’s work on Chopin since the 1950s, and incorporates – somewhat uneasily – projects from across that time, sanded and fitted to each other with varying success. And although it is in many ways a problematic book, difficult to use, it nonetheless makes for highly enjoyable reading and engagement. Reviewing a work of research necessitates the identification of problems and inaccuracies, a process that too often leaves a negative, sum-of-its-faults impression; but for a book of this complexion and size – the closing credits are on p. 923 – that would be unfair, and it is not what I wish to do.

Despite the implications of the title, this is not a traditional monumental biography such as would sit next to Frederick Niecks’s essential two-volume Frédéric Chopin as a Man and Musician Footnote ² and Jim Samson’s masterful Chopin.Footnote ³ Rather, the intention seems to be for a kind of Magnus Liber Chopini, an inclusive compendium of largely self-standing treatments of the composer’s biography, pianism, musical language, cultural presence and influence. The structure of the book points to its long and gradual genesis: it consists of three ‘volumes’ (hereafter designated Volumes, to avoid the impression that there is actually more than one actual book) in one: Volume One is Life – Facts, Testimony, Opinions (comprising three parts, ‘The Man’, ‘The Pianist’, and ‘The Composer’); Volume Two is Work – An Integral Interpretation (‘Elements, Texture, and Form’, ‘Genres and Works’, ‘Aesthetics, Poetics, Expression, and Meaning’, and ‘Style: Its Features and Phases’); and Volume Three is Resonance: Through the Years and the Lands (‘The Life of a Work’ and ‘Influence and Inspiration’). Ultimately, it is a unique kind of scholarly project, one that combines elements of monumental biography, collection of more specialized musical studies, and a wide-ranging, annotated sourcebook such as Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger’s Chopin vu par ses élèves,Footnote ⁴ perhaps most familiar to Anglophone readers in its third edition, Chopin: Pianist and Teacher,Footnote ⁵ a ‘little breviary’ – in that author’s formulation – addressing all aspects of Chopin’s teaching, his students, pianistic aesthetic, technique, and so on. Tomaszewski’s magisterial work thus seems to draw upon a variety of kinds of work, and this shows in its structure and make-up.

One of the more apparent oddities is the uneven proportions of the three Volumes: the first is some 230 pages, the second approximately 560, and the third a scant 80. There are some appendices at the end, but other appendix-like sections, including (confusingly) citations and bibliographies, are scattered throughout. For example, each of the three parts of Volume One listed above, ‘The Man’, ‘The Pianist’, and ‘The Composer’, has its own Notes section (‘Notes to Part 1’, etc.); because these sections do not appear in the Table of Contents, a lot of aimless flipping through the thousand or so pages in one’s lap will result. Each of those three parts is subdivided into smaller chapters – ‘The Pianist’ is divided into ‘Playing, Concerts, and Instruments’, and ‘Method, Repertoire, and Pupils’ – but each of the chapters has an individual ‘Literature’ section, a partial bibliography. Thus: the tripartite structure of the first VOLUME results in three separate sections of Notes and six different Literature listings. The first subsection, ‘The Man’, consists of a nine-page essay and a 120-plus page ‘Chronicle of His Life’ – essentially, a detailed timeline augmented with biographical material.Footnote ⁶ Elsewhere, there is a list of Chopin publications with opus numbers, and there are images and musical examples throughout. The variations in presentation continue throughout the volume, and invite dipping in at random, which is not a typical feature of academic works.

Probably unavoidably, there are inconsistencies of proofreading and continuity, and not all are trivial. One of the more serious occurs on p. 176, where Tomaszewski states that one of the ‘particular points of Chopin’s pianistic credo’ is ‘the naturalness of the initial placement of the hands on the keyboard (the position of the E major scale)’, but four lines later has Chopin start his students’ scales with B Major and work around to C Major (my italics), all five black keys to none. E major must be a misprint, because quite a number of sources agree on B Major, and when Chopin set a pupil’s hand position with the RH thumb and LH fifth finger on E, he included A♯ (thus E Lydian, which is consistent with B Major). Less crucially, the name ‘Białobłocki’ at one point becomes ‘Białostocki’ (p. 32), and there are various other inconsistencies (quotation marks that aren’t closed, etc.).

The annotated timeline/chronicle is a superb contribution, and it is both clear and eminently readable. However, Tomaszewski makes several pregnant remarks that go unexplained. On p. 28, for example, he says that Chopin ‘apparently learned organ with [Wilhelm Wacław] Würfel’ – a matter that has engendered a good deal of debate – but offers no explanation as to why such an assumption might be made. A more suggestive thought is found on p. 50, where he observes that Chopin puts on ‘for reasons unknown, a game of appearances’ in writing to Tytus about going to visit Alexandrine de Moriolles (daughter of his tutor, who seems to keep sending for him): ‘These are my romances’, Chopin wrote. What is the point here? Chopin students know that his letters to such friends as Tytus can seem highly passionate, even erotic, to modern eyes (though Poles often explain that this was simply how young men talked to each other in a kind of typically Romantic, overheated poetic idiom), and his love life was certainly ill-starred. If Tomaszewski’s aim was to raise the issue of Chopin’s gender preferences, that would be a worthwhile subject for discussion, but he might be implying something else about Chopin’s motives, such as deflecting attention from his real (for lack of a better word) crush, or lack of ‘romances’ altogether. Regardless, the phrase ‘game of appearances’ (his sister would later chide him for not maintaining contact with the girl in question) requires further explanation, as least in our literal age. Relevant to this whole question are Chopin’s (in Tomaszewski’s words) ‘adventures with “some female Tyrolese singers”’ referred to in a letter of 21 July 1830, his youthful infatuation with Konstancia Gladkowska, his later long-term alliance with George Sand. If gender issues are to be brought up, it seems fair to expect that they will be addressed, not simply alluded to with neo-Victorian obfuscation.

Another case requiring a closer look than Tomaszewski provides involves the story of Chopin’s prodigious child student Carl Filtsch and his older brother Joseph. The outlines of the story are well known; Carl died tragically young, and quotations from Joseph’s letters describing Carl’s lessons with Chopin circulate widely throughout the literature. As Eigeldinger pointed out decades ago,Footnote ⁷ though, no article reproduces facsimiles of several of the most oft-quoted letters, and their tone is somewhat at variance with those that have been verified. Tomaszewski imputes several quotes to Joseph Filtsch, presumably taking directly from Arthur Hedley’s edition of Chopin’s correspondence, but does not specify sources any further, which is problematic.

Different issues emerge with the huge middle Volume, ‘Work: An Integral Interpretation’. Parts Four, Six, and Seven all comprise essays on various aspects of Chopin’s style and poetic idiom, Part Five, ‘Genres and Works’ – by far the longest, at c. 240 pages – assays an inclusive overview of his works, occasionally almost slipping into the vague tone of programme notes. The general preamble to each group can, to my eye, be less than helpful: the Ballades, Scherzi, and Op. 49 Fantasia are grouped together, but the observations fall short, e.g., ‘The form of these works – expansive and in a single movement – is known as “free”. Eschewing all the a priori formal schemes familiar to the era, it is expression-dependent’ (p. 497). But lumping these nine pieces together is partially the problem: the title Ballade signals one kind of ‘generic contract’, to use Jeffrey Kallberg’s formulation, and Fantasia quite another.Footnote ⁸ There is an over-reliance on qualification of wording that results in a certain skittishness regarding authority: ‘In this group of Romantic works, the music primarily “relates” and “presents”, transports in time and space, spins out “plots”, develops “action”, paints “background” … ’ (p. 497) Why, as we might say in the US, all the scare-quotes, the implied citations of unnamed others? The effect is one of deferring to conventional wisdom but taking no responsibility for it.

Another concern may be found in the more theoretical sections. On p. 240, Tomaszewski observes, ‘Chopin’s basic scale is – understandably, given the times in which he lived – the bimodal heptatonic diatonic; in other works, the major-minor scale’. What, precisely, does this clarify? There seems little point in discussing a particular composer’s ‘basic scale’ using terminology (a major-minor scale is a modern construct: a major scale with lowered 6th and 7th degrees) that would have made no sense to him. More confusingly still, among the examples he uses to illustrate this basic scale is the purest of pure D-flat Major scales, that found in the first four measures of the prière Trio of the Funeral March of the B-flat Minor Sonata, Op. 35: no added notes, no lowered 6th and 7th degrees. Another example, the opening of the middle section of the second (scherzo) movement of the same sonata, is simply a diatonic melody in G-flat Major that is sequentially repeated on the mediant as the harmony changes to that key. Scale theory and terminology are not necessary for describing that which is fundamentally harmonic, and one wonders why the attempt was made. Similarly, his discussion of ‘figurational melody’ (beginning about p. 264, with various other writers’ attempts to describe something that would take more analysis than they’re willing to engage in) ultimately offers little illumination: distinctions like that between ‘melody with superimposed ornamentation’ and ‘melody with integral ornamentation’ are subjective past the point of usefulness.

So despite best efforts, this reads so far as a list of complaints. That is misleading and even unjust; a work of this size, produced by a scholar of Tomaszewski’s stature, carries (mistakes and all) the authority of a life’s-work of research and reflection. To dip into it is to pull up a chair in one of Prof. Tomaszewski’s seminars, engage him at various points in his scholarly life, and to find both much to nod at and much to resist. The author brings many other scholars on board as he refers to their ideas and contributions, and the sense for this reader is almost Talmudic: one enters into discussion with not only Tomaszewski but also Niecks, Eigeldinger, Kallberg, Samson, Rink, Gajewski, Szulc, Hedley, Abraham … all sages of Chopin Studies. One agrees, disagrees, ponders, and moves elsewhere in the book. The presentation is, as stated above, beautiful and varied – if (sadly) rather incompletely proofread – which means that it behaves, in the reader’s hand, almost like a book of spells and lore from children’s fiction. One finds illustrations of various kinds, lengthy essays, facts, opinions, in-depth analyses, lists, references, marginalia, glosses. It is intensely personal, and opening it up offers almost a sense of mining for treasure: what am I about to find? The look and layout of the book contributes to this sense: it is attractively laid out in the sense that the consistency of presentation that would be expected from a university press sometimes takes a back seat to a certain artistic variety, which rewards the eye and engages the mind more than a thousand similar pages would do. The notes and literature sections are presented in double columns, as opposed to the body of the text, and the many musical examples are of high quality and fine detail (though they tend to be rather small, a necessary compromise for a work of this size, which means that the small notes in Chopin’s fantasia passages and ornamental fioriture can be challenging to read). High-quality illustrations are scattered throughout: images of Chopin drawn by his friends, and such surviving memorabilia as his pencil and his appointment book. Such a design seems to offer a surprise on every page, something new and attractive to explore, which is an especially felicitous approach for a book of this moment.

In sum it is a work of unique type, worthy of repeated study, reflection, and (yes) disagreement. Our field is immeasurably richer with it.