Responding to the call in Jim Samson's introduction to The Cambridge Companion to Chopin Footnote 1 – the first attempt at reviewing the myths and legends surrounding Chopin in France, Germany, Russia and England – Chopin and his Critics is a fascinating anthology of Chopin criticism, disclosing the ‘changing outlook on Chopin's music’ (p. 10) and revealing the particular taste-publics in the nineteenth century and their relationship with each other. In particular, the book allows the reader to witness examples in primary nineteenth- and early twentieth-century sources, of Jeffrey Kallberg's claim that
‘Chopin unsettles us. At once exalted and shadowy, he cuts a curious figure in contemporary culture. Ethereal composer and enervated enfant mâle. … a Pole who wrote most of his works among Frenchman, his music exudes exoticism at the same time as it partakes of the European common-practice tradition. Champion of the miniature at a time when many around him gravitated toward ever grander musical colossi, he confounds our abilities to hear his contemporaries and him on equal footing. … Central to our repertory, Chopin nevertheless remains a marginalized figure’.Footnote 2
The texts included here – works by critics, commentaries by other composers, writers and popularizers up to the first World War – unveil Chopin's complex and at times voluble status throughout Northern and Eastern Europe as a composer who, even when genuinely appreciated, disconcerted and discomforted critics. Elements that were praised in one country – such as unusual harmonies and original textures – were criticized in another, or even ignored completely. Chopin's qualities as performer were at times criticised, praised or even overlooked, basing the reception only on the publication of his music (in England), or on other pianists’ performances and Chopin's exclusive salon performances (in Germany and Russia). Readers may be already familiar with these aspects of Chopin's reception, but this collection of primary sources allows them to be easily observed and assessed more carefully and in detail.
Introduced by the general editor Irena Poniatowska, the book is divided into five sections, dedicated to Poland, Russia, Germany and Austria, France and Great Britain. The sections relating to Poland and Russia are translated into English, whereas the sections on Germany and Austria, France, and Great Britain are left in their original languages. Each section is preceded by an introduction by the editor of that specific section. For Poniatowska, and I agree with her, the entire book ‘is a pioneering effort. No other anthologies of this kind are available, not even for individual nations’ (p. 13).
However, the anthology is what it is: an anthology. As such it cannot be complete; it is useful because it brings together in one book ‘work by critics, but the selection also contains some commentaries by other composers, writers and popularisers’ (p. 14) – a series of documents that would have to be traced one by one by anyone interested in Chopin's reception. The introductory sections written by the various editors are interesting, but only occasionally do they extend beyond a summary of the main points expressed in the primary sources included. Certainly, this is due to the space constraints inherent in short introductions in an anthology. It would have been better, however, if the introductions had a common format; for example, only the introduction to the German/Austrian section includes a list of other reviews not included in the anthology (namely texts by Fink and Rellstab, two authors otherwise well represented in the included texts) and a bibliography on the topic. It would have been interesting to have a more detailed description of the documentation available in each country considered and to explain the reason for excluding one type of document or another. The reader, unfortunately, is left wondering how complete and exhaustive the included texts are. For example, the German composer, pedagogue and performer Johanna Kinkel wrote quite extensively about Chopin in the nineteenth-century, but she is not considered or mentioned at all. Moreover, in a few instances, bibliographical details about the documents included are not complete. Poniatowska's Introduction is also very interesting, but apart from referring to Samson's work in the field of Chopin's reception, and a brief general mention to Benedetto Croce (translated into Polish in 1961) about the work of critics, more recent literature on reception studies is not taken into consideration.Footnote 3
Nevertheless, the Anthology is an extremely valuable collection of primary source materials; it should serve as a springboard for the reader's own critical study. The section on Polish criticism, edited by Magdalena Dziadek, includes texts ranging from 1830s to the beginning of the twentieth century. Critics emphasize the Polishness of Chopin's music, especially its patriotic elements. For Jan Kleczynski, writing in his comparative studies of Chopin and Schumann, ‘a moment's reflection on the two composers will reveal that although some of Schumann's individual ideas were superior in terms of originality, nonetheless he descended all to easily into eccentricity, and could not match the aesthetic restraint that gives so much vibrancy to Chopin's works’ (p. 88). A classical balance, that according to Dziadek, Kleczynsky highlighted to ‘counter the pejorative view taken of Chopin by foreign, mostly German, critics’ (p. 27). But critics also address the issue of Chopin's exclusive attachment to the piano and his inability to write large-scale compositions.
The section on Russian criticism, edited by Irina Nikolskaya, highlights Chopin's genius in his use of harmony, highly original textures and in particular the ‘aphoristic quality of his Preludes’ (p. 16). Among the documents included is Asafyev's very interesting account of Chopin's music. Asafyev was a very important figure in the Soviet musical culture. A musicologist and composer, among his various interests and activities he organized concerts of contemporary music. As a writer and musicologist, he was interested in highlighting the classical legacy in Russian contemporary music. In his book on Chopin – only short excerpts are included in the anthology – Asafyev laments that ‘there is no reliable scholarship on the sources of his pianism, and there are no comprehensive studies of the means of expression (the musical idioms and ideas) that the composer used to formulate the subtle, crystalline song of his soul’ (p. 200). He discusses Chopin's achievement, particularly in reference to the Preludes and the Sonata in B-flat minor, as arising ‘not from any schematic rules but from an internal impulse combined with the dynamics of sound. As a whole, it produces a development of colourful, organically interconnected musical pictures: a masterly and precise system of melodic and harmonic gestures (intonations). It is worth noting how the sonata traces its course from a vibrant and emotional first movement to the cool, dispassionate streams of sound in the finale’ (p. 207). Asafyev includes no music examples, but it is interesting to notice how his words suggest a combination of motivic and harmonic analysis.Footnote 4
The editor of the section on German criticism, Joachim Draheim, acknowledges that Chopin's link with his German publishers, the numerous reviews in German musical journal and his contact with eminent German musical figures played an important role in his gaining access to the musical life in Germany. In addition to famous writings of Schumann, Rellstab and Fink, the section contains writings by other authors such as August Kahlert, Ferdinand Hiller, Peter Cornelius, Eduard Hanslick and Ferruccio Busoni, as well as reviews of Chopin's concerts in Vienna and Munich. Also included is a series of reviews of books, concerts and letters that appeared after Chopin's death.
Among French critics represented in the section edited by Marie-Paule Rambeau, Chopin appears to have been a composer not easily understood. His performances were at once criticized and praised for his sensitive and soft touch. In 1833, Berlioz stated that Chopin,
as performer and as composer, is an artist apart, who does not resemble any other known musician. His melodies, impregnated with Polish forms, have something naively savage, which charm and captive for the same strange effect; in his Etude one finds the most profoundly surprising harmonic combinations; he has imagined a chromatic embroidery reproduced in several of his compositions, the effect of which cannot be described for it is so bizarre and surprising (p. 352).
Chopin's art thus is captured in a net of unique and strange features; its charm and strangeness are seen as a consequence of his double nationality, as Agathe Audley writes in 1880: ‘spiritual and lively as the France to which he belongs through his father; ardent and passionate like the Poland that claims him through his mother to the extent that he does not have any predecessor nor any successors’Footnote 5 (p. 370). Liszt himself, whilst admitting that he does not understand Chopin's late works, declares that the composer ‘shines alone in art's firmament’ (p. 18).
The English critics, thoroughly scrutinized by Rosalba Agresta, hailed Chopin as the starting point for the development of the so-called ‘romantic school’. But here romantic must be understood in a pejorative way (p. 450) as ‘a “new” school – opposed to the “classical” one – that had forgotten the lessons of the great composers such as Mozart and Beethoven and only aimed at public acclaim’ (p. 451). Later in the nineteenth century there were attempts at a positive evaluation of Chopin's music. Reverend Hugh Reginald Haweis, writing in 1866, considered Chopin ‘as an original composer, whose works are marked by a complete absence of the commonplace’ but only in relation to smaller composition (p. 456).
It was only in 1914, with Alfred Redgrave Cripp, writing in The Musical Times, that a full revaluation of Chopin is suggested in the context of British reception, in a way that provides an eloquent description of Chopin's destiny, not only in Great Britain but also in the other countries included in this reception study:
There is probably no musician who has been at once so fortunate and so unfortunate in his posthumous fame as Frederic Chopin. Fortunate, in that he has attracted attention of many to whom, as a rule, music makes but little appeal: unfortunate, because, largely through that very circumstance, a somewhat false picture of him has little by little been built up. His name has served as a peg on which to hang much empty rhetoric. Thus, we have Chopin the sentimentalist, Chopin the ‘tone poet’, Chopin the lover, Chopin the (supposed) patriot; but Chopin the musician – for him, indeed, we have very far to look (p. 533).
Whether we agree with Cripp that a completely false image of Chopin as been built or not, the incredible reception history of Chopin's music is attested in this anthology, showing that ‘in the end Chopin's music contains the many forms in which it has been promoted and interpreted’.Footnote 6
