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Chopin Quotes

Browse 10 quotes about Chopin.

Chopin Quotes

“[On Chopin's Preludes:] "His genius was filled with the mysterious sounds of nature, but transformed into sublime equivalents in musical thought, and not through slavish imitation of the actual external sounds. His composition of that night was surely filled with raindrops, resounding clearly on the tiles of the Charterhouse, but it had been transformed in his imagination and in his song into tears falling upon his heart from the sky. ... The gift of Chopin is [the expression of] the deepest and fullest feelings and emotions that have ever existed. He made a single instrument speak a language of infinity. He could often sum up, in ten lines that a child could play, poems of a boundless exaltation, dramas of unequalled power.”

“Kalkbrenner has made me an offer; that I should study with him for three years, and he will make something really - really out of me. I answered that I know how much I lack; but that I cannot exploit him, and three years is too much. But he has convinced me that I can play admirably when I am in the mood, and badly when I am not; a thing which never happens to him. After close examination he told me that I have no school; that I am on an excellent road, but can slip off the track. That after his death, or when he finally stops playing, there will be no representative of the great piano-forte school. That even if I wish it, I cannot build up a new school without knowing the old one; in a word : that I am not a perfected machine, and that this hampers the flow of my thoughts. That I have a mark in composition; that it would be a pity not to become what I have the promise of being...”

“Beethoven introduced us to anger. Haydn taught us capriciousness, Rachmaninoff melancholy. Wagner was demonic. Bach was pious. Schumann was mad, and because his genius was able to record his fight for sanity, we heard what isolation and the edge of lunacy sounded like. Liszt was lusty and vigorous and insisted that we confront his overwhelming sexuality as well as our own. Chopin was a poet, and without him we never would have understood what night was, what perfume was, what romance was.”

“Lubię i muzykę! (powiadał mi) Lubię i muzykę, i jak sobie wrócę z pola, a człowiek mi buty ściągnie, to ja sobie lubię tak dumać i nogi moczyć, i słuchać, jak mi żona moja gra na fortepianie Chopina!... Malaturę (malaturę!...) także lubiłem - nim-em się ożenił!" Nigdy pojąć nie mogłem, dlaczego malarstwa zaniechał on lubować, odkąd ożenił się - myślę, że to znaczy, iż ideał-wcielony zajął miejsce onej malatury, która pierwej była obywatelowi przyjemną. Szkoda, że nieboszczyk Fryderyk nie wiedział nic o tym!!”

“Their mother had white hands, long tapered fingers, and when she kneaded dough, her wedding ring clinked against the bowl. She was always singing softly as she played the piano with her white hands. She accompanied Emily's dance recitals and she could play anything, but Chopin was the one that Gillian loved. She played Chopin every night, and when she turned the pages, she wasn't really looking at the music. She knew the saddest Waltzes by heart. The saddest were the ones that she knew best, and she would play at bedtime, so falling asleep was like drifting off in autumn forests filled with golden leaves.”

“Where do you think the notes were before Chopin wrote his nocturnes?” With a nod of confusion I asked, “Where?” She leaned back, exhaling a stream of smoke, as if unraveling a hidden truth. “I believe those notes were always present, suspended in the air, waiting for an artist's embrace. It's as if there's an intangible essence, an elusive sense, that artists possess. They have the ability to pluck those ethereal notes from the unseen and mold them into tangible forms, giving voice to our deepest emotions and translating them into melodies that resonate within us.”