User:Smerus/chopforrfc

Please note the following before responding in the RfC.

• The numbering of the sections here is to be ignored: they will fall out as incorporated in the article.
• I propose that para 3 of 'Travel and domestic success' here (begnning 'Letters from Chopin...') be inserted in the article, with references and note as below.

• Please note also alternative for para 3 below, as per Talk:Frédéric_Chopin#Threaded_Discussion

• I propose that the sub-section 'Sexuality' as set out here be relocated to 'Reception and Influence'
• I propose that other discussions (if any) of Chopin's sexual preferences be removed from the article.

In September 1828 Chopin, while still a student, visited Berlin with a family friend, zoologist Feliks Jarocki, enjoying operas directed by Gaspare Spontini and attending concerts by Carl Friedrich Zelter, Felix Mendelssohn and other celebrities. On an 1829 return trip to Berlin, he was a guest of Prince Antoni Radziwiłł, governor of the Grand Duchy of Posen – himself an accomplished composer and aspiring cellist. For the prince and his pianist daughter Wanda, he composed his Introduction and Polonaise brillante in C major for cello and piano, Op. 3.^[1]

Back in Warsaw that year, Chopin heard Niccolò Paganini play the violin, and composed a set of variations, Souvenir de Paganini. It may have been this experience which encouraged him to commence writing his first Études (1829–32), exploring the capacities of his own instrument.^[2] On 11 August, three weeks after completing his studies at the Warsaw Conservatory, he made his debut in Vienna. He gave two piano concerts and received many favourable reviews – in addition to some commenting (in Chopin's own words) that he was "too delicate for those accustomed to the piano-bashing of local artists". In the first of these concerts, he premiered his Variations on Là ci darem la mano, Op. 2 (variations on a duet from Mozart's opera Don Giovanni) for piano and orchestra.^[3] He returned to Warsaw in September 1829,^[4] where he premiered his Piano Concerto No. 2 in F minor, Op. 21 on 17 March 1830.^[5]

Letters from Chopin to Tytus Woyciechowski in the period 1829–30 (when Chopin was about twenty) contain erotic references to dreams and to offered kisses and embraces. According to Adam Zamoyski, such expressions "were, and to some extent still are, common currency in Polish and carry no greater implication than the 'love'" concluding letters today. "The spirit of the times, pervaded by the Romantic movement in art and literature, favoured extreme expression of feeling ... Whilst the possibility cannot be ruled out entirely, it is unlikely that the two were ever lovers."^[6] Chopin's biographer Alan Walker considers that, insofar as such expressions could be perceived as homosexual in nature, they would not denote more than a passing phase in Chopin's life.^[7] Kallberg, writing in 1994, says that concepts of sexual practice and identity were very different in Chopin's time, so modern interpretation is problematic.^{[8][n 1]}

Chopin's successes as a composer and performer opened the door to western Europe for him, and on 2 November 1830, he set out, in the words of Zdzisław Jachimecki, "into the wide world, with no very clearly defined aim, forever."^[11] With Woyciechowski, he headed for Austria again, intending to go on to Italy. Later that month, in Warsaw, the November 1830 Uprising broke out, and Woyciechowski returned to Poland to enlist. Chopin, now alone in Vienna, was nostalgic for his homeland, and wrote to a friend, "I curse the moment of my departure."^[12] When in September 1831 he learned, while travelling from Vienna to Paris, that the uprising had been crushed, he expressed his anguish in the pages of his private journal: "Oh God! ... You are there, and yet you do not take vengeance!"^[13] Jachimecki ascribes to these events the composer's maturing "into an inspired national bard who intuited the past, present and future of his native Poland."^[11]

(see Talk:Frédéric_Chopin#Threaded_Discussion)

Larghetto from Concerto Op. 21

Neal O'Doan [scores], Seattle Philharmonic, Nico Snel [scores]

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Letters from Chopin to Tytus Woyciechowski in the period 1829–30 (when Chopin was about twenty) contain erotic references, including one of October 1829 to dreams of an "ideal" associated with adagio of his Piano concerto op. 21, and one of 4 September 1830 invoking dreams and kisses with Woychiekowski himself. Translators Arthur Hedley (1962) and David Frick (2016) assumed that the "ideal", unnamed in Chopin's letter, refers to a woman.^[14][9] According to biographers Frederick Niecks (1888), Adam Zamoyski (1979, rev. 2010) and Alan Walker (2018) that woman was Konstancja Gładkowska.^[15][16][17] According to Walker, the passage is "[t]he clearest indication we have of Chopin's infatuation with Konstancja."^[17] According to Niecks, Chopin had two passions: his love for Gładkowska and his friendship for Woyciechowski, while he expressed his friendship for the latter sometimes in words a lover would use towards his beloved.^[18] Zamoyski considered the letter of 4 September consistent with how feelings were expressed in the Romantic era -"The spirit of the times, pervaded by the Romantic movement in art and literature, favoured extreme expression of feeling ... Whilst the possibility cannot be ruled out entirely, it is unlikely that the two were ever lovers."^[19] Walker considers that the passage in the letter of 4 September 1830 is undeniably erotic, and that Chopin transferred what he was feeling for Gładkowska to Woyciechowski. Insofar as such expressions could be perceived as homosexual in nature, they would not denote more than a passing phase in Chopin's life.^[20] Kallberg, writing in 1994, says that concepts of sexual practice and identity were very different in Chopin's time, so modern interpretation is problematic.^{[21][n 2]}

The musicologist Antoni Pizá writes that "Chopin's sexual life has never failed to awaken the curiosity of music lovers and to generate discourse among experts".^[23] The music historian Jeffrey Kallberg says that in Chopin's time, "listeners to the genre of the piano nocturne often couched their reactions in feminine imagery", and he cites many examples of such reactions to Chopin's nocturnes.^[24] One reason for this may be "demographic" – there were more female than male piano players, and playing such "romantic" pieces was seen by male critics as a female domestic pastime. Such genderization was not commonly applied to other piano genres such as the scherzo or the polonaise.^[25] "To be associated with the feminine was also often to be devalorized",^[26] and such associations of Chopin's music with the "feminine" did not begin to shift until the early twentieth century, when pianists such as Artur Rubinstein began to militate against a sentimental "salon" style of playing these works and when musical analysis of a more rigorous nature (such as that of Heinrich Schenker) began to assert itself.^[27]

Such attitudes may also have influenced opinion about the composer's personal sexuality; debate on this topic began to expand towards the end of the 20th century. Comments on Chopin's letters to Woyciechowski are mentioned above. Research in this area also considered views of Chopin's other social contacts. Chopin's relationship with George Sand was certainly physical in its early stages. Sand claimed (not entirely reliably) that it ceased to be so after June 1839 until the end of their affair in 1847.^[28] Sand's daughter Solange, aged 13 at the time, referred to Chopin in 1842 as "Sexless" ("Sans-sexe"), although in later years she seemed to display affection for him herself.^[29] Chopin was a friend of the Marquis de Custine, who had been associated with homosexual scandals. A letter from de Custine to Chopin, inviting Chopin to visit, refers to the composer as an "inconstant sylph"; Kallberg recognizes the "impossibility of 'discovering' the truth" of what this may imply.^[30]

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