Chopin in Paris
The Life and Times of the Romantic Composer
-
- $19.99
-
- $19.99
Publisher Description
Chopin in Paris introduces the most important musical and literary figures of Fryderyk Chopin's day in a glittering story of the Romantic era. During Chopin's eighteen years in Paris, lasting nearly half his short life, he shone at the center of the immensely talented artists who were defining their time -- Hugo, Balzac, Stendhal, Delacroix, Liszt, Berlioz, and, of course, George Sand, a rebel feminist writer who became Chopin's lover and protector.
Tad Szulc, the author of Fidel and Pope John Paul II, approaches his subject with imagination and insight, drawing extensively on diaries, memoirs, correspondence, and the composer's own journal, portions of which appear here for the first time in English. He uses contemporary sources to chronicle Chopin's meteoric rise in his native Poland, an ascent that had brought him to play before the reigning Russian grand duke at the age of eight. He left his homeland when he was eighteen, just before Warsaw's patriotic uprising was crushed by the tsar's armies.
Carrying the memories of Poland and its folk music that would later surface in his polonaises and mazurkas, Chopin traveled to Vienna. There he established his reputation in the most demanding city of Europe. But Chopin soon left for Paris, where his extraordinary creative powers would come to fruition amid the revolutions roiling much of Europe. He quickly gained fame and a circle of powerful friends and acquaintances ranging from Rothschild, the banker, to Karl Marx.
Distinguished by his fastidious dress and the wracking cough that would cut short his life, Chopin spent his days composing and giving piano lessons to a select group of students. His evenings were spent at the keyboard, playing for his friends. It was at one of these Chopin gatherings that he met George Sand, nine years his senior. Through their long and often stormy relationship, Chopin enjoyed his richest creative period. As she wrote dozens of novels, he composed furiously -- both were compulsive creators. After their affair unraveled, Chopin became the protégé of Jane Stirling, a wealthy Scotswoman, who paraded him in his final year across England and Scotland to play for the aristocracy and even Queen Victoria. In 1849, at the age of thirty-nine, Chopin succumbed to the tuberculosis that had plagued him from childhood.
Chopin in Paris is an illuminating biography of a tragic figure who was one of the most important composers of all time. Szulc brings to life the complex, contradictory genius whose works will live forever. It is compelling reading about an exciting epoch of European history, culture, and music -- and about one of the great love dramas of the nineteenth century.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
An assassin's bullet wounds Pope Gregory XVII, who instructs a Jesuit priest to find out who's behind the murderous plot in Szulc's plodding fictionalization of the mystery surrounding the 1981 assassination attempt on the life of Pope John Paul II. The Jesuit detective is ex-CIA agent Tim Savage, who became a priest after suffering a crisis of conscience while operating death squads in Vietnam. Savage soon realizes that the would-be assassin was a front man for a much more insidious secret group conspiring to kill the pope. Tracing this conspiracy proves improbably easy, since everyone from Turkish terrorists to Muslim imams to Catholic archbishops readily provide clues. Savage's findings are eventually buried by the Vatican, but not before some convenient accidents give the bad guys their just deserts. Szulc (Chopin in Paris), a New York Times foreign and diplomatic correspondent from 1955 to 1972, states in the book's afterword that he uncovered the real-world conspiracy to assassinate the pope while researching material for his 1995 biography of John Paul II. He chose fiction to reveal the truth to the world, he says, "in order to honor commitments of discretion to my principal sources." A noble intention, perhaps, but the resulting book has neither the integrity of journalism nor the drama of accomplished fiction. Static dialogue flattens the characters, and suspense flags. Unless readers have a working knowledge of recent French and Vatican politics, the revelation of the figures behind the assassination attempt will fall largely on deaf ears (especially since Szulc doesn't provide a key matching characters to their real-life counterparts). In addressing such a dire subject with a coy allegory, Szulc masquerades (alleged) fact as fiction, and does a disservice to both. Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.]