Frederic Chopin Quotes
-
One needs only to study a certain positioning of the hand in relation to the keys to obtain with ease the most beautiful sounds, to know how to play long notes and short notes and to achieve certain unlimited dexterity. A well formed technique, it seems to me, can control and vary a beautiful sound quality.
-
The three most celebrated doctors on the island have been to see me. One sniffed at what I spat, the second tapped where I spat from, and the third sounded me and listened as I spat. The first said I was dead, the second that I was dying and the third that I'm going to die.
-
A long time ago I decided that my universe will be the soul and heart of man.
-
My piano has not yet arrived. How did you send it? By Marseilles or by Perpignan? I dream music but I cannot make any because here there are not any pianos . . . in this respect this is a savage country.
-
Time is the best of critics; and patience the best of teachers.
-
If I were still stupider than I am, I should think myself at the apex of my career; yet I know how much I still lack, to reach perfection; I see it the more clearly now that I live only among first-rank artists and know what each one of them lacks.
-
I haven't heard anything so great for a long time; Beethoven snaps his fingers at the whole world.
-
The Official Bulletin declared that the Poles should be as proud of me as the Germans are of Mozart; obvious nonsense.
-
England is a country of pianos, they are everywhere.
-
I wish I could throw off the thoughts which poison my happiness, but I take a kind of pleasure in indulging them.
-
It is dreadful when something weighs on your mind, not to have a soul to unburden yourself to. You know what I mean. I tell my piano the things I used to tell you.
-
Nothing is more beautiful than the sound of the guitar.
-
Simplicity is the highest goal, achievable when you have overcome all difficulties.
-
Having nothing to do, I am correcting the Paris edition of Bach; not only the engraver's mistakes, but also the mistakes hallowed by those who are supposed to understand Bach. I have no pretensions to understand better, but I do think that sometimes I can guess.
-
I really don't know whether any place contains more pianists than Paris, or whether you can find more asses and virtuosos anywhere.
-
After a rest in Edinburgh, where, passing a music-shop, I heard some blind man playing a mazurka of mine.
-
I don't know where there can be so many pianists as in Paris, so many asses and so many virtuosi.
-
The earth is suffocating... Swear to make them cut me open, so that I won't be buried alive.
-
A strange adventure befell me while I was playing my Sonata in B flat minor before some English friends. I had played the Allegro and the Scherzo more or less correctly. I was about to attack the March when suddenly I saw arising from the body of my piano those cursed creatures which had appeared to me one lugubrious night at the Chartreuse. I had to leave for one instant to pull myself together after which I continued without saying anything.
-
I am not fitted to give concerts. The audience intimidates me, I feel choked by its breath, paralyzed by its curious glances, struck dumb by all those strange faces.
-
Liszt commenting on the music of Frédéric Chopin: He confided . . . those inexpressible sorrows to which the pious give vent in their communication with their Maker. What they never say except upon their knees, he said in his palpitating compositions.
-
I feel like a novice, just as I felt before I knew anything of the keyboard. It is far too original, and I shall end up not being able to learn it myself.
-
Chopin was the first piano composer who knew exactly how to make piano sound reach fullness, radiance and grandness. What to regard and what, by all means, to avoid. Chopin was keenly aware of the overtones and he did take care of them so artfully.
-
I could express my feelings more easily if they could be put into the notes of music, but as the very best concert would not cover my affection for you, dear daddy, I must use the simple words of my heart, to lay before you my utmost gratitude and filial affection.