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Frédéric Chopin Quotes (1810-1849)
Composer
About Frédéric Chopin
Frédéric Chopin (1 March 1810 – 17 October 1849) was a Polish pianist and composer of classical music who lived in Paris from age 21. He wrote almost solely for piano and remains the most widely played composer for that instrument. He also wrote for violin and viola. His music ranged from patriotic, melancholy, passionate to simple and beautiful, and he was known as a great teacher of piano.
Best Frédéric Chopin Quotes
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Explore our curated collection of the most famous and impactful Frédéric Chopin quotes.
“I'm a revolutionary, money means nothing to me.”
“I astonished Kalkbrenner, who at once asked me, was I not a pupil of Field, because I have Cramer's method and Field's touch. (That delighted me.)”
“Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art.”
“Here you doubtless observe my tendency to do wrong against my will. As something has involuntarily crept into my head through my eyes, I love to indulge it, even though it may be all wrong.”
“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.”
“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”
“How great a joy I feel in my heart. That a day so pleasant, so dear and glorious begins, a day that I greet with the wish. That long years may pass in happiness. In health and vigour, peacefully, successfully. May the gift of heaven fall richly upon you”
“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 [attain] certain unlimited dexterity... A well formed technique, it seems to me, [is one] that can control and vary a beautiful sound quality.”
“I have met Rossini, Cherubini, Baillot, etc.—also Kalkbrenner. You would not believe how curious I was about Herz, Liszt, Hiller, etc. — They are all zero beside Kalkbrenner. I confess that I have played like Herz, but would wish to play like Kalkbrenner. If Paganini is perfection, Kalkbrenner is his equal, but in quite another style.”
“Idę się umywać, nie całuj mię teraz, bom się jeszcze nie umył. — Ty? chociażbym się olejkami wysmarował bizantyjskimi, nie pocałowałbyś, gdybym ja Ciebie magnetycznym sposobem do tego nie przymusił. Jest jakaś siła w naturze. Dziś Ci się śnić będzie, że mnie całujesz. Muszę Ci oddać za szkaradny sen, jakiś mi dziś w nocy sprowadził.”
“Messieurs, I should like to be granted the favour of performing at one of your admirable concerts, and this I beg to ask of you. Trusting, since I lack other qualifications to obtain this, in your goodwill towards artists, I dare to hope that you will greet my request favourably, I have the honour to be, Messieurs, your very humble servant.
Frédéric Chopin
Cité Bergère, No. 4”
Frédéric Chopin
Cité Bergère, No. 4”
“I am cross and depressed, and people bore me with their excessive attentions. I can't breathe, I can't work; I feel alone, alone, alone, although I am surrounded. There are a whole lot of ladies, 70 to 80 year-old lords, but no young folk: they are all out shooting. One can't get out of doors because it has been raining and blowing for several days. Cited in chopin-society.org.uk ”
“ Give me a kiss, dearest lover. I'm certain that you still love me, and I fear you always, like some tyrant over me. I don't know why, but I fear you. Upon my word, only you have power over me, you and... no one else. Chopin, Frédéric (2016), Chopin's Polish Letters, page: 185, at: David A., place: Warsaw, publisher: Narodowy Instytut Fryderyka Chopina, ISBN: 978-83-64823-19-0, OCLN: 956448514”
“ No one other than I has read your letter. As always, even now, I carry your letters with me. How blissful it will it be for me, having gone beyond the city walls in May, thinking about my approaching journey, to pull out a letter of yours and assure myself sincerely that you love me, or at least to gaze at the hand and the writing of him, whom only I am able to love! Chopin, Frédéric (2016), Chopin's Polish Letters, page: 148f, at: David A., place: Warsaw, publisher: Narodowy Instytut Fryderyka Chopina, ISBN: 978-83-64823-19-0, OCLN: 956448514”
“I'm glad that the secret is submerged in my heart, that in me is the end of what is for you the beginning. And be glad that you have in me an abyss into which you can cast everything without fear - as if into a second self - because your spirit has long lain there at the very bottom. I keep your letters like a ribbon from a mistress. I have the ribbon; write to me, I'll caress you again in a week.Chopin, Frédéric (2016), Chopin's Polish Letters, page: 171, at: David A., place: Warsaw, publisher: Narodowy Instytut Fryderyka Chopina, ISBN: 978-83-64823-19-0, OCLN: 956448514”
“How strange! This bed on which I shall lie has been slept on by more than one dying man, but today it does not repel me! Who knows what corpses have lain on it and for how long? But is a corpse any worse than I? A corpse too knows nothing of its father, mother or sisters or Titus. Nor has a corpse a sweetheart. A corpse, too, is pale, like me. A corpse is cold, just as I am cold and indifferent to everything. A corpse has ceased to live, and I too have had enough of life.... Why do we live on through this wretched life which only devours us and serves to turn us into corpses? The clocks in the Stuttgart belfries strike the midnight hour. Oh how many people have become corpses at this moment! Mothers have been torn from their children, children from their mothers - how many plans have come to nothing, how much sorrow has sprung from these depths, and how much relief!... Virtue and vice have come in the end to the same thing! It seems that to die is man's finest action - and what might be his worst? To be born, since that is the exact opposite of his best deed. It is therefore right of me to be angry that I was ever born into this world! Why was I not prevented from remaining in a world where I am utterly useless? What good can my existence bring to anyone? … But wait, wait! What's this? Tears? How long it is since they flowed! How is this, seeing that an arid melancholy has held me for so long in its grip? How good it feels - and sorrowful. Sad but kindly tears! What a strange emotion! Sad but blessed. It is not good for one to be sad, and yet how pleasant it is - a strange state...”
Frédéric Chopin Quotes by Topic
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Frédéric Chopin on Piano
Frédéric Chopin on Simplicity
“Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art.”
Frédéric Chopin on Dexterity
“One needs only to study a certain positioning of the hand in relation to the keys to obtain with ease the most beautiful quality of sound, to know how to play long notes and short notes and [to attain] unlimited dexterity … A well-formed technique, it seems to me, [is one] that can control and vary [bien nuancer] a beautiful sound quality.”
Frédéric Chopin on Depression
“I am cross and depressed, and people bore me with their excessive attentions. I can't breathe, I can't work; I feel alone, alone, alone, although I am surrounded. There are a whole lot of ladies, 70 to 80 year-old lords, but no young folk: they are all out shooting. One can't get out of doors because it has been raining and blowing for several days.”
Quotes About Frédéric Chopin
Gain deeper perspective through quotes about Frédéric Chopin from others.
Marc-André Hamelin on Frédéric Chopin 2 quotes
“Chopin‘s pianistic production is overall more voluminous and somewhat more consistent in emotional substance, however wonderful much of Schumann‘s work is.”
Ashish Xiangyi Kumar on Frédéric Chopin 2 quotes
“Chopin is -- popularly, but not critically -- seen primarily as a great melodist, which reputation does him a great disservice.”
Elisabeth Leonskaja on Frédéric Chopin
Ming-Qiang Li on Frédéric Chopin 2 quotes
“Chopin is played much more than Schumann in China, both in concert halls and music schools. The reason, if I put it in a most simple and direct way, Chopin is more universal, appeals more to the masses. Schumann is more personal, appeals more to the elites.”
Franz Liszt on Frédéric Chopin
“Music was his language, the divine tongue through which he expressed a whole realm of sentiments that only the select few can appreciate... The muse of his homeland dictates his songs, and the anguished cries of Poland lend to his art a mysterious, indefinable poetry which, for all those who have truly experienced it, cannot be compared to anything else... The piano alone was not sufficient to reveal all that lies within him. In short he is a most remarkable individual who commands our highest degree of devotion.”
Carl Mikuli on Frédéric Chopin 2 quotes
“According to a tradition—and, be it said, an erroneous one—Chopin’s playing was like that of one dreaming rather than awake—scarcely audible in its coninual pianissiomos and una cordoas, with feebly developed technique and quite lacking in confidence, or at least indistinct, and distorted out of all rhythmic form by an incessant tempo rubato! The effect of these notions could not be otherwise than very prejudicial to the interpretation of his works, even by the most able artists—in their very striving after truthfulness; besides, they are easily accounted for.”
George SandOeuvres autobiographiques on Frédéric Chopin
“His creation was spontaneous, miraculous. He found it without searching for it, without foreseeing it. It came to his piano suddenly, complete, sublime, or it sang in his head during a walk, and he would hasten to hear it again by, tossing it off on his instrument. But then would begin the most heartbreaking labor I have ever witnessed. It was a series of efforts, indecision, and impatience to recapture certain details of the theme he had heard: what had come to him all of a piece, he now over-analyzed in his desire to write it down, and his regret at not finding it again "neat," as he said, would throw him into a kind of despair. He would shut himself up in his room for days at a time, weeping, pacing, breaking his pens, repeating and changing a single measure a hundred times, writing it and effacing it with equal frequency, and beginning again the next day with a meticulous and desperate perseverance. He would spend six weeks on one page, only to end up writing it just as he had traced it in his first outpouring.”
András Schiff on Frédéric Chopin
About Frédéric Chopin
Frédéric Chopin (1 March 1810 – 17 October 1849) was a Polish pianist and composer of classical music who lived in Paris from age 21. He wrote almost solely for piano and remains the most widely played composer for that instrument. He also wrote for violin and viola. His music ranged from patriotic, melancholy, passionate to simple and beautiful, and he was known as a great teacher of piano.