Chopin either had left or was about to leave Marienbad when he received Schumann's letter. Had he received it sooner, his answer would not have been very encouraging. For in his circumstances he could not but have felt even the most highly-esteemed confrere, the most charming of companions, in the way.[FOOTNOTE: Mendelscohn's sister, Rebecka Dirichlet, found him completely absorbed in his Polish Countess. (See The Mendelssohn Family, Vol. II, p. 15.)] But although the two musicians did not meet at Marienbad, they saw each other at Leipzig. How much one of them enjoyed the visit may be seen in the following extract from a letter which Schumann wrote to Heinrich Dorn on September 14, 1836:—
The day before yesterday, just after I had received your
letter and was going to answer it, who should enter?—Chopin.
This was a great pleasure. We passed a very happy day
together, in honour of which I made yesterday a holiday...I
have a new ballade by Chopin. It appears to me his
genialischstes (not genialstes) work; and I told him that I
liked it best of all.
[FOOTNOTE: "Sein genialischstes (nicht genialstes) Werk." I
take Schumann to mean that the ballade in question (the one
in G minor) is Chopin's most spirited, most daring work, but
not his most genial—i.e., the one fullest of genius.
Schumann's remark, in a criticism of Op. 37, 38, and 42, that
this ballade is the "wildest and most original" of Chopin's
compositions, confirms my conjecture.]
After a long meditative pause he said with great emphasis: "I
am glad of that, it is the one which I too like best." He
played besides a number of new etudes, nocturnes, and
mazurkas—everything incomparable. You would like him very
much. But Clara [Wieck] is greater as a virtuoso, and gives
almost more meaning to his compositions than he himself.
Imagine the perfection, a mastery which seems to be quite
unconscious of itself!
Besides the announcement of September 16, 1836, that Chopin had been a day in Leipzig, that he had brought with him among other things new "heavenly" etudes, nocturnes, mazurkas, and a new ballade, and that he played much and "very incomparably," there occur in Schumann's writings in the Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik unmistakable reminiscences of this visit of the Polish musician. Thus, for instance, in a review of dance-music, which appeared in the following year, and to which he gave the fantastic form of a "Report to Jeanquirit in Augsburg of the editor's last artistico-historical ball," the writer relates a conversation he had with his partner Beda:—
I turned the conversation adroitly on Chopin. Scarcely had
she heard the name than she for the first time fully looked
at me with her large, kindly eyes. "And you know him?" I
answered in the affirmative. "And you have heard him?" Her
form became more and more sublime. "And have heard him
speak?" And when I told her that it was a never-to-be-
forgotten picture to see him sitting at the piano like a
dreaming seer, and how in listening to his playing one seemed
to one's self like the dream he created, and how he had the
dreadful habit of passing, at the end of each piece, one
finger quickly over the whizzing keyboard, as if to get rid
of his dream by force, and how he had to take care of his
delicate health—she clung to me with ever-increasing
timorous delight, and wished to know more and more about him.
Very interesting is Schumann's description of how Chopin played some etudes from his Op. 25; it is to be found in another criticism of the same year (1837):—
As regards these etudes, I have the advantage of having heard
most of them played by Chopin himself, and, as Florestan
whispered in my ear at the time, "He plays them very much a
la Chopin." Imagine an AEolian harp that had all the scales,
and that these were jumbled together by the hand of an artist
into all sorts of fantastic ornaments, but in such a manner
that a deeper fundamental tone and a softly-singing higher
part were always audible, and you have an approximate idea of
his playing. No wonder that we have become fondest of those
pieces which we heard him play himself, and therefore we
shall mention first of all the first one in A flat, which is
rather a poem than an etude. It would be a mistake, however,
to suppose that he brought out every one of the little notes
with distinctness; it was more like a billowing of the A flat
major chord, swelled anew here and there by means of the
pedal; but through the harmonies were heard the sustained
tones of a wondrous melody, and only in the middle of it did
a tenor part once come into greater prominence amid the
chords along with that principal cantilena. After listening
to the study one feels as one does after a blissful vision,
seen in a dream, which, already half awake, one would fain
bring back. He soon came to the one in F minor, the second in
the book, likewise one which impresses one indelibly with his
originality; it is so charming, dreamy, and soft, somewhat
like the singing of a child in its sleep. Beautiful also,
although less new in character than in the figure, was the
following one in F major; here the object was more to exhibit
bravura, the most charming bravura, and we could not but
praise the master highly for it....But of what use are
descriptive words?
This time we cannot cite a letter of Mendelssohn's; he was elsewhere similarly occupied as Chopin in Marienbad. After falling in love with a Frankfort lady, Miss Jeanrenaud, he had gone to Scheweningen to see whether his love would stand the test of absence from the beloved object. It stood the test admirably, and on September 9, a few days before Chopin's arrival in Leipzig, Mendelssohn's engagement to the lady who became his wife on March 28, 1837, took place.
But another person who has been mentioned in connection with Chopin's first visit to Leipzig, Henrietta Voigt, [FOOTNOTE: The editor of "Acht Briefe und ein Facsimile van Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy" speaks of her as "the artistic wife of a Leipzig merchant, whose house stood open to musicians living in and passing through Leipzig.">[ has left us an account of the impression made upon her. An entry in her diary on September 13, 1836, runs thus:—
Yesterday Chopin was here and played an hour on my piano—a
fantasia and new etude of his—interesting man and still more
interesting playing; he moved me strangely. The over-
excitement of his fantastic manner is imparted to the keen-
eared; it made me hold my breath. Wonderful is the ease with
which his velvet fingers glide, I might almost say fly, over
the keys. He has enraptured me—I cannot deny it—in a way
which hitherto had been unknown to me. What delighted me was
the childlike, natural manner which he showed in his
demeanour and in his playing.
After this short break of his journey at Leipzig, which he did not leave without placing a wreath of flowers on the monument of Prince Joseph Poniatowski, who in 1812 met here with an early death, being drowned in the river Elster, Chopin proceeded on his homeward journey, that is toward Paris, probably tarrying again for a day or two at Heidelberg.