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.
The non-artistic events of this period are of a more stirring nature than the artistic ones. First in time and importance comes Chopin's meeting with George Sand, which more than any other event marks an epoch in the composer's life. But as this subject has to be discussed fully and at some length we shall leave it for another chapter, and conclude this with an account of some other matters.