Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849)
During his ten-year relationship with the French novelist George Sand, Chopin spent most of his summers at Sand’s country estate in Nohant, in central France. Chopin was an urban animal; in the country, he quickly became bored and moody. But the lack of distractions was good for his music. Most days her rose late, had breakfast in his bedroom, and spent the day composing, with a break to give a piano lesson to Sand’s daughter, Solange. At 6:00 P.M. the household assembled for dinner, often served outdoors, followed by music, conversation, and sundry entertainments. Then Chopin retired to bed while Sand went to her writing table.
Although his lack of any real responsibility at Nohant made it easier for Chopin to compose, his work process was still far from effortless. Sand noted his work habits:
His creation was spontaneous and miraculous. He found it without seeking it, without foreseeing it. It came on his piano suddenly, complete, sublime, or it sang in his head during a walk, and he was impatient to play it to himself. But then began the most heart-rending labour I ever saw. It was a series of efforts, of irresolutions, and of frettings to seize again certain details of the theme he had heard; what he had conceived as a whole he analysed too much when wishing to write it, and his regret at not finding it again, in his opinion, clearly defined, threw him into a kind of despair. He shut himself up in his room for whole days, weeping, walking, breaking his pens, repeating and altering a bar a hundred times, writing and effacing it as many times, and recommencing the next day with a minute and desperate perseverance. He spent six weeks over a single page to write it at last as he had noted it down at the very first.
Sand tried to convince Chopin to trust his initial inspiration, but he was loath to take her advice, and became angry when disturbed. “I dared not insist,” Sand wrote. “Chopin when angry was alarming, and as, with me, he always restrained himself, he seemed almost to choke and die.”
* Source: Daily Rituals by Mason Currey