The first Romantic

Peter Phillips on the life and times of Chopin, who was born 200 years ago

The year 1810 may seem a little late to look for the beginning of the Romantic movement in music, but with the births of Chopin, Schumann and S.S. Wesley one could make a case. Think of the difference in the lifestyles of these composers, especially Chopin’s, when compared with those of their immediate predecessors. Where Mozart was tied to a court and lived more or less the life of a servant, these three travelled as they liked, the original freelancing musicians. Where Haydn was emotionally tied to the Church (and physically to a court), only Wesley relied on the Church for employment, and was famously outspoken about the low standards he found there, making himself thoroughly unpopular. Where Beethoven and Schubert travelled little and chose solitary lives struggling to make ends meet — forever composing by candlelight in garrets if the illustrators are to be believed — our anniversarians had more modern relationships, with well documented passions and stormy scenes (though not a lot of children). When one adds Mendelssohn, born the previous year, into the equation, the whole aspect of classical composition and its practitioners does seem to have undergone a fundamental change at about that time.

Of the three, Chopin — his unPolish name comes from the fact that his father was a French émigré — lived the most bohemian life, replete with restless travel, a famous mistress, ambivalent sexuality, an almost superhuman technique at the keyboard, a romantically early death from modish diseases and a love of nightlife which meant he was always tired. Much of this would resurface in the lives of the High Romantics, especially worship of the hero performer, but taken with his music Chopin’s world had a naivety in it which suggests the early stages of the movement.