Frédéric Chopin Quotes

26 Sourced Quotes

Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has conquered all the difficulties, 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
Every difficulty slurred over will be a ghost to disturb your repose later on.

Frédéric Chopin
Time is still the best critic, and patience the best teacher.

Frédéric Chopin
I wish I could throw off the thoughts which poison my happiness, but I take a kind of pleasure in indulging them.

Frédéric Chopin
Having nothing to do, I am correcting the Paris edition of Bach; not only the engraver's mistakes, but also the mistakes hallowed by those who are supposed to understand Bach (I have no pretensions to understand better, but I do think that sometimes I can guess).

Frédéric Chopin
I am gay on the outside, especially among my own folk (I count Poles my own); but inside something gnaws at me; some presentiment, anxiety, dreams - or sleeplessness - melancholy, indifference - desire for life, and the next instant, desire for death; some kind of sweet peace, some kind of numbness, absent-mindedness...

Frédéric Chopin
Here, waltzes are called works! And Strauss and Lanner, who play them for dancing, are called Kapellmeistern. This does not mean that everyone thinks like that; indeed, nearly everyone laughs about it; but only waltzes get printed.

Frédéric Chopin
I haven't heard anything so great for a long time; Beethoven snaps his fingers at the whole world...

Frédéric Chopin
Among the numerous pleasures of Vienna the hotel evenings are famous. During supper Strauss or Lanner play waltzes...After every waltz they get huge applause; and if they play a Quodlibet, or jumble of opera, song and dance, the hearers are so overjoyed that they don't know what to do with themselves. It shows the corrupt taste of the Viennese public.

Frédéric Chopin
It's a huge Carthusian monastery, stuck down between rocks and sea, where you may imagine me, without white gloves or hair curling, as pale as ever, in a cell with such doors as Paris never had for gates. The cell is the shape of a tall coffin, with an enormous dusty vaulting, a small window... Bach, my scrawls and waste paper - silence - you could scream - there would still be silence. Indeed, I write to you from a strange place.

Frédéric Chopin
I don't know where there can be so many pianists as in Paris, so many asses and so many virtuosi.

Frédéric Chopin
If I were still stupider than I am, I should think myself at the apex of my career; yet I know how much I still lack, to reach perfection; I see it the more clearly now that I live only among first-rank artists and know what each one of them lacks.

Frédéric Chopin
Once while listening Liszt playing a Beethoven sonata:
Must he play everything in such a declamatory manner?

Frédéric Chopin
After a rest in Edinburgh, where, passing a music-shop, I heard some blind man playing a mazurka of mine...

Frédéric Chopin
The Official Bulletin declared that the Poles should be as proud of me as the Germans are of Mozart; obvious nonsense.

Frédéric Chopin
All the same it is being said everywhere that I played too softly, or rather, too delicately for people used to the piano-pounding of the artists here.

Frédéric Chopin
You already know when I'm writing, so don't be surprised if it's short and dry, because I'm too hungry to write anything fat

Frédéric Chopin
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.

Frédéric Chopin
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

Frédéric Chopin
Letter to Camille Pleyel:
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.

Frédéric Chopin
Concerts are never real music, you have to give up the idea of hearing in them all the most beautiful things of art.

Frédéric Chopin
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.)

Frédéric Chopin
Sometimes I can only groan, and suffer, and pour out my despair at the piano!

Frédéric Chopin
Of his piano concerto, op.11:
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.

Frédéric Chopin
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

Frédéric Chopin
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.

Frédéric Chopin