I’ve often thought that meeting one of the great composers of the past in person, even for a few minutes, would tell us much more about his or her music than decades of dogged score-study. Music is not just a cold concatenation of ‘tonally moving forms’, despite what the curmudgeonly Viennese critic Eduard Hanslick wanted us to believe. ‘From the heart – may it return to the heart’, wrote Beethoven on a copy of his Missa solemnis, and I have lost count of the number of students who told me they had learned to play the piano for no other reason than ‘to express their emotions’.

I’m therefore sure that many pianists have wondered, as I have, what Chopin and Liszt were really like, especially as teachers. With Liszt there is no need to wonder too much, given the numerous reminiscences and day-to-day recollections left by his students. But for Chopin, detailed information was hitherto thin on the ground, even when collected together in Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger’s excellent Chopin: Pianist and Teacher – As Seen by his Pupils. The idealised Chopin that emerged from this – effete, fastidious, hyper-sensitive – never seemed to be a person of flesh and blood. It was difficult to imagine how this ultra-fragile figure – Liszt’s ‘divine aristocrat, a female archangel with prismatic wings’ – could have credibly survived anywhere, let alone amid the hustle and bustle of 19th-century Paris. But all this has now changed, for we’ve finally been given a believable Chopin.

In 2018, with little fanfare, there appeared Frédéric Chopin – Einblicke in Unterricht und Umfeld: Die Briefe seiner Lieblingsschülerin Friederike Müller, Paris 1839-1845 (‘Frédéric Chopin – Insights into his Teaching and [Social] Environment: The Letters of his Favourite Student Friederike Müller, Paris 1839-1845’), expertly edited and annotated by Uta Goebl-Streicher. This book, all 640 pages of it, is a game-changer. For the first time ever, we have detailed, daily accounts of lessons with Chopin, written immediately after they took place, not hazily recalled decades later. It’s almost as if we were in the room, listening in to the conversation, although the actual sound of the playing is, alas, lost for ever. Müller’s letters are currently available only in German and in Polish translation. Fortunately, I was gently encouraged to learn the former language many years ago, when I married my German wife. In my column in the next issue, I’ll summarise what I think all pianists, whatever their linguistic range, might learn from the Müller material. As a short prelude, I will present a ‘standard’ outline of Chopin’s teaching. It’s only with this background in mind that we can clearly comprehend how Müller turns what was once a faded caricature into a vivid, full-colour photo.

Every week of the Parisian season, from around the beginning of October to the end of March, a steady stream of piano pupils would come to study with Chopin. By the late 1830s, he was the most famous pianist permanently resident in Paris, and its most exclusive piano teacher. Even Liszt had not charged as much for a one-hour piano lesson: 20 gold francs, a phenomenal fee. As Chopin received up to five students per day, he could easily earn in two weeks what a bank clerk could in a year. Teaching – and not the modest royalties from his music – was accordingly his main source of income, just as Berlioz made his living as librarian of the Conservatoire, and Wagner by borrowing money.

Students arriving at Chopin’s apartment would be greeted by a valet: evidence of unusual opulence. Most musicians, then as now, had to open their own front doors. While waiting in the antechamber, students would unobtrusively place the fee for their lesson, delicately concealed in an envelope, on the mantelpiece.

Most of Chopin’s pupils were wealthy young ladies, their talents in inverse proportion to their social status. Wilhelm von Lenz, a Russian visitor, noted that a steady stream of such students – ‘each one even prettier than the last’ – would emerge from the music room and parade haughtily past the next in line. No Chopin student achieved international renown as a performer, though a few – such as Carl Mikuli, teacher of Moriz Rosenthal – passed on the flame to subsequent generations. Chopin himself had high hopes for Carl Filtsch, a remarkably talented teenage prodigy. ‘When this lad starts touring,’ Liszt joked, ‘I’d better shut up shop!’ But Filtsch was already ill. He died of consumption only a few years before Chopin’s own death.

On being ushered into the music room, a student would sit at a Pleyel grand piano. Chopin would sit at an upright. Most of his teaching was by direct example – he preferred to do rather than describe. But for his own music, Chopin would regularly write variants into pupils’ scores – some of them distinct improvements on the published versions – as well as fingerings and friendly admonitions.

Especially important was the cultivation of a singing tone. ‘If you can’t sing, you can’t play the piano,’ Chopin would say. He advised his students to listen to Rubini, Pasta and other singing stars of the day. Despite this, Chopin prepared for his own concerts not by attending the opera, nor even by practising the pieces programmed, but by spending a fortnight playing Bach’s 48 Preludes and Fugues. ‘Play Bach for me,’ he would say to his students as they left.

And then, in March 1839, 22-year-old Friederike Müller arrived in Paris from Vienna, in the company of her aunt Wilhelmine. Friederike was determined to find a famous piano teacher: Liszt, Thalberg, or perhaps Chopin … IP