Chopin: The Man and His Music

Chopin subtle-souled psychologist is more kin to Keats than Shelley he is a greater artist than a thinker. His philosophy is of the beautiful as was Keats and while he lingers by the rivers edge to catch the song of the reeds his gaze is oftener fixed on the quiring planets. He is natures most exquisite sounding-board and vibrates to her with intensity color and vivacity that have no parallel. Stained with melancholy his joy is never that of the strong man rejoicing in his muscles. -from Poet and Psychologist James Huneker describes Chopins mazurkas as the music in which the Pole suffers in song the joy of his sorrow. Such distinctive literary lyricism fills this classic 1900 life of the 19th-century French-Polish pianist and composer. After exploring the storied artistic circles in which Frédéric Chopin moved in Paris and his tempestuous relationship with the novelist George Sand Huneker delves into the artistic psychology of his music with in-depth analyses of Chopins studies many of which Huneker finds poetic; his preludes which Huneker deems moods in miniature; and the melancholy mysteries of Chopins nocturnes. A striking portrait of genius Huneker captures an artist who was pleasant and persuasive in public and a neurotic being in private and finds a composer whose music aches with the pathos of spiritual distance. American arts critic JAMES HUNEKER (1860-1921) also wrote Iconoclasts: A Book of Dramatists (1905) Egoists: A Book of Supermen (1909) Franz Liszt: Illustrated (1911) and The Pathos of Distance (1912).