Customer Reviews

Chopin's Funeral

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I was disappointed by this book. Its title and slight size might suggest that it deals almost exclusively with Chopin's last days and burial. Not so. Eisler's description of Chopin's funeral comprises the first nine pages of this book. Another two at the end tell of Chopin's last minutes. (She sheds no new light on either event.) In between, you will find a Reader's Digest version of Chopin's life with particular emphasis on his relationship with George Sand. The book ends when Chopin does: the aftermath of his demise, it's effects on those around him, are not discussed.

I assume the author's intent was to quickly distill the couple's relationship so that she could speculate on it's unraveling. But the pair's quirky "association" lasted for twenty-one years. So this abridgement leaves much to be desired.

If you want a brief recap of the Chopin-Sand story, or are totally unfamiliar with their singular relationship, I suppose this book wouldn't be a bad place to start. However, it's not written particularly well. The convoluted, ungainly sentences were difficult to forgive after a while. If you want a better written and more detailed book on the composer, I recommend "Chopin in Paris" by Tad Szulc.

Focusing on the last fifteen years of Frederic Chopin's life, this biography of the composer shows how his relationship with the "liberated" author George Sand, her household, and her children dominated Chopin's life in France from shortly after his arrival there in 1831 until his death from tuberculosis in 1849. Carefully researched and footnoted, the biography describes this unlikely relationship, sometimes mutually supportive and sometimes strained, either from Chopin's increasing debilitation from his devastating illness or from Sand's promiscuity and desire for excitement.

Confining herself to those details which can be historically verified, author Eisler documents her vivid account of their life together primarily through references to the letters of the participants and eyewitness accounts. Unlike writers of fictionalized biography, she presents the facts and avoids drawing conclusions, even when they seem obvious to the lay reader. The one arena in which she allows herself some imaginative leeway is in analyzing some of the creative works of Chopin and Sand, relating them to events in their lives. For Chopin she suggests that the mood or form of a work might be related to particular events or circumstances, while for Sand she suggests that it might be the subject matter itself.

Straightforward and scholarly, the biography presents facts, rather then bringing events to life, and while some insight can be gained into the participants from their letters, there are some gaps in the historical record which sometimes leave the reader wishing for more transitions, especially as the Chopin/Sand relationship deteriorates and eventually ends. While music history scholars may be familiar with much of this material, Eisler's story is, for the novice, a fascinating glimpse into the life and times of these romantic artists, their friends, and patrons in Paris near the mid-point of the 19th century. Mary Whipple

Benita Eisler had written a concise and powerful book about the life of Frederic Chopin, including his loves, his music and his friends. Beginning with a colorful account of Chopin's funeral, the author then begins to weave together a tormented picture of him. His many illnesses, the distance from those he loved, his constant need for funds....all describe a life of unbelievable turmoil. Eisner is able to capture the essence of Chopin brilliantly and relate it to the reader with strokes of understanding and compassion.

While Chopin's relationship with George Sand has been well-documented over the years, the author, nonetheless, gives an emotional portrayal of their lives together...and apart. It is the central part of this book, as it should be. But how many readers know the influence that Sand's children had on him....especially Solange? Chopin relied heavily on both women but it was Solange who comforted him at the composer's end.

As a pianist, I enjoyed Eisner's brief and occasional comments on Chopin's compositions. They always seemed to complement her narrative and they were never too weighty to drag down any chapter. Her writing style is often brisk but not in any way capricious. The "photo" taken of Chopin towards the end of his life says it all. A man barely five feet tall, weighing little by a body wracked with suffering....a man in this condition who could still write some of the most expansive music. Eisner secures it all...she allows the reader to have great empathy and awe for Chopin.

It's a rare occurrence that a dust jacket adds so much to the book. It's really designed to give the look and feel of a first edition classic. Eisner's "Chopin's Funeral" is a highly recommended, thoroughly enjoyable book.

Most Chopinophiles who read "Chopin's Funeral" will have already read works on the composer, and will find little that is new here. As has been noted by others, the title is misleading (unless the author is telling us that Chopin's life was in fact a long pre-mortem funeral), but the few introductory pages describing Chopin's funeral at the Madeleine are thoroughly engaging.

Eisler does present some more or less newish, but not original, material. Among the more interesting relate to 2 of the 4 illustrations. For example, she suggests that the famous unique photo of Chopin was taken in 1846, and not mere months before his death in 1849. I suppose it is possible. The chronically ill Chopin certainly must have appeared to be on the verge of death many times, before the year of his actual demise.

She also publishes a photo of a hideous "original" death mask that will shock most readers who have only seen the apparently "sanitized" mask sculpted after Chopin's sister supposedly complained about the agonized and gruesome appearance of the first version, which bears no resemblance to Chopin aside from the pouty lower lip of a painfully grimacing mouth; in addition, Chopin appears to be bald! But who knows what the ravages of his final illness did to his appearance? In any case, readers who see this shocking photo for the first time, which will be most readers, are sure to be stricken with disbelief that it is actually their dear Chip-Chip at all. This death mask is nowhere to be found among "Google Images"; only the famous, oft-published "elegant" mask is widely available. For admirers of that well-known "life-like" death mask, this one will be a nightmare.

Eisler is solidly sympathetic with Chopin re: the breakup with Sand, while admitting that Chopin was not the easiest partner to deal with... no new ground here. Her synopsis of Sand's roman a clef about Chopin, "Lucrezia Floriani", is very clear and detailed; not all Chopin bios give such a good description of the plot. (Sand's book itself is rather boring, and would be excruciatingly so were it not about Chopin, dwelling on minute character descriptions page after page... it could use a few throbbing members, or car crashes! In fact, Eisler herself seems to take her cue from Sand, focusing on the character and motivation of those in Chopin's world.)

The language will be a tad flowery for many tastes, often written in a Harlequin romance style. The book also happens to include a factual error or two, stating on page 115:

"Returning from New York in 1852, Julian Fontana [Chopin's amanuensis] committed suicide in Paris, three years after Chopin's death."

Yet Fontana published most of Chopin's posthumous works in 1855. He did commit suicide, but in 1869, TWENTY years after Chopin's death. This kind of error could only be made by an author who took on Chopin as a "project", with little or no previous familiarity with standard sources. Of course this blunder brings suspicion on other material... we don't like to feel we must do an author's editing and fact-checking. ARE YOU LISTENING, KNOPF?

Eisler also mistakenly states that Chopin's cellist friend Franchomme was "the inspiration for the only music Chopin would ever write for an instrument other than the piano", meaning the cello. Those who have an actual rather than a commercial interest in Chopin know that he wrote also for the violin (Piano Trio) and flute (Rossini Variations), both pieces completed before Chopin's arrival in Paris and subsequent friendship with Franchomme, though the Trio was PUBLISHED, and no doubt finally edited, in Paris after his arrival. One of his cello works, the Polonaise, was written before his Paris period. We don't mention Chopin's writing for voice and, technically, orchestra.

The book's rough-edged,"faux-deckled" pages look nice enough, but are a major pain when the reader wishes to riffle-search for a specific page. The dust jacket is well done, imitating a quarter-calf 19th century binding.

"Chopin's Funeral" appears to be a limited gleaning of Chopin scholarship by an author who wished to make the material "romantically readable". The serious student would do better to go to the sources. If you just want a beach read, "Chopin's Funeral" will do; we gather that the author aimed no higher.

Eisler's biography is a short (200 pp), well-written, intimate, and moving portrait of composer Frederic Chopin's life in Paris, where he lived from 1831 (age 21) until his death from tuberculosis in 1849. During this time Chopin's private life centered around the notoriously famous woman novelist George Sand, who served as lover, muse, companion, nurse, and substitute mother to the physically weak and emotionally needy composer. The dynamics of this "celebrity" relationship - as spectacular and popular back then as anything in today's tabloids - are traced with empathy and clarity by the biographer, and related in an interesting and defensible way to the works of both participants.

As a biographer, Eisler brings out the positive and the negative traits and behaviors of Chopin and Sand, both as individuals and as participants in the relationship, in such a way that the reader gets to know these troubled, yet fascinating and brilliant, characters as three-dimensional people with all their faults and virtues. By the end of the book, I felt that I had begun to know Chopin and Sand as a friend or close acquaintance might, that is, by feeling and instinct as well as factual knowledge.

Eisler manages to accomplish this feat of empathy while sticking closely to the known facts of her subjects' lives, inventing little, and declining the temptation to flights of theoretical interpretation. The reader is shown everything, and allowed to allocate his or her sympathies where he or she will. The result is a biography which, while it does not break new ground in scholarship, did touch me and acquaint me with the human dimension of these lives.

As I consider Ferderick Chopin to be my favorite composer, I was struck by the idea of this book - a biography that greatly focuses on Chopin's later years. Benita Eisler allows for some cursory background knowledge of Chopin's family and upbringing, but recounts his time spent in Paris, his affair with George Sand, and his eventual demise due to consumption. Her scant biography is a quick-paced, easy read.

"Chopin's Funeral" paints an almost "rakish" picture of the slight composer. Eisler talks of his love for fashion and fashionable decorating, that is in contrast to his profession and earnings. She tells of his relationship with the writer Sand, how the affair started and ended, and the impact it had on both. (To Sand it seems to have been just another affair, while to Chopin it was possibly the love of his life.)

Eisler is much more empathetic when it comes to Chopin's sheer genius at composing, and how admired he was by his contemporaries (including Franz Liszt). Yet it seems to be the plight of genius composers that they never achieve the success they were destined to until after their untimely death. Chopin has left the world an incredible legacy of melancholic music that tugs at the heartstrings. His inventions were ground-breaking at the time and worthy of much more adoration than he received. And Eisler speaks with knowledge on many of Chopin's compositions. While an informative read, "Chopin's Funeral" is much too small to give a balanced and complete look at the life of Frederick Chopin. It leaves the reader wanting to know more and we must seek it from another source.

I have read many biographies of Chopin, in addition to his letters, and found that there were many errors in this book. In the beginning of the book, Eisler presents a diminutive Chopin at 5', sitting on the piano next to the outgoing 6' tall Franz Liszt. Chopin was actually 5'7", an average height at the time, while George Sand, his companion, was only 5'. That visual cue colors the rest of the biography, portraying Chopin as a tiny weakling who was dominated by George Sand. I also found that she editorializes more than the better biographies, adding her own bias in a "creative", way. While all biographers do this, they usually have better research to support their storyline.

very nice book to read. it flows pretty nicely, especially if u don't know music history that well. it's a biography with a story behind it. it doesnt require a special music knowledge.

Here are some errors--just a few.
1. "Unlike Brahms, Chopin never found a George Bernard Shaw to champion his work in Britain." Shaw DESPISED the music of Brahms until well after the latter's death when it made no difference.
2. Chopin's height is given by the author as 5 feet. If she had viewed Chopin's 1836 passport, she would have seen that his official height was just under 5 ft. 7 in.
3. Original (supposed) death mask by Clésinger. Ms. Eisler describes it: "Bald head...mouth contorted by agonized efforts to breathe..." Death masks were sometimes finished showing subjects bald, but Chopin had a headful of hair at his death. The author could have referred to the postmortem sketches by Kwiatowski--there you see it: hair. As for the "mouth contorted by agonized efforts to breathe," the mouth is no more contorted than any dead man's, especially after being mashed down under a couple of pounds of plaster. No such mask is on the website of the Bibliotheque Nationale de France. Does it resemble Chopin? The line of the nose doesn't, nor the chin, nor the massive, square jaws. Other than the the receding lower lip (due to missing teeth) this mask could just as easily be that of a hanged criminal.
4. "Called 'consumptive rage,' the particular disease...has been related to episodes of paranoid suspicion..." Really? There's no such term in the Practice of Physic, by T. Watson, the preeminent clinician of this period. No Google search turns up anything in medical literature under the name.
5 Chopin was "repelled by...Jews..." Chopin was no more anti-Semitic than any other Pole of his day. And his anti-Semitic remarks (often as jests) are found mainly in his youthful letters.
6. "The disease that killed him is still not diagnosed with certainty..." Chopin exhibited the classic symptoms of pulmonary tuberculosis, probably contracted from a tubercular roommate early in adulthood.
7. "Every other day he spent five minutes inhaling deeply from a bottle whose contents, prescribed by Dr. Molin, and probably containing morphine..." There's no evidence for this. Morphine was smoked or swallowed during this period, not inhaled. The only inhaled pre-1850 medications for tuberculosis for which there's evidence are nitrous oxide and sulfuric ether. In a letter of July, 1849, Chopin refers to Molin's treatments as homeopathy. Probably there was no actual medication in his bottle.
8. Error dating Chopin's 1849 daguerreotype: Eisler dates Chopin's last daguerreotype to 1846, confusing it with an earlier photo. She also points out Chopin's edema in this 1849 photo (which, again, she says is from 1846). Edema would not have been apparent three years prior to death. Chopin himself doesn't refer to his swelling until the last year of his life.
9. Re. a possible postmortem photo of Chopin. The author says, "No evidence exists that (the Bisson studio) made 'house calls.'" Yes, they did indeed make house calls. Post mortem photography was a huge source of income for daguerreotypists. And yes, an (apparent) postmortem photo of Chopin exists.

I had never heard of this book until my piano teacher group selected it for a book club group discussion. The title seems inadequate for what is inside. Covering much more than his funeral, this very accessible book reveals details of Chopin's life story in chronological order, incorporating many quotes from Chopin's letters and primary sources. The author also offers some well-educated speculation as to motives underlying his activities and relationships, particularly with George Sand and her children. Chopin's faults and weaknesses are revealed but not sensationalized, and his prodigious talent is respected but not glorified, resulting in an impression by the end that one has made the acquaintance of a troubled and talented real human being. A very useful plus is the index, making it worth purchasing, rather than borrowing. As a pianist, I like being able to refer to the index and quickly find specific works by opus number and then re-read what life events may have inspired them. Chopin's music has always meant much to me; now I understand something about what it must have taken to create it. This book has brought my "Chopin ear" to a new depth of appreciation.