The Parisian Worlds of Frederic Chopin [Hardcover]

Dr. William G. Atwood (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 10, 1999

In 1831, Chopin stopped in Paris on his way to London, fleeing his native Warsaw after Russia's brutal repression of an insurrection there. Entranced by the lively social and artistic scene in the city, the musician remained there until his death in 1849. In this engaging book, William Atwood recreates the Paris that Chopin knew, providing vivid details about its places, people, and politics, and showing how these affected the sensitive musician during an enormously fruitful period in his career.

Drawing on many contemporary sources, Atwood brings to life the musicians, writers, artists, courtesans, salon hostesses, politicians, doctors, businessmen, and messianic Polish emigres who lived in Paris. He describes the theaters, music halls, and salons of Paris as well as its less glamorous worlds filled with the political conflicts and economic fluctuations of the July Monarchy. He tells about the city's newly awakened social consciousness and the philosophers and writers (including George Sand) who fostered it. The book sheds brilliant new light on both Paris and Chopin and will be delightful reading for lovers of the city or the musician.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

This book may be of greater interest to the historian--political, social, and cultural--than to the musician. As its title indicates, it is about France, particularly Paris, more than about Chopin, and presupposes considerable knowledge of French history. Chopin wanders through its pages as a peripatetic presence; there are quotes from his letters commenting on whom he meets, where he plays, what he sees and hears, with references to his friends, pupils, and publishers. The author, a New York dermatologist who has written two previous books about Chopin (including Fryderyk Chopin: Pianist from Warsaw), has prodigiously researched every aspect of French life between the revolutions of 1830 and 1848. He quotes copiously from contemporary writers as diverse as Balzac, Heine, Berlioz, Mrs. Trollop, and Thackeray. A meticulously detailed guided tour through Paris is followed by an account of several generations of the royal family describing their politics, personalities, fortunes, and misfortunes, as well as their habits, love affairs, interrelationships, hangers-on, and adversaries, resulting in a bewildering profusion of names.

Among the most interesting chapters are those on the Polish refugee community--where Chopin had many friends--and those on the artists, writers, musicians, philosophers, and theologians (including numerous crackpots) who created the city's rich cultural life in its concerts, theaters, operas, journals, and famous private salons. The writing is lively, witty, and informative, marred only by occasional infelicities like "his inseparable sister," and the book abounds with excellent illustrations. Unfortunately, it also abounds with anti-Semitic slurs; Atwood misses no chance to point out, in an insulting manner, the Jewish origin of anyone he does not like, from the Rothschilds to Heine, Meyerbeer, and Offenbach. --Edith Eisler

From Publishers Weekly

Atwood's third book on Chopin (Fryderyk Chopin: Pianist from Warsaw) views the composer's life against the backdrop of Paris, from Chopin's arrival in 1831 until his death in 1849. Atwood captures historical details of the City of Light, nicely describing, for example, the Polish emigre community and the city's leading salon hostesses. Chopin's own insights into these various milieus are revealed in pointed comments drawn from his correspondence ("I am launching myself little by little into society, alas, with nothing more than a ducat in my pocket!"). Beginning with a panoramic tour through the arrondissements of Paris, Atwood notes Chopin's various residences and other landmarks of importance in his life. Several chapters on the intensely active musical life of Paris, from the salons to Chopin's beloved opera, and on the rise of journalistic music criticism, are of central interest. Yet Atwood's thoroughness becomes a problem in chapters that, by his own admission, explore aspects of Parisian life with which Chopin had little to do. For instance, his lover George Sand was a link to literary and radical political circles, but Atwood stresses Chopin's lack of interest in politics only after providing a detailed political history. A chapter on the visual arts includes Sand's observation that "her lover was a musician and only a musician, with little feeling for the other arts." Atwood's urge toward panorama takes the book away from its supposed central figure into the realm of more general cultural history from which Chopin often disappears. But what this study lacks in focus it makes up for in colorful anecdotes and personality sketches that will surely interest aficionados of music in 19th-century Paris. 151 illus.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press (November 10, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300077734
• ISBN-13: 978-0300077735
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.5 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,072,910 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Excellent Book!, July 22, 2000

By 

Aussie Reader ""Rick"" (Canberra, Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Parisian Worlds of Frederic Chopin (Hardcover)

What pleasure it is to be able to sit down and write a review of a truly enjoyable book such as this one. As I sit here typing I am listening to some music from one of the greatest composers of the 19th Century, Frederic Chopin. Fitting no less, as this book provides the reader with a guide through the City of Paris as seen and experienced by Chopin during his time there.

The author, William Atwood, has written two previous books on Chopin and in this third book he shows that he has a deep understanding for Chopin and his time. Covering the period from 1831 to 1849 Atwood covers all manner of subjects in his discussion of Paris, that beautiful city that seemed to produce some of the greatest artists in Europe. The author provides you with an insight into the social and artistic scene as well as some of the more interesting people, places and activities of Paris.

The book covers not only music and musicians but poets, writers, painters, the opera and theatre, medicine, bohemians, people of the street and how they all lived and survived during this turbulent period. The story just flows along smoothly and some of the stories are just amazing.

For instance when Paris decided to solve the sewage problem that tended to blot the city streets they changed the roadways contours from concave to convex allowing the swill and sewage to run off the roads into the new drainage system. The only problem with this was that not all the drains were properly covered and children often fell through the drains into the underground sewer system!

Another interesting little story in the chapter on medicine informs the reader that during the craze for bleeding as a form of combating illness that swept Paris during the early 1830's it was estimated that by 1833 Paris was importing 41.5 million leeches a year!

One of my favourite stories was the tragic tale of Alphonsine Plessis, the lady of the camellias, which can be found in the chapter regarding bohemians and demimondes (I don't want to spoil the story for anyone so you will have to buy the book and read it for yourself). According the Atwood the people of Paris still leave offerings of flowers on her tomb at the cemetery at Montmarte.

For anyone who loves good history, the arts or just a well-written book I am sure they will enjoy this story. In the pages you will find some of the greatest names in the world of the arts, Frederic Chopin, Eugene Delacroix, George Sand, Honore de Balzac, Hector Berlioz, Alexandre Dumas, Victor Hugo, Franz Liszt, and many many more. The book also provides numerous black and white illustrations showing Paris, its people and its buildings, during this time. This is a great story, an enjoyable read and an interesting piece of history.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Wealth of Fascinating Information, August 7, 2001

By 

"elenedom" (Albuquerque, NM United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Parisian Worlds of Frederic Chopin (Hardcover)

I found this book at our local library here in Albuquerque, and just had to own a copy. For anyone with an interest in Chopin, this book is an incredible gold mine of facts and details you won't find anywhere else, but Chopin is really only a small part of the wide-ranging subjects covered. Everyone who was anyone in Paris in the 1830s and '40s figures in this book, and people and events are also connected to the wider world of Europe and even America. The major composers, writers, artists, social reformers, politicians, and even doctors are covered. Nearly everything you might want to know about daily life in the first half of the 19th century is also described (will definitely cure you of any longing for the "good old days"....).

William Atwood is a dermatologist, and his descriptions of the medical thinking and practice of the time were especially interesting to me. As a holistic practitioner, I appreciated his discussion of the popularity of homeopathy in the 19th century. Chopin, of course, used homeopathy instead of the brutal methods of the allopathic doctors of his time, and seems to have been far better off than he would have been otherwise.

This book was a great help to me in clarifying Chopin's place in his time and adopted country. I expect to refer to it often.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Wealth of Fascinating Information, August 7, 2001

By 

"elenedom" (Albuquerque, NM United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Parisian Worlds of Frederic Chopin (Hardcover)

I found this book at our local library here in Albuquerque, and just had to own a copy. For anyone with an interest in Chopin, this book is an incredible gold mine of facts and details you won't find anywhere else, but Chopin is really only a small part of the wide-ranging subjects covered. Everyone who was anyone in Paris in the 1830s and '40s figures in this book, and people and events are also connected to the wider world of Europe and even America. The major composers, writers, artists, social reformers, politicians, and even doctors are covered. Nearly everything you might want to know about daily life in the first half of the 19th century is also described (will definitely cure you of any longing for the "good old days"....).

William Atwood is a dermatologist, and his descriptions of the medical thinking and practice of the time were especially interesting to me. As a holistic practitioner, I appreciated his discussion of the popularity of homeopathy in the 19th century. Chopin, of course, used homeopathy instead of the brutal methods of the allopathic doctors of his time, and seems to have been far better off than he would have been otherwise.

This book was a great help to me in clarifying Chopin's place in his time and adopted country. I expect to refer to it often.