
Frédéric Chopin and George Sand Go to Majorca - tintinnabula
https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/there-are-no-pianos-be-had-here
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WhompingWindows
Poor Chopin. A genius with impeccable musical taste, capable of the greatest
finesse and beautifully singing melodies on the piano, Chopin lived his life
battling against Tuberculosis. It's wild to think that with modern medicine,
he would have lived a fuller and much more productive life. What if he died at
70 instead of 39, and produced double the number of pieces he did? His works
are already lauded as the the top echelon of piano music, which is easy to
hear in Chopin's Ballade No. 1 in G Minor, for instance:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ce8p0VcTbuA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ce8p0VcTbuA)

If Beethoven's or Bach's late periods are any indication, brilliant composers
can continue innovating and moving forward well into their 50's and beyond.
Such a shame that Chopin and Schubert died such premature deaths, though one
could argue it's lucky they did indeed live long enough to give us
compositions.

~~~
furgooswft13
A bit unrelated but I sometimes wonder what Bach would have thought of, and
how he might take advantage of modern day electronic keyboards. The ability to
change voices at will (even on different areas of the keyboard), and
importantly for Mr. Well Tempered, the ability to change tunings with the
press of a button.

Surely even these days keyboards should be sensitive to key aftertouch to get
a clavichord like vibrato that Bach was fond of.

It'd be like Switched-on-Bach^10 but improvised live by a single madman on his
electro-organ.

~~~
tsunamifury
Thats a plot point played for gags in the original Bill & Ted's Excellent
Adventure

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8UGAbAPPkk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8UGAbAPPkk)

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Rotdhizon
There was an old game called Eternal Sonata that based around the life of
Chopin. One of my all time favorites.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_Sonata](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_Sonata)

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hnzix
_> "There was then no one single way to build one: it was much like the
automobile industry at the end of the century, inventors and keen-eyed
engineers advancing their own ideas, often their own patents, consensus
following only later."_

Kind of like how we're now standardizing on Javascript as the one true
programming language, as all others fall into disuse. _(ducks)_

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anonymouslee
Great article. Perhaps his trials and tribulations were essential to his
compositions of melancholy genius also filled with joy & beauty & rage.

One of his last works, his Op. 60 Barcarolle is incredible if you haven't
heard it yet:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9umBE2Gn7Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9umBE2Gn7Q)

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pseudolus
The Guardian is currently featuring (21/08/2018) a very enlightening podcast
with the author (Paul Kildea). It's available at:

[https://www.theguardian.com/books/series/books](https://www.theguardian.com/books/series/books)

~~~
vixen99
Kildea's latest book tracks the fascinating history of one of Chopin's pianos
- the one he had in Majorca on which he composed some of the preludes.

~~~
romwell
That's the piano the article is about.

