everything hilariously wrong about Life of Chopin by Liszt, aka one of the greatest fanfiction in classical music history:
-Liszt’s ‘investigative journalism’ abt Chopin pissed Ludwika (Chopin’s sister) off so bad she passed it to Jane Stirling who also got pissed off so bad that she half assed her entire response and to top it off Liszt didn’t even use her answers to write his book. He straight up wrote something that goes “My intimate association with Chopin gives me the right to ask incredibly personal questions that, by the way, is a great invasion of his private life”. Totally doesn’t sound tone deaf to the 2 people who are heavily grieving his recent death. Yup. Way to go Franz.
-Hell there’s a good chance he didn’t even write the thing himself.
-After it was published, the book also pissed Fontana (Chopin’s roommate and lifelong friend) off so bad that he just gave up on the idea of writing another Chopin biography because he thought it wouldn’t stand a chance against Liszt’s popularity.
-It was the only popular interpretation of Chopin’s life for a good 30ish years . Even Tchaikovsky read it and was amazed by how incomprehensible it is, saying : “It is full of empty phrases and waffle”.
Imagine grieving a friend so hard that you managed to write a book that flipped off nearly every single one of his close ones and your rose tinted view of his character influenced a popular one sided misrepresentation of the man you wished to honor.
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