#piano

“Sometimes I can only groan, and suffer, and pour out my despair at the piano! As quoted in Chopin and the Swedish Nightingale .”

“Time is still the best critic, and patience the best teacher. As quoted in Chopin : Pianist and Teacher as Seen by His Pupils .”

“One needs only to study a certain positioning of the hand in relation to the keys to obtain with ease the most beautiful sounds, to know how to play long notes and short notes and to [attain] certain unlimited dexterity... A well formed technique, it seems to me, [is one] that can control and vary a beautiful sound quality. As quoted in Chopin : Pianist and Teacher as Seen by His Pupils .”

“I wish I could throw off the thoughts which poison my happiness, but I take a kind of pleasure in indulging them. As quoted in Chopin .”

“I'm a revolutionary, money means nothing to me. Quoted in Arthur Hedley , Chopin (1947).”

“My piano has not yet arrived. How did you send it? By Marseilles or by Perpignan? I dream music but I cannot make any because here there are not any pianos . . . in this respect this is a savage country. Letter to Camille Pleyel .”

“No one other than I has read your letter. As always, even now, I carry your letters with me. How blissful it will it be for me, having gone beyond the city walls in May, thinking about my approaching journey, to pull out a letter of yours and assure myself sincerely that you love me, or at least to gaze at the hand and the writing of him, whom only I am able to love! Chopin to Tytus Woyciechowski, 27 March 1830”

“I'm glad that the secret is submerged in my heart, that in me is the end of what is for you the beginning. And be glad that you have in me an abyss into which you can cast everything without fear”

“Give me a kiss, dearest lover. I'm certain that you still love me, and I fear you always, like some tyrant over me. I don't know why, but I fear you. Upon my word, only you have power over me, you and... no one else. Chopin to Tytus Woyciechowski, 5 October 1830”