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Notes on Chopin
An inspiring discourse on the power of music from one of the twentieth century’s most important figures, André Gide André Gide, one of the great intellectuals of the twentieth century and a devoted pianist, invites readers to reevaluate Frédéric Chopin as a composer “betrayed . . . deeply, intimately, totally violated” by a music community that had fundamentally misinterpreted his work. As a profound admirer of Chopin’s “promenade of discoveries,” Gide intersperses musical notation throughout the text to illuminate his arguments, but most moving is Gide’s own poetic expression for the music he so loved.
128 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1949
About the author
André Gide
864 books1,747 followersDiaries and novels, such as
The Immoralist
(1902) and
Lafcadio's Adventures
(1914), of noted French writer André Gide examine alienation and the drive for individuality in an often disapproving society; he won the Nobel Prize of 1947 for literature.
André Paul Guillaume Gide authored books. From beginnings in the symbolist movement, career of Gide ranged to anticolonialism between the two World Wars.
Known for his fiction as well as his autobiographical works, Gide exposes the conflict and eventual reconciliation to public view between the two sides of his personality; a straight-laced education and a narrow social moralism split apart these sides. One can see work of Gide as an investigation of freedom and empowerment in the face of moralistic and puritan constraints, and it gravitates around his continuous effort to achieve intellectual honesty. His self-exploratory texts reflect his search of full self, even to the point of owning sexual nature without betraying values at the same time. After his voyage of 1936 to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the same ethos informs his political activity, as his repudiation of Communism suggests.
Chinese 安德烈·纪德
André Paul Guillaume Gide authored books. From beginnings in the symbolist movement, career of Gide ranged to anticolonialism between the two World Wars.
Known for his fiction as well as his autobiographical works, Gide exposes the conflict and eventual reconciliation to public view between the two sides of his personality; a straight-laced education and a narrow social moralism split apart these sides. One can see work of Gide as an investigation of freedom and empowerment in the face of moralistic and puritan constraints, and it gravitates around his continuous effort to achieve intellectual honesty. His self-exploratory texts reflect his search of full self, even to the point of owning sexual nature without betraying values at the same time. After his voyage of 1936 to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the same ethos informs his political activity, as his repudiation of Communism suggests.
Chinese 安德烈·纪德
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
January 22, 2026
Notes on Notes on Chopin
Primarily a repudiation of the virtuoso's interpretation of Chopin.
Chopin wrote both very easy and very difficult pieces of music (and everything in between). The virtuoso is motivated to compensate for the simplicity of some of Chopin's works, by playing them faster, with more dynamic range and precision.
As a result, much is lost. Individual notes and emphases are lost in the fray. If every note is charged with emotion, the virtuoso loses all that makes Chopin's music his, too occupied trying to wow and overwhelm the audience. It is vital then not to play Chopin as if it were Liszt, Gide quips, because one turns Chopin into merely "better Liszt".
Chopin's works, indeed, are particularly vulnerable to this:
"the very secret of a work in which no note is negligible, in which no rhetoric enters, no redundancy, where nothing is simple padding, as happens so often in the music of so many other composers"
One may disagree, especially given the hyperbole used here and elsewhere in the book. However, I would like to point again to the fact that Chopin created works of the most disparate complexity. Chopin had no snobbish qualms about creating 'simple' pieces of music, nor did he prefer those complex, technically demanding showpieces so universally appreciated. If anything, by starting from the notes (instead of the emotion) Chopin gravitates to simplicity, narrows down and inflicts the greatest emotional impact using the smallest means.
More importantly, Gide raises a beautiful point about the virtuoso's "unbearable assurance". People fortunate enough to have witnessed Chopin playing live have recounted how he did so. He's supposed to have seemed as though he was improvising every piece he performed, forever unsure what note would come next. Gide states beautifully:
"he seemed to be constantly seeking, inventing, discovering his thought little by little. This kind of charming hesitation, of surprise and delight, ceases to be possible if the work is presented to us, no longer in state of successive formation, but as an already perfect, precise and objective whole."
It's not that the pianist actually improvises (for Chopin most certainly didn't), but instead that he appears to, for the audience to be able to truly feel.
"I like the musical phrase which gradually shapes beneath his fingers to seem to be emerging from him, to astonish even him, and subtly to invite us to enter into his delight."
Though Gide later criticizes pianists that perform Chopin's Prelude in B Minor with too slow a tempo (Pogorelich takes this to the extreme), I think Kissin's 1999 performance is a great example of this "hesitancy" on display. I have heard this prelude many times, but upon hearing this specific performance for the first time, I truly felt it.
It stressed, once more, the importance of the performer and performance. A bad performance will, at best, obscure genuine art, effectively presenting its shadow alone. At worst, it will maim or mutilate what was meant to be exquisite. Because of this, and as a consolation, one should bear in mind that by continuing to search and listen, one eventually will come across that special performance that will make one understand, and feel.
As for the book's structure, about half of it is made up of the Notes on Chopin, the remainder is a collection of journal entires and unpublished pages "which relate to Chopin and more generally, to music". These often repeat points made in Notes on Chopin and were less interesting than the Notes to me.
Gide mostly focuses on the preludes for his analyses. A welcome choice because their relative short length allows them to be easily be played and re-played while reading. Often the analysis is accompanied by the score for the particular bar or set of bars spoken about. Gide's analysis of the Prelude in A Minor was a highlight.
I get the same feeling of revulsion stereotypically associated with mathematical formulas when faced with any reference to music theory. Luckily, though it does feature often, it doesn't feature for very long, nor is it very complex.
Overall a pleasant and interesting read which sadly loses some of its luster because of the inclusion of the journal entries and unpublished pages.
Primarily a repudiation of the virtuoso's interpretation of Chopin.
Chopin wrote both very easy and very difficult pieces of music (and everything in between). The virtuoso is motivated to compensate for the simplicity of some of Chopin's works, by playing them faster, with more dynamic range and precision.
As a result, much is lost. Individual notes and emphases are lost in the fray. If every note is charged with emotion, the virtuoso loses all that makes Chopin's music his, too occupied trying to wow and overwhelm the audience. It is vital then not to play Chopin as if it were Liszt, Gide quips, because one turns Chopin into merely "better Liszt".
Chopin's works, indeed, are particularly vulnerable to this:
"the very secret of a work in which no note is negligible, in which no rhetoric enters, no redundancy, where nothing is simple padding, as happens so often in the music of so many other composers"
One may disagree, especially given the hyperbole used here and elsewhere in the book. However, I would like to point again to the fact that Chopin created works of the most disparate complexity. Chopin had no snobbish qualms about creating 'simple' pieces of music, nor did he prefer those complex, technically demanding showpieces so universally appreciated. If anything, by starting from the notes (instead of the emotion) Chopin gravitates to simplicity, narrows down and inflicts the greatest emotional impact using the smallest means.
More importantly, Gide raises a beautiful point about the virtuoso's "unbearable assurance". People fortunate enough to have witnessed Chopin playing live have recounted how he did so. He's supposed to have seemed as though he was improvising every piece he performed, forever unsure what note would come next. Gide states beautifully:
"he seemed to be constantly seeking, inventing, discovering his thought little by little. This kind of charming hesitation, of surprise and delight, ceases to be possible if the work is presented to us, no longer in state of successive formation, but as an already perfect, precise and objective whole."
It's not that the pianist actually improvises (for Chopin most certainly didn't), but instead that he appears to, for the audience to be able to truly feel.
"I like the musical phrase which gradually shapes beneath his fingers to seem to be emerging from him, to astonish even him, and subtly to invite us to enter into his delight."
Though Gide later criticizes pianists that perform Chopin's Prelude in B Minor with too slow a tempo (Pogorelich takes this to the extreme), I think Kissin's 1999 performance is a great example of this "hesitancy" on display. I have heard this prelude many times, but upon hearing this specific performance for the first time, I truly felt it.
It stressed, once more, the importance of the performer and performance. A bad performance will, at best, obscure genuine art, effectively presenting its shadow alone. At worst, it will maim or mutilate what was meant to be exquisite. Because of this, and as a consolation, one should bear in mind that by continuing to search and listen, one eventually will come across that special performance that will make one understand, and feel.
As for the book's structure, about half of it is made up of the Notes on Chopin, the remainder is a collection of journal entires and unpublished pages "which relate to Chopin and more generally, to music". These often repeat points made in Notes on Chopin and were less interesting than the Notes to me.
Gide mostly focuses on the preludes for his analyses. A welcome choice because their relative short length allows them to be easily be played and re-played while reading. Often the analysis is accompanied by the score for the particular bar or set of bars spoken about. Gide's analysis of the Prelude in A Minor was a highlight.
I get the same feeling of revulsion stereotypically associated with mathematical formulas when faced with any reference to music theory. Luckily, though it does feature often, it doesn't feature for very long, nor is it very complex.
Overall a pleasant and interesting read which sadly loses some of its luster because of the inclusion of the journal entries and unpublished pages.
February 3, 2025
A beautiful read if you're a classical music lover (or nerd) :-)
June 19, 2018
Kitap daha çok Chopin icrasının nasıl olacağına dair bir anlatı sunuyor. Eserlerinin anlaşılmaktan çok hissedilir çalınmadığı, yorumcuların genel olarak yaptıkları hataları, Chopin parçalarının şov havasında haddinden fazla hızlı çalındığına dair yakınmaların kaleme alındığı bir kitap. Genel okuyucu kitlesinin kitaptan tat alabilmesi için biraz müzik teorisi bilmesi gerekli.
https://youtu.be/l8C7hYSQd_c
https://youtu.be/l8C7hYSQd_c
July 11, 2017
About as short and sweet as a Chopin Prelude.
April 4, 2026
Gide dresse ici un portrait à contre courant de la vision communément transmise de Chopin. L’avant-propos de Levinas présente amplement le propos de Gide, mais il semblerait que l’une des pages les plus frappantes de cette œuvre n’ait pas été écrite par l’auteur lui-même, mais par Boris De Schloezer, dans la NRF du 1er janvier 1932 (p.131 dans l’édition) : si l’inflexibilité de Gide se traduit dans toute l’analyse par le choix parfois acerbe de dire les choses telles qu’il les a éprouvées, avec le panel corrosif dont dispose avec brio l’auteur, elle est révélée comme telle par les quelques phrases de De Schloezer qui la replacent comme manière parfois trop implacable et trop paradoxalement sentimentalement motivée de comprendre un compositeur qui peinait lui-même a s’expliquer certaines de ses plus belles pages.
Un très un livre au demeurant, pour les mélomanes mais aussi pour les amateur de la plume intraitable de ce grand Gide.
Un très un livre au demeurant, pour les mélomanes mais aussi pour les amateur de la plume intraitable de ce grand Gide.
December 9, 2018
Quotes:
Chopin, on the other hand, was the first to banish all oratorical development. His sole concern, it seems, is to narrow limits, to reduce the means of expression to what is indispensable.
There is none more perfect...
Chopin, on the other hand, was the first to banish all oratorical development. His sole concern, it seems, is to narrow limits, to reduce the means of expression to what is indispensable.
There is none more perfect...
March 23, 2019
Miten pitkälle kantaa kirjan muodossa yhden ihmisen näkemys toisen taiteeseen, kun painotetaan lähinnä estetiikkaa ja näkemys on erittäin subjektiivinen? André Giden Chopin : merkintöjä, mielikuvia, muistoja (Fuga 2017, suom. Martti Anhava) on erinäisistä aineksista kokoon kursittu teos, jossa kokonaisuuden kasassa pysyminen on samaa luokkaa kuin hakaneuloin korjatulla vaatteella. Kirja koostuu pääosin Giden esseestä, joka on julkaistu alun perin 1931, ja sitä on täydennetty kirjailijan päiväkirjaotteilla ja muilla merkinnöillä, kaikella missä on Chopin mainittu sivulauseessakin. Säveltäjä pysyi Nobel-palkitulle Gidelle tärkeänä koko elämän, ja tällä oli vahva näkemys siitä, miten Chopinia tulisi tulkita. Hilpeintä teoksessa on jonkinlainen häpeämätön elitismi, joka näkyy Giden suhtautumisessa niihin, jotka eivät soita Chopinia oikein. Moni saa kuulla kunniansa. Joitakin tylytyskohtia Gide oli tekstien uudelleenjulkaisuissa halunnut poistettavan, mutta tässä ne ovat kaikki mukana. Parasta antia olivat tietyt taiteen tekemistä ja kokemista koskevat onnistuneet ja ajattelemisen aihetta antaneet kitetytykset. Muuten kirja oli "välipalateos". Tulipa luettua. Olin varannut tämän jostakin syystä luettuani HS:n arvostelun, Chopinia ja klassista musiikkia paremmin tunteva saanee kirjasta enemmän irti.
“Esittäjä tietää oikein hyvin että mitä vähemmän minä ymmärrän sitä enemmän hämmästyn. Mutta ymmärtäminen on juuri se mitä minä ajan takaa. Hämmästyksellä on taiteen piirissä arvoa vain jos se saman tien tekee tilaa tunteelle; ja useimmiten se asettuu tunteen esteeksi." (s. 22)
“Esittäjä tietää oikein hyvin että mitä vähemmän minä ymmärrän sitä enemmän hämmästyn. Mutta ymmärtäminen on juuri se mitä minä ajan takaa. Hämmästyksellä on taiteen piirissä arvoa vain jos se saman tien tekee tilaa tunteelle; ja useimmiten se asettuu tunteen esteeksi." (s. 22)
April 23, 2018
I found this book in a Bookmobile that was traveling the country. I was intrigued by the inscription in the front of the book gifting it to a friend in 1949. I was unfamiliar with the author, Andre' Gide, except for his quote with which I am very familiar: "One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight, for a very long time, of the shore." I enjoyed reading Gide's critiques of Chopin's works. It was nice to read leisurely and coincided with Gide's repeated mantra that Chopin should be played slowly, not rushed for effect. Definitely a good read that I will return to again.
January 13, 2024
I don't really know how to rate this. I think I picked it thinking if might be more biographical. This is a passionate and positive critique but it is really too technical for my taste (Gide was a talented pianist so really knows the theory). I also thought he was a little tough on Wagner and the Germans. Would probably appeal to someone with strong music theory who really really likes Chopin.
February 20, 2020
Above my head I think! I am no musician. I did find myself nodding my head a lot though.
Some of Chopin’s shortest works have the necessary and pure beauty of the resolution of a problem. In art, to state a problem well is to solve it. --Gide, André. Notes on Chopin
Some of Chopin’s shortest works have the necessary and pure beauty of the resolution of a problem. In art, to state a problem well is to solve it. --Gide, André. Notes on Chopin
January 5, 2023
normalde önsözleri nerdeyse hiç okumam ama İdil Biret'in yazığı bir şeyi okumak istediğim için oıkudum bu sefer. kitabın geri kalanını doğru anlamama yardımcı olduğu için memnunum okuduğuma. kitap da güzel elbette
December 21, 2021
A very insightful look into how to play Chopin's works. However, the central part of this book were Gide's Journal entries, which to me, just seemed to take up space and not add much to his "Notes"
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February 26, 2025Delightful reflections on the je ne sais quoi of Chopin.
May 31, 2025
"Quando penso all'addio che ho dato alla musica, A peu que le coeur ne me fend, e mi pare adesso che la morte non possa togliermi nulla a cui io abbia tenuto maggiormente"
May 23, 2025
intéressant, curieux de trouver des enregistrements fidèles à l'interprétation de chopin par gide
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August 14, 2012fazlasıyla teknik bilgi gerektiriyor -yalnızca konservatuvara gidenler vb. anlayacaktır sanırım.
(bir parantez açayım: Can Yayınları bunu Chopin'in 200. doğum yılı vesilesiyle bayağı da bol reklamla, İdil Biret'in CDsi ile beraber sunmuştu (kapalı poşeti içinde). Hedef kitlesi, genel okuryazar profiliydi muhakkak. Burada bir pazarlama hinliği var sanırım. Gide adına aldanmayın; müzik namına notaları bile ayıramayacak benim gibi okura verebileceği pek az şey var burada. Daha bilindik bir hayat öyküsü veya müzik ile daha genel felsefi veya toplumsal konuları bir araya getiren bir çalışma beklentisi olmasın henüz okumayan insanda!)
(bir parantez açayım: Can Yayınları bunu Chopin'in 200. doğum yılı vesilesiyle bayağı da bol reklamla, İdil Biret'in CDsi ile beraber sunmuştu (kapalı poşeti içinde). Hedef kitlesi, genel okuryazar profiliydi muhakkak. Burada bir pazarlama hinliği var sanırım. Gide adına aldanmayın; müzik namına notaları bile ayıramayacak benim gibi okura verebileceği pek az şey var burada. Daha bilindik bir hayat öyküsü veya müzik ile daha genel felsefi veya toplumsal konuları bir araya getiren bir çalışma beklentisi olmasın henüz okumayan insanda!)
July 22, 2024
Güzel bir kitap. Farklı ilgi alanları olan kişiler sıkılabilirler, çünkü piyanoya ağırlık verilmiş ve Chopin’in çalışı ve besteleri vurgulanmış. Ben dört yaşında başlayıp yıllarca piyano çalmış biri olarak çok hoşlandım, sevdim kitabı. Ve çok beğendim.
June 29, 2010
Every Chopin lover must read it!
August 22, 2016
In art, to state a problem well is to solve it.
-Andre Gide, Notes on Chopin
-Andre Gide, Notes on Chopin
March 27, 2017
"Bugün yücelttiğimiz neredeyse bütün büyük insanlar, hemen hemen bütün yaratıcılar, yığınlar arasından sivrilmiş hemen herkes, bir karışımın ya da en azından köklerinden kopuşun bir ürünüdür."
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews