the court of Prince Casimir
Sapieha, settled in Warsaw as a teacher of music, and soon got into good
practice, "giving his lessons at three florins (eighteen pence) per hour
very regularly, and making a fortune." And thus teaching and composing
(he is said to have composed much for the pianoforte, but he never
published anything), he lived a long and useful life, dying in 1842 at
the age of 86 (Karasowski says in 1840). The punctual and, no doubt,
also somewhat pedantic music-master who acquired the esteem and goodwill
of his patrons, the best families of Warsaw, and a fortune at the same
time, is a pleasant figure to contemplate. The honest orderliness and
dignified calmness of his life, as I read it, are quite refreshing in
this time of rush and gush. Having seen a letter of his, I can imagine
the heaps of original MSS., clearly and neatly penned with a firm
hand, lying carefully packed up in spacious drawers, or piled up on
well-dusted shelves. Of the man Zywny and his relation to the Chopin
family we get some glimpses in Frederick's letters. In one of the year
1828, addressed to his friend Titus Woyciechowski, he writes: "With us
things are as they used to be; the honest Zywny is the soul of all our
amusements." Sowinski informs us that Zywny taught his pupil according
to the classical German method--whatever that may mean--at that time in
use in Poland. Liszt, who calls him "an enthusiastic student of Bach,"
speaks likewise of "les errements d'une ecole entierement classique."
Now imagine my astonishment when on asking the well-known pianoforte
player and composer Edouard Wolff, a native of Warsaw, [Fooynote: He
died at Paris on October 16, 1880.] what kind of pianist Zywny was,
I received the answer that he was a violinist and not a pianist.
That Wolff and Zywny knew each other is proved beyond doubt by the
above-mentioned letter of Zywny's, introducing the former to Chopin,
then resident in Paris. The solution of the riddle is probably this.
Zywny, whether violinist or not, was not a pianoforte virtuoso--at
least, was not heard in public in his old age. The mention of a single
name, that of Wenzel W. Wurfel, certainly shows that he was not the best
pianist in Warsaw. But against any such depreciatory remarks we have
to set Chopin's high opinion of Zywny's teaching capability. Zywny's
letter, already twice alluded to, is worth quoting. It still further
illustrates the relation in which master and pupil stood to each