The sexuality of Chopin
Did a journalist undo centuries of denial?
He was the the 19th century Polish composer of magical piano music. Chopin struck many contemporaries as—not quite a man?
I flip through books on Frédéric Chopin, finding snippets over the years, like “Chopin was a man with a woman’s genius,” or “so womanly is he.”
But that didn’t mean anything.
He was…otherworldly?
That was another word often used of him. A scholar writes in 1996:
“People who heard and saw Chopin play the piano, who encountered his music, or who made his acquaintance repeatedly tried to share their experience by evoking various otherworldly beings, in particular fairies, elves, sylphs, and angels.”
He was different. He was a fairy?—a magical being from another world. A 2003 biographer, Benita Eisler, writes:
“His frail physical presence, the ‘short form’ of his most popular compositions and the lightness of touch at the keyboard evoking ‘small faery voices,’ fused into a single impression: Chopin was not a man.”
