Wednesday, March 1, marked 213 years since Fryderyk Chopin was born in Żelazowa Wola, some 50 km west of Warsaw.
The book contains 231 letters that Müller wrote from Paris to her aunts in Vienna. In them, the young pianist contained vivid accounts of each of her almost 170 lessons with Chopin as well as descriptions of the musical and social life of the French capital in the early 1840s.
Poland's National Chopin Institute described the publication on its website as unique, because, "unlike most of the testimonies of Chopin’s other students, which were written down after many years and present therefore a somewhat embellished picture," Müller’s letters "give a day-to-day true-to-the-facts account of the piano lessons with Chopin, including extensive quotations of the composer’s remarks."
Born in 1816, Müller arrived in Paris in 1839 to study with Chopin. She studied under his guidance for a year and a half, from October 1839 to the spring of 1841. She subsequently developed a concert career that came to an end after she got married in 1849. She died in 1895.
Chopin dedicated his Allegro de Concert Op. 46 to Müller.
(mk/gs)