“Chip chip” is Frédéric Chopin’s nickname given to him by his companion of nine years, the writer George Sand. It is also the title of the documentary devoted by Richard Desjardins to the composer who has accompanied him since his earliest childhood.
What if Chopin had sowed the seeds of jazz? The question arises concerning Beethoven and the boogie-woogie rhythm of the 3e variations of the Arietta of its 32e Sonata. When Richard Desjardins sits next to Charles Richard-Hamelin, 2e Prize of the Chopin Competition in 2015 in Warsaw, and that it subtly highlights certain harmonies in the chords of a Nocturnaland passes to Herbie Hancock, there is almost no doubt about it.
Mediator
“I rubbed shoulders with musicians from all walks of life, until country. People know the name Chopin, but that’s it. This is what I wanted to present: the existence of this music and this man; the richness of this music. There is no such complex music being composed today, in my point of view. Hence this hypothesis addressed in the film that one of the origins of jazz is Chopin. It’s a wealth in itself and it’s a shame that it’s not more widely available than that. »
Richard Desjardins is aware of his role as mediator, while the forums open to so-called classical music are closing one after the other. “Music is accessible and speaks to everyone. I came into contact with classical music having studied it for several years. But the public who goes to the concert is not overflowing, because people do not make the link between the existence of this music, which dates back one, two or three centuries, and its influence on music. which followed in the West. »
Richard Desjardins reveled in the first signs of wonder in the land where he was born: “I presented the film in two places in Abitibi and more than once the comment was: “Coudonc, what ‘we see in the film, when he plays, it’s at real speed?’ Eh yes ! »
The documentary on Chopin by Richard Desjardins was announced in 2018. “I have always made documentaries in my region in Abitibi with my friend Robert Monderie on the management of natural resources, the forest [L’erreur boréale, 1999]the mines [Trou story, 2011]. We also discussed the indigenous question [Le peuple invisible, 2007]. Robert decided he had had enough. I couldn’t imagine making a film without him. The producer Sylvie Van Brabant asked me: “Don’t you have something to offer?” And then, I don’t know what came over me, I threw it as an idea on the table, I wrote a text and, to my great surprise, it was accepted. Chopin, I could do it alone, think it, realize it by my own means. »
Admiration
In the film, Richard Desjardins goes back to his young years, when his mother, at the piano, played him works by Chopin while the workers sometimes stopped when returning from work to listen to a few notes. “Maybe there were some of Polish origin,” the songwriter-documentarian wonders in the film.
This composer whom he “always monitored, but without any particular expectation relating to work on him”, Desjardins followed in his footsteps to Warsaw, Paris and Nohant, meeting several musicologists and several historians. When he wants to musically express an idea, he has at his side, in Charles Richard-Hamelin, a sober and perfect guide.
The approach, without pretensions other than to illuminate with warmth, proximity and charisma the journey and the work, Richard Desjardins, admirer in particular of Martha Argerich and the two Piano concertos, assumes it as the expression of a strong connection with the musician. “In the long run, too, I realized that what exists for the public on the Internet did not correspond to the idea I had of this man. There are films that are a bit cheesy, even though I find him to be a man of great humility, for reasons that I tried to explore without finding anything. »
The genesis of Chip Chip was disrupted by the pandemic: “For it to take five years for 52 minutes, it’s because there were problems! » summarizes Richard Desjardins. The film was finally completed this summer.
However, at the end of 2020, a comprehensive study by Swiss Radio Television, signed Moritz Weber, broke the taboo revealing Chopin’s homosexuality and the various reasons why it was kept quiet for so long. The great love of his life would have been the pianist Tytus Woyciechowski and he lived in Paris successively for two years with Jan Matuszyński, flautist, then Julian Fontana, pianist and copyist. In his film, Desjardins perpetuates, without reservation, the idea of the presumed, but undocumented, idylls of the young Chopin with Konstancja Gładkowska then Maria Wodzińska.
There was no question of discussing his sexuality, because he never talked about it
“There was no question of discussing his sexuality, because he never talked about it. He lived for several years with George Sand, who had an open sexuality, truly extraordinary for the time, and said: “God made what is good so that we can taste it.” George Sand sometimes complained about his carnal love affairs with Chopin. But we could only draw approximations from it and I therefore did not want to address this dimension which does not belong to me. »
It doesn’t matter if the 2e movement of 2e Concerto was composed by Chopin with Konstancja or Tytus in mind. On the other hand, many of the pains and tensions felt in the work or the harmonies, attributed to Chopin’s fragile health, are perhaps (Nocturne op. 48 no. 1, Nocturne in sharp minor, posthumous opus) the expression of an inner suffering and an even greater unhappiness, which had, as for Tchaikovsky, no other means of expression than music.