Was frederic Chopin rich

Answer 1

Chopin's means were always pretty modest. His father was a schoolteacher and ran a boarding house out of their home, mostly for sons of Polish lords and wealthy landowners. The family was comfortable enough and housed in a palace (one of the perks of the job) but they were not well-off by any means, and they struggled to send Fryderyk abroad to further his career.

His father supported him until he was able to get a full studio of students in Paris. He charged a great deal more than the average piano teacher and made a decent living, but since he was reliant on the aristocracy (mostly the ladies) to fund his expensive lessons, he was obliged to spend a good bit of money to present a lifestyle of a certain degree of luxury.

One might say this was a habit of his childhood, since his father did the same. Nicolas Chopin wrote to his son on 7 September 1834, 3 years after his arrival in Paris: "So now you are settled with your own furniture, and indeed not without some little luxury, if I may say so. But I quite understand that you had to have it since you give your lessons at home, and now, as always, people judge by appearances." Franz Liszt wrote to Marie d'Agoult on the 13th: "Chopin is quite sad; the furniture was a bit more expensive than he thought, and and so we have perhaps a month of melancholy and grief. It is deplorable."

Liszt himself was able to make a better living than Chopin because he performed often, and indeed, when Chopin was able to put on a concert, even one, it could set his finances straight for months.

Another social expectation for high-class city people was that they leave the city and spend the summer months in the countryside. This was true in Warsaw and in Paris, and since Nicolas Chopin was a teacher he had no problem pulling this off. The Chopins often spent the summer months at Żelazowa Wola, where Chopin was born, as guests of the Skarbek family, but sometimes Fryderyk was invited to spend the summer with one of his schoolmates. Either way it was not too much expense for the family.

Fryderyk had a similar arrangement with George Sand during the course of their relationship; he did not have to pay rent at Nohant, her country home (Sand referred to him as her guest) or contribute much to the expenses. However, these summer vacations did mean that Chopin was required to save money during the winter in order to spend the summer months in the country where he could not earn any money (but still had to pay rent on his apartment in Paris).

He charged 20 francs per lesson, 30 if he had to do the lesson outside his home. I have not done a thorough study of this, but it appears as though he gave an average of 2-3 lessons per day during the week. I have also not studied rents, but his last place of residence was probably the most expensive at 400 francs per month (of which he only paid 200). He and George Sand found a country house on Majorca for 50 francs per month, and they rented their rooms at the monastery of Valldemosa for 35 francs per year (not that they stayed so long), but the cost of living was much lower there.

Chopin was also able to sell his compositions to publishers for several hundred francs each. The price varied depending on who he was selling to and how many countries they were buying for. Sometimes he could get around 2,000 francs for one work, sold to 2-3 different publishing houses. (Usually 3: French, English, and German/Austrian.) In the later years he could also earn close to 10,000 francs for putting on one concert, but those were quite rare.

It is difficult to find evidence of this in the primary sources, but Chopin was also able to earn money playing for private salons. On the surface, it appears as though he was merely an invited guest who played for the pleasure of his friends, but apparently it was common practice for the host to leave money for the musicians in some discreet place. Chopin was comfortable enough that he could choose his hosts well and sparingly, which added to his mystique: everyone wanted to hear him play but few had the pleasure, and it was often the same people over and over again who were able to hear him play at these soirées.

At the end of his life, when he was no longer able to give lessons or concerts, he was quite destitute and had to depend on the charity of friends to stay afloat. His father had always advised him to put aside "une poire pour la soif" ("a pear for the thirst", meaning a rainy-day fund), but he was never quite able to manage it.