The friendship of Frédéric Chopin and Tytus Woyciechowski has been a source of fascination for generations.
Despite rarely meeting, these two men shared a deep and unique emotional intimacy.
Chopin’s letters to Woyciechowski are so passionate, and his devotion to him so complete, that some modern scholars believe that there was a homoerotic or even outright homosexual element to their bond.
We’ll never know the complete truth, especially since Woyciechowski’s side of the correspondence has been lost.
But what we do know is that Chopin’s love for Woyciechowski had a huge impact not only on his personal life but also on his music.
Tytus Woyciechowski
Meeting Tytus Woyciechowski
Tytus Woyciechowski was born on New Year’s Eve in 1808 in the city of Lemberg, Galicia (present-day Lviv, Ukraine).
A little more than a year later, Frédéric Chopin was born in a village west of Warsaw.
At the age of fourteen, Woyciechowski began attending the Warsaw Lyceum, a school located within the magnificent Casimir Palace.
Frédéric’s father was a French teacher at the Lyceum, and the family lived in the palace’s residential quarters.
In addition to housing teachers and their families, those quarters were also used to host students.
In 1823, Woyciechowski was one of the handful of students who joined the Chopin household. During this time, Woyciechowski became friends with Frédéric.
He even studied piano with teacher Wojciech Żywny, who Chopin had studied with for five years (before absorbing everything Żywny had to teach). The two teenage boys bonded by playing piano four-hands together.
After graduating from the Lyceum, Woyciechowski returned to the family estate near Lublin, Poland. Nowadays, that’s a two-hour drive east of Warsaw, but the commute would have been considerably longer by carriage.
Dedicating His First Big Work to Woyciechowski
Frédéric, always sensitive and emotional, clearly missed his dear friend deeply.
In 1827, the year Frédéric turned seventeen, he composed Variations on “Là ci darem la mano”, a fantasy for piano and orchestra based on a theme from Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni. It was his first work for piano and orchestra.
Chopin: Variations on “Là ci darem la mano”, op. 2
Not surprisingly, he dedicated the piece to Woyciechowski. When they met next, Woyciechowski wrote under the dedication on the title page of the manuscript, “I accept with pleasure.”
Chopin premiered the “Là ci darem la mano” variations in Vienna in the summer of 1829. It was a big hit. Chopin wrote to his family back in Warsaw, “Everyone clapped so loudly after each variation that I had difficulty hearing the orchestral tutti.”
In 1831, Robert Schumann reviewed the work in the influential music journal Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung, coining the famous phrase, “Hats off, gentlemen! A genius.”
This was one of the first works that would jumpstart Chopin’s career…and the score bore his best friend’s name.
Letter Writing
Since Woyciechowski left Warsaw to work on the family estate, much of his friendship with Chopin was conducted via correspondence.
Tragically, Woyciechowski’s letters to Chopin have been lost. This means we only have a one-sided correspondence, making it difficult to know what feelings Woyciechowski might have had about his talented friend.
After writing many letters to each other, in 1828, at the ages of nineteen and eighteen, they reunited at a mutual friend’s country home. It would be one of the few times they’d ever meet as adults.
Chopin’s Infatuation With Konstancja Gładkowska
Konstancja Gładkowska © chopin.nifc.pl
If Chopin was ever in love with Woyciechowski, that didn’t keep him from having romantic feelings for someone else, too.
In 1829, Chopin fell in puppy love – from a great distance – with the Warsaw-based singer Konstancja Gładkowska.
He shared his feelings in letters to Woyciechowski, putting her on a pedestal and referring to her as “the ideal”, but he got cold feet when it came to actually pursuing her.
In the meantime, he seemed to sublimate his desire for emotional intimacy with Gładkowska (or Woyciechowski, or both) into his compositions.
He told Woyciechowski that the second movement of his F-minor concerto was inspired by her.
Frédéric Chopin: Piano Concerto No. 2 – II. Larghetto Arthur Rubinstein, piano
He explained to Woyciechowski:
Perhaps to my misfortune, I have met my ideal and have served her faithfully for six months, without speaking to her about my feelings. I dream about it: under her inspiration, the adagio of my Concerto in F minor and, this morning, the little waltz that I’m sending you–the Waltz in B minor [Op. 69 No. 2], have been born… I tell to the piano what I confide to you.
Chopin: Waltz Op.69 No.2 in B minor
At the same time, he longed to involve Woyciechowski in the creation of his music. In October 1829, he wrote Woyciechowski to say, “I have composed a big Technical Exercise in my own special manner; I will show it to you when we meet.” A few weeks later, he announced the expansion of the project: “I have written a few exercises – if you were by my side, I would play them well to you.”
The Political Situation Deteriorates in Poland
Chopin memorial monument (Photo: Zbigniew Czernik)
As 1830 rolled around and the political situation heated up, Chopin began spending more and more time with radical anti-Russian elements in Warsaw coffeehouses.
When Tsar Nicholas came to Warsaw, Chopin wasn’t invited to perform for him, despite his growing reputation. “People were surprised at my absence, but I was not,” he observed.
In late June, once the royal court departed Warsaw, Chopin was invited to play his “Là ci darem la mano” variations at the National Theater. He did so on 8 July 1830.
Two days later, on 10 July, Chopin traveled to the family estate of the piece’s dedicatee to stay for a couple of weeks.
Chopin had anticipated this journey for months. He wrote to Woyciechowski in March:
“As always, even now, I carry your letters with me. How blissful it will be for me, having gone beyond the city walls in May, thinking about my approaching journey, to pull out a letter of yours and assure myself sincerely that you love me, or at least to gaze at the hand and the writing of him, whom only I am able to love!”
A “Romantic” Summer Vacation with Woyciechowski
At the estate, they explored nature and rode horses together across the estate. Woyciechowski tried to teach Chopin how to use a crossbow. Chopin was too physically weak to be much good at it, but he remembered the trip with fond nostalgia.
In August, he wrote:
“I tell you sincerely that it is pleasant to recall all of this. Your fields left in me some sort of longing; that birch under the windows just will not leave my memory. That crossbow! How romantic it all was! I remember that crossbow, with which you really wore me out – for all my sins.”
Seeing Gładkowska’s Debut – And Saying Goodbye
There was clearly some kind of romantic element to his relationship with Woyciechowski, but that didn’t keep him from cutting his visit short when he heard that the singer Gładkowska would be making her own debut at the National Theater on 24 July.
Chopin returned to Warsaw to see her and was blown away. Critics, however, weren’t. “[Her voice is] devoid of charm, which is the soul of singing,” the Polish Courier opined.
It would be an uphill battle for her to make a career in music. Instead, in 1832, she married a wealthy diplomat and property owner named Aleksander Józef Grabowski. They had five children together.
As for Chopin, he labeled his latest feelings for Gładkowska “platonic” in a letter to Woyciechowski.
However, he clearly harbored some complicated, unresolved feelings about the whole thing. Just before Chopin left Warsaw to tour Europe, Gładkowska wrote a note in his autograph album: “In foreign lands they may appreciate and reward you better, but they cannot love you more.” At some point after her marriage, Chopin wrote his own response in pencil: “Oh yes they can!”
An International Trip Cut Short by Crisis
Chopin soon decided that he needed to try to make an international name for himself. He invited Woyciechowski along on his travels. In October 1830, they set out for Vienna together, stopping in Dresden and Prague along the way.
But days after they reached the gilded Austrian capital, disastrous news shattered all their plans. On 29 November 1830, the November Uprising began in Warsaw, pitting Polish revolutionaries against Russian occupiers.
Woyciechowski immediately cut short his travels to return to Warsaw to fight for the freedom of his homeland.
Bruce Liu plays Chopin: Nocturne in C Sharp Minor, KK IVa/16, composed in 1830
Chopin was deeply distressed at the idea of his friend joining the military, as well as the danger that he knew his family and friends were in.
At one point, he had a kind of mental breakdown in his diary:
“My poor father! The dear old man may have succumbed to the ferocity of Muscovite soldiery let loose! …. Alone! Alone! – There are no words for my misery; how can I bear this feeling – ”
Despite his emotional agony, he decided against following Woyciechowski and returning to Warsaw himself, choosing instead to stay in Vienna and pursue his career.
He stayed in Vienna for eight months to establish his name while relying on money from his father. Fortunately, his family survived (although they made a practice of burning his letters to avoid retribution from any Russian forces who might find them).
But he had crippling doubts about his choices, and he missed Woyciechowski dreadfully.
“My dearest life!” he wrote to him. “I have never missed you as I do now; I have no one to pour things out to, I have not you. One look from you after each concert would be more to me than all the praises of the journalists.”
The Later Life of Tytus Woyciechowski – and Chopin’s Death
The two men would never see each other again. Chopin would do his part for the cause not by fighting, but by writing culturally influential Polish-inspired music, helping to shape Polish identity and bolster Polish morale.
Woyciechowski, meanwhile, became a military hero. He was awarded the Virtuti Militari, the highest honour in the Polish military.
In 1838, Woyciechowski married a woman named Countess Aloysia Poletylo. They had four children. Their second was named Fryderyk, after Chopin.
As an adult, Woyciechowski went into agricultural management, introducing the concept of crop rotation to Poland. Later, in 1847, he was involved in founding a sugar factory.
Although they never met in-person again, Woyciechowski and Chopin continued to correspond until Chopin’s death.
Woyciechowski lived for thirty more years, dying in March 1879.
Today, a monument stands at his family’s estate, commemorating the visit Chopin made there in 1830.
Before his death, while battling the end stages of his tuberculosis infection, Chopin wrote a letter expressing his desire to see him. But, tragically, a reunion never occurred.
It is impossible to know whether Chopin and Woyciechowski were ever in a romantic relationship, especially since Woyciechowski’s letters have been lost. However, one thing’s for sure: both of these two men loved each other for nearly their entire lives.
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