Amantine (also "Amandine") Lucile Aurore Dupin

George Sand - Fem Fatale

This beauty is George Sand, aka Amantine (also "Amandine") Lucile Aurore Dupin who supposedly came into Frederic Chopin's life today (nearly 175 years ago actually) at a party he hosted - winning his heart over by wearing white pantaloons and ribbons in the colors of the Polish flag.  I guess only in Paris in the 1830s.

10 years later they split up and 2 years later he died - probably not from a broken heart.

Why am I subjecting you to this trivia today? I'm not sure other than I was looking through a box of memorabilia on my way to another box of Christmas ornaments and found a paper from grad school that I read for some music history gathering and it dealt with Parisian artistic society - gatherings if you will - of people with a common interest and those who wanted to be associated with them.

The night George Sand appeared as a guest at Chopin's abode, Franz Liszt was also there as were any number of good musicians and artists.  Aside from the potential for plenty of snobbery and ego, it is an interesting thought this.  No TV or radio or WiFi, no Ipad or Pod or Iphone - just chairs and performance, either mental/intellectual or sit down at the piano and play a few new works freshly composed for your enjoyment.

We forget that music was meant to be part of the stream of history, that Beethoven wrote his symphonies for immediate playing and for money and not to secure a place for all time.  Chopin wrote piano pieces partly as instructional guides (his "Etudes") and partly to play at gatherings like this.  George Sand dressed as a man and smoked cigars and wrote trashy (by those standards) books and was the Mistress du jour of many many men. She was outrageous - the Lady Gaga of her time perhaps - but I would be hard pressed to imagine Gaga sitting with Dick Cavett, YoYoMa, George Harrison and a few others discussing a recent exhibit at the Metropolitan.  I'm not putting Gaga down, my grand daughter knows her lyrics, so she must have value...but talk about a different age.

I guess that is what I'm thinking about now as I managed to find the Christmas lights and next am going to test them out.  What about all this having topics come to you instead of you finding things to talk about and finding people to talk with about them. 

Back to the lights.