I must ask the reader still to imagine that he is at a pianoforte
recital, although I frankly admit that I have been guilty of many
digressions, so that it must appear to him as if he had been
whisked from Mendelssohn Hall up to Carnegie Hall, then down to
the Metropolitan Opera House and back to Mendelssohn Hall again.
This, however, as I have sought to make clear before, is due to
the universality of the pianoforte as an instrument and to the
comprehensiveness of pianoforte music, which in itself illustrates
in great part the development of the art.
At this point, then, of our imaginary pianoforte recital there is
likely to be a group of compositions by Chopin; and the larger the
group, or the more groups by this composer on the program, the better
satisfied the audience is apt to be. Baker calls Frederic Chopin
(1810-1849) the "incomparable composer for the pianoforte." But he was
more. He was an incomparable composer from every point of view, great,
unique, a tone poet, as well as the first composer who searched the
very soul of the instrument for which he specialized. Extraordinary as
is his significance for that instrument, his influence extends through
it into other realms of music, and his art is making itself felt to
this day in orchestra, opera and music-drama as well as in pianoforte
music. For he was an innovator in form, an intrepid adventurer in
harmony and a sublime singer of melody.
Tempo Rubato.
Before the pianist whose recital we are supposed to be attending will
have played many bars of the first piece in the Chopin group, the
individuality of this composer will become apparent. Melody will
pervade the recital hall like the fragrance of flowers. At the same
time there will be an iridescence not noticeable in any of the music
that preceded Chopin, and produced as if by cascades of jewels--those
remarkable ornamental notes which yet are not ornamental, but, in
spite of all their light and shade, and their play of changeable
colors, part of the great undercurrent of melody itself. Here we have
then, nearly at the very outset of the first Chopin piece, the famous
_tempo rubato_, so-called, which has been explained in various ways,
but which with Chopin really means that while the rhythm goes calmly
on with one hand, the other weaves a veil of iridescent notes around
the melodic idea. Liszt expressed it exactly when he said: "You see
that tree? Its leaves move to and fro in the wind and follow the
gentle motion of the air; but its trunk stands there immovable in its
form." Or the _tempo rubato_ is like a shower of petals from a tree in
full bloom; the firm outline of the tree, its foliage are there, while
we see the delicately tinted blossoms falling from the branches and
filling the air with color and fragrance; or like the myriad shafts
from the facets of a jewel, piercing in all directions while the
jewel itself remains immovable, the centre of its own rays; or like
the crisp ripple on a river, while the stream itself flows on in
majesty; or, in one or two passages when Chopin becomes a cynic, like
the twaddle of critics while the person they criticise calmly goes
about his mission.
The Soul of the Pianoforte.
What you will notice about these compositions of Chopin--and I say
"these compositions" deliberately, although I have not named any (for
it makes no difference what pieces of his are on the program, the
effect will be the same)--is the fact that in none of them is there
the slightest suggestion of anything but pianoforte music. Chopin's
great achievement so far as the pianoforte is concerned is the fact
that he liberated it completely from orchestral and choral influences,
and made it an instrument sufficient unto itself, brought it into its
own in all its beauty of tone and expression and enlarged its
capacity; sought out its soul and reproduced it in tone, as no other
composer had done before him or has done since. The recognition of the
true piano tone seems to have been instinctive with him. It appears in
his earliest works. Nothing he ever wrote suggests orchestra or voice.
For the beautiful singing quality he brings out in much of his music
is a singing quality which belongs to the noble instrument to which he
devoted himself. Not once while listening to a Chopin composition do
you think to yourself, as you do so often with classical works, like
the Beethoven sonatas, "How well this would sound on the orchestra!"
Yet Chopin is as sonorous, as passionate, as pleading, as melancholy
and as rich in effect, although he is played only on the black and
white keys of the pianoforte, as if he were given forth by a hundred
instrumentalists, so thoroughly did he understand the instrument for
which he wrote. He was the Wagner of the pianoforte.
A Clear Melodic Line.
What you will notice, too, about his music is the general distinctness
of his melody. There may be times, as in some of his arabesque
compositions, like the "F Minor Etude," when the effect is slightly
blurred. But this is done purposely, and as a rule there will be found
a clear melodic line running through everything he wrote. Combined
with this melody are weird, exquisite, entrancing harmonies, and those
showers of _tempo rubato_ notes which glitter like a veil of mist in
the sunlight and yet, although a veil, allow you to see what is
beneath it, like a delicate fabric which seems rather to emphasize and
reveal the very things it is intended to conceal.
Chopin was a Pole. He had the melancholy of his race, but also its
_verve_. Profoundly affected by his country's sorrow, he also had its
haughty spirit. In Paris, where he spent the most significant years of
his life, he was surrounded by the aristocracy of his own country who
were in exile, and by the aristocracy of the arts. Liszt speaks of an
evening at his salon where he met, besides some of the Polish
aristocrats, people like Heinrich Heine, Meyerbeer, Delacroix,
Nourrit, the tenor, and Bellini. Chopin admired Bellini's music, its
clear and beautiful melodiousness, and I myself think that Chopin's
melody often has Italian characteristics, although it is combined with
harmony that is German in its seriousness, but wholly Chopinesque in
all its essentials. In those numerous groups of ornamental, or rather
semi-ornamental, notes, so many of them chromatic, and all of them
usually designated by the technical term "passing notes," signifying
that they are merely incidental to the melody and to the harmonic
structure, there are nevertheless many that have far greater
importance than if they were merely "passing." It is in bringing out
this significance by slight accelerations and retards, by allowing a
few of them to flash out here while the others remain slightly veiled,
that the inspired Chopin player shows his true conception of what the
composer meant by _tempo rubato_.
It was Liszt, afterward the first to recognize Wagner, who was the
first to recognize Chopin. It was Liszt also who introduced him to
George Sand (Mme. Dudevant), the great passion of his life. Chopin was
the friend of many women. They adored his poetic nature, and there is
much in his music that is effeminate, delicate and sensitive; but
altogether too much has been made of this side of his art, and of
certain morbid pieces like some of the Nocturnes. The affair with
George Sand was not only a passion, but was a tragedy, and like all
such tragedies it left on his music the imprint of something deeper
and greater than mere delicacy and morbidity. Then, too, we have to
count with his patriotism and his sympathy with his struggling
country, and there is much more of the virile and heroic in his music
than either the average virtuoso or the average listener allows for.
The Etudes.
These contrasts in his music can readily be recognized when a great
pianist makes up the Chopin group on his program from the Etudes,
which are among the greatest compositions of all times, whether we
consider them as pianoforte music or as music in general. They touch
the soul in many places, and in many and varied ways, and they reflect
the alternate delicacy and daintiness of his genius as well as its
vigor and nobility. Suppose, for the sake of a brilliant beginning,
the virtuoso chooses to start off with the fifth, the so-called "Etude
on Black Keys," and flashes it in our eyes, making the pianoforte play
the part of a mirror held in the sunlight. This gives us one side of
Chopin's music, its brilliancy; and it is noticeable that while the
tempo of the piece is given as _vivace_, the style in which it is to
be played is indicated by the direction _brillante_.
If the pianist continues with the third Etude, we shall hear one of
the most tender and beautiful melodies that Chopin ever composed. Let
him follow this with number thirteen, the one in A flat major, and we
are reminded of what Schumann said, in his review of this book of
Etudes, in which he speaks of the A flat major as "an aeolian harp,
possessed of all the musical scales, the hand of the artist causing
them all to intermingle in many varieties of fantastic embellishment,
yet in such a way as to leave everywhere audible a deep fundamental
tone and a soft continuously singing upper voice."
Schumann heard Chopin himself play this Etude, and he says that
whoever will play it in the way described will get the correct idea of
Chopin's performance. "But it would be an error to think that Chopin
permitted every one of the small notes to be distinctly heard. It was
rather an undulation of the A flat major chord here and there thrown
aloft anew by the pedal. Throughout all the harmonies one always heard
in great tones a wondrous melody, while once only in the middle of the
piece, besides that chief song, a tenor voice became prominent in the
midst of the chords. After the Etude, a feeling came over one as of
having seen in a dream a beatific picture which, when half awake, one
would gladly recall."
Vigor, Passion, and Impetus.
If now the pianist wishes to show by contrast Chopin in his full
vigor, passionate and impetuous, let him take the great C Minor Etude,
the twelfth, _Allegro con fuoco_. "Great in outline, pride, force and
velocity, it never relaxes its grim grip from the first shrill
dissonance to the overwhelming chordal close," says Huneker, adding
that "this end rings out like the crack of creation." It is supposed
to be an expression of the alternating wrath and despair with which
Chopin received the tidings of the taking of Warsaw by the Russians in
September, 1831, for it was shortly after this that the Etude was
composed. No wonder, to quote again from Huneker, that "all sweeps
along in tornadic passion."
A pianist hardly can go amiss in making his selection from the
twenty-seven Etudes, for the contrasts which he can effect are
obvious, and there is among these compositions not one which has not
its special merits. There is the tenth, of which Von Buelow said
whoever could play it in a really finished manner might congratulate
himself on having climbed to the highest point of the pianist's
Parnassus, and that the whole repertory of music for the pianoforte
does not contain a study of perpetual motion so full of genius and
fancy as this especial one is universally acknowledged to be,
excepting, possibly, Liszt's "Feux Follets." Then there is number
nineteen in C sharp minor, like a nocturne with the melody in the left
hand, with the right hand answering as a flute would a 'cello. For
contrast take number twenty-one, the so-called "Butterfly Etude"--a
wretched misnomer, because a pianist gifted with true musical
clairvoyance can work up such a gust of passion in this Etude that any
butterfly would be swept away as if by a hurricane. Nor, in order to
accomplish this, is it necessary to make such a bravura piece of the
Etude as so many pianists ignorantly do. We have, too, the "Winter
Wind Etude," in A minor, Opus 25, number eleven--the twenty-third in
the collection as usually published--planned on a grand scale and
carried out in a manner equal to the plan.
Von Buelow calls attention to the fact that, with all its sonorousness,
"the greatest fullness of sound imaginable," it nowhere trespasses
upon the domain of the orchestra, but remains pianoforte music in the
strictest sense of the word. "To Chopin," says Von Buelow, in referring
to this Etude, "is due the honor and credit of having set fast the
boundary between piano and orchestral music which, through other
composers of the romantic school, especially Robert Schumann, has been
defaced and blotted out, to the prejudice and damage of both species."
While agreeing with Von Buelow that Chopin was the great liberator of
the pianoforte, I cannot agree with the exception he takes to the
music of Robert Schumann. If he had referred back to the unpianistic
classical sonata form, he would have been more accurate.
The Preludes.
I have gone into some detail regarding these Etudes because I regard
them, as a whole, among the greatest of Chopin's works. But I once
heard Rubinstein play the entire set of twenty-four Preludes, and I
sometimes wonder, as one often does with the compositions of a great
genius, whether these Preludes, in spite of their comparative brevity,
should not be ranked as high as anything Chopin ever wrote. According
to tradition, they were composed during the winter of 1838, which
Chopin spent with George Sand at Majorca in the Balearic Islands. But
there is authority for saying that they received only the finishing
touches there, and are in fact the gleanings of his portfolios.
It seems as if in these twenty-four pieces every phase of human
emotion were brought out. If my memory is correct, Rubinstein played
them as a solo group at a Philharmonic concert, or he may have given
them about the same time at one of his recitals. It was in 1872; and
while after this long lapse of time it is impossible to remember every
detail of his performance, I shall never forget the exquisite
tenderness with which he played the very brief Prelude in A major, the
seventh. He simply caressed the keyboard, touched it as if his fingers
were tipped with velvet; and though into the other compositions of the
series he put, according as their character varied, an immense amount
of passion, or more subdued emotion, I can still hear this seventh
Prelude sounding in my memory, note for note and bar for bar, as he
rendered it--a prolonged, tremulous whisper. Schumann regarded the
Preludes as most remarkable, saying that "in every piece we find in
his own hand 'Frederic Chopin wrote it.' One recognizes him in his
pauses, in his quick-coming breath. He is the boldest, the proudest
poet-soul of his time."
Each number in the series is complete in itself, a mood picture; but
the series as a whole, in its collection of moods, its panorama of
emotions, represents the entire range of Chopin's art. The fourth in E
minor, covering only a page, is one of the most pathetic plaints ever
penned. The fifteenth in D flat major, with its continual reiteration
of the dominant, like the incessant drip of rain on a roof, is a
nocturne--Chopin in one of his morbid moments; while the eighteenth in
F minor is as bold a piece of dramatic recitative as though it had
been lifted bodily out of a music-drama. And so we might run the whole
range of the collection, finding each admirable in itself, yet
different from all the others. What a group for a recital these
twenty-four Preludes make!
Nocturnes.
If Chopin had not written the Nocturnes I doubt if those who play and
those who comment on him would err so often in attributing such an
excess of morbidness to him as they do, or lay the charge of
effeminacy against him. Morbid these Nocturnes undoubtedly are in many
parts, and yet they often rise to the dignity of elegy, and sometimes
even of tragedy. Exquisitely melodious they are, too, and full of the
haunting mystery of night. The one in C sharp minor, Opus 27, No. 1,
is perhaps the most dramatic of the series, and Henry T. Finck, in his
Chopin essay, is entirely within bounds when he says that it embodies
a greater variety of emotion and more genuine dramatic spirit on four
pages than many operas on four hundred. There are greater nocturnes
than the one in G, Opus 37, No. 2, but I must nevertheless regard it
as the most beautiful of all. It may bewitch and unman the player, as
Niecks has said, but, on the other hand, I think its second melody,
like a Venetian barcarolle breathed through the moonlight, is the most
exquisite thing Chopin ever composed; and note how, without any
undulating accompaniment, its rhythm nevertheless produces a gentle
wavy effect.
Probably the most familiar of all the Nocturnes is the one in E flat,
the second in the first set, Opus 9. It has been played so much that
unless it is interpreted in a perfect manner it comes perilously near
to being hackneyed; but under the hands of a great pianist, who
unites with absolute independence of all his ten fingers, the soul of
a poet, it becomes an iridescent play of color, with a sombre picture
of melancholy seen through the iridescence. Remenyi played a violin
arrangement of it with such delicacy and so much poetry of feeling
that he actually reconciled one to its transfer from the pianoforte to
the soprano instrument of four strings.
Chopin and Poe.
John Field, an Irish composer (1782-1837), was the first to compose
nocturnes, and it is not unlikely that Chopin got the pattern from
him. Occasionally at historical recitals one hears a nocturne by John
Field; but I think that if even those who love to question the
originality of great men were familiar with the nocturnes of Field,
they would realize how far Chopin went beyond him, making out of a
small type an art form of such poetic content that, in spite of Field
having been first in the lists, Chopin may be said to have originated
the form. Naturally, Field did not relish seeing himself supplanted by
this greater genius, and he said of Chopin that he composed music for
a sick-room, and had "a talent of the hospital." On recital programs
Chopin's nocturnes often appear, and, when played by a master like
Paderewski, who is sensitive to every shade of Chopin's genius, they
are heard with an exquisite feeling of sorrow. In these Nocturnes,
Chopin always seems to me like Edgar Allan Poe in "Ullalume" or in
"Annabel Lee"--and was not Poe one of the only two American poets of
real genius?
Waltzes and Mazurkas.
A Chopin waltz will admirably afford contrast in a group of Chopin
pieces on a recital program. Possibly the waltzes are the most
frequently played by amateurs of all Chopin's compositions. But, to
perpetrate an Irish bull, even those that have been played to death
still are very much alive. It was Schumann who said that if these
waltzes were to be played for dancing more than half the dancers
should be Countesses, the music is so aristocratic. Indeed, to listen
to these waltzes is like looking at a dance through a fairy lens. They
seem to be improvisations of the pianist during a dance, and to
reflect the thoughts that arise in the player's mind as he looks on,
giving out the rhythm with the left hand, while the melody and the
ornamental note-groups indicate his fancies--love, a jealous plaint,
joy, ecstasy, and the tender whispering of enamored couples as they
glide past. The slow A minor "Waltz," with its viola-like left-hand
melody, was Chopin's favorite, and he was so pleased when Stephen
Heller told him that it was his favorite one, too, that he invited him
to luncheon. (Strange that we always should regard food as the most
appropriate reward of artistic sympathy!) Each waltz, with the
exception of some of the posthumous ones, has its individual charm,
but to me the most beautiful is the one in C sharp minor, with its
infinite expression of longing in its leading theme and its remarkable
chromatic descent before the brilliant right-hand passage that follows
in the second episode. These chromatics should be emphasized, as they
are a feature of the passage and form gems of harmonization. But few
pianists seem to appreciate their significance and pay sole attention
to bringing out the upper voice.
Thoroughly characteristic of Chopin, thoroughly in keeping with his
Polish nationality and its traditions, are the Mazurkas--jewels of
music, full of the finest feeling, the most delicate harmonization,
and with a dash and spirit entirely their own. Weitzmann truly says
that they are the most faithful and animated pictures of his nation
which Chopin has left us, and that they are masterpieces of their
class: "Here he stands forth in his full originality as the head of
the romantic school of music; in them his novel and alluring melodic
and harmonic progressions are even more surprising than in his larger
compositions."
Liszt on the Mazurkas.
Liszt, too, pauses to pay his tribute to them: "Some portray foolhardy
gaiety in the sultry and oppressive air of a ball, and on the eve of a
battle; one hears the low sighs of parting, whose sobs are stifled by
sharp rhythms of the dance. Others portray the grief of the sorely
anxious soul amid festivities, whose tumult is unable to drown the
profound woe of the heart. Others, again, show the tears, premonitions
and struggles of a broken heart, devoured by jealousy, sorrowing over
its loss, but repressing the curse. Now we are surrounded by a
swirling frenzy, pierced by an ever-recurring palpitating melody like
the anxious beating of a loving but rejected heart; and anon distant
trumpet calls resound like dim memories of bygone fame." All this is
very fine, although a trifle over-sentimental. The fact is that the
Chopin Mazurkas are archly coquettish, passionately pleading, full of
delicate banter, love, despair and conquest--and always thoroughly
original and thoroughly interesting. In fact Chopin never is
commonplace. A Mazurka or two will add zest to any group of his works
on a recital program.
The Polonaises are Chopin's battle-hymns. The roll of drums, the
booming of cannon, the rattle of musketry and the plaint for the
dead--all these things one may hear in some of these compositions. The
mourning notes, however, are missing from the "A Major Polonaise,"
Opus 40, and usually called "Le Militaire." It is not a large canvas,
but it is heroic and one of the most virile of all his works. It was
of this polonaise Chopin said that if he could play it as it should be
played, he would break all the strings of the pianoforte before he had
finished.
Other Works.
And then the Ballades and the Scherzos. These are perhaps Chopin's
greatest contributions to the music of the pianoforte. They are
wonderfully original, wonderfully emotional, yet never to the point of
morbidness, full of his original harmonies, fascinating rhythms and
glow. In the Scherzos he is not gaily abandoned, as the title would
suggest, but often grim and mocking--tragedy mocking itself.
Chopin also wrote Sonatas--felt himself obliged to, perhaps, because
he was writing for the pianoforte, because pianoforte music still was
in the grip of the thirty-two Beethoven pianoforte sonatas. By no
means did he adhere to the classical form; yet these three sonatas are
not to be counted among his most successful compositions. One of them,
the B flat minor, contains the familiar funeral march which has been
said to "give forth the pain and grief of an entire nation"--Chopin's
nation, sorrowing Poland; and, indeed, the middle episode, the trio of
the march, is pathetic to the verge of tears, while in the other
portions the march progresses to the grave amid the tolling of bells
and the heavy tramp of soldiery. It is played and played, possibly
played too much; and yet, when well played, never misses leaving a
deep impression. Because people will persist in "playing" certain
popular pieces, there is no reason these should not be enjoyed when
interpreted by a master. There is a vast difference between
interpretation and mere "playing."
This funeral march is followed in the sonata by a finale which aptly
enough has been described as night winds sweeping over graves. The
funeral march often is played at recitals as a detached piece. I
cannot see why pianists do not add this finale, which has real
psychological connection with it. The "Berceuse," a "Barcarolle," two
"Concertos for Piano and Orchestra," which often are slightingly
spoken of, and most unjustly, since they are full of beautiful melody
and most grateful to play--beyond these it does not seem necessary to
go here, unless, perhaps, to mention the Impromptus, which are full of
the most delightful _chiaroscuro_, and the great F minor "Fantaisie."
A Noble from Head to Foot.
Because Chopin wrote only for the pianoforte, because as a rule his
pieces are not long, his greatness was not at first recognized. The
conservatives seemed to think no man could be great unless he wrote
sonatas in four movements for the piano and symphonies for the
orchestra, unless he composed for fifty or sixty instruments instead
of for only one. But although Jumbo was large, he was not accounted
beautiful, and worship of the big is a mistaken kind of reverence.
Chopin's briefest mazurka is worth infinitely more than many sonatas
that cover many pages. This composer was a tone poet of the highest
order. While to-day we regard him mainly as the interpreter of beauty,
in his own day he was an innovator, a reformer and, like his own
Poles, a revolutionist. The pianoforte--the pianoforte as a solo
instrument--sufficed for his most beautiful dreams, for his most
passionate longings. Bie, in his "History of the Pianoforte and
Pianoforte Players," tells us that Chopin smiled when he heard that
Czerny had composed another overture for eight pianos and sixteen
persons, and was very happy over it. "Chopin," adds Bie, "opened to
the two hands a wider world than Czerny could give to thirty-two."
Rubinstein, as quoted by Huneker, apostrophizes him as "the piano
bard, the piano rhapsodist, the piano mind, the piano soul.... Tragic,
romantic, virile, heroic, dramatic, fantastic, soulful, sweet, dreamy,
brilliant, grand, simple--all possible expressions are found in his
compositions and all are sung by him upon his instrument." Huneker
himself says: "In Chopin's music there are many pianists, many
styles, and all are correct if they are poetically musical, logical
and individually sincere." Best of all, he enlarged the scope for
individual expression in music. Once for all, he got pianoforte music
away from the set form of the classical sonata. "He was sincere, and
his survival when nearly all of Mendelssohn, much of Schumann, and
half of Berlioz have suffered an eclipse, is proof positive of his
vitality."--Thus again Huneker. Bie says, in summing up his position,
that his greatness is his aristocracy; that "he stands among
musicians, in his faultless vesture, a noble from head to foot." But,
above all, he is a searcher of the human soul, and, because he
searched it out on the pianoforte, is he therefore less great than if
he had drawn it out on the strings, piped it on the reeds, blown it
through the tubes and battered it on the drumheads of the orchestra?