I had fully intended at the conclusion of my last chapter to close the
curtain on Chopin and his music, for I agree with the remark Deppe once
made to Amy Fay about the advisability of putting Chopin on the shelf
for half a century and studying Mozart in the interim. Bless the dear
Germans and their thoroughness! The type of teacher to which Deppe
belonged always proceeded as if a pupil, like a cat, had nine lives.
Fifty years of Chopin on the shelf! There's an idea for you. At the
conclusion of this half century's immurement what would the world say to
the Polish composer's music? That is to say, in 1955 the unknown
inhabitants of the musical portion of this earth would have sprung upon
them absolutely new music. The excitement would be colossal, colossal,
too, would be the advertising. And then? And then I fancy a chorus of
profoundly disappointed lovers of the tone art. Remember that the world
moves in fifty years. Perhaps there would be no longer our pianoforte,
our keyboard. How childish, how simple would sound the timid little
Chopin of the far-away nineteenth century.
In the turbulent times to come music will have lost its personal flavor.
Instead of interpretative artists there will be gigantic machinery
capable of maniacal displays of virtuosity; merely dropping a small coin
in a slot will sound the most abstruse scores of Richard Strauss--then
the popular and bewhistled music maker. And yet it is difficult for us,
so wedded are we to that tragic delusion of earthly glory and artistic
immortality, to conjure up a day when the music of Chopin shall be stale
and unprofitable to the hearing. For me the idea is inconceivable. Some
of his music has lost interest for us, particularly the early works
modeled after Hummel. Ehlert speaks of the twilight that is beginning to
steal over certain of the nocturnes, valses, and fantasias. Now Hummel
is quite perfect in his way. To imitate him, as Chopin certainly did,
was excellent practice for the younger man, but not conducive to
originality. Chopin soon found this out, and dropped both Hummel and
Field out of his scheme. Nor shall I insist on the earlier impositions
being the weaker; _Op. 10_ contains all Chopin in its twelve studies.
The truth is, that this Chopin, to whom has been assigned two or three
or four periods and styles and manners of development, sprang from the
Minerva head of music a full-fledged genius. He grew. He lived. But the
exquisite art was there from the first. That it had a "long foreground"
I need not tell you.
What compositions, then, would our mythic citizens of 1955
prefer?--can't you see them crowding around the concert grand piano
listening to the old-fashioned strains as we listen today when some
musical antiquarian gives a recital of Scarlatti, Couperin, Rameau on a
clavecin! Still, as Mozart and Bach are endurable now, there is no
warrant for any supposition that Chopin would not be tolerated a half
century hence. Fancy those sprightly, spiritual, and very national
dances, the mazurkas, not making an impression! Or at least two of the
ballades! Or three of the nocturnes! Not to mention the polonaises,
preludes, scherzos, and etudes. Simply from curiosity the other night--I
get so tired playing checkers--I went through all my various editions of
Chopin--about ten--looking for trouble. I found it when I came across
five mazurkas in the key of C-sharp minor. I have arrived at the
conclusion that this was a favorite tonality of the Pole. Let us see.
Two studies in _Op. 10_ and _25_, respectively; the
_Fantaisie-Impromptu_, _Op. 66_; five _Mazurkas_, above mentioned; one
_Nocturne, Op. 27, No. 1_; one _Polonaise, Op. 26, No. 1_; one _Prelude,
Op. 45_; one _Scherzo, Op. 39_; and a short second section, a
_cantabile_ in the _E major Scherzo, Op. 54_; one _Valse, Op. 64, No.
2_--are there any more in C-sharp minor? If there are I cannot recall
them. But this is a good showing for one key, and a minor one. Little
wonder Chopin was pronounced elegiac in his tendencies--C-sharp minor is
a mournful key and one that soon develops a cloying, morbid quality if
too much insisted upon.
The mazurkas are worthy specimens of their creator's gift for varying
not only a simple dance form, but also in juggling with a simple melodic
idea so masterfully that the hearer forgets he is hearing a three-part
composition on a keyboard. Chopin was a magician. The first of the
_Mazurkas in C-sharp minor_ bears the early _Op. 6, No. 2_. By no means
representative, it is nevertheless interesting and characteristic. That
brief introduction with its pedal bass sounds the rhythmic life of the
piece. I like it; I like the dance proper; I like the major--you see the
peasant girls on the green footing away--and the ending is full of a sad
charm. _Op. 30, No. 4_, the next in order, is bigger in conception,
bigger in workmanship. It is not so cheerful, perhaps, as its
predecessor in the same key; the heavy basses twanging in tenths like a
contrabasso are intentionally monotone in effect. There is defiance and
despair in the mood. And look at the line before the last--those
consecutive fifths and sevenths were not placed there as a whim; they
mean something. Here is a mazurka that will be heard later than 1955! By
the way, while you are loitering through this Op. 30 do not neglect No.
3, the stunning specimen in D-flat. It is my favorite mazurka.
Now let us hurry on to _Op. 41, No. 1_. It well repays careful study.
Note the grip our composer has on the theme, it bobs up in the middle
voices; it comes thundering at the close in octave and chordal
_unisons_, it rumbles in the bass and is persistently asserted by the
soprano voice. Its scale is unusual, the atmosphere not altogether
cheerful. Chopin could be depressingly pessimistic at times. _Op. 50,
No. 3_, shows how closely the composer studied his Bach. It is by all
odds the most elaborately worked out of the series, difficult to play,
difficult to grasp in its rather disconnected procession of moods. To me
it has a clear ring of exasperation, as if Chopin had lost interest, but
perversely determined to finish his idea. As played by Pachmann, we get
it in all its peevish, sardonic humors, especially if the audience, or
the weather, or the piano seat does not suit the fat little blackbird
from Odessa. _Op. 63, No. 3_, ends this list of mazurkas in C-sharp
minor. In it Chopin has limbered up, his mood is freer, melancholy as it
is. Louis Ehlert wrote of this: "A more perfect canon in the octave
could not have been written by one who had grown gray in the learned
arts." Those last few bars prove that Chopin--they once called him
amateurish in his harmonies!--could do what he pleased in the
contrapuntal line.
Shall I continue? Shall I insist on the obvious; hammer in my truisms!
It may be possible that out here on the Wissahickon--where the summer
hiccoughs grow--that I do not get all the news of the musical world. Yet
I vainly scan piano recital programs for such numbers as those C-sharp
minor mazurkas, for the _F minor Ballade_, for that beautiful and
extremely original _Ballade Op. 38_ which begins in F and ends in A
minor. Isn't there a legend to the effect that Schumann heard Chopin
play his _Ballade_ in private and that there was no stormy middle
measures? I've forgotten the source, possibly one of the greater
Chopinist's--or _Chopine_-ists, as they had it in Paris. What a
stumbling-block that A minor explosion was to audiences and students
and to pianists themselves. "Too wild, too wild!" I remember hearing the
old guard exclaim when Rubinstein, after miraculously prolonging the
three A's with those singing fingers of his, not forgetting the pedals,
smashed down the keyboard, gobbling up the sixteenth notes, not in
phrases, but pages. How grandly he rolled out those bass scales, the
chords in the treble transformed into a _Cantus Firmus_. Then, his
Calmuck features all afire, he would begin to smile gently and lo!--the
tiny, little tune, as if children had unconsciously composed it at play!
The last page was carnage. Port Arthur was stormed and captured in every
bar. What a pianist, what an artist, what a _man_!
I suppose it is because my imagination weakens with my years--remember
that I read in the daily papers the news of Chopin's death! I do long
for a definite program to be appended to the _F-major Ballade_. Why not
offer a small prize for the best program and let me be judge? I have
also reached the time of life when the _A-flat Ballade_ affects my
nerves, just as Liszt was affected when a pupil brought for criticism
the _G minor Ballade_. Preserve me from the _Third Ballade_! It is
winning, gracious, delicate, capricious, melodic, poetic, and what not,
but it has gone to meet the _D-flat Valse_ and _E-flat Nocturne_--as
the obituaries say. The fourth, the _F minor Ballade_--ah, you touch me
in a weak spot. Sticking for over a half century to Bach so closely, I
imagine that the economy of thematic material and the ingeniously spun
fabric of this _Ballade_ have made it my pet. I do not dwell upon the
loveliness of the first theme in F minor, or of that melodious approach
to it in the major. I am speaking now of the composition as a whole. Its
themes are varied with consummate ease, and you wonder at the corners
you so easily turn, bringing into view newer horizons; fresh and
striking landscapes. When you are once afloat on those D-flat scales,
four pages from the end nothing can stop your progress. Every bar slides
nearer and nearer to the climax, which is seemingly chaos for the
moment. After that the air clears and the whole work soars skyward on
mighty pinions. I quite agree with those who place in the same category
the _F minor Fantaisie_ with this _Ballade_. And it is not much played.
Nor can the mechanical instruments reproduce its nuances, its
bewildering pathos and passion. I see the musical mob of 1955 deeply
interested when the Paderewski of those days puts it on his program as a
gigantic novelty!
You see, here I have been blazing away at the same old target again,
though we had agreed to drop Chopin last month. I can't help it. I felt
choked off in my previous article and now the _dam_ has overflowed,
though I hope not the reader's! While I think of it, some one wrote me
asking if Chopin's first _Sonata in C minor, Op. 4_, was worth the
study. Decidedly, though it is as dry as a Kalkbrenner Sonata for
Sixteen Pianos and forty-five hands. The form clogged the light of the
composer. Two things are worthy of notice in many pages choked with
notes: there is a menuet, the only essay I recall of Chopin's in this
graceful, artificial form; and the Larghetto is in 5/4 time--also a
novel rhythm, and not very grateful. How Chopin reveled when he reached
the _B-flat minor_ and _B minor Sonatas_ and threw formal physic to the
dogs! I had intended devoting a portion of this chapter to the
difference of old-time and modern methods in piano teaching. Alas! my
unruly pen ran away with me!