Chopin's style, he must not be understood too literally. As a matter
of fact, the _rubato_ is too important an element of expression not to
have been partially anticipated in the works of some of Chopin's
predecessors, just as Wagner's leading motives had imperfect
prototypes in the works of some preceding composers. As early as 1602,
the Italian, Caccini, describes what he calls the "Stile Nobile, in
which the singer," he says, "emancipates himself from the fetters of
the measure, by prolonging or diminishing the duration of a note by
one-half, according as the sense of the word requires it." But it is
probable that the Italian singers of that period, as to-day, used
this kind of _rubato_ merely to display the beauty of their voice on a
loud high note, and not, like Chopin, for the sake of emphasizing a
pathetic or otherwise expressive note or chord.
Of the Germans it may be said that, as a rule, they had, until
recently, no special liking for the _tempo rubato_. Dr. Hanslick, the
eminent Viennese critic, referred to it thirty years ago, as "a morbid
unsteadiness of _tempo_." Mendelssohn, who always liked a "nice, swift
_tempo_," repeatedly expressed his aversion to Chopin's _rubato_.
Nevertheless, traces of it may be found in the rhythms of the
classical school. Although Mozart's _tempo_ in general was as strict
and uniform as that of a waltz in the ball-room, in playing an adagio
he appears to have allowed his left hand some freedom of movement for
the sake of expression (see Jahn I., 134). Beethoven, according to
Seyfried, "was very particular at rehearsals about the frequent
passages in _tempo rubato_;" and there are other remarks by
contemporaries of Beethoven which indicate that although he wrote in
the classical style, in his playing and conducting he often introduced
a romantic _rubato_. Still, in the majority of his compositions, there
is no room for the _rubato_, which cannot be said to have found a home
in German music till it was assimilated by the Schumann school, under
the influence of Chopin. Since then, it has leavened the spirit of
modern music in a manner which has never been sufficiently emphasized.
I am convinced that even Richard Wagner was, unconsciously, influenced
by it through Liszt; for one of the chief peculiarities of his style
is a sort of dramatic _rubato_ which emancipates his music from the
tyranny of the strict dance measure. In his essay on the proper
interpretation of Tannhäuser, Wagner declares that the division of
music into regular measures, or bars, is merely a mechanical means for
enabling the composer to convey his ideas to the singer. As soon as
the singer has grasped the idea, he says, the bar should be thrown
aside as a useless incumbrance, and the singer, ignoring strict time,
should be guided by his feelings alone, while the conductor should
follow and preserve harmony between him and the orchestra.
It might be said that this dramatic _rubato_ is something different
from Chopin's _rubato_. _Rubato_ literally means "robbed," and it is
generally supposed that the peculiarity of Chopin's style consisted
simply in this, that he prolonged certain notes in a bar at the
expense of the others--robbing from one what he gave to his neighbor.
But this is a very inadequate conception of the term. Chopin's
_rubato_ means much more than this. It includes, to a large extent,
the frequent unexpected changes of time and rhythm, together with the
_ritardandos_ and _accelerandos_. It includes, secondly, those unique
passages, first conceived by Chopin, where the right hand has to play
irregular groups of small notes--say twenty-two, while the left hand
plays only twelve; or nineteen, while the left plays four--passages in
which Chopin indicated as clearly as Wagner did in the words just
quoted that the musical bar is a mere mechanical measure which does
not sufficiently indicate the phrasing of the romantic or dramatic
ideas that lie beyond the walls of a dance-hall.
There is a third peculiarity of Chopin's style which may be included
under the name of _rubato_, namely, his habit of "robbing" the note,
not of its duration, but its _accent_. Every student of music knows
that the symphony and sonata are called "idealized dance forms,"
because they are direct outgrowths of the dances that were cultivated
originally in Italy, France, and Germany. Now, one peculiarity of
these dances is the fact that the accent always falls on the first
beat of each bar. This is very appropriate and convenient for dancing,
but from an artistic point of view, it is decidedly monotonous. Hence,
Chopin conferred a vast benefit on modern art by introducing the
spirit of Slavic music, in which the accent often falls on other beats
beside the first. These regular accents produce the effect of the
variable _tempo rubato_, and it is to them that Chopin's works largely
owe their exotic, poetic color. As they open up new possibilities of
emotional expression, they have been eagerly appropriated by other
composers and have leavened all modern music. To Chopin, therefore,
chiefly belongs the honor of having emancipated music from the
monotony of the Western European dance-beat by means of the _tempo
rubato_ in its varied aspects.
But, it was not merely in the accent of the dance forms, that he
introduced an agreeable innovation; he was one of the giants who helped
to create a new epoch in art, by breaking these old forms altogether,
and substituting new ones better suited to modern tastes. And here we
come across one of the most ludicrous misconceptions which have been
fostered concerning Chopin by shallow critics, and which brings us back
again for a moment to the question of Jumboism. I do not know whether
he was a German or a French critic who first wrote that Chopin,
although great in short pieces, was not great enough to master the
sonata form. Once in print, this silly opinion was repeated parrot-like
by scores of other critics. _How_ silly it is may be inferred from the
fact that such third-rate composerlings as Herz and Hummel were able to
write sonatas of the most approved pattern--and that, in fact, _any_
person with the least musical talent can learn in a few years to write
sonatas that are absolutely correct as regards form. And yet we are
asked to believe that Chopin, one of the most profound and original
musical thinkers the world has ever seen, could not write a correct
sonata! _Risum teneatis amici_! Chopin not able to master the sonata
form? The fact is, _the sonata form could not master him_. He felt
instinctively that it was too artificial to serve as a vehicle for the
expression of poetic thought; and his thoroughly original genius
therefore created the more plastic and malleable shorter forms which
have since been adopted by composers the world over. The few sonatas
which Chopin wrote do not deviate essentially from the orthodox
structure, but one feels constantly that he was hampered in his
movements by the artificial structure. Though they are full of genius,
like everything he composed, he did not write them _con amore_.
Concentration is one of Chopin's principal characteristics, and the
sonata favors diffuseness. Too much thematic beating out is the bane of
the sonata. A few bars of gold are worth more than many square yards of
gold leaf; and Chopin's bars are solid gold. Moreover, there is no
organic unity between the different parts of the sonata, whatever may
have been said to the contrary. The essentially artificial character of
the sonata is neatly illustrated by a simile used by Dr. Hanslick in
speaking of Chopin. "This composer," he said, "although highly and
peculiarly gifted, was never able to unite the fragrant flowers which
he scattered by handfuls, into beautiful wreaths." Dr. Hanslick intends
this as censure. I regard it as the greatest compliment he could have
paid him. A wreath may be very pretty in its way, but it is artificial.
The flowers are crushed and their fragrance does not blend. How much
lovelier is a single violet or orchid in the fields, unhampered by
strings and wires, and connected solely with its stalk and the
surrounding green leaves. Many of Chopin's compositions are so short
that they can hardly be likened unto flowers, but only to buds. Yet is
not a rosebud a thousand times more beautiful than a full-blown rose?
One more consideration. The psychology of the sonata form is false.
Men and women do not feel happy for ten minutes as in the opening
allegro of a sonata, then melancholy for another ten minutes, as in
the following adagio, then frisky, as in the scherzo, and finally,
fiery and impetuous for ten minutes as in the finale. The movements of
our minds are seldom so systematic as this. Sad and happy thoughts and
moods chase one another incessantly and irregularly, as they do in the
compositions of Chopin, which, therefore, are much truer echoes of our
modern romantic feelings than the stiff and formal classical sonatas.
And thus it is, that Chopin's habitual neglect of the sonata form,
instead of being a defect, reveals his rare artistic subtlety and
grandeur. It was natural that a Pole should vindicate for music this
emotional freedom of movement, for the Slavic mind is especially prone
to constant changes of mood. Nevertheless, as soon as Chopin had shown
the way, other composers followed eagerly in the new path, and in the
present day the sonata may be regarded as obsolete. Few contemporary
composers have written more than one or two--merely in order to show
that they can do so if they want to; and even Brahms, the high priest
of the conservatives, has, in his later period, devoted himself more
and more exclusively to shorter modern forms in his pianoforte music.
Strictly speaking, Chopin was not the first who tried to get away from
the sonata. Beethoven, though he remained faithful to it, felt its
fetters, as is shown by his numerous poetic licenses. Schubert wrote
"Moments Musicals," Mendelssohn, "Songs without Words," Weber,
Polonaises, and Field, Nocturnes. But these were merely straws which
indicated in which direction Chopin's genius would sweep the field and
clear the musical atmosphere. His polonaises and nocturnes are vastly
superior to those of Weber and Field; and his poetic preludes, his
romantic ballads, his lovely berçeuse, his amorous mazurkas, are new
types in art which have often been imitated but never equalled. Only
in one field did Chopin have a dangerous rival among his predecessors,
namely, in the Waltz. Weber's "Invitation to the Dance" is the source
of the modern idealized waltz, because it was not written for the feet
alone, but also for the heart and the imagination. Like Chopin's
waltzes, it contains chivalrous passages, amorous episodes, and subtle
changes of movement. And it seems as if the fact that there was less
room for formal and emotional innovations in the waltz than in the
other forms, had somewhat affected Chopin's imagination. For, although
the most popular of his works, his waltzes are, with a few exceptions
in which the _rubato_ prevails, less characteristic than his other
pieces. Nevertheless, they are charming, every one of them. But they
are fairy dances--mortals are too clumsy to keep time to them.
Next to the waltzes in popularity come the polonaises; and they fully
deserve their popularity. Liszt has given us a charming description of
the polonaise as it was formerly danced in Chopin's native country. It
was less a dance than a promenade in which courtly pomps and
aristocratic splendor were on exhibition. It was a chivalrous but not
an amorous dance, precedence being given to age and rank, before youth
and beauty. And whereas, in other dances, the place of honor is
always given to the fair sex, in the polonaise the men are in the
foreground. In a word, the polonaise represents, both in its subject
and the style of music, the masculine side of Chopin's genius.
The feminine side is chiefly embodied in the mazurkas and the
nocturnes. It has been said that the highest genius must combine
masculine with feminine traits, and it is a remarkable fact that the
works of two of the most spontaneous composers--Chopin and
Schubert--are often characterized by an exquisite feminine tenderness
and grace; as if, seeing that women have not done their duty as
composers, they had tried to introduce the feminine spirit in music.
Yet it is unfair to place too much emphasis on this side of their
genius. In their bolder moments, Chopin and Schubert are thoroughly
masculine.
It seems strange at first sight that the mazurkas, these exquisite
love poems, should be so much less popular than the waltzes, for they
are quite as melodious and much easier--although here, as elsewhere,
Chopin often introduces a few very difficult bars in an otherwise easy
composition, as if to keep away bunglers. Perhaps the cause of their
comparative neglect is, that they are so thoroughly Polish in spirit;
unless they are played with an exotic _rubato_, their fragrance
vanishes. There is more local color in the mazurkas than in any of
his other works. The Mazurs are musically a highly gifted nation, and
Chopin was impressed early in life with the quaint originality of
their melodies. No doubt some of his mazurkas are merely artistic
settings of these old love songs, but they are the settings of an
inspired jeweller. If we can judge by the number of pieces of each
class that he wrote, the mazurka was Chopin's favorite form. Even on
his death-bed he wrote one. It was his last effort, and he was too
weak to try it over on the piano. It is of heart-rending sadness, and
exquisite pathos. Perhaps it was a patriotic rather than an æsthetic
feeling which led him thus to favor the mazurka. His love for his
country was exceeded only by his devotion to his art. "Oh, how sad it
must be to die in a foreign country," he wrote to a friend in 1830;
and when, soon afterward, he left home he took along a handful of
Polish soil which he kept for nineteen years. Shortly before his death
he expressed a wish that it should be strewn in his coffin--a wish
which was fulfilled; so that his body rested on Polish soil even in
Paris.
A countless number of exquisite melodic rhythmic and harmonic details
in the mazurkas might be dwelt upon in this place, but I will only
call attention to the inexhaustible variety of ideas which makes each
of them so unique, notwithstanding their strong family likeness. They
are like fantastic orchids, or like the countless varieties of humming
birds, those "winged poems of the air," of which no two are alike
while all resemble each other.
The nocturnes represent the dreamy side of Chopin's genius. They are
sufficiently popular, yet few amateurs have any idea of their
unfathomable depth, and few know how to use the pedal in such a way as
to produce the rich uninterrupted flow of tone on which the melody
should float. Most pianists play them too fast. Mozart and Schumann
protested against the tendency to take their slow pieces too fast, and
Chopin suffers still more from this pernicious habit. Mendelssohn in
"A Midsummer Night's Dream," and Weber in "Oberon," have given us
glimpses of dreamland, but Chopin's nocturnes take us there bodily,
and plunge us into reveries more delicious than the visions of an
opium eater. They should be played in the twilight and in solitude,
for the slightest foreign sound breaks the spell. But just as dreams
are sometimes agitated and dramatic, so some of these nocturnes are
complete little dramas with stormy, tragic episodes, and the one in C
sharp minor, _e.g._, embodies a greater variety of emotion and more
genuine dramatic spirit on four pages than many popular operas on four
hundred.
One of Chopin's enchanting innovations, which he introduced
frequently in the nocturnes, consists in those unique and exquisite
_fioriture_, or dainty little notes which suddenly descend on the
melody like a spray of dew drops glistening in all the colors of the
rainbow. No less unique and original are the exquisite modulations
into foreign keys which abound in the nocturnes, as, indeed, in all
his works. Schucht calls attention to the fact that in his very opus 1
Chopin permits himself a freedom of modulation which Beethoven rarely
indulged in. But this is a mere trifle compared with the works of his
last period. Here we find a striking originality and boldness of
modulation that has no parallel in music, except in Wagner's last
music-dramas. Now we have seen that Moscheles, and other
contemporaries of Chopin, found his modulations harsh and
disagreeable; and doubtless there are amateurs to-day who regard them
in the same way. It seems, indeed, as if musical people must be
divided into two classes--those who find their chief delight in melody
pure and simple, and those who think that rich and varied harmony is
the soul of music. Chopin fortunately wrote for both classes. Italy
has produced no melodist equal to him, and Germany only one--Franz
Schubert. No one has written melodies more soulful than those of the
nocturne, opus 37, No. 2, the second ballad, the études, opus 10, No.
3; opus 25, No. 7, etc. I distinctly remember the thrill with which I
heard each of these melodies for the first time; but it was a deeper
emotion still which I felt when I played for the first time the
sublimest of his nocturnes--the last but one he wrote--and came across
that wonderful modulation from five sharps to four flats, and, later
on, the delicious series of modulations in the fourth and fifth bars
after the Tempo Primo. I realized then that modulation is a deeper
source of emotional expression than melody.
In speaking of Chopin's melancholy character, the nocturnes are often
referred to as illustrations of it. They do, indeed, breathe a spirit
of sadness, but the majority represent, as I have said, the dreamy
side of his genius. The real anguish of his heart is not expressed in
the nocturnes but in the preludes and études, strange as these names
may seem for such pathetic effusions of his heart. The étude, opus 10,
No. 6, seems as if it were in a sort of double minor; as much sadder
than ordinary minor, as ordinary minor is sadder than major. Chopin
had abundant cause to be melancholy. He inherited that national
melancholy of the Poles which causes them even to dance to tunes in
minor keys, and which is commonly attributed to the long-continued
political oppression under which they have suffered. But, apart from
this national trait, Chopin had sufficient personal reasons for
writing the greater part of his mazurkas and his other pieces in
minor keys. Like other men of genius, he keenly felt the anguish of
not being fully appreciated by his contemporaries. Moreover, although
he was greatly admired by the French and Polish women in Paris, and
was even conceded a lady-killer, he was, in his genuine affairs of the
heart, thrice disappointed. His first love, who wore his engagement
ring when he left Warsaw, proved faithless to the absent lover, and
married another man. The second love deceived him in the same way,
preferring a Count to a genius. And his third love, George Sand, after
apparently reciprocating his attachment, for a few years, not only
discarded him, but tried to justify her conduct to the world, by
giving an exaggerated portraiture of his weaknesses, in her novel
"Lucrezia Floriani."
Nevertheless, it was in one respect fortunate for the world that
George Sand was Chopin's friend so long, for we owe to her facile pen
many interesting accounts of Chopin's habits and the origin of some of
his compositions. The winter which he spent with her on the Island of
Majorca was one of the most important in his life, for it was here
that he composed some of those masterpieces, his preludes--a word
which might be paraphrased as Introductions to a new world of musical
emotion. There is a strange discrepancy in the accounts which Liszt
and George Sand give of the Majorca episode in Chopin's life. Liszt
describes it as a period of calm enjoyment, George Sand as one of
discomfort and distress. As she was an eye-witness, her testimony
appears the more trustworthy, especially as it is borne out by the
character of the preludes which he composed there. There are among
Chopin's preludes a few which breathe the spirit of contentment and
grace, or of religious grandeur, but most of them are outbreaks of the
wildest anguish and heart-rending pathos. If tears could be heard,
they would sound like these preludes. Two of the saddest--those in B
minor and E minor--were played by the famous organist Lefebure Wely,
at Chopin's funeral services. But it is useless to specify. They are
all jewels of the first water.
Some years ago I wrote in "The Nation" that if all pianoforte music in
the world were to be destroyed, excepting one collection, my vote
should be cast for Chopin's preludes. If anything could induce me to
modify that opinion to-day, it would be the thought of Chopin's
études. I would never consent to their loss. Louis Ehlert, speaking of
Chopin's F Major ballad, says he has seen even children stop in their
play and listen to it enraptured. But, in the études I mentioned a
moment ago, there are melodies which, I should think, would tempt even
angels to leave their happy home and indulge, for a moment, in the
luxury of idealized human sorrow. There is in these twenty-seven
études, as in the twenty-five preludes, an inexhaustible wealth of
melody, modulation, poetry and passion. One can play them every day
and never tire of them. Of most of them one might say what Schumann
said of one--that they are "poems rather than studies;" and much
surprise has been expressed that Chopin should have chosen such a
modest and apparently inappropriate name for them as "studies." Now, I
have a theory on this subject: I believe it was partly an ironic
intention which induced Chopin to call some of his most inspired
pieces "studies." Pianists have always been too much in the habit of
looking at their art from purely technical or mechanical points of
view. They looked for mere five-finger exercises in Chopin's études,
and finding at the same time an abundance of musical ideas, they were
surprised. It did not occur to them that Chopin might have intended
them also as studies in musical composition--studies in melody,
harmony, rhythm and emotional expression. I believe he did so intend
them; and finding that his contemporaries did not take his idea, he
probably laughed in his sleeve, and exclaimed, "_O tempora!_"
This conjecture seems the more plausible, from the fact that there was
a pronounced ironic and comic vein in Chopin's character. The accounts
of his melancholy, in fact, like those of his ill-health, have been
too much exaggerated. He was often in a cheerful mood. Sometimes he
would amuse himself for a whole evening playing blind-man's buff with
the children. As a mere child he had formed the habit of mimicking and
caricaturing pianists and other distinguished men. Liszt often
suffered from this mischievous habit, but he did not complain, and
even seemed to enjoy it. Of Chopin's wit, two specimens may be cited.
A rich Parisian one day invited him to dinner, with the intention of
getting him to entertain the guests afterward. In this case, however,
the host had reckoned without the guest, for, when asked to play,
Chopin exclaimed, "But, my dear sir, I have eaten so little." The
other instance occurs in one of his letters, where he says of the
pianist Aloys Schmitt, that he was forty years old, and his
compositions eighty--a _bon mot_ worthy of Heine.
There was much, indeed, in common between Chopin and Heine. Nothing is
more characteristic of Heine than the way in which he works up our
sentimental feelings only to knock us on the head with a comic or
grotesque line at the end. Similarly, Chopin, after improvising for
his friends for an hour or two, would suddenly rouse them from their
reveries by a _glissando_--sliding his fingers from one end of the
key-board to the other. In almost all of Chopin's or Heine's poems
there is this peculiar mixture of the sad and the comic veins--even
in the scherzos, which represent the gay and cheerful moods of
Chopin's muse.