This perhaps is the easiest and certainly the best known of Chopin’s
nocturnes. Scarcely a student but has played it at one time or another.
In fact, it has been worn well-nigh to shreds; yet still retains its
simple, tender charm, if approached in the proper spirit. It is replete
with melodic beauty and warm harmonic coloring, and is an excellent
study in tone-production and shading, as well as a model of symmetrical
form. It was one of his early works, and the glow of first youth still
lingers about it, in spite of its over-familiarity and much abuse. As a
teaching-piece it sometimes surprises the weary teacher with a waft of
unexpected freshness, like the fleeting odor from an old and much-used
school-book in which violets have been pressed.
It is a pure lyric, a love-song without words, but to which a dreamily
tender poetic text can easily be imagined and supplied; and the very
evident suggestion of the harp or guitar in its accompanying chords
facilitates the effort and brightens the poetic effect. So far as I can
learn, it has no definite local background, either in fact or tradition;
no special place or persons to which it refers. It is an abstract idea
treated subjectively, the embodied emotional reflex of imaginary
conditions. The scene is a garden—any garden, so it be beautiful, rich
with the vivid luxuriance of the South, fragrant with the breath of
sleeping flowers, with the South summer-night hanging fondly over it,
and the summer stars glittering above. The melody is the song of the
ideal troubadour, pouring out his heart to the night and his listening
lady, while the accompanying chords are lightly swept from vibrant
strings by the practised fingers of the minstrel. The cadenza at the
close is intended as a mere delicate ripple of liquid brilliancy, as if
the moon, suddenly breaking through a veil of evening mist, had flooded
the scene with a rain of silvery radiance.