This nocturne, though one of Chopin’s most intrinsically beautiful
compositions for the piano, is even more frequently heard upon the
violin. It has been, for decades, a favorite lyric number with all the
leading violinists of the world, and adapts itself admirably to the
resources and peculiar character of this instrument.
For this there is an excellent reason, far other than mere chance. On a
certain evening in the early thirties were assembled in an elegant
Parisian salon a company of the musical and literary _élite_ of the
French capital, to meet several foreign celebrities and enjoy one of
those rare opportunities for intellectual and artistic converse and
companionship, of which we read with envious longing, but which are
practically unknown in our busy, prosaic age.
There were present Chopin, Liszt, Mendelssohn, the latter then in Paris
on a brief visit, besides many local musicians of note, including some
of the professors of the Conservatoire, also George Sand, Heinrich
Heine, Alfred De Musset, with some lesser literary lights, and a
brilliant gathering of social leaders. It was an evening long to be
remembered for the sparkling wit and repartee, flashed back and forth
from these brilliant intellects, like the rays of light from the
glittering jewels of the ladies, for the occasional bursts of glowing
eloquence and poetic thought from the profounder minds, and especially
for the music, which was plentiful and of the best.
It may have been on this very occasion that Rossini made his famous, but
most unfriendly, hit at the expense of Liszt’s marvelous powers of
improvisation, which he, Rossini, was inclined seemingly to doubt. Liszt
was being pressed to play and to improvise, and Rossini called out
across the room: “Yes, my friend, do improvise that beautiful thing that
you improvised at Madam —’s last Friday, and at Lord So and So’s the
week before.”
In the course of the evening a local violinist of prominence played for
the company a new composition of his own, a sweet, long-sustained
cantilena, with a more involved second movement in double stopping. When
he had finished and the applause had subsided, one of the ladies was
heard to remark, “What a pity that the piano is incapable of these
effects! It is brilliant, dramatic, resourceful, what you will; but only
the violin can stir the heart in that way.”
Chopin rose, bowing with one of his equivocal smiles, half-sad,
half-playfully mocking, stepped to the piano and improvised this
nocturne, a perfect reproduction of all the best violin effects,
cantilena and all, including the double-stopping in the second theme,
with a certain warmth and poetry added, which were all his own. Of
course, it was afterward finished and perfected in detail, but in
substance it was the same as the D flat nocturne which we all know so
well and which the violinists, though most of them unconscious of the
reason, have singled out as specially adapted to their instrument.
The player should keep the violin and its effects in mind in rendering
it, the lingering, songful, string quality of tone in the melody, the
smooth legato, the leisurely, well-rounded embellishments; and the tempo
should never be hurried. It may be well to say, in this connection, that
in these Chopin nocturnes, and in all other lyric compositions, the
embellishments, grace-notes, and the like should be made to conform to
the general mood and character of the rest of the music. Symmetry and
fitting proportions are among the primal laws of all art.
In a Liszt rhapsody, a cadenza should flash like a rocket, but in a
Chopin nocturne it should glide with easy, undulating grace, should
float like a wind-blown ribbon, a fallen rose-leaf. Too often we hear
the ornamental passages in a lyric played as if they were wholly
irrelevant matter, dropped in there by accident out of some other
entirely different compositions,—a bit of vain, noisy display in the
midst of a poetic dream, breaking instead of enhancing its charm,
utterly incongruous. Harmonize the embellishments with the subject! Fit
the trimming to the fabric!