Although technically easy and thoroughly musical, this little work is
strangely enough but little played. It is technically no harder than the
Op. 9 referred to, though it requires more intensity and stronger
contrasts in its treatment.
It is singular that a comparatively simple composition, of such
intrinsic merit, by one of the great composers, comprising, as it does,
so many attractive elements in such small compass, should be so little
used. Possibly, to those not acquainted with its subject, the closing
chords, with their sharp, almost painful contrast, and utter
dissimilarity to the preceding movement, have seemed incongruous and
unintelligible; but, when the theme and purpose of the whole are
understood, it is seen in what a masterly manner, and with what simple
material, Chopin has produced the most striking dramatic results.
The subject of this nocturne is the same as that of Robert Browning’s
later poem, “In a Gondola”; an episode to be found in the annals of
Venice, when, at the height of her pride and power, she was nominally a
republic, but from the large legislative body elected exclusively from
among the nobility, an inner, higher circle of forty was chosen, and
they, in turn, selected from their number, by secret ballot, the
mysterious, potent Council of Ten, gruesomely famous in history, who
wielded the real power of the State, often for the darkest personal
ends, the Doge being little more than a figure-head. Highest and most
dreaded of all was the Council of Three, chosen from their own number by
the Ten, by an ingenious system of secret ballot so perfect that only
those selected knew on whom the choice had fallen, and they did not know
each other’s identity. They met at night, in a secret chamber, in which
the three tables and three chairs, and even the blocks of marble in the
pavement of the floor were symbolically triangular. They entered at the
fixed hour, by three separate doors, disguised in black masks and long
black cloaks, conferred in whispers only, and their decrees, like those
of the Greek Fates, were inexorable and inevitable. Veiled and shielded
by mystery, they worked their awful will, from which there was no escape
and no appeal.
The story runs that once a beautiful and high-spirited heiress, the
daughter of a former Doge, and the special ward of the Council of Three,
as the disposal of her hand and fortune was an important State matter,
had the courage to brave their prohibition and secretly to welcome the
suit and return the love of a young, gallant, but fortuneless knight,
who risked his life to obtain their brief, stolen interviews, or to
breathe his love in subdued but heart-stirring melody beneath her
window. One night, when a great ball at the palace seemed to afford an
opportunity for her to escape unnoticed, he came disguised as a
gondolier, and for a few sweet moments they were alone together upon the
moonlit water.
The first theme of this nocturne suggests the scene in the gondola, with
its softly swaying motion as it feels the faint swell of the great sea’s
distant heart-throb, while the melodic phrases embody the tender mood of
the lovers as if in a sweet, low song. Browning expresses the mood in
his opening lines:
“I send my heart up to thee, all my heart,
In this my singing;
For the stars help me and the sea bears part;
The very night is clinging
Closer to Venice’s streets to leave one space
Above me, whence thy face
May light my joyous heart to thee, its dwelling-place.”
The second theme is somewhat more intense, though still subdued. It
tells of greater passion and also of deeper sadness, with an occasional
passing thrill of suppressed terror. Browning sings it:
“O which were best, to roam or rest?
The land’s lap or the water’s breast?
To sleep on yellow millet sheaves,
Or swim in lucid shadows, just
Eluding water-lily leaves.
An inch from Death’s black fingers, thrust
To lock you, whom release he must;
Which life were best on summer eves?”
To which the lady answers:
“Dip your arm o’er the boat-side, elbow deep,
As I do; thus; were death so unlike sleep,
Caught this way? Death’s to fear from flame or steel,
Or poison, doubtless; but from water—feel!”
The last measures of the lyric melody, full of lingering sweetness, are
like the parting kiss. Then suddenly, brutally, with the G major chord
against the crashing F’s in the bass, the voice of fate breaks the
tender spell. Death enters with swift, heart-crushing tread, and his icy
hand snatches his victim from the very arms of love; and the closing
chords, brief, but impressive, voice the shock, the cry of anguish, and
the swift sinking into black despair, which were the lady’s more bitter
share in the tragedy. For too soon the time had passed. Their brief
happiness had been saddened and softened to deeper, graver tenderness by
the knowledge of impending danger, by the ever-recurrent cloud like the
passing thought that Browning voices in the line:
“What if the Three should catch at last thy serenader?”
They must return or be detected. Reluctantly he guides the boat back to
the landing, and just in the moment of their farewell he is surprised,
overpowered, and stabbed to death by waiting assassins, dying in her
arms.
The closing of the nocturne as just described is, to my thinking, more
dramatic, more realistic, and far stronger than the last lines of
Browning’s poem:
“It was ordained to be so, sweet! and best
Comes now, beneath thine eyes, upon thy breast.
Still kiss me! Care not for the cowards! Care
Only to put aside thy beauteous hair
My blood will hurt! The Three I do not scorn
To death, because they never lived; but I
Have lived, indeed, and so (yet one more kiss) can die.”