François Frédéric Chopin, genius of music for the piano, was born in
Zelazowa Wola, Poland, on February 22, 1810. He began to study the piano
at six. One year later he made his first public appearance and wrote his
first piece of music. His later music study took place privately with
Joseph Elsner and at the Warsaw Conservatory from which he was graduated
with honors in 1829. In that year he visited Vienna where he gave two
successful concerts of his works. He left Poland for good in 1830,
settling permanently in Paris a year after that. He soon became one of
the most highly regarded musicians in France, even though he gave only a
few public concerts. In 1837 he first met the writer, George Sand, with
whom he was involved emotionally for about a decade, and under whose
influence he composed some of his greatest music. Always sensitive in
physique and of poor health, Chopin suffered physically most of his
adult life. He died in Paris on October 17, 1849 and was buried in Père
Lachaise.
Chopin produced 169 compositions in all. Practically all of them are for
the piano, and most within the smaller forms. In writing for the piano
he was an innovator who helped change the destiny of piano style and
technique. He is often described as the poet of the keyboard, by virtue
of his sensitive and deeply affecting lyricism (usually beautifully
ornamented), his always exquisite workmanship, and his profound emotion.
Many of his works are nationally Polish in expression.
The Etude in E major, op. 10, no. 3 (1833) is one of two of Chopin’s
most famous works in the etude form. While an etude is essentially a
technical exercise, Chopin produced twenty-seven pieces for piano which,
though they still probe various technical problems, are nevertheless so
filled with poetic thought and musical imagination that they belong in
the realm of great art and must be numbered with his most significant
compositions. That in E major is one of his most beautiful melodies, a
soulful song rather than a technical exercise; Chopin himself regarded
this as one of his most inspired pages. One of the many transcriptions
of this composition existing is for the voice.
The so-called _Revolutionary Etude_—C minor, op. 10, no. 12 (1833)—was
inspired by the tidings received by Chopin while he was traveling from
Vienna to Paris that Warsaw had fallen to the Russians. His first
impulse was to rush back home and join in the battle. He was dissuaded
from doing this by his family, and instead he sublimated his intense
patriotic feelings by writing a fiery piece of national music, full of
the spirit of defiance. Since then this etude has become as inextricably
associated with Poland and its national aspirations and ideals as, for
example, is Sibelius’ _Finlandia_ with Finland. This etude was
repeatedly played over the Polish radio when Nazi Germany first attacked
Poland in 1939, a continual inspiration to the defenders of Warsaw; it
was the last piece of music played over the Polish radio before the
Germans took over.
In the Fantaisie-Impromptu in C-sharp minor, op. 66 (1834), Chopin makes
a structural compromise between the forms of the fantasy and the
impromptu. In doing so, he produced one of his best known melodies, a
melody that appears after a fast bravura opening. This is a flowing
sentimental song that was used for the popular American tune, “I’m
Always Chasing Rainbows.”
The _Funeral March_ is surely the most celebrated funeral music ever
written. It is found as the third movement of the Sonata No. 2 in B-flat
minor, for piano, op. 35 (1839). In various arrangements, especially for
orchestra, for band and for organ, this music has accompanied the dead
to their final resting place in every part of the civilized world. In
three-part form, the first section consists of a slow, mournful march.
In the middle trio a more reflective mood is projected, almost like a
kind of gentle recollection of the dead and the good he had performed.
The opening mournful tread returns after this trio to bring the
composition to its conclusion.
The fifty-five Mazurkas are among the most national of Chopin’s
compositions, those in which he most fervently expressed his strong
feelings about his native land. The Mazurka is a Polish dance in ¾ time,
somewhat slower in tempo than the waltz, and highly varied in rhythm and
emotion. In Chopin’s Mazurkas we find, on the one hand, brief mood
pictures, and on the other, a fiery romantic temperament which expresses
itself in rapid and at times abrupt alternations of feeling from the gay
to the melancholy, from the energetic to the pensive. One of the most
beautiful of the Mazurkas is that in A minor, op. 17, no. 4 (1833), of
which Stokowski made an excellent orchestral arrangement. One of the
most dramatic is that in B-flat minor, op. 24, no. 4 (1835) orchestrated
by Stokowski, Auber, among others. Two other Chopin Mazurkas that have
been orchestrated are found in _Les Sylphides_ (see below): that in D
major, op. 33, no. 2 (1838) and C major, op. 67, no. 3 (1835).
Chopin wrote nineteen Nocturnes, each one a slow, poetic and atmospheric
piece of “night music.” “Chopin loved the night,” wrote James Gibbons
Huneker, “and its soft mysteries, and his nocturnes are true night
pieces, some with agitated, remorseful countenance, others seen in
profile only, while many others are whisperings at the dusk.” The most
celebrated of Chopin’s Nocturnes is that in E-flat major, op. 9, no. 2
(1833), truly a “whispering at the dusk.” This is a beautiful, romantic
song that begins without preliminaries. As this spacious melody unfolds,
it acquires even new facets of beauty through the most exquisite
embellishments. Among the many transcriptions that have become popular,
besides those for orchestra, is one for violin and piano by Pablo de
Sarasate, and another for cello and piano by David Popper.
There are two Chopin Polonaises that are particularly favored by
audiences everywhere. One is the _Heroic_, the other the _Military_.
Chopin was especially successful in endowing artistic dimensions and
significance to this old courtly folk dance which is technically
characterized by its syncopations and accents on the half beat. He wrote
twelve for piano. The _Heroic_, in A-flat major, op. 53, no. 6 (1842) is
fiery music, its first robust theme being the reason why the entire work
has been designated as “heroic.” This main melody was borrowed for the
American popular song, “Till the End of Time,” a big hit in 1945.
(Sigmund Spaeth has pointed up the interesting fact that while “Till the
End of Time” was at the head of the “Hit Parade” in 1945, the polonaise
itself from which this song was derived was in fifteenth place,
“competing with all the light and serious music of the world.” And one
of the reasons why the Polonaise suddenly became so popular was because
it was featured prominently in the screen biography of Chopin released
that year, _A Song to Remember_.) The _Military Polonaise_, in A major,
op. 40, no. 1 (1839) is one of Chopin’s most commanding pieces of music.
Both principal themes have a pronounced military character, though the
second is somewhat more subdued and lyrical than the first. Glazunov’s
transcription for orchestra, for the ballet _Chopiniana_, is one of
several adaptations.
Of Chopin’s twenty-six Preludes, two should be singled out for their
enormous popular appeal. Chopin’s Preludes are brief compositions
suggesting a mood or picture, but at the end leaving the impression with
the listener that much more could be spoken on that subject. These
Preludes, as Robert Schumann wrote, “are sketches, the beginnings of
studies, or, if you will, ruins; eagles’ pinions, wild and motley and
pell-mell. But in every piece we find, in his own pearly handwriting,
‘this is by Frederic Chopin’; even in his pauses we recognize him by his
agitated breathing.” There are twenty-four pieces in op. 28 (1839), each
one in one of the keys of the major or minor scale, beginning with C
major and A minor, and concluding with F major and D minor. The most
popular is that in A major, one of the shortest in the group, a
sixteen-bar melody in two short sentences; this is not only one of
Chopin’s simplest lyrical thoughts, but also one of his most eloquent.
Among the orchestral transcriptions is the one found in the ballet _Les
Sylphides_ (see below).
The second of Chopin’s most popular Preludes is the so-called
_Raindrop_, in D-flat major, op. 28, no. 15. Some of the depression
experienced by Chopin during a miserable stay in Majorca with George
Sand—where he was plagued by illness, bad weather, and the antagonism
and suspicions of his neighbors—can here be found. The melody is a
somber reflection, through which is interspersed a repetitious figure
that seems to suggest the rhythm of falling raindrops, the reason why
this piece acquired its familiar nickname. The belief that Chopin was
inspired to write this music by listening to the gentle sound of falling
rain on the roof of his Majorca house is apocryphal.
_Les Sylphides_, one of the most popular works in the classic ballet
repertory, makes extensive use of some of Chopin’s best-known
compositions for the piano, orchestrated by Stravinsky, Alexander
Tcherepnine, Glazunov, and Liadov. With choreography by Michel Fokine it
was first presented by Diaghilev’s Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo in Paris
on June 2, 1909 with Pavlova, Karsavina, and Nijinsky as principal
dancers. There is no story line to this ballet. In place of characters
there are only dancers dressed in long white dresses, and a danseur in
black and white velvet. In place of an actual plot there is only
atmosphere and mood. A subdued, introspective overture (Prelude in A
major, op. 28, no. 7) leads to the rise of the curtain on an ancient
ruin within a secluded wood. Girls in white are transfixed in a tableau;
then they begin dancing to the strains of the Nocturne in A-flat, op.
32, no. 2. After that come various dances to the following Chopin
compositions: Waltz in G-flat, op. 70, no. 1; Mazurka in C major, op.
67, no. 3; Mazurka in D major, op. 33, no. 2; a repetition of the
opening A major Prelude; Waltz in A-flat, op. 69, no. 1, the _L’adieu_;
a repetition of the opening A major Prelude; Waltz in C-sharp minor, op.
64, no. 2; Waltz in E-flat, op. 18, the _Grande valse brillante_.
Chopin’s fourteen waltzes are the last word in aristocratic elegance and
refinement of style; they are abundant with the most beguiling lyrical
ideas. Perhaps the best loved of all these waltzes is that in C-sharp
minor, op. 64, no. 2 (1847). The waltz opens without preliminaries with
music of courtly grace; two other equally appealing subjects follow. The
so-called _Minute Waltz_—in D-flat major, op. 64, no. 1—is one of the
shortest of Chopin’s compositions for the piano. The term “minute” does
not refer to the sixty seconds supposedly required for its performance
(actually that performance takes less than a minute) but to the French
term, “_minute_” meaning “small.”