pure serenity of the thought; secondly, the liquid perfection of the
verse. But when we turn to a melody of Beethoven, we find that here the
two aspects are inseparable: that the verse is the thought, that the
embodiment is the inspiration, and that it is virtually impossible to
formulate any test of the one which is not at the same time a test of
the other. The contrast will become still clearer if we take a poem in
which the two qualities are not both present. The epilogue in Browning's
_Asolando_, for example, can hardly be regarded as verse at all: but the
uncouthness which deprives it of any claim to the title of a classic, is
to most readers compensated by the spirit of sturdy courage that
animates it throughout. To this compensation there is no parallel in
Music. We may sometimes condone a fault in a melody otherwise
admirable--the second strain, for instance, in our ballad of 'The
Bailiff's Daughter'--but in so doing we set one portion of the form
against another; we do not set the form as a whole against some external
counterpart. In short, whatever can be said as to the conditions of
vitality in other arts, in Music, at least, it is true that a work is
great in proportion as its form is perfect.
This perfection of form was Chopin's ostensible ideal. No composer in
the whole history of Music has laboured with a more earnest anxiety at
accuracy of outline and artistic symmetry of detail. We have here 'no
clattering of dishes at a royal banquet,' no casual indolence of
accompaniment; no gap filled with unmeaning brilliance or idle
commonplace: every effect is studied with deliberate purpose, and
wrought to the highest degree of finish that it can bear. Of course, the
thoughts were conceived spontaneously; no man could have written the
poorest of Chopin's works by rule and measure: but before they were
deemed ready for presentation they were tried by every test, and
confronted with every alternative which a scrupulous ingenuity could
propose. It is no small commendation that workmanship so elaborate
should be beyond the reach of any imitator. As a rule, it is the
dashing, daring, impetuous pioneer in Art who distances all followers,
and finds himself, he hardly knows how, on a height that they can never
hope to attain: in this case the climber has planted every footstep with
a careful circumspection, he has employed all his prudence, all his
foresight, all his certain command of resource, and yet, at the end of
the ascent he stands alone. The reason for this is twofold: first, that
Chopin's intuition of style was a natural gift which few other
composers have possessed in an equal degree: second, that he brought
to its cultivation not only an untiring diligence, but a delicacy of
taste which is hardly ever at fault. His limitations are plain
and unmistakable. For the larger types of the art, for the broad
architectonic laws of structure on which they are based, he exhibited
an almost total disregard. His works in 'Sonata form,' and in the
forms cognate to the Sonata, are, with no exception, the failures
of a genius that has altogether overstepped its bounds. Of Choral
compositions, of Symphony, of Opera, he has not left us a single
example. But when all this has been admitted, it still remains true
that he is a great master, great in his exquisite sense of beauty, in
his almost unerring skill, and in the deliberate and reasoned audacity
with which he has extended the range of musical expression.
Like all modern composers of acknowledged rank, Chopin was strongly
influenced by the popular music of his native country. As a child, he
had been fond of collecting and studying the folk-songs which he heard
at harvest field or market or village festival; they supplied him with
his first models, and in some cases with his first themes as well. In
later life, their impression deepened rather than faded. He always
thought of himself as a national poet: 'I should like,' he told Hiller,
'to be to my people what Uhland is to the Germans.' No doubt the
external qualities of his music are entirely his own: the richness of
harmony, the complexity of figure, the delicate elaboration of
ornament; but the texture which these colour and adorn is essentially of
native growth and native substance. In a word, he made precisely the
right use of national materials, taking them as a basis, and developing
them into fuller beauty by the force and brilliance of his own personal
genius.
There are three chief ways in which this national influence affected his
work. In the first place, the popular music of Poland, unlike that of
Italy or Germany, is almost invariably founded on dance forms and dance
rhythms. Its gifts to the art of Europe are the Polonaise, the
Krakowiak, and the Mazurka: types which, however widely they may differ
in grade of social acceptance, are all essentially Polish in history and
character. The very ballads of the country have the same lilt and
cadence; they are primitive dances not yet differentiated from the use
of words. They move with recurrent figure, with exact balance of melodic
phrase, with that precise symmetry which is required by a 'Muse of the
many-twinkling feet.' And it is hardly necessary to point out that in
this respect Chopin is a true Pole. More than a quarter of his entire
composition is devoted ostensibly to dance forms; and throughout the
rest of it their effect may be traced in a hundred phrases and episodes.
Grant that his treatment of the rhythmic figures is very different from
the simple _naïvité_ of his models: we are here discussing not treatment
but conception, and in conception his indebtedness to his country is
incontestable. His Mazurkas, in short, bear somewhat the same relation
to the tunes of the peasantry as the songs of Robert Burns to those of
the forerunners whom he superseded.
A second point of resemblance is Chopin's habit of founding a whole
paragraph either on a single phrase repeated in similar shapes, or on
two phrases in alternation. By itself this practice is primitive almost
to barbarism, and its employment in many of the Polish folk-songs is a
serious depreciation of their artistic value. But when it is confined to
an episodical passage, especially in a composition founded on a striking
or important melody, it may serve as a very justifiable point of rest, a
background of which the interest is purposely toned down to provide a
more striking contrast with the central figure. Of its illegitimate use
a noticeable example may be found in the 'Spring Song,' which, it must
be remembered, Chopin never intended to publish: its true and right
employment will be seen in many of the Mazurkas--such, for instance,
as the first (in F sharp minor), the fifth (in B flat), and the
thirty-seventh (in A flat), which is, perhaps, the most beautiful of
all. In the longer works, which are the more varied in proportion to
their greater scale, we should hardly expect to find examples of a
mannerism which, by its very nature, stands at the opposite pole from
variation: but its influence may be noticed in the short, clear-cut
phrases and exact balance of such compositions as the Scherzo in C sharp
minor. No doubt much of this exactitude is due to an intense desire for
clearness and precision: yet none the less the particular way in which
that desire is satisfied may be regarded as characteristic of the
national manner. Beethoven does not attain the lucidity of his style by
such close parallelism of phraseology.
Thirdly, Chopin was to some extent affected by the tonality of his
native music. A large number of the Polish folk-songs are written, not
in our modern scale, but in one or other of the ecclesiastical modes:
notably the Lydian, which has its fourth note a semitone sharper, and
the Dorian, which has its third and seventh notes a semitone flatter
than the major scale of Western Europe. Some, again, end on what we
should call dominant harmony; a clear survival of the ecclesiastical
distinction between plagal and authentic. Of this tonal system, some
positive traces may be found in the Mazurkas, the cadences of the
thirteenth, seventeenth and twenty-fifth, the frequent use of a
sharpened subdominant, and the like; while on the negative side it may
perhaps account for Chopin's indifference to the requirements of
key-relationship. Not only in his efforts at Sonata form does he show
himself usually unable to hold together a complex scheme of keys, but in
works of a more loose structure his choice seems to be regulated rather
by hazard than by any preconceived plan. Sometimes, as in the end
of the F major Ballade, he deliberately strays away from a logical
conclusion;[42] sometimes, as in the sixth Nocturne, he forces himself
back with a sudden and inartistic violence; more often he allows his
modulations to carry him where they will, and is so intent on perfecting
each phrase and each melody that he has no regard left to bestow on the
general principles of construction. No doubt some of this weakness was
due to defective training, some, also, to the prevailing spirit and
temper of the Romantic movement. But, in Chopin's case, there was a
special reason beyond. As a Pole, he approached our western key system
from the outside, and although he learned its language with wonderful
skill and facility, he never wholly assimilated himself to the method of
thought which it implies.
It is quite possible that, in any case, Chopin would have found himself
incapable of dealing with large masses. The want of virility, which has
already been noted in his character, appears beyond question in his
music; leaving untouched all the grace and tenderness, all the rare and
precious qualities of workmanship, but relaxing into an almost
inevitable weakness at any crisis which demands sustained force or
tenacity. When he is at his strongest, we miss that sense of reserve
power, that quiet irresistible force, 'too full for sound or foam,'
which characterises the dignity of the noblest art. He can be
passionate, vehement, impetuous, but he expends himself in the effort.
He can express agitation, challenge, defiance, but he lacks the royal
magnanimity that will never stoop to defy. Even his melody is never
sublime, never at the highest level. Its more serious mood stands to the
great tunes of Beethoven as Leopardi stands to Dante, rising for a
moment on a few perfect lines to follow the master's flight, and then
sinking back to earth under some load of weariness or impatience.
Take, for instance, the B flat minor Sonata, in which Chopin most nearly
approximates to the 'grand manner' of composition. The first movement,
regarded by itself, is a masterpiece; its exposition clear and concise,
its subjects well contrasted, one for thematic treatment and one for
melody, its free fantasia an admirable example of an established type,
and its recapitulation, though a little too short for perfect balance, a
firm and lucid statement which sums up its results without a bar of
vagueness or uncertainty. Not less complete is the Scherzo, which
develops the simple forms of Mozart and Beethoven without obscuring
their outline, and, despite all its rush and vigour, never allows its
themes to get out of hand or to pass beyond the legitimate bounds of
control. But from this point the value of the Sonata steadily declines.
Schumann undoubtedly hits the blot when he declares that the great
Funeral March ought never to have formed part of the work at all. As a
separate piece it is of incomparable beauty; as the adagio of this
particular Sonata it is wholly out of place. Its key is ill selected in
relation to the rest of the composition; its contrasts of theme bear too
much resemblance to those of the first movement; worst of all, its form
is precisely the same as that of the Scherzo; and these objections, not
one of which affects the movement in itself, are no less than fatal to
it in its present context. The Finale, again, has neither the breadth
nor the dignity requisite for its position. Its structure, though
perfectly clear, is too simple and primitive to justify it as the
fitting conclusion of an important work; and its persistent rhythmic
figure gives it somewhat the air of an impromptu. If we had found it in
the Volume of _Preludes_, we should have felt for it nothing but
admiration; here, its inadequacy is so obvious that the greater part of
critical attention has been distracted from its undeniable merits. In
short, the first half of the Sonata gives promise of a Classic such as,
with one exception, the world had not seen since the death of Beethoven;
the second half, though almost every bar contains something that is
beautiful, is a disappointment and a failure. Icarus has flown too near
the sun, and the borrowed wings have no longer the strength to support
him.
This want of manliness, moral and intellectual, marks the one great
limitation of Chopin's province. It is, of course, wholly unreasonable
to make it a subject of complaint; we might as well complain of Keats
for not being Milton; or depreciate Carpaccio because the genius of
Titian has the wider expanse. The lines of _Endymion_ are not less
musical because the poem, as a whole, falls below the epic level, and if
they were, we have 'La Belle Dame sans Merci,' and the Sonnets and the
five Odes. The Saint Ursula pictures are not less sweet and gracious
because they lack the majesty of the 'Assumption;' and if they were, we
could solace ourselves with the 'St George' and the 'St Jerome.' And
similarly, if we accept from Chopin what he has to give, we shall be in
no mind to bear malice for what he is forced to withhold. His passion is
so keen and vital, his melody so winning, his love of beauty so
single-hearted, that to demand the sterner qualities is almost an act of
ingratitude. He knows the full secret of that mysterious power--so easy
to feel, so impossible to define--through which music fulfils its
function of suggesting and typifying emotion. He can appeal to our
sensuous nature with a mastery which is almost irresistible, and he
never degrades the appeal into vulgarity or sensationalism. Under his
spell even the display of technical difficulty acquires life and
significance. His Studies, avowedly classed as exercises of dexterity,
stand to those of other writers as pictures to freehand drawing. His
'virtuoso passages' differ from those of Herz, and Hunten, and even
Thalberg, as a pianoforte differs from a barrel-organ. In his lightest
moment he is a poet: graceful in fancy, felicitous in expression, and
instinct with the living spirit of romance.
There is hardly need to select examples of a gift which he exhibits on
almost every page, yet a few typical instances may serve to concentrate
our attention for a moment on the characteristic features of his melody,
and to show the particular way in which he fulfilled the first requisite
of a composer. Apart from works already considered, some special study
may be given to the two Nocturnes, Op. 37, to the Ballade in A flat, to
the second and third Impromptus, to the wonderful Étude in F minor,
written for Moscheles, and to the fourth, eighth, fifteenth, nineteenth
and twenty-third of the Preludes. These compositions are chosen, not
because they are more tuneful than the rest--that is a question upon
which every hearer must consult his own judgment--but because their
elements of tunefulness seem to be in an eminent degree central and
representative. No doubt many favourites will be found missing from the
catalogue, the Prelude in C minor, the Nocturne in D flat, the more
famous of the Waltzes and Polonaises; they have been purposely omitted,
because, with all their beauty, they only contain tendencies of thought
and manner which the list already exemplifies. As a rule, except for
an occasional _appoggiatura_, Chopin keeps his melody within the
strict limits of the diatonic scale, or of some equally diatonic
ecclesiastical mode, and uses his chromatic effects sometimes for the
accompaniment figure, sometimes for the subsequent thematic treatment.
His tunes, for the most part, are as simple in outline as folk-songs,
and the moods which they imply, whether melancholy, tender, playful or
passionate, are an outcome of the more direct personal emotions.
Sometimes his thought is as transparent as that of a child, and appeals
to our sympathy with all a child's unquestioning and irresistible
confidence. Sometimes he strikes a deeper note with a no less frank,
outspoken freedom of disclosure. And always, whether severe or vehement,
whether gay or dejected, he offers for our admiration the same
perfection of curve, the same delicate balance of rhythm, and the same
plasticity of melodic stanza.
There are two characteristics in Chopin's music which deserve some
detailed consideration,--first, his sense of harmony; second, his use of
accompaniment figures. No doubt, as standpoints for general criticism,
they are not of parallel importance; the one implies a habit of mind as
a whole, the other denotes a degree of technical skill and technical
efficiency. But in both respects Chopin occupies a position so far apart
from that of other composers--in both his manner is so original, so
unique, so far removed from common or customary ways--that in his work
they assume an almost equal value and interest. Again, in estimating
their worth, we are dealing with a more definite and concrete material
than when we endeavour to outline with words the impalpable spirit of
melody. The tunes of a musician, though they constitute the chief part
of his gift, constitute also that part which least admits of any
profitable discussion; and the very qualities, through which alone they
are susceptible of analysis, can be more easily noted and appraised in
the secondary functions of treatment and elaboration. We cannot gauge
the success of an effort unless we have already ascertained its
intention; and the intention, though not always obscure in melody, is
undoubtedly clearer to trace in the polyphonic scheme by which melody is
supported and sustained.
Now, when we examine Chopin's harmony, we are at once struck with an
apparent contradiction. We feel that, in its broader aspects, it is
wonderfully pure and lucid, flowing along an established course,
deviating but little from the simpler and more ordinary progressions.
Yet every now and again we come across passages, the sight of which is
enough to make orthodox professors of music 'stare and gasp;'--passages
which seem to break with resolute and unflinching defiance the
elementary rules that stand at the beginning of our text-books. Worst of
all, these apparent solecisms, the commission of which by any other hand
would be wholly intolerable, offer themselves to our notice as though
they were the most natural and regular forms of expression. They are not
obvious slips, like the 'misprint' in the Ninth Symphony; they are not
importations from some alien musical language, like the occasional
extravagances of Grieg or Dvořák; on the contrary, they take our
recognised system of harmonic laws, and literally honour it more in the
breach than the observance. Are consecutive fifths and octaves
forbidden? There is, in one of the Études, a delightful passage, which
consists exclusively of the prohibited intervals.[43] Are consecutive
major thirds justly regarded as harsh and dissonant? Chopin, at his
dreamiest and most contemplative, can employ them with unfailing
effect.[44] Is the dominant seventh a chord which, to all well-regulated
ears, demands instant resolution? The twenty-first Mazurka rejects the
claim, and sends one floating down four bars of chromatic scale with no
hope of rest until it reaches the bottom. And the manner of composition
which these instances exemplify can be traced in plenty of other
phrases, less extreme, perhaps, but not less audacious. In parts of the
fourth and sixth Nocturnes we can find harmonic schemes which it is
probable no other musician would have ever dared to devise, schemes
which set at naught our established distinctions of concord and discord,
which display in unbroken series artifices that are usually kept for
single isolated points of excitement, and which, nevertheless, are as
undoubtedly intentional as they are undeniably successful in their aim.
There is no shirking the difficulty. Here is a composer who is brought
up on Bach, and whose general sense of harmony is as pure and sincere as
that of his great master. Here are passages, written by him with obvious
care and deliberation, the acceptance of which would seem impossible
without throwing discredit on the harmonic code. And, as climax of
bewilderment, the code is right and the passages are beautiful. It may
certainly appear for the moment as though there were no solution in view
unless we take a despairing refuge in some Hegelian identification of
opposites.
Now, the impression which harmony produces is that of a third dimension
in Music. It is the element of solidity and substance on which the
melody rests. In a Chorale, for instance, the tune describes a sort of
pattern on the superficies of the work, and the chords sustain and
support it from underneath. And just as certain tunes can give us the
effect of breadth, that is, of wide sweep over their superficial area,
so certain harmonisations give us the effect of massiveness, that is, of
strength and bulk in its substratum. It is not, of course, pretended
that the artistic value of a composition can be summed up in so crude a
metaphor: nothing more is attempted than to represent the one factor in
the case, which is germane to the present purpose. Further, all the
harmonic rules have been devised with a view to making the solid body of
the Music as firm and compact as possible. They deal with the
substratum, not with the superficies; with the perpendicular aspect, not
with the horizontal. The law of consecutives is not held to be broken if
in an orchestral piece a violin phrase is doubled by the violoncello or
the bassoon: such a device gives us the lines of the pattern in
duplicate, and lies altogether outside the material on which the pattern
is superimposed. So in these disputed passages of Chopin. They are not
really harmonic at all, they lie in the same plane as the melody, and,
for their support, imply a separate and distinct scheme of chords, which
the ear can always understand for itself.
A few examples may help to make this clearer. In the twelfth bar of the
well-known Nocturne in E flat (Op. 9, No. 2), there is a connecting
passage which, when we see it on paper, seems to consist of a rapid
series of remote and recondite modulations. When we hear it played in
the manner which Chopin intended, we feel that there is only one real
modulation, and that the rest of the passage is an iridescent play of
colour, an effect of superficies, not an effect of substance. Precisely
the same impression is produced in the middle section of the sixth
Nocturne, and in the return to the opening theme at the end of the
fifteenth. So it is with these apparent consecutives. They are not
ungrammatical, because, like the Emperor Sigismund, they are 'supra
grammaticam:' they do not defy harmonic laws because they belong to a
different jurisdiction: in a word, they are to be treated not as
harmonisations of their theme, but rather as new forms of melodic
extension. Their real harmony is implied, not expressed: a construction
to be understood from the general context and tenour of the passage: and
it is because the general tenour is unmistakable that these 'sense
constructions' are fully justified. Chopin's harmonic system, in short,
is like a river--its surface windswept into a thousand variable crests
and eddies, its current moving onward, full, steadfast and inevitable,
bearing the whole volume of its waters by sheer force of depth and
impetus.