of Chopin's visit to Scotland in 1848. The tone-poet was in the poorest
health, but with characteristic tenacity played at concerts and paid
visits to his admirers. Mr. Hadden found the following notice in the
back files of the Glasgow "Courier":
Monsieur Chopin has the honour to announce that his matinee
musicale will take place on Wednesday, the 27th September, in
the Merchant Hall, Glasgow. To commence at half-past two
o'clock. Tickets, limited in number, half-a-guinea each, and
full particulars to be had from Mr. Muir Wood, 42, Buchanan
street.
He continues:
The net profits of this concert are said to have been exactly
L60--a ridiculously low sum when we compare it with the
earnings of later day virtuosi; nay, still more ridiculously
low when we recall the circumstance that for two concerts in
Glasgow sixteen years before this Paganini had L 1,400. Muir
Wood, who has since died, said: "I was then a comparative
stranger in Glasgow, but I was told that so many private
carriages had never been seen at any concert in the town. In
fact, it was the county people who turned out, with a few of
the elite of Glasgow society. Being a morning concert, the
citizens were busy otherwise, and half a guinea was considered
too high a sum for their wives and daughters."
The late Dr. James Hedderwick, of Glasgow, tells in his
reminiscences that on entering the hall he found it about one-third
full. It was obvious that a number of the audience were
personal friends of Chopin. Dr. Hedderwick recognized the
composer at once as "a little, fragile-looking man, in pale
gray suit, including frock coat of identical tint and texture,
moving about among the company, conversing with different
groups, and occasionally consulting his watch," which seemed
to be "no bigger than an agate stone on the forefinger of an
alderman." Whiskerless, beardless, fair of hair, and pale and
thin of face, his appearance was "interesting and
conspicuous," and when, "after a final glance at his miniature
horologe, he ascended the platform and placed himself at the
instrument, he at once commanded attention." Dr. Hedderwick
says it was a drawing-room entertainment, more piano than
forte, though not without occasional episodes of both strength
and grandeur. It was perfectly clear to him that Chopin was
marked for an early grave.
So far as can be ascertained, there are now living only two
members of that Glasgow audience of 1848. One of the two is
Julius Seligmann, the veteran president of the Glasgow Society
of Musicians, who, in response to some inquiries on the
subject, writes as follows:
"Several weeks before the concert Chopin lived with different
friends or pupils on their invitations, in the surrounding
counties. I think his pupil Miss Jane Stirling had something
to do with all the general arrangements. Muir Wood managed the
special arrangements of the concert, and I distinctly remember
him telling me that he never had so much difficulty in
arranging a concert as on this occasion. Chopin constantly
changed his mind. Wood had to visit him several times at the
house of Admiral Napier, at Milliken Park, near Johnstone, but
scarcely had he returned to Glasgow when he was summoned back
to alter something. The concert was given in the Merchant
Hall, Hutcheson street, now the County Buildings. The hall was
about three-quarters filled. Between Chopin's playing Madame
Adelasio de Margueritte, daughter of a well-known London
physician, sang, and Mr. Muir accompanied her. Chopin was
evidently very ill. His touch was very feeble, and while the
finish, grace, elegance and delicacy of his performances were
greatly admired by the audience, the want of power made his
playing somewhat monotonous. I do not remember the whole
programme, but he was encored for his well-known mazurka in B
flat (op. 7, No. 1), which he repeated with quite different
nuances from those of the first time. The audience was very
aristocratic, consisting mostly of ladies, among whom were the
then Duchess of Argyll and her sister, Lady Blantyre."
The other survivor is George Russell Alexander, son of the
proprietor of the Theatre Royal, Dunlop street, who in a
letter to the writer remarks especially upon Chopin's pale,
cadaverous appearance. "My emotion," he says, "was so great
that two or three times I was compelled to retire from the
room to recover myself. I have heard all the best and most
celebrated stars of the musical firmament, but never one has
left such an impress on my mind."
Chopin played October 4 in Edinburgh, and returned to London in
November after various visits. We read of a Polish ball and concert at
which he played, but the affair was not a success. He left England in
January 1849 and heartily glad he was to go. "Do you see the cattle in
this meadow?" he asked, en route for Paris: "Ca a plus d'intelligence
que des Anglais," which was not nice of him. Perhaps M. Niedzwiecki, to
whom he made the remark took as earnest a pure bit of nonsense, and
perhaps--! He certainly disliked England and the English.
Now the curtain prepares to fall on the last dreary finale of Chopin's
life, a life not for a moment heroic, yet lived according to his lights
and free from the sordid and the soil of vulgarity. Jules Janin said:
"He lived ten miraculous years with a breath ready to fly away," and we
know that his servant Daniel had always to carry him to bed. For ten
years he had suffered from so much illness that a relapse was not
noticed by the world. His very death was at first received with
incredulity, for, as Stephen Heller said, he had been reported dead so
often that the real news was doubted. In 1847 his legs began to bother
him by swelling, and M. Mathias described him as "a painful spectacle,
the picture of exhaustion, the back bent, head bowed--but always
amiable and full of distinction." His purse was empty, and his lodgings
in the Rue Chaillot were represented to the proud man as being just
half their cost,--the balance being paid by the Countess Obreskoff, a
Russian lady. Like a romance is the sending, by Miss Stirling, of
twenty-five thousand francs, but it is nevertheless true. The
noble-hearted Scotchwoman heard of Chopin's needs through Madame Rubio,
a pupil, and the money was raised. That packet containing it was
mislaid or lost by the portress of Chopin's house, but found after the
woman had been taxed with keeping it.
Chopin, his future assured, moved to Place Vendome, No. 12. There he
died. His sister Louise was sent for, and came from Poland to Paris. In
the early days of October he could no longer sit upright without
support. Gutmann and the Countess Delphine Potocka, his sister, and M.
Gavard, were constantly with him. It was Turgenev who spoke of the half
hundred countesses in Europe who claimed to have held the dying Chopin
in their arms. In reality he died in Gutmann's, raising that pupil's
hand to his mouth and murmuring "cher ami" as he expired. Solange Sand
was there, but not her mother, who called and was not admitted--so they
say. Gutmann denies having refused her admittance. On the other hand,
if she had called, Chopin's friends would have kept her away from him,
from the man who told Franchomme two days before his death, "She said
to me that I would die in no arms but hers." Surely--unless she was
monstrous in her egotism, and she was not--George Sand did not hear
this sad speech without tears and boundless regrets. Alas! all things
come too late for those who wait.
Tarnowski relates that Chopin gave his last orders in perfect
consciousness. He begged his sister to burn all his inferior
compositions. "I owe it to the public," he said, "and to myself to
publish only good things. I kept to this resolution all my life; I wish
to keep to it now." This wish has not been respected. The posthumous
publications are for the most part feeble stuff.
Chopin died, October 17, 1849, between three and four in the morning,
after having been shrived by the Abbe Jelowicki. His last word,
according to Gavard, was "Plus," on being asked if he suffered.
Regarding the touching and slightly melodramatic death bed scene on the
day previous, when Delphine Potocka sang Stradella and Mozart--or was
it Marcello?--Liszt, Karasowski, and Gutmann disagree.
The following authentic account of the last hours of Chopin appears
here for the first time in English, translated by Mr. Hugh Craig. In
Liszt's well-known work on Chopin, second edition, 1879, mention is
made of a conversation that he had held with the Abbe Jelowicki
respecting Chopin's death; and in Niecks' biography of Chopin some
sentences from letters by the Abbe are quoted. These letters, written
in French, have been translated and published in the "Allgemeine Musik
Zeitung," to which they were given by the Princess Marie Hohenlohe, the
daughter of Princess Caroline Sayn Wittgenstein, Liszt's universal
legatee and executor, who died in 1887.
For many years [so runs the document] the life of Chopin was
but a breath. His frail, weak body was visibly unfitted for
the strength and force of his genius. It was a wonder how in
such a weak state, he could live at all, and occasionally act
with the greatest energy. His body was almost diaphanous; his
eyes were almost shadowed by a cloud from which, from time to
time, the lightnings of his glance flashed. Gentle, kind,
bubbling with humor, and every way charming, he seemed no
longer to belong to earth, while, unfortunately, he had not
yet thought of heaven. He had good friends, but many bad
friends. These bad friends were his flatterers, that is, his
enemies, men and women without principles, or rather with bad
principles. Even his unrivalled success, so much more subtle
and thus so much more stimulating than that of all other
artists, carried the war into his soul and checked the
expression of faith and of prayer. The teachings of the
fondest, most pious mother became to him a recollection of his
childhood's love. In the place of faith, doubt had stepped in,
and only that decency innate in every generous heart hindered
him from indulging in sarcasm and mockery over holy things and
the consolations of religion.
While he was in this spiritual condition he was attacked by
the pulmonary disease that was soon to carry him away from us.
The knowledge of this cruel sickness reached me on my return
from Rome. With beating heart I hurried to him, to see once
more the friend of my youth, whose soul was infinitely dearer
to me than all his talent. I found him, not thinner, for that
was impossible, but weaker. His strength sank, his life faded
visibly. He embraced me with affection and with tears in his
eyes, thinking not of his own pain but of mine; he spoke of my
poor friend Eduard Worte, whom I had just lost, you know how.
(He was shot, a martyr of liberty, at Vienna, November 10,
1848.)
I availed myself of his softened mood to speak to him about
his soul. I recalled his thoughts to the piety of his
childhood and of his beloved mother. "Yes," he said, "in order
not to offend my mother I would not die without the
sacraments, but for my part I do not regard them in the sense
that you desire. I understand the blessing of confession in so
far as it is the unburdening of a heavy heart into a friendly
hand, but not as a sacrament. I am ready to confess to you if
you wish it, because I love you, not because I hold it
necessary." Enough: a crowd of anti-religious speeches filled
me with terror and care for this elect soul, and I feared
nothing more than to be called to be his confessor.
Several months passed with similar conversations, so painful
to me, the priest and the sincere friend. Yet I clung to the
conviction that the grace of God would obtain the victory over
this rebellious soul, even if I knew not how. After all my
exertions, prayer remained my only refuge.
On the evening of October 12 I had with my brethren retired to
pray for a change in Chopin's mind, when I was summoned by
orders of the physician, in fear that he would not live
through the night. I hastened to him. He pressed my hand, but
bade me at once to depart, while he assured me he loved me
much, but did not wish to speak to me.
Imagine, if you can, what a night I passed! Next day was the
13th, the day of St. Edward, the patron of my poor brother. I
said mass for the repose of his soul and prayed for Chopin's
soul. "My God," I cried, "if the soul of my brother Edward is
pleasing to thee, give me, this day, the soul of Frederic."
In double distress I then went to the melancholy abode of our
poor sick man.
I found him at breakfast, which was served as carefully as
ever, and after he had asked me to partake I said: "My friend,
today is the name day of my poor brother." "Oh, do not let us
speak of it!" he cried. "Dearest friend," I continued, "you
must give me something for my brother's name day." "What shall
I give you?" "Your soul." "Ah! I understand. Here it is; take
it!"
At these words unspeakable joy and anguish seized me. What
should I say to him? What should I do to restore his faith,
how not to lose instead of saving this beloved soul? How
should I begin to bring it back to God? I flung myself on my
knees, and after a moment of collecting my thoughts I cried in
the depths of my heart, "Draw it to Thee, Thyself, my God!"
Without saying a word I held out to our dear invalid the
crucifix. Rays of divine light, flames of divine fire,
streamed, I might say, visibly from the figure of the
crucified Saviour, and at once illumined the soul and kindled
the heart of Chopin. Burning tears streamed from his eyes. His
faith was once more revived, and with unspeakable fervor he
made his confession and received the Holy Supper. After the
blessed Viaticum, penetrated by the heavenly consecration
which the sacraments pour forth on pious souls, he asked for
Extreme Unction. He wished to pay lavishly the sacristan who
accompanied me, and when I remarked that the sum presented by
him was twenty times too much he replied, "Oh, no, for what I
have received is beyond price."
From this hour he was a saint. The death struggle began and
lasted four days. Patience, trust in God, even joyful
confidence, never left him, in spite of all his sufferings,
till the last breath. He was really happy, and called himself
happy. In the midst of the sharpest sufferings he expressed
only ecstatic joy, touching love of God, thankfulness that I
had led him back to God, contempt of the world and its good,
and a wish for a speedy death.
He blessed his friends, and when, after an apparently last
crisis, he saw himself surrounded by the crowd that day and
night filled his chamber, he asked me, "Why do they not pray?"
At these words all fell on their knees, and even the
Protestants joined in the litanies and prayers for the dying.
Day and night he held my hand, and would not let me leave him.
"No, you will not leave me at the last moment," he said, and
leaned on my breast as a little child in a moment of danger
hides itself in its mother's breast.
Soon he called upon Jesus and Mary, with a fervor that reached
to heaven; soon he kissed the crucifix in an excess of faith,
hope and love. He made the most touching utterances. "I love
God and man," he said. "I am happy so to die; do not weep, my
sister. My friends, do not weep. I am happy. I feel that I am
dying. Farewell, pray for me!"
Exhausted by deathly convulsions he said to the physicians,
"Let me die. Do not keep me longer in this world of exile. Let
me die; why do you prolong my life when I have renounced all
things and God has enlightened my soul? God calls me; why do
you keep me back?"
Another time he said, "O lovely science, that only lets one
suffer longer! Could it give me back my strength, qualify me
to do any good, to make any sacrifice--but a life of fainting,
of grief, of pain to all who love me, to prolong such a life--
O lovely science!"
Then he said again: "You let me suffer cruelly. Perhaps you
have erred about my sickness. But God errs not. He punishes
me, and I bless him therefor. Oh, how good is God to punish me
here below! Oh, how good God is!"
His usual language was always elegant, with well chosen words,
but at last to express all his thankfulness and, at the same
time, all the misery of those who die unreconciled to God, he
cried, "Without you I should have croaked (krepiren) like a
pig."
While dying he still called on the names of Jesus, Mary,
Joseph, kissed the crucifix and pressed it to his heart with
the cry "Now I am at the source of Blessedness!"
Thus died Chopin, and in truth, his death was the most
beautiful concerto of all his life.
The worthy abbe must have had a phenomenal memory. I hope that it was
an exact one. His story is given in its entirety because of its
novelty. The only thing that makes me feel in the least sceptical is
that La Mara,--the pen name of a writer on musical
subjects,--translated these letters into German. But every one agrees
that Chopin's end was serene; indeed it is one of the musical
death-beds of history, another was Mozart's. His face was beautiful and
young in the flower-covered coffin, says Liszt. He was buried from the
Madeleine, October 30, with the ceremony befitting a man of genius. The
B flat minor Funeral march, orchestrated by Henri Reber, was given, and
during the ceremony Lefebure-Wely played on the organ the E and B minor
Preludes. The pall-bearers were distinguished men, Meyerbeer,
Delacroix, Pleyel and Franchomme--at least Theophile Gautier so
reported it for his journal. Even at his grave in Pere la Chaise no two
persons could agree about Chopin. This controversy is quite
characteristic of Chopin who was always the calm centre of argument.
He was buried in evening clothes, his concert dress, but not at his own
request. Kwiatowski the portrait painter told this to Niecks. It is a
Polish custom for the dying to select their grave clothes, yet Lombroso
writes that Chopin "in his will directed that he should be buried in a
white tie, small shoes and short breeches," adducing this as an
evidence of his insanity. He further adds "he abandoned the woman whom
he tenderly loved because she offered a chair to some one else before
giving the same invitation to himself." Here we have a Sand story
raised to the dignity of a diagnosed symptom. It is like the other
nonsense.
IV. THE ARTIST
Chopin's personality was a pleasant, persuasive one without being so
striking or so dramatic as Liszt's. As a youth his nose was too large,
his lips thin, the lower one protruding. Later, Moscheles said that he
looked like his music. Delicacy and a certain aristrocratic bearing, a
harmonious ensemble, produced a most agreeable sensation. "He was of
slim frame, middle height; fragile but wonderfully flexible limbs,
delicately formed hands, very small feet, an oval, softly outlined
head, a pale transparent complexion, long silken hair of a light
chestnut color, parted on one side, tender brown eyes, intelligent
rather than dreamy, a finely-curved aquiline nose, a sweet subtle
smile, graceful and varied gestures." This precise description is by
Niecks. Liszt said he had blue eyes, but he has been overruled. Chopin
was fond of elegant, costly attire, and was very correct in the matter
of studs, walking sticks and cravats. Not the ideal musician we read
of, but a gentleman. Berlioz told Legouve to see Chopin, "for he is
something which you have never seen--and some one you will never
forget." An orchidaceous individuality this.
With such personal refinement he was a man punctual and precise in his
habits. Associating constantly with fashionable folk his naturally
dignified behavior was increased. He was an aristocrat--there is no
other word--and he did not care to be hail-fellow-well-met with the
musicians. A certain primness and asperity did not make him popular.
While teaching, his manner warmed, the earnest artist came to life, all
halting of speech and polite insincerities were abandoned. His pupils
adored him. Here at least the sentiment was one of solidarity. De Lenz
is his most censorious critic and did not really love Chopin. The
dislike was returned, for the Pole suspected that his pupil was sent by
Liszt to spy on his methods. This I heard in Paris.
Chopin was a remarkable teacher. He never taught but one genius, little
Filtsch, the Hungarian lad of whom Liszt said, "When he starts playing
I will shut up shop." The boy died in 1845, aged fifteen; Paul
Gunsberg, who died the same year, was also very talented. Once after
delivering in a lovely way the master's E minor concerto Filtsch was
taken by Chopin to a music store and presented with the score of
Beethoven's "Fidelio." He was much affected by the talents of this
youthful pupil. Lindsay Sloper and Brinley Richards studied with
Chopin. Caroline Hartmann, Gutmann, Lysberg, Georges Mathias, Mlle.
O'Meara, many Polish ladies of rank, Delphine Potocka among the rest,
Madame Streicher, Carl Mikuli, Madame Rubio, Madame Peruzzi, Thomas
Tellefsen, Casimir Wernik, Gustav Schumann, Werner Steinbrecher, and
many others became excellent pianists. Was the American pianist, Louis
Moreau Gottschalk, ever his pupil? His friends say so, but Niecks does
not mention him. Ernst Pauer questions it. We know that Gottschalk
studied in Paris with Camille Stamaty, and made his first appearance
there in 1847. This was shortly before Chopin's death when his interest
in music had abated greatly. No doubt Gottschalk played for Chopin for
he was the first to introduce the Pole's music in America.
Chopin was very particular about the formation of the touch, giving
Clementi's Preludes at first. "Is that a dog barking?" was his sudden
exclamation at a rough attack. He taught the scales staccato and legato
beginning with E major. Ductility, ease, gracefulness were his aim;
stiffness, harshness annoyed him. He gave Clementi, Moscheles and Bach.
Before playing in concert he shut himself up and played, not Chopin but
Bach, always Bach. Absolute finger independence and touch
discrimination and color are to be gained by playing the preludes and
fugues of Bach. Chopin started a method but it was never finished and
his sister gave it to the Princess Czartoryska after his death. It is a
mere fragment. Janotha has translated it. One point is worth quoting.
He wrote:
No one notices inequality in the power of the notes of a scale
when it is played very fast and equally, as regards time. In a
good mechanism the aim is not to play everything with an equal
sound, but to acquire a beautiful quality of touch and a
perfect shading. For a long time players have acted against
nature in seeking to give equal power to each finger. On the
contrary, each finger should have an appropriate part assigned
it. The thumb has the greatest power, being the thickest
finger and the freest. Then comes the little finger, at the
other extremity of the hand. The middle finger is the main
support of the hand, and is assisted by the first. Finally
comes the third, the weakest one. As to this Siamese twin of
the middle finger, some players try to force it with all their
might to become independent. A thing impossible, and most
likely unnecessary. There are, then, many different qualities
of sound, just as there are several fingers. The point is to
utilize the differences; and this, in other words, is the art
of fingering.
Here, it seems to me, is one of the most practical truths ever uttered
by a teacher. Pianists spend thousands of hours trying to subjugate
impossible muscles. Chopin, who found out most things for himself, saw
the waste of time and force. I recommend his advice. He was ever
particular about fingering, but his innovations horrified the purists.
"Play as you feel," was his motto, a rather dangerous precept for
beginners. He gave to his pupils the concertos and sonatas--all
carefully graded--of Mozart, Scarlatti, Field, Dussek, Hummel,
Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Weber and Hiller and, of Schubert, the
four-hand pieces and dances. Liszt he did not favor, which is natural,
Liszt having written nothing but brilliant paraphrases in those days.
The music of the later Liszt is quite another thing. Chopin's genius
for the pedal, his utilization of its capacity for the vibration of
related strings, the overtones, I refer to later. Rubinstein said:
The piano bard, the piano rhapsodist, the piano mind, the
piano soul is Chopin. ... Tragic, romantic, lyric, heroic,
dramatic, fantastic, soulful, sweet, dreamy, brilliant, grand,
simple; all possible expressions are found in his compositions
and all are sung by him upon his instrument.
Chopin is dead only fifty years, but his fame has traversed the half
century with ease, and bids fair to build securely in the loves of our
great-grandchildren. The six letters that comprise his name pursue
every piano that is made. Chopin and modern piano playing are
inseparable, and it is a strain upon homely prophecy to predict a time
when the two shall be put asunder. Chopin was the greatest interpreter
of Chopin, and following him came those giants of other days, Liszt,
Tausig, and Rubinstein.
While he never had the pupils to mould as had Liszt, Chopin made some
excellent piano artists. They all had, or have--the old guard dies
bravely--his tradition, but exactly what the Chopin tradition is no man
may dare to say. Anton Rubinstein, when I last heard him, played Chopin
inimitably. Never shall I forget the Ballades, the two Polonaises in F
sharp minor and A flat major, the B flat minor Prelude, the A minor
"Winter Wind" the two C minor studies, and the F minor Fantasie. Yet
the Chopin pupils, assembled in judgment at Paris when he gave his
Historical Recitals, refused to accept him as an interpreter. His touch
was too rich and full, his tone too big. Chopin did not care for
Liszt's reading of his music, though he trembled when he heard him
thunder in the Eroica Polonaise. I doubt if even Karl Tausig,
impeccable artist, unapproachable Chopin player, would have pleased the
composer. Chopin played as his moods prompted, and his playing was the
despair and delight of his hearers. Rubinstein did all sorts of
wonderful things with the coda of the Barcarolle--such a page!--but Sir
Charles Halle said that it was "clever but not Chopinesque." Yet Halle
heard Chopin at his last Paris concert, February, 1848, play the two
forte passages in the Barcarolle "pianissimo and with all sorts of
dynamic finesse." This is precisely what Rubinstein did, and his
pianissimo was a whisper. Von Bulow was too much of a martinet to
reveal the poetic quality, though he appreciated Chopin on the
intellectual side; his touch was not beautiful enough. The Slavic and
Magyar races are your only true Chopin interpreters. Witness Liszt the
magnificent, Rubinstein a passionate genius, Tausig who united in his
person all the elements of greatness, Essipowa fascinating and
feminine, the poetic Paderewski, de Pachmann the fantastic, subtle
Joseffy, and Rosenthal a phenomenon.
A world-great pianist was this Frederic Francois Chopin. He played as
he composed: uniquely. All testimony is emphatic as to this. Scales
that were pearls, a touch rich, sweet, supple and singing and a
technique that knew no difficulties, these were part of Chopin's
equipment as a pianist. He spiritualized the timbre of his instrument
until it became transformed into something strange, something remote
from its original nature. His pianissimo was an enchanting whisper, his
forte seemed powerful by contrast so numberless were the gradations, so
widely varied his dynamics. The fairylike quality of his play, his
diaphanous harmonies, his liquid tone, his pedalling--all were the work
of a genius and a lifetime; and the appealing humanity he infused into
his touch, gave his listeners a delight that bordered on the
supernatural. So the accounts, critical, professional and personal
read. There must have been a hypnotic quality in his performances that
transported his audience wherever the poet willed. Indeed the stories
told wear an air of enthusiasm that borders on the exaggerated, on the
fantastic. Crystalline pearls falling on red hot velvet-or did Scudo
write this of Liszt?--infinite nuance and the mingling of silvery
bells,--these are a few of the least exuberant notices. Was it not
Heine who called "Thalberg a king, Liszt a prophet, Chopin a poet, Herz
an advocate, Kalkbrenner a minstrel, Madame Pleyel a sibyl, and
Doehler--a pianist"? The limpidity, the smoothness and ease of Chopin's
playing were, after all, on the physical plane. It was the poetic
melancholy, the grandeur, above all the imaginative lift, that were
more in evidence than mere sensuous sweetness. Chopin had, we know, his
salon side when he played with elegance, brilliancy and coquetry. But
he had dark moments when the keyboard was too small, his ideas too big
for utterance. Then he astounded, thrilled his auditors. They were rare
moments. His mood-versatility was reproduced in his endless colorings
and capricious rhythms. The instrument vibrated with these new,
nameless effects like the violin in Paganini's hands. It was ravishing.
He was called the Ariel, the Undine of the piano. There was something
imponderable, fluid, vaporous, evanescent in his music that eluded
analysis and eluded all but hard-headed critics. This novelty was the
reason why he has been classed as a "gifted amateur" and even to-day is
he regarded by many musicians as a skilful inventor of piano passages
and patterned figures instead of what he really is--one of the most
daring harmonists since Bach.
Chopin's elastic hand, small, thin, with lightly articulated fingers,
was capable of stretching tenths with ease. Examine his first study for
confirmation of this. His wrist was very supple. Stephen Heller said
that "it was a wonderful sight to see Chopin's small hands expand and
cover a third of the keyboard. It was like the opening of the mouth of
a serpent about to swallow a rabbit whole." He played the octaves in
the A flat Polonaise with infinite ease but pianissimo. Now where is
the "tradition" when confronted by the mighty crashing of Rosenthal in
this particular part of the Polonaise? Of Karl Tausig, Weitzmann said
that "he relieved the romantically sentimental Chopin of his
Weltschmerz and showed him in his pristine creative vigor and wealth of
imagination." In Chopin's music there are many pianists, many styles
and all are correct if they are poetically musical, logical and
individually sincere. Of his rubato I treat in the chapter devoted to
the Mazurkas, making also an attempt to define the "zal" of his playing
and music.
When Chopin was strong he used a Pleyel piano, when he was ill an
Erard--a nice fable of Liszt's! He said that he liked the Erard but he
really preferred the Pleyel with its veiled sonority. What could not he
have accomplished with the modern grand piano? In the artist's room of
the Maison Pleyel there stands the piano at which Chopin composed the
Preludes, the G minor nocturne, the Funeral March, the three
supplementary etudes, the A minor Mazurka, the Tarantelle, the F minor
Fantasie and the B minor Scherzo. A brass tablet on the inside lid
notes this. The piano is still in good condition as regards tone and
action.
Mikuli asserted that Chopin brought out an "immense" tone in
cantabiles. He had not a small tone, but it was not the orchestral tone
of our day. Indeed how could it be, with the light action and tone of
the French pianos built in the first half of the century? After all it
was quality, not quantity that Chopin sought. Each one of his ten
fingers was a delicately differentiated voice, and these ten voices
could sing at times like the morning stars.
Rubinstein declared that all the pedal marks are wrong in Chopin. I
doubt if any edition can ever give them as they should be, for here
again the individual equation comes into play. Apart from certain
fundamental rules for managing the pedals, no pedagogic regulations
should ever be made for the more refined nuances.
The portraits of Chopin differ widely. There is the Ary Scheffer, the
Vigneron--praised by Mathias--the Bovy medallion, the Duval drawing,
and the head by Kwiatowski. Delacroix tried his powerful hand at
transfixing in oil the fleeting expressions of Chopin. Felix Barrias,
Franz Winterhalter, and Albert Graefle are others who tried with more
or less success. Anthony Kolberg painted Chopin in 1848-49. Kleczynski
reproduces it; it is mature in expression. The Clesinger head I have
seen at Pere la Chaise. It is mediocre and lifeless. Kwiatowski has
caught some of the Chopin spirit in the etching that may be found in
volume one of Niecks' biography. The Winterhalter portrait in Mr.
Hadow's volume is too Hebraic, and the Graefle is a trifle ghastly. It
is the dead Chopin, but the nose is that of a predaceous bird,
painfully aquiline. The "Echo Muzyczne" Warsaw, of October 1899--in
Polish "17 Pazdziernika"--printed a picture of the composer at the age
of seventeen. It is that of a thoughtful, poetic, but not handsome lad,
his hair waving over a fine forehead, a feminine mouth, large, aquiline
nose, the nostrils delicately cut, and about his slender neck a Byronic
collar. Altogether a novel likeness. Like the Chopin interpretation, a
satisfactory Chopin portrait is extremely rare.
As some difficulty was experienced in discovering the identity of
Countess Delphine Potocka, I applied in 1899 to Mr. Jaraslow de
Zielinski, a pianist of Buffalo, New York, for assistance; he is an
authority on Polish and Russian music and musicians. Here are the facts
he kindly transmitted: "In 1830 three beautiful Polish women came to
Nice to pass the winter. They were the daughters of Count Komar, the
business manager of the wealthy Count Potocki. They were singularly
accomplished; they spoke half the languages of Europe, drew well, and
sang to perfection. All they needed was money to make them queens of
society; this they soon obtained, and with it high rank. Their graceful
manners and loveliness won the hearts of three of the greatest of
noblemen. Marie married the Prince de Beauvau-Craon; Delphine became
Countess Potocka, and Nathalie, Marchioness Medici Spada. The last
named died young, a victim to the zeal in favor of the cholera-stricken
of Rome. The other two sisters went to live in Paris, and became famous
for their brilliant elegance. Their sumptuous 'hotels' or palaces were
thrown open to the most prominent men of genius of their time, and
hither came Chopin, to meet not only with the homage due to his genius,
but with a tender and sisterly friendship, which proved one of the
greatest consolations of his life. To the amiable Princess de Beauvau
he dedicated his famous Polonaise in F sharp minor, op. 44, written in
the brilliant bravura style for pianists of the first force. To
Delphine, Countess Potocka, he dedicated the loveliest of his valses,
op. 64, No. 1, so well transcribed by Joseffy into a study in thirds."
Therefore the picture of the Grafin Potocka in the Berlin gallery is
not that of Chopin's devoted friend.
Here is another Count Tarnowski story. It touches on a Potocka episode.
"Chopin liked and knew how to express individual characteristics on the
piano. Just as there formerly was a rather widely-known fashion of
describing dispositions and characters in so-called 'portraits,' which
gave to ready wits a scope for parading their knowledge of people and
their sharpness of observation; so he often amused himself by playing
such musical portraits. Without saying whom he had in his thoughts, he
illustrated the characters of a few or of several people present in the
room, and illustrated them so clearly and so delicately that the
listeners could always guess correctly who was intended, and admired
the resemblance of the portrait. One little anecdote is related in
connection with this which throws some light on his wit, and a little
pinch of sarcasm in it.
"During the time of Chopin's greatest brilliancy and popularity, in the
year 1835, he once played his musical portraits in a certain Polish
salon, where the three daughters of the house were the stars of the
evening. After a few portraits had been extemporized, one of these
ladies wished to have hers--Mme. Delphine Potocka. Chopin, in reply,
drew her shawl from her shoulders, threw it on the keyboard and began
to play, implying in this two things; first, that he knew the character
of the brilliant and famous queen of fashion so well, that by heart and
in the dark he was able to depict it; secondly, that this character and
this soul is hidden under habits, ornamentations and decorations of an
elegant worldly life, through the symbol of elegance and fashion of
that day, as the tones of the piano through the shawl."
Because Chopin did not label his works with any but general titles,
Ballades, Scherzi, Studies, Preludes and the like, his music sounds all
the better: the listener is not pinned down to any precise mood, the
music being allowed to work its particular charm without the aid of
literary crutches for unimaginative minds. Dr. Niecks gives specimens
of what the ingenious publisher, without a sense of humor, did with
some of Chopin's compositions: Adieu a Varsovie, so was named the
Rondo, op. 1; Hommage a Mozart, the Variations, op. 2; La Gaite,
Introduction and Polonaise, op. 3 for piano and 'cello; La
Posiana--what a name!--the Rondo a la Mazur, op. 5; Murmures de la
Seine, Nocturnes op. 9; Les Zephirs, Nocturnes, op. 15; Invitation a la
Valse, Valse, op. 18; Souvenir d'Andalousie, Bolero, op. 19--a bolero
which sounds Polish!--Le Banquet Infernal, the First Scherzo, op.
20--what a misnomer!--Ballade ohne Worte, the G minor Ballade--there is
a polyglot mess for you!--Les Plaintives, Nocturnes, op. 27; La
Meditation, Second Scherzo, B flat minor-meditation it is not!--II
Lamento e la Consolazione, Nocturnes, op. 32; Les Soupirs, Nocturnes,
op. 37, and Les Favorites, Polonaises, op. 40. The C minor Polonaise of
this opus was never, is not now, a favorite. The mazurkas generally
received the title of Souvenir de la Pologne.
In commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Chopin,
October 17, 1899, a medal was struck at Warsaw, bearing on one side an
artistically executed profile of the Polish composer. On the reverse,
the design represents a lyre, surrounded by a laurel branch, and having
engraved upon it the opening bars of the Mazurka in A flat major. The
name of the great composer with the dates of his birth and death, are
given in the margin. Paderewski is heading a movement to remove from
Paris to Warsaw the ashes of the pianist, but it is doubtful if it can
be managed. Paris will certainly object to losing the bones of such a
genius.
Chopin's acoustic parallelisms are not so concrete, so vivid as
Wagner's. Nor are they so theatrical, so obvious. It does not, however,
require much fancy to conjure up "the drums and tramplings of three
conquests" in the Eroica Polonaise or the F sharp major Impromptu. The
rhythms of the Cradle Song and the Barcarolle are suggestive enough and
if you please there are dew-drops in his cadenzas and there is the
whistling of the wind in the last A minor Study. Of the A flat Study
Chopin said: "Imagine a little shepherd who takes refuge in a peaceful
grotto from an approaching storm. In the distance rushes the wind and
the rain, while the shepherd gently plays a melody on his flute." This
is quoted by Kleczynski. There are word-whisperings in the next study
in F minor, whilst the symbolism of the dance--the Valse, Mazurka,
Polonaise, Menuetto, Bolero, Schottische, Krakowiak and Tarantella--is
admirably indicated in all of them. The bells of the Funeral March, the
will o' wisp character of the last movement of the B flat minor Sonata,
the dainty Butterfly Study in G flat, opus 25, the aeolian murmurs of
the E flat Study, in opus 10, the tiny prancing silvery hoofs in the F
major Study, opus 25, the flickering flame-like C major Study No. 7,
opus 10, the spinning in the D flat Valse and the cyclonic rush of
chromatic double notes in the E flat minor Scherzo--these are not
studied imitations but spontaneous transpositions to the ideal plane of
primary, natural phenomena.
Chopin's system--if it be a system--of cadenzas, fioriture
embellishment and ornamentation is perhaps traceable to the East. In
his "Folk Music Studies," Mr. H. E. Krehbiel quotes the description of
"a rhapsodical embellishment, called 'alap,' which after going through
a variety of ad libitum passages, rejoins the melody with as much grace
as if it had never been disunited, the musical accompaniment all the
while keeping time. These passages are not reckoned essential to the
melody, but are considered only as grace notes introduced according to
the fancy of the singer, when the only limitations by which the
performer is bound are the notes peculiar to that particular melody and
a strict regard to time."
Chopin founded no school, although the possibilities of the piano were
canalized by him. In playing, as in composition, only the broad trend
of his discoveries may be followed, for his was a manner not a method.
He has had for followers Liszt, Rubinstein, Mikuli, Zarembski,
Nowakowski, Xaver Scharwenka, Saint-Saens, Scholtz, Heller, Nicode,
Moriz Moszkowski, Paderewski, Stojowski, Arenski, Leschetizki, the two
Wieniawskis, and a whole group of the younger Russians Liadoff,
Scriabine and the rest. Even Brahms--in his F sharp major Sonata and E
flat minor Scherzo--shows Chopin's influence. Indeed but for Chopin
much modern music would not exist.
But a genuine school exists not. Henselt was only a German who fell
asleep and dreamed of Chopin. To a Thalberg-ian euphony he has added a
technical figuration not unlike Chopin's, and a spirit quite Teutonic
in its sentimentality. Rubinstein calls Chopin the exhalation of the
third epoch in art. He certainly closed one. With a less strong
rhythmic impulse and formal sense Chopin's music would have degenerated
into mere overperfumed impressionism. The French piano school of his
day, indeed of today, is entirely drowned by its devotion to cold
decoration, to unemotional ornamentation. Mannerisms he had--what great
artist has not?--but the Greek in him, as in Heine, kept him from
formlessness. He is seldom a landscapist, but he can handle his brush
deftly before nature if he must. He paints atmosphere, the open air at
eventide, with consummate skill, and for playing fantastic tricks on
your nerves in the depiction of the superhuman he has a peculiar
faculty. Remember that in Chopin's early days the Byronic pose, the
grandiose and the horrible prevailed--witness the pictures of Ingres
and Delacroix--and Richter wrote with his heart-strings saturated in
moonshine and tears. Chopin did not altogether escape the artistic
vices of his generation. As a man he was a bit of poseur--the little
whisker grown on one side of his face, the side which he turned to his
audience, is a note of foppery--but was ever a detester of the
sham-artistic. He was sincere, and his survival, when nearly all of
Mendelssohn, much of Schumann and half of Berlioz have suffered an
eclipse, is proof positive of his vitality. The fruit of his
experimentings in tonality we see in the whole latter-day school of
piano, dramatic and orchestral composers. That Chopin may lead to the
development and adoption of the new enharmonic scales, the "Homotonic
scales," I do not know. For these M. A. de Bertha claimed the future of
music. He wrote:
"Now vaporously illumined by the crepuscular light of a magical sky on
the boundaries of the major and minor modes, now seeming to spring from
the bowels of the earth with sepulchral inflexions, melody moves with
ease on the serried degrees of the enharmonic scales. Lively or slow
she always assumed in them the accents of a fatalist impossibility, for
the laws of arithmetic have preceded her, and there still remains, as
it were, an atmosphere of proud rigidity. Melancholy or passionate she
preserves the reflected lines of a primitive rusticity, which clings to
the homotones in despite of their artificial origin." But all this will
be in the days to come when the flat keyboard will be superseded by a
Janko many-banked clavier contrivance, when Mr. Krehbiel's oriental
srootis are in use and Mr. Apthorp's nullitonic order, no key at all,
is invented. Then too a new Chopin may be born, but I doubt it.
Despite his idiomatic treatment of the piano it must be remembered that
Chopin under Sontag's and Paganini's influence imitated both voice and
violin on the keyboard. His lyricism is most human, while the
portamento, the slides, trills and indescribably subtle turns--are they
not of the violin? Wagner said to Mr. Dannreuther--see Finck's "Wagner
and his Works"--that "Mozart's music and Mozart's orchestra are a
perfect match; an equally perfect balance exists between Palestrina's
choir and Palestrina's counterpoint, and I find a similar
correspondence between Chopin's piano and some of his Etudes and
Preludes--I do not care for the Ladies' Chopin; there is too much of
the Parisian salon in that, but he has given us many things which are
above the salon." Which latter statement is slightly condescending.
Recollect, however, Chopin's calm depreciation of Schumann. Mr. John F.
Runciman, the English critic, asserts that "Chopin thought in terms of
the piano, and only the piano. So when we see Chopin's orchestral music
or Wagner's music for the piano we realize that neither is talking his
native tongue--the tongue which nature fitted him to speak." Speaking
of "Chopin and the Sick Men" Mr. Runciman is most pertinent:
"These inheritors of rickets and exhausted physical frames made some of
the most wonderful music of the century for us. Schubert was the most
wonderful of them all, but Chopin runs him very close. ... He wrote
less, far less than Schubert wrote; but, for the quantity he did write,
its finish is miraculous. It may be feverish, merely mournful, cadavre,
or tranquil, and entirely beautiful; but there is not a phrase that is
not polished as far as a phrase will bear polishing. It is marvellous
music; but, all the same, it is sick, unhealthy music."
"Liszt's estimate of the technical importance of Chopin's works,"
writes Mr. W.J. Henderson, "is not too large. It was Chopin who
systematized the art of pedalling and showed us how to use both pedals
in combination to produce those wonderful effects of color which are so
necessary in the performance of his music. ... The harmonic schemes of
the simplest of Chopin's works are marvels of originality and musical
loveliness, and I make bold to say that his treatment of the passing
note did much toward showing later writers how to produce the restless
and endless complexity of the harmony in contemporaneous orchestral
music."
Heinrich Pudor in his strictures on German music is hardly
complimentary to Chopin: "Wagner is a thorough-going decadent, an
off-shoot, an epigonus, not a progonus. His cheeks are hollow and
pale--but the Germans have the full red cheeks. Equally decadent is
Liszt. Liszt is a Hungarian and the Hungarians are confessedly a
completely disorganized, self-outlived, dying people. No less decadent
is Chopin, whose figure comes before one as flesh without bones, this
morbid, womanly, womanish, slip-slop, powerless, sickly, bleached,
sweet-caramel Pole!" This has a ring of Nietzsche--Nietzsche who
boasted of his Polish origin.
Now listen to the fatidical Pole Przybyszewski: "In the beginning there
was sex, out of sex there was nothing and in it everything was. And sex
made itself brain whence was the birth of the soul." And then, as Mr.
Vance Thompson, who first Englished this "Mass of the Dead"--wrote: "He
pictures largely in great cosmic symbols, decorated with passionate and
mystic fervors, the singular combat between the growing soul and the
sex from which it fain would be free." Arno Holz thus parodies
Przybyszewski: "In our soul there is surging and singing a song of the
victorious bacteria. Our blood lacks the white corpuscles. On the
sounding board of our consciousness there echoes along the frightful
symphony of the flesh. It becomes objective in Chopin; he alone, the
modern primeval man, puts our brains on the green meadows, he alone
thinks in hyper-European dimensions. He alone rebuilds the shattered
Jerusalem of our souls." All of which shows to what comically
delirious lengths this sort of deleterious soul-probing may go.
It would be well to consider this word "decadent" and its morbid
implications. There is a fashion just now in criticism to
over-accentuate the physical and moral weaknesses of the artist.
Lombroso started the fashion, Nordau carried it to its logical
absurdity, yet it is nothing new. In Hazlitt's day he complains, that
genius is called mad by foolish folk. Mr. Newman writes in his Wagner,
that "art in general, and music in particular, ought not to be
condemned merely in terms of the physical degeneration or abnormality
of the artist. Some of the finest work in art and literature, indeed,
has been produced by men who could not, from any standpoint, be
pronounced normal. In the case of Flaubert, of De Maupassant, of
Dostoievsky, of Poe, and a score of others, though the organic system
was more or less flawed, the work remains touched with that universal
quality that gives artistic permanence even to perceptions born of the
abnormal." Mr. Newman might have added other names to his list, those
of Michael Angelo and Beethoven and Swinburne. Really, is any great
genius quite sane according to philistine standards? The answer must be
negative. The old enemy has merely changed his mode of attack: instead
of charging genius with madness, the abnormal used in an abnormal sense
is lugged in and though these imputations of degeneracy, moral and
physical, have in some cases proven true, the genius of the accused one
can in no wise be denied. But then as Mr. Philip Hale asks: Why this
timidity at being called decadent? What's in the name?
Havelock Ellis in his masterly study of Joris Karl Huysmans, considers
the much misunderstood phenomenon in art called decadence. "Technically
a decadent style is only such in relation to a classic style. It is
simply a further development of a classic style, a further
specialization, the homogeneous in Spencerian phraseology having become
heterogeneous. The first is beautiful because the parts are
subordinated to the whole; the second is beautiful because the whole is
subordinated to the parts." Then he proceeds to show in literature that
Sir Thomas Browne, Emerson, Pater, Carlyle, Poe, Hawthorne and Whitman
are decadents--not in any invidious sense--but simply in "the breaking
up of the whole for the benefit of its parts." Nietzsche is quoted to
the effect that "in the period of corruption in the evolution of
societies we are apt to overlook the fact that the energy which in more
primitive times marked the operations of a community as a whole has now
simply been transferred to the individuals themselves, and this
aggrandizement of the individual really produces an even greater amount
of energy." And further, Ellis: "All art is the rising and falling of
the slopes of a rhythmic curve between these two classic and decadent
extremes. Decadence suggests to us going down, falling, decay. If we
walk down a real hill we do not feel that we commit a more wicked act
than when we walked up it....Roman architecture is classic to become in
its Byzantine developments completely decadent, and St. Mark's is the
perfected type of decadence in art. ... We have to recognize that
decadence is an aesthetic and not a moral conception. The power of
words is great but they need not befool us. ... We are not called upon
to air our moral indignation over the bass end of the musical clef." I
recommend the entire chapter to such men as Lombroso Levi, Max Nordau
and Heinrich Pudor, who have yet to learn that "all confusion of
intellectual substances is foolish."
Oscar Bie states the Chopin case most excellently:--
Chopin is a poet. It has become a very bad habit to place this
poet in the hands of our youth. The concertos and polonaises
being put aside, no one lends himself worse to youthful
instruction than Chopin. Because his delicate touches
inevitably seem perverse to the youthful mind, he has gained
the name of a morbid genius. The grown man who understands how
to play Chopin, whose music begins where that of another
leaves off, whose tones show the supremest mastery in the
tongue of music--such a man will discover nothing morbid in
him. Chopin, a Pole, strikes sorrowful chords, which do not
occur frequently to healthy normal persons. But why is a Pole
to receive less justice than a German? We know that the
extreme of culture is closely allied to decay; for perfect
ripeness is but the foreboding of corruption. Children, of
course, do not know this. And Chopin himself would have been
much too noble ever to lay bare his mental sickness to the
world. And his greatness lies precisely in this: that he
preserves the mean between immaturity and decay. His greatness
is his aristocracy. He stands among musicians in his faultless
vesture, a noble from head to foot. The sublimest emotions
toward whose refinement whole generations had tended, the last
things in our soul, whose foreboding is interwoven with the
mystery of Judgment Day, have in his music found their form.
Further on I shall attempt--I write the word with a patibulary
gesture--in a sort of a Chopin variorum, to analyze the salient
aspects, technical and aesthetic, of his music. To translate into
prose, into any language no matter how poetical, the images aroused by
his music, is impossible. I am forced to employ the technical
terminology of other arts, but against my judgment. Read Mr. W. F.
Apthorp's disheartening dictum in "By the Way." "The entrancing
phantasmagoria of picture and incident which we think we see rising
from the billowing sea of music is in reality nothing more than an
enchanting fata morgana, visible at no other angle than that of our own
eye. The true gist of music it never can be; it can never truly
translate what is most essential and characteristic in its expression.
It is but something that we have half unconsciously imputed to music;
nothing that really exists in music."
The shadowy miming of Chopin's soul has nevertheless a significance for
this generation. It is now the reign of the brutal, the realistic, the
impossible in music. Formal excellence is neglected and programme-music
has reduced art to the level of an anecdote. Chopin neither preaches
nor paints, yet his art is decorative and dramatic--though in the
climate of the ideal. He touches earth and its emotional issues in
Poland only; otherwise his music is a pure aesthetic delight, an
artistic enchantment, freighted with no ethical or theatric messages.
It is poetry made audible, the "soul written in sound." All that I can
faintly indicate is the way it affects me, this music with the petals
of a glowing rose and the heart of gray ashes. Its analogies to Poe,
Verlaine, Shelley, Keats, Heine and Mickiewicz are but critical
sign-posts, for Chopin is incomparable, Chopin is unique. "Our
interval," writes Walter Pater, "is brief." Few pass it recollectedly
and with full understanding of its larger rhythms and more urgent
colors. Many endure it in frivol and violence, the majority in bored,
sullen submission. Chopin, the New Chopin, is a foe to ennui and the
spirit that denies; in his exquisite soul-sorrow, sweet world-pain, we
may find rich impersonal relief.
V. POET AND PSYCHOLOGIST
Music is an order of mystic, sensuous mathematics. A sounding mirror,
an aural mode of motion, it addresses itself on the formal side to the
intellect, in its content of expression it appeals to the emotions.
Ribot, admirable psychologist, does not hesitate to proclaim music as
the most emotional of the arts. "It acts like a burn, like heat, cold
or a caressing contact, and is the most dependent on physiological
conditions."
Music then, the most vague of the arts in the matter of representing
the concrete, is the swiftest, surest agent for attacking the
sensibilities. The CRY made manifest, as Wagner asserts, it is a cry
that takes on fanciful shapes, each soul interpreting it in an
individual fashion. Music and beauty are synonymous, just as their form
and substance are indivisible.
Havelock Ellis is not the only aesthetician who sees the marriage of
music and sex. "No other art tells us such old forgotten secrets about
ourselves...It is in the mightiest of all instincts, the primitive sex
traditions of the race before man was, that music is rooted...Beauty is
the child of love." Dante Gabriel Rossetti has imprisoned in a sonnet
the almost intangible feeling aroused by music, the feeling of having
pursued in the immemorial past the "route of evanescence."
Is it this sky's vast vault or ocean's sound,
That is Life's self and draws my life from me,
And by instinct ineffable decree
Holds my breath
Quailing on the bitter bound?
Nay, is it Life or Death, thus thunder-crown'd,
That 'mid the tide of all emergency
Now notes my separate wave, and to what sea
Its difficult eddies labor in the ground?
Oh! what is this that knows the road I came,
The flame turned cloud, the cloud returned to flame,
The lifted, shifted steeps and all the way?
That draws around me at last this wind-warm space,
And in regenerate rapture turns my face
Upon the devious coverts of dismay?
During the last half of the nineteenth century two men became rulers of
musical emotion, Richard Wagner and Frederic Francois Chopin. The music
of the latter is the most ravishing gesture that art has yet made.
Wagner and Chopin, the macrocosm and the microcosm! "Wagner has made
the largest impersonal synthesis attainable of the personal influences
that thrill our lives," cries Havelock Ellis. Chopin, a young man
slight of frame, furiously playing out upon the keyboard his soul, the
soul of his nation, the soul of his time, is the most individual
composer that has ever set humming the looms of our dreams. Wagner and
Chopin have a motor element in their music that is fiercer, intenser
and more fugacious than that of all other composers. For them is not
the Buddhistic void, in which shapes slowly form and fade; their
psychical tempo is devouring. They voiced their age, they moulded their
age and we listen eagerly to them, to these vibrile prophetic voices,
so sweetly corrosive, bardic and appealing. Chopin being nearer the
soil in the selection of forms, his style and structure are more naive,
more original than Wagner's, while his medium, less artificial, is
easier filled than the vast empty frame of the theatre. Through their
intensity of conception and of life, both men touch issues, though
widely dissimilar in all else. Chopin had greater melodic and as great
harmonic genius as Wagner; he made more themes, he was, as Rubinstein
wrote, the last of the original composers, but his scope was not
scenic, he preferred the stage of his soul to the windy spaces of the
music-drama. His is the interior play, the eternal conflict between
body and soul. He viewed music through his temperament and it often
becomes so imponderable, so bodiless as to suggest a fourth dimension
in the art. Space is obliterated. With Chopin one does not get, as from
Beethoven, the sense of spiritual vastness, of the overarching sublime.
There is the pathos of spiritual distance, but it is pathos, not
sublimity. "His soul was a star and dwelt apart," though not in the
Miltonic or Wordsworthian sense. A Shelley-like tenuity at times wings
his thought, and he is the creator of a new thrill within the thrill.
The charm of the dying fall, the unspeakable cadence of regret for the
love that is dead, is in his music; like John Keats he sometimes sees:--
Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.
Chopin, "subtle-souled psychologist," is more kin to Keats than
Shelley, he is a greater artist than a thinker. His philosophy is of
the beautiful, as was Keats', and while he lingers by the river's edge
to catch the song of the reeds, his gaze is oftener fixed on the
quiring planets. He is nature's most exquisite sounding-board and
vibrates to her with intensity, color and vivacity that have no
parallel. Stained with melancholy, his joy is never that of the strong
man rejoicing in his muscles. Yet his very tenderness is tonic and his
cry is ever restrained by an Attic sense of proportion. Like Alfred De
Vigny, he dwelt in a "tour d'ivoire" that faced the west and for him
the sunrise was not, but O! the miraculous moons he discovered, the
sunsets and cloud-shine! His notes cast great rich shadows, these
chains of blown-roses drenched in the dew of beauty. Pompeian colors
are too restricted and flat; he divulges a world of half-tones, some
"enfolding sunny spots of greenery," or singing in silvery shade the
song of chromatic ecstasy, others "huge fragments vaulted like
rebounding hail" and black upon black. Chopin is the color genius of
the piano, his eye was attuned to hues the most fragile and attenuated;
he can weave harmonies that are as ghostly as a lunar rainbow. And
lunar-like in their libration are some of his melodies--glimpses,
mysterious and vast, as of a strange world.
His utterances are always dynamic, and he emerges betimes, as if from
Goya's tomb, and etches with sardonic finger Nada in dust. But this
spirit of denial is not an abiding mood; Chopin throws a net of tone
over souls wearied with rancors and revolts, bridges "salty, estranged
seas" of misery and presently we are viewing a mirrored, a fabulous
universe wherein Death is dead, and Love reigns Lord of all.
II
Heine said that "every epoch is a sphinx which plunges into the abyss
as soon as its problem is solved." Born in the very upheaval of the
Romantic revolution--a revolution evoked by the intensity of its
emotion, rather than by the power of its ideas--Chopin was not
altogether one of the insurgents of art. Just when his individual soul
germinated, who may tell? In his early music are discovered the roots
and fibres of Hummel and Field. His growth, involuntary, inevitable,
put forth strange sprouts, and he saw in the piano, an instrument of
two dimensions, a third, and so his music deepened and took on stranger
colors. The keyboard had never sung so before; he forged its formula. A
new apocalyptic seal of melody and harmony was let fall upon it.
Sounding scrolls, delicious arabesques gorgeous in tint, martial,
lyric, "a resonance of emerald," a sobbing of fountains--as that Chopin
of the Gutter, Paul Verlaine, has it--the tear crystallized midway, an
arrested pearl, were overheard in his music, and Europe felt a new
shudder of sheer delight.
The literary quality is absent and so is the ethical--Chopin may
prophesy but he never flames into the divers tongues of the upper
heaven. Compared with his passionate abandonment to the dance, Brahms
is the Lao-tsze of music, the great infant born with gray hair and with
the slow smile of childhood. Chopin seldom smiles, and while some of
his music is young, he does not raise in the mind pictures of the
fatuous romance of youth. His passion is mature, self-sustained and
never at a loss for the mot propre. And with what marvellous vibration
he gamuts the passions, festooning them with carnations and great white
tube roses, but the dark dramatic motive is never lost in the
decorative wiles of this magician. As the man grew he laid aside his
pretty garlands and his line became sterner, its traceries more gothic;
he made Bach his chief god and within the woven walls of his strange
harmonies he sings the history of a soul, a soul convulsed by antique
madness, by the memory of awful things, a soul lured by Beauty to
secret glades wherein sacrificial rites are performed to the solemn
sounds of unearthly music. Like Maurice de Guerin, Chopin perpetually
strove to decipher Beauty's enigma and passionately demanded of the
sphinx that defies:
"Upon the shores of what oceans have they rolled the stone that hides
them, O Macareus?"
His name was as the stroke of a bell to the Romancists; he remained
aloof from them though in a sympathetic attitude. The classic is but
the Romantic dead, said an acute critic. Chopin was a classic without
knowing it; he compassed for the dances of his land what Bach did for
the older forms. With Heine he led the spirit of revolt, but enclosed
his note of agitation in a frame beautiful. The color, the "lithe
perpetual escape" from the formal deceived his critics, Schumann among
the rest. Chopin, like Flaubert, was the last of the idealists, the
first of the realists. The newness of his form, his linear
counterpoint, misled the critics, who accused him of the lack of it.
Schumann's formal deficiency detracts from much of his music, and
because of their formal genius Wagner and Chopin will live.
To Chopin might be addressed Sar Merodack Peladan's words:
"When your hand writes a perfect line the Cherubim descend to find
pleasure therein as in a mirror." Chopin wrote many perfect lines; he
is, above all, the faultless lyrist, the Swinburne, the master of
fiery, many rhythms, the chanter of songs before sunrise, of the burden
of the flesh, the sting of desire and large-moulded lays of passionate
freedom. His music is, to quote Thoreau, "a proud sweet satire on the
meanness of our life." He had no feeling for the epic, his genius was
too concentrated, and though he could be furiously dramatic the
sustained majesty of blank verse was denied him. With musical ideas he
was ever gravid but their intensity is parent to their brevity. And it
must not be forgotten that with Chopin the form was conditioned by the
idea. He took up the dancing patterns of Poland because they suited his
vivid inner life; he transformed them, idealized them, attaining to
more prolonged phraseology and denser architecture in his Ballades and
Scherzi--but these periods are passionate, never philosophical.
All artists are androgynous; in Chopin the feminine often prevails, but
it must be noted that this quality is a distinguishing sign of
masculine lyric genius, for when he unbends, coquets and makes graceful
confessions or whimpers in lyric loveliness at fate, then his mother's
sex peeps out, a picture of the capricious, beautiful tyrannical Polish
woman. When he stiffens his soul, when Russia gets into his nostrils,
then the smoke and flame of his Polonaises, the tantalizing despair of
his Mazurkas are testimony to the strong man-soul in rebellion. But it
is often a psychical masquerade. The sag of melancholy is soon felt,
and the old Chopin, the subjective Chopin, wails afresh in melodic
moodiness.
That he could attempt far flights one may see in his B flat minor
Sonata, in his Scherzi, in several of the Ballades, above all in the F
minor Fantasie. In this great work the technical invention keeps pace
with the inspiration. It coheres, there is not a flaw in the
reverberating marble, not a rift in the idea. If Chopin, diseased to
death's door, could erect such a Palace of Dreams, what might not he
have dared had he been healthy? But forth from his misery came
sweetness and strength, like honey from the lion. He grew amazingly the
last ten years of his existence, grew with a promise that recalls
Keats, Shelley, Mozart, Schubert and the rest of the early slaughtered
angelic crew. His flame-like spirit waxed and waned in the gusty
surprises of a disappointed life. To the earth for consolation he bent
his ear and caught echoes of the cosmic comedy, the far-off laughter of
the hills, the lament of the sea and the mutterings of its depths.
These things with tales of sombre clouds and shining skies and
whisperings of strange creatures dancing timidly in pavonine twilights,
he traced upon the ivory keys of his instrument and the world was
richer for a poet. Chopin is not only the poet of the piano, he is also
the poet of music, the most poetic of composers. Compared with him Bach
seems a maker of solid polyphonic prose, Beethoven a scooper of stars,
a master of growling storms, Mozart a weaver of gay tapestries,
Schumann a divine stammerer. Schubert, alone of all the composers,
resembles him in his lyric prodigality. Both were masters of melody,
but Chopin was the master-workman of the two and polished, after
bending and beating, his theme fresh from the fire of his forge. He
knew that to complete his "wailing Iliads" the strong hand of the
reviser was necessary, and he also realized that nothing is more
difficult for the genius than to retain his gift. Of all natures the
most prone to pessimism, procrastination and vanity, the artist is most
apt to become ennuied. It is not easy to flame always at the focus, to
burn fiercely with the central fire. Chopin knew this and cultivated
his ego. He saw too that the love of beauty for beauty's sake was
fascinating but led to the way called madness. So he rooted his art,
gave it the earth of Poland and its deliquescence is put off to the day
when a new system of musical aestheticism will have routed the old,
when the Ugly shall be king and Melody the handmaiden of science. But
until that most grievous and undesired time he will catch the music of
our souls and give it cry and flesh.
III
Chopin is the open door in music. Besides having been a poet and giving
vibratory expression to the concrete, he was something else--he was a
pioneer. Pioneer because in youth he had bowed to the tyranny of the
diatonic scale and savored the illicit joys of the chromatic. It is
briefly curious that Chopin is regarded purely as a poet among
musicians and not as a practical musician. They will swear him a
phenomenal virtuoso, but your musician, orchestral and theoretical,
raises the eyebrow of the supercilious if Chopin is called creative. A
cunning finger-smith, a moulder of decorative patterns, a master at
making new figures, all this is granted, but speak of Chopin as
path-breaker in the harmonic forest--that true "forest of numbers"--as
the forger of a melodic metal, the sweetest, purest in temper, and lo!
you are regarded as one mentally askew. Chopin invented many new
harmonic devices, he untied the chord that was restrained within the
octave, leading it into the dangerous but delectable land of extended
harmonies. And how he chromaticized the prudish, rigid garden of German
harmony, how he moistened it with flashing changeful waters until it
grew bold and brilliant with promise! A French theorist, Albert
Lavignac, calls Chopin a product of the German Romantic school. This is
hitching the star to the wagon. Chopin influenced Schumann; it can be
proven a hundred times. And Schumann understood Chopin else he could
not have written the "Chopin" of the Carneval, which quite out-Chopins
Chopin.
Chopin is the musical soul of Poland; he incarnates its political
passion. First a Slav, by adoption a Parisian, he is the open door
because he admitted into the West, Eastern musical ideas, Eastern
tonalities, rhythms, in fine the Slavic, all that is objectionable,
decadent and dangerous. He inducted Europe into the mysteries and
seductions of the Orient. His music lies wavering between the East and
the West. A neurotic man, his tissues trembling, his sensibilities
aflame, the offspring of a nation doomed to pain and partition, it was
quite natural for him to go to France--Poland had ever been her
historical client--the France that overheated all Europe. Chopin, born
after two revolutions, the true child of insurrection, chose Paris for
his second home. Revolt sat easily upon his inherited aristocratic
instincts--no proletarian is quite so thorough a revolutionist as the
born aristocrat, witness Nietzsche--and Chopin, in the bloodless battle
of the Romantics, in the silent warring of Slav against Teuton, Gaul
and Anglo-Saxon, will ever stand as the protagonist of the artistic
drama.
All that followed, the breaking up of the old hard-and-fast boundaries
on the musical map is due to Chopin. A pioneer, he has been rewarded as
such by a polite ignorement or bland condescension. He smashed the
portals of the convention that forbade a man baring his soul to the
multitude. The psychology of music is the gainer thereby. Chopin, like
Velasquez, could paint single figures perfectly, but to great massed
effects he was a stranger. Wagner did not fail to profit by his
marvellously drawn soul-portraits. Chopin taught his century the pathos
of patriotism, and showed Grieg the value of national ore. He
practically re-created the harmonic charts, he gave voice to the
individual, himself a product of a nation dissolved by overwrought
individualism. As Schumann assures us, his is "the proudest and most
poetic spirit of his time." Chopin, subdued by his familiar demon, was
a true specimen of Nietzsche's Ubermensch,--which is but Emerson's
Oversoul shorn of her wings. Chopin's transcendental scheme of technics
is the image of a supernormal lift in composition. He sometimes robs
music of its corporeal vesture and his transcendentalism lies not alone
in his striving after strange tonalities and rhythms, but in seeking
the emotionally recondite. Self-tormented, ever "a dweller on the
threshold" he saw visions that outshone the glories of Hasheesh and his
nerve-swept soul ground in its mills exceeding fine music. His vision
is of beauty; he persistently groped at the hem of her robe, but never
sought to transpose or to tone the commonplace of life. For this he
reproved Schubert. Such intensity cannot be purchased but at the cost
of breadth, of sanity, and his picture of life is not so high, wide,
sublime, or awful as Beethoven's. Yet is it just as inevitable, sincere
and as tragically poignant.
Stanislaw Przybyszewski in his "Zur Psychologie des Individuums"
approaches the morbid Chopin--the Chopin who threw open to the world
the East, who waved his chromatic wand to Liszt, Tschaikowsky,
Saint-Saens, Goldmark, Rubinstein, Richard Strauss, Dvorak and all
Russia with its consonantal composers. This Polish psychologist--a
fulgurant expounder of Nietzsche--finds in Chopin faith and mania, the
true stigma of the mad individualist, the individual "who in the first
instance is naught but an oxidation apparatus." Nietzsche and Chopin
are the most outspoken individualities of the age--he forgets
Wagner--Chopin himself the finest flowering of a morbid and rare
culture. His music is a series of psychoses--he has the sehnsucht of a
marvellously constituted nature--and the shrill dissonance of his
nerves, as seen in the physiological outbursts of the B minor Scherzo,
is the agony of a tortured soul. The piece is Chopin's Iliad; in it are
the ghosts that lurk near the hidden alleys of the soul, but here come
out to leer and exult.
Horla! the Horla of Guy de Maupassant, the sinister Doppelganger of
mankind, which races with him to the goal of eternity, perhaps to
outstrip and master him in the next evolutionary cycle, master as does
man, the brute creation. This Horla, according to Przybyszewski,
conquered Chopin and became vocal in his music--this Horla has mastered
Nietzsche, who, quite mad, gave the world that Bible of the Ubermensch,
that dancing lyric prose-poem, "Also Sprach Zarathustra."
Nietzsche's disciple is half right. Chopin's moods are often morbid,
his music often pathological; Beethoven too is morbid, but in his
kingdom, so vast, so varied, the mood is lost or lightly felt, while in
Chopin's province, it looms a maleficent upas-tree, with flowers of
evil and its leaves glistering with sensuousness. But so keen for
symmetry, for all the term formal beauty implies, is Chopin, that
seldom does his morbidity madden, his voluptuousness poison. His music
has its morass, but also its upland where the gale blows strong and
true. Perhaps all art is, as the incorrigible Nordau declares, a slight
deviation from the normal, though Ribot scoffs at the existence of any
standard of normality. The butcher and the candle-stick-maker have
their Horla, their secret soul convulsions, which they set down to
taxation, the vapors, or weather.
Chopin has surprised the musical malady of the century. He is its chief
spokesman. After the vague, mad, noble dreams of Byron, Shelley and
Napoleon, the awakening found those disillusioned souls, Wagner,
Nietzsche and Chopin. Wagner sought in the epical rehabilitation of a
vanished Valhalla a surcease from the world-pain. He consciously
selected his anodyne and in "Die Meistersinger" touched a consoling
earth. Chopin and Nietzsche, temperamentally finer and more sensitive
than Wagner--the one musically, the other intellectually--sang
themselves in music and philosophy, because they were so constituted.
Their nerves rode them to their death. Neither found the serenity and
repose of Wagner, for neither was as sane and both suffered mortally
from hyperaesthesia, the penalty of all sick genius.
Chopin's music is the aesthetic symbol of a personality nurtured on
patriotism, pride and love; that it is better expressed by the piano is
because of that instrument's idiosyncrasies of evanescent tone,
sensitive touch and wide range in dynamics. It was Chopin's lyre, the
"orchestra of his heart," from it he extorted music the most intimate
since Sappho. Among lyric moderns Heine closely resembles the Pole.
Both sang because they suffered, sang ineffable and ironic melodies;
both will endure because of their brave sincerity, their surpassing
art. The musical, the psychical history of the nineteenth century would
be incomplete without the name of Frederic Francois Chopin. Wagner
externalized its dramatic soul; in Chopin the mad lyricism of the
Time-spirit is made eloquent. Into his music modulated the poesy of his
age; he is one of its heroes, a hero of whom Swinburne might have sung:
O strong-winged soul with prophetic
Lips hot with the blood-beats of song;
With tremor of heart-strings magnetic,
With thoughts as thunder in throng;
With consonant ardor of chords
That pierce men's souls as with swords
And hale them hearing along.