cleverly constructed. Klindworth gives a more binding character to the
first double notes. Another gleam of the Chopin sunshine.
Storm clouds gather in the G sharp minor, the twelfth prelude, so
unwittingly imitated by Grieg in his Menuetto of the same key, and in
its driving presto we feel the passionate clench of Chopin's hand. It
is convulsed with woe, but the intellectual grip, the self-command are
never lost in these two pages of perfect writing. The figure is
suggestive, and there is a well defined technical problem, as well as a
psychical character. Disputed territory is here: the editors do not
agree about the twelfth and eleventh bars from the last. According to
Breitkopf & Hartel the bass octaves are E both times. Mikuli gives G
sharp the first time instead of E; Klindworth, G sharp the second time;
Riemann, E, and also Kullak. The G sharp seems more various.
In the thirteenth prelude, F sharp major, here is lovely atmosphere,
pure and peaceful. The composer has found mental rest. Exquisitely
poised are his pinions for flight, and in the piu lento he wheels
significantly and majestically about in the blue. The return to earth
is the signal for some strange modulatory tactics. It is an impressive
close. Then, almost without pause, the blood begins to boil in this
fragile man's veins. His pulse beat increases, and with stifled rage he
rushes into the battle. It is the fourteenth prelude in the sinister
key of E flat minor, and its heavy, sullen-arched triplets recalls for
Niecks the last movement of the B flat minor Sonata; but there is less
interrogation in the prelude, less sophistication, and the heat of
conflict over it all. There is not a break in the clouds until the
beginning of the fifteenth, the familiar prelude in D flat.
This must be George Sand's: "Some of them create such vivid impressions
that the shades of dead monks seem to rise and pass before the hearer
in solemn and gloomy funereal pomp." The work needs no programme. Its
serene beginning, lugubrious interlude, with the dominant pedal never
ceasing, a basso ostinato, gives color to Kleczynski's contention that
the prelude in B minor is a mere sketch of the idea fully elaborated in
No. 15. "The foundation of the picture is the drops of rain falling at
regular intervals"--the echo principle again--"which by their continual
patter bring the mind to a state of sadness; a melody full of tears is
heard through the rush of the rain; then passing to the key of C sharp
minor, it rises from the depths of the bass to a prodigious crescendo,
indicative of the terror which nature in its deathly aspect excites in
the heart of man. Here again the form does not allow the ideas to
become too sombre; notwithstanding the melancholy which seizes you, a
feeling of tranquil grandeur revives you." To Niecks, the C sharp minor
portion affects one as in an oppressive dream: "The re-entrance of the
opening D flat, which dispels the dreadful nightmare, comes upon one
with the smiling freshness of dear, familiar nature."
The prelude has a nocturnal character. It has become slightly banal
from frequent repetition, likewise the C sharp minor study in opus 25.
But of its beauty, balance and exceeding chastity there can be no
doubt. The architecture is at once Greek and Gothic.
The sixteenth prelude in the relative key of B flat minor is the
boldest of the set. Its scale figures, seldom employed by Chopin, boil
and glitter, the thematic thread of the idea never being quite
submerged. Fascinating, full of perilous acclivities and sudden
treacherous descents, this most brilliant of preludes is Chopin in
riotous spirits. He plays with the keyboard: it is an avalanche, anon a
cascade, then a swift stream, which finally, after mounting to the
skies, descends to an abyss. Full of imaginative lift, caprice and
stormy dynamics, this prelude is the darling of the virtuoso. Its
pregnant introduction is like a madly jutting rock from which the eagle
spirit of the composer precipitates itself.
In the twenty-third bar there is curious editorial discrepancy.
Klindworth uses an A natural in the first of the four groups of
sixteenths, Kullak a B natural; Riemann follows Kullak. Nor is this
all. Kullak in the second group, right hand, has an E flat, Klindworth
a D natural. Which is correct? Klindworth's texture is more closely
chromatic and it sounds better, the chromatic parallelism being more
carefully preserved. Yet I fancy that Kullak has tradition on his side.
The seventeenth prelude Niecks finds Mendelssohn-ian. I do not. It is
suave, sweet, well developed, yet Chopin to the core, and its harmonic
life surprisingly rich and novel. The mood is one of tranquillity. The
soul loses itself in early autumnal revery while there is yet splendor
on earth and in the skies. Full of tonal contrasts, this highly
finished composition is grateful to the touch. The eleven booming A
flats on the last page are historical. Klindworth uses a B flat instead
of a G at the beginning of the melody. It is logical, but is it Chopin?
The fiery recitatives of No. 18 in F minor are a glimpse of Chopin,
muscular and not hectic. In these editions you will find three
different groupings of the cadenzas. It is Riemann's opportunity for
pedagogic editing, and he does not miss it. In the first long breathed
group of twenty-two sixteenth notes he phrases as shown on the
following page.
It may be noticed that Riemann even changes the arrangement of the
bars. This prelude is dramatic almost to an operatic degree. Sonorous,
rather grandiloquent, it is a study in declamation, the declamation of
the slow movement in the F minor concerto. Schumann may have had the
first phrase in his mind when he wrote his Aufschwung. This page of
Chopin's, the torso of a larger idea, is nobly rhetorical.
[Musical score excerpt]
What piano music is the nineteenth prelude in E flat! Its widely
dispersed harmonies, its murmuring grace and June-like beauty, are they
not Chopin, the Chopin we best love? He is ever the necromancer, ever
invoking phantoms, but with its whirring melody and furtive caprice
this particular shape is an alluring one. And difficult it is to
interpret with all its plangent lyric freedom.
No. 20 in C minor contains in its thirteen bars the sorrows of a
nation. It is without doubt a sketch for a funeral march, and of it
George Sand must have been thinking when she wrote that one prelude of
Chopin contained more music than all the trumpetings of Meyerbeer.
Of exceeding loveliness is the B flat major prelude, No. 21. It is
superior in content and execution to most of the nocturnes. In feeling
it belongs to that form. The melody is enchanting. The accompaniment
figure shows inventive genius. Klindworth employs a short appoggiatura,
Kullak the long, in the second bar. Judge of what is true editorial
sciolism when I tell you that Riemann--who evidently believes in a
rigid melodic structure--has inserted an E flat at the end of bar four,
thus maiming the tender, elusive quality of Chopin's theme. This is
cruelly pedantic. The prelude arrests one in ecstasy; the fixed period
of contemplation of the saint or the hypnotized sets in, and the
awakening is almost painful. Chopin, adopting the relative minor key as
a pendant to the picture in B flat, thrills the nerves by a bold
dissonance in the next prelude, No. 22. Again, concise paragraphs
filled with the smoke of revolt and conflict The impetuosity of this
largely moulded piece in G minor, its daring harmonics,--read the
seventeenth and eighteenth bars,--and dramatic note make it an
admirable companion to the Prelude in F minor. Technically it serves as
an octave study for the left hand.
In the concluding bar, but one, Chopin has in the F major Prelude
attempted a most audacious feat in harmony. An E flat in the bass of
the third group of sixteenths leaves the whole composition floating
enigmatically in thin air. It deliciously colors the close, leaving a
sense of suspense, of anticipation which is not tonally realized, for
the succeeding number is in a widely divorced key. But it must have
pressed hard the philistines. And this prelude, the twenty-third, is
fashioned out of the most volatile stuff. Aerial, imponderable, and
like a sun-shot spider web oscillating in the breeze of summer, its
hues change at every puff. It is in extended harmonics and must be
delivered with spirituality. The horny hand of the toilsome pianist
would shatter the delicate, swinging fantasy of the poet. Kullak points
out a variant in the fourteenth bar, G instead of B natural being used
by Riemann. Klindworth prefers the latter.
We have reached the last prelude of op. 28. In D minor, it is
sonorously tragic, troubled by fevers and visions, and capricious,
irregular and massive in design. It may be placed among Chopin's
greater works: the two Etudes in C minor, the A minor, and the F sharp
minor Prelude. The bass requires an unusual span, and the suggestion by
Kullak, that the thumb of the right hand may eke out the weakness of
the left is only for the timid and the small of fist. But I do not
counsel following his two variants in the fifth and twenty-third bars.
Chopin's text is more telling. Like the vast reverberation of monstrous
waves on the implacable coast of a remote world is this prelude.
Despite its fatalistic ring, its note of despair is not dispiriting.
Its issues are larger, more impersonal, more elemental than the other
preludes. It is a veritable Appassionata, but its theatre is cosmic and
no longer behind the closed doors of the cabinet of Chopin's soul. The
Seelenschrei of Stanislaw Przybyszewski is here, explosions of wrath
and revolt; not Chopin suffers, but his countrymen. Kleczynski speaks
of the three tones at the close. They are the final clangor of
oppressed, almost overthrown, reason. After the subject reappears in C
minor there is a shift to D flat, and for a moment a point of repose is
gained, but this elusive rest is brief. The theme reappears in the
tonic and in octaves, and the tension becomes too great; the
accumulated passion discharges and dissolves in a fierce gust of double
chromatic thirds and octaves. Powerful, repellant, this prelude is
almost infernal in its pride and scorn. But in it I discern no vestige
of uncontrolled hysteria. It is well-nigh as strong, rank and human as
Beethoven. The various editorial phraseology is not of much moment.
Riemann uses thirty-second notes for the cadenzas, Kullak eighths and
Klindworth sixteenths.
Niecks writes of the Prelude in C sharp minor, op. 45, that it
"deserves its name better than almost any one of the twenty-four; still
I would rather call it improvisata. It seems unpremeditated, a heedless
outpouring, when sitting at the piano in a lonely, dreary hour, perhaps
in the twilight. The quaver figure rises aspiringly, and the sustained
parts swell out proudly. The piquant cadenza forestalls in the
progression of diminished chords favorite effects of some of our more
modern composers. The modulation from C sharp minor to D major and back
again--after the cadenza--is very striking and equally beautiful."
Elsewhere I have called attention to the Brahmsian coloring of this
prelude. Its mood is fugitive and hard to hold after capture. Recondite
it is and not music for the multitude.
Niecks does not think Chopin created a new type in the Preludes. "They
are too unlike each other in form and character." Yet notwithstanding
the fleeting, evanescent moods of the Preludes, there is designedly a
certain unity of feeling and contrasted tonalities, all being grouped
in approved Bach-ian manner. This may be demonstrated by playing them
through at a sitting, which Arthur Friedheim, the Russian virtuoso, did
in a concert with excellent effect. As if wishing to exhibit his genius
in perspective, Chopin carved these cameos with exceeding fineness,
exceeding care. In a few of them the idea overbalances the form, but
the greater number are exquisite examples of a just proportion of
manner and matter, a true blending of voice and vision. Even in the
more microscopic ones the tracery, echoing like the spirals in strange
seashells, is marvellously measured. Much in miniature are these
sculptured Preludes of the Polish poet.
VIII. IMPROMPTUS AND VALSES
To write of the four Impromptus in their own key of unrestrained
feeling and pondered intention would not be as easy as recapturing the
first "careless rapture" of the lark. With all the freedom of an
improvisation the Chopin impromptu has a well defined form. There is
structural impulse, although the patterns are free and original. The
mood-color is not much varied in three, the first, third and fourth,
but in the second there is a ballade-like quality that hints of the
tragic. The A flat Impromptu, op. 29, is, if one is pinned down to the
title, the happiest named of the set. Its seething, prankish, nimble,
bubbling quality is indicated from the start; the D natural in the
treble against the C and E flat--the dominant--in the bass is a most
original effect, and the flowing triplets of the first part of this
piece give a ductile, gracious, high-bred character to it. The
chromatic involutions are many and interesting. When the F minor part
is reached the ear experiences the relief of a strongly contrasted
rhythm. The simple duple measure, so naturally ornamented, is nobly,
broadly melodious. After the return of the first dimpling theme there
is a short coda, a chiaroscura, and then with a few chords the
composition goes to rest. A bird flew that way! Rubato should be
employed, for, as Kleczynski says, "Here everything totters from
foundation to summit, and everything is, nevertheless, so beautiful and
so clear." But only an artist with velvety fingers should play this
sounding arabesque.
There is more limpidezza, more pure grace of line in the first
Impromptu than in the second in F sharp, op. 36. Here symmetry is
abandoned, as Kullak remarks, but the compensation of intenser
emotional issues is offered. There is something sphinx-like in the pose
of this work. Its nocturnal beginning with the carillon-like bass--a
bass that ever recalls to me the faint, buried tones of Hauptmann's
"Sunken Bell," the sweetly grave close of the section, the faint
hoof-beats of an approaching cavalcade, with the swelling thunders of
its passage, surely suggests a narrative, a programme. After the D
major episode there are two bars of anonymous modulation--these bars
creak on their hinges--and the first subject reappears in F, then
climbs to F sharp, thence merges into a glittering melodic organ-point,
exciting, brilliant, the whole subsiding into an echo of earlier
harmonies. The final octaves are marked fortissimo which always seems
brutal. Yet its logic lies in the scheme of the composer. Perhaps he
wished to arouse us harshly from his dreamland, as was his habit while
improvising for friends--a glissando would send them home shivering
after an evening of delicious reverie.
Niecks finds this Impromptu lacking the pith of the first. To me it is
of more moment than the other three. It is irregular and wavering in
outline, the moods are wandering and capricious, yet who dares deny its
power, its beauty? In its use of accessory figures it does not reveal
so much ingenuity, but just because the "figure in the carpet" is not
so varied in pattern, its passion is all the deeper. It is another
Ballade, sadder, more meditative of the tender grace of vanished days.
The third Impromptu in G flat, op. 51, is not often played. It may be
too difficult for the vandal with an average technique, but it is
neither so fresh in feeling nor so spontaneous in utterance as its
companions. There is a touch of the faded, blase, and it is hardly
healthy in sentiment. Here are some ophidian curves in triplets, as in
the first Impromptu, but with interludes of double notes, in coloring
tropical and rich to morbidity. The E flat minor trio is a fine bit of
melodic writing. The absence of simplicity is counterbalanced by
greater freedom of modulation and complexity of pattern. The impromptu
flavor is not missing, and there is allied to delicacy of design a
strangeness of sentiment--that strangeness which Edgar Poe declared
should be a constituent element of all great art.
The Fantaisie-Impromptu in C sharp minor, op. 66, was published by
Fontana in 1855, and is one of the few posthumous works of Chopin
worthy of consideration. It was composed about 1834. A true Impromptu,
but the title of Fantaisie given by Fontana is superfluous. The piece
presents difficulties, chiefly rhythmical. Its involuted first phrases
suggest the Bellini-an fioriture so dear to Chopin, but the D flat part
is without nobility. Here is the same kind of saccharine melody that
makes mawkish the trio in the "Marche Funebre." There seems no danger
that this Fantaisie-Impromptu will suffer from neglect, for it is the
joy of the piano student, who turns its presto into a slow, blurred
mess of badly related rhythms, and its slower movement into a long
drawn sentimental agony; but in the hands of a master the C sharp minor
Impromptu is charming, though not of great depth.
The first Impromptu, dedicated to Mlle. la Comtesse de Lobau, was
published December, 1837; the second, May, 1840; the third, dedicated
to Madame la Comtesse Esterhazy, February, 1843. Not one of these four
Impromptus is as naive as Schubert's; they are more sophisticated and
do not smell of nature and her simplicities.
Of the Chopin Valses it has been said that they are dances of the soul
and not of the body. Their animated rhythms, insouciant airs and
brilliant, coquettish atmosphere, the true atmosphere of the ballroom,
seem to smile at Ehlert's poetic exaggeration. The valses are the most
objective of the Chopin works, and in few of them is there more than a
hint of the sullen, Sargasson seas of the nocturnes and scherzi.
Nietzsche's la Gaya Scienza--the Gay Science--is beautifully set forth
in the fifteen Chopin valses. They are less intimate, in the psychic
sense, but exquisite exemplars of social intimacy and aristocratic
abandon. As Schumann declared, the dancers of these valses should be at
least countesses. There is a high-bred reserve despite their
intoxication, and never a hint of the brawling peasants of Beethoven,
Grieg, Brahms, Tschaikowsky, and the rest. But little of Vienna is in
Chopin. Around the measures of this most popular of dances he has
thrown mystery, allurement, and in them secret whisperings and the
unconscious sigh. It is going too far not to dance to some of this
music, for it is putting Chopin away from the world he at times loved.
Certain of the valses may be danced: the first, second, fifth, sixth,
and a few others. The dancing would be of necessity more picturesque
and less conventional than required by the average valse, and there
must be fluctuations of tempo, sudden surprises and abrupt languors.
The mazurkas and polonaises are danced to-day in Poland, why not the
valses? Chopin's genius reveals itself in these dance forms, and their
presentation should be not solely a psychic one. Kullak, stern old
pedagogue, divides these dances into two groups, the first dedicated to
"Terpsichore," the second a frame for moods. Chopin admitted that he
was unable to play valses in the Viennese fashion, yet he has contrived
to rival Strauss in his own genre. Some of these valses are trivial,
artificial, most of them are bred of candlelight and the swish of
silken attire, and a few are poetically morbid and stray across the
border into the rhythms of the mazurka. All of them have been edited to
death, reduced to the commonplace by vulgar methods of performance, but
are altogether sprightly, delightful specimens of the composer's
careless, vagrant and happy moods.
Kullak utters words of warning to the "unquiet" sex regarding the
habitual neglect of the bass. It should mean something in valse tempo,
but it usually does not. Nor need it be brutally banged; the
fundamental tone must be cared for, the subsidiary harmonies lightly
indicated. The rubato in the valses need not obtrude itself as in the
mazurkas.
Opus 18, in E flat, was published in June, 1834, and dedicated to Mile.
Laura Harsford. It is a true ballroom picture, spirited and infectious
in rhythms. Schumann wrote rhapsodically of it. The D flat section has
a tang of the later Chopin. There is bustle, even chatter, in this
valse, which in form and content is inferior to op. 34, No. I, A flat.
The three valses of this set were published December, 1838. There are
many editorial differences in the A flat Valse, owing to the careless
way it was copied and pirated. Klindworth and Kullak are the safest for
dynamic markings. This valse may be danced as far as its dithyrhambic
coda. Notice in this coda as in many other places the debt Schumann
owes Chopin for a certain passage in the Preambule of his "Carneval."
The next Valse in A minor has a tinge of Sarmatian melancholy, indeed,
it is one of Chopin's most desponding moods. The episode in C rings of
the mazurka, and the A major section is of exceeding loveliness; Its
coda is characteristic. This valse is a favorite, and who need wonder?
The F major Valse, the last of this series, is a whirling, wild dance
of atoms. It has the perpetuum mobile quality, and older masters would
have prolonged its giddy arabesques into pages of senseless spinning.
It is quite long enough as it is. The second theme is better, but the
appoggiatures are flippant. It buzzes to the finish. Of it is related
that Chopin's cat sprang upon his keyboard and in its feline flight
gave him the idea of the first measures. I suppose as there is a dog
valse, there had to be one for the cat.
But as Rossini would have said, "Ca sent de Scarlatti!"
The A minor Valse was, of the three, Chopin's favorite. When Stephen
Heller told him this too was his beloved valse, Chopin was greatly
pleased, inviting the Hungarian composer, Niecks relates, to luncheon
at the Cafe Riche.
Not improvised in the ballroom as the preceding, yet a marvellous
epitome is the A flat Valse, op. 42, published July, 1840. It is the
best rounded specimen of Chopin's experimenting with the form. The
prolonged trill on E flat, summoning us to the ballroom, the suggestive
intermingling of rhythms, duple and triple, the coquetry, hesitation,
passionate avowal and the superb coda, with its echoes of evening--have
not these episodes a charm beyond compare? Only Schumann in certain
pages of his "Carneval" seizes the secret of young life and love, but
his is not so finished, so glowing a tableau.
Regarding certain phrasing of this valse Moriz Rosenthal wrote to the
London "Musical Standard":
In Music there is Liberty and Fraternity, but seldom Equality,
and in music Social Democracy has no voice. Notes have a right
to the Aftertone (Nachton), and this right depends upon their
role in the key. The Vorhalt (accented passing note) will
always have an accent. On this point Riemann must without
question be considered right. Likewise the feeling player will
mark those notes that introduce the transition to another key.
We will consider now our example and set down my accents:
[Musical score excerpt]
In the first bar we have the tonic chord of its major key as
bass, and are thus not forced to any accent. In the second bar
we have the dominant harmony in the bass, and in the treble,
C, which falls upon the down beat as Vorhalt to the next tone
(B flat), so it must be accented. Also in the fourth bar the B
flat is Vorhalt to the B flat, and likewise requires an
accent. In bars 6, 7 and 8 the notes, A flat, B flat and C,
are without doubt the characteristic ones of the passage, and
the E flat has in each case only a secondary significance.
That a genius like Chopin did not indicate everything
accurately is quite explainable. He flew where we merely limp
after. Moreover, these accents must be felt rather than
executed, with softest touch, and as tenderly as possible.
The D flat Valse--"le valse du petit chien"--is of George Sand's own
prompting. One evening at her home in the Square d'Orleans, she was
amused by her little pet dog, chasing its tail. She begged Chopin, her
little pet pianist, to set the tail to music. He did so, and behold the
world is richer for this piece. I do not dispute the story. It seems
well grounded, but then it is so ineffably silly! The three valses of
this op. 64 were published September, 1847, and are respectively
dedicated to the Comtesse Delphine Potocka, the Baronne Nathaniel de
Rothschild and the Baronne Bronicka.
I shall not presume to speak of the execution of the D flat Valse; like
the rich, it is always with us. It is usually taken at a meaningless,
rapid gait. I have heard it played by a genuine Chopin pupil, M.
Georges Mathias, and he did not take it prestissimo. He ran up the D
flat scale, ending with a sforzato at the top, and gave a variety of
nuance to the composition. The cantabile is nearly always delivered
with sloppiness of sentiment. This valse has been served up in a highly
indigestible condition for concert purposes by Tausig, Joseffy--whose
arrangement was the first to be heard here--Theodore Ritter, Rosenthal
and Isidor Philipp.
The C sharp minor Valse is the most poetic of all. The first theme has
never been excelled by Chopin for a species of veiled melancholy. It is
a fascinating, lyrical sorrow, and what Kullak calls the psychologic
motivation of the first theme in the curving figure of the second does
not relax the spell. A space of clearer skies, warmer, more consoling
winds are in the D flat interlude, but the spirit of unrest, ennui
returns. The elegiac imprint is unmistakable in this soul dance. The A
flat Valse which follows is charming. It is for superior souls who
dance with intellectual joy, with the joy that comes of making
exquisite patterns and curves. Out of the salon and from its
brilliantly lighted spaces the dancers do not wander, do not dance into
the darkness and churchyard, as Ehlert imagines of certain other valses.
The two valses in op. 69, three valses, op. 70, and the two remaining
valses in E minor and E major, need not detain us. They are posthumous.
The first of op. 69 in F minor was composed in 1836; the B minor in
1829; G flat, op. 70, in 1835; F minor in 1843, and D flat major, 1830.
The E major and E minor were composed in 1829. Fontana gave these
compositions to the world. The F minor Valse, op. 69, No. 1, has a
charm of its own. Kullak prints the Fontana and Klindworth variants.
This valse is suavely melancholy, but not so melancholy as the B minor
of the same opus. It recalls in color the B minor mazurka. Very gay and
sprightly is the G flat Valse, op. 70, No. I. The next in F minor has
no special physiognomy, while the third in D flat contains, as Niecks
points out, germs of the op. 42 and the op. 34 Valses. It recalls to me
the D flat study in the supplementary series. The E minor Valse,
without opus, is beloved. It is very graceful and not without
sentiment. The major part is the early Chopin. The E major Valse is
published in the Mikuli edition. It is commonplace, hinting of its
composer only in places. Thus ends the collection of valses, not
Chopin's most signal success in art, but a success that has dignified
and given beauty to this conventional dance form.
IX. NIGHT AND ITS MELANCHOLY MYSTERIES:--THE NOCTURNES
Here is the chronology of the nocturnes: Op. 9, three nocturnes,
January, 1833; op. 15, three nocturnes, January, 1834; op. 27, two
nocturnes, May, 1836; op. 32, two nocturnes, December, 1837; op. 37,
two nocturnes, May, 1840; op. 48, two nocturnes, November, 1841; op.
55, two nocturnes, August, 1844; op. 62, two nocturnes, September,
1846. In addition there is a nocturne written in 1828 and published by
Fontana, with the opus number 72, No. 2, and the lately discovered one
in C sharp minor, written when Chopin was young and published in 1895.
This completes the nocturne list, but following Niecks' system of
formal grouping I include the Berceuse and Barcarolle as full fledged
specimens of nocturnes.
John Field has been described as the forerunner of Chopin. The limpid
style of this pupil and friend of Clementi, his beautiful touch and
finished execution, were certainly admired and imitated by the Pole.
Field's nocturnes are now neglected--so curious are Time's
caprices--and without warrant, for not only is Field the creator of the
form, but in both his concertos and nocturnes he has written charming,
sweet and sane music. He rather patronized Chopin, for whose melancholy
pose he had no patience. "He has a talent of the hospital," growled
Field in the intervals between his wine drinking, pipe smoking and the
washing of his linen--the latter economical habit he contracted from
Clementi. There is some truth in his stricture. Chopin, seldom
exuberantly cheerful, is morbidly sad and complaining in many of the
nocturnes. The most admired of his compositions, with the exception of
the valses, they are in several instances his weakest. Yet he ennobled
the form originated by Field, giving it dramatic breadth, passion and
even grandeur. Set against Field's naive and idyllic specimens,
Chopin's efforts are often too bejewelled for true simplicity, too
lugubrious, too tropical--Asiatic is a better word--and they have the
exotic savor of the heated conservatory, and not the fresh scent of the
flowers reared in the open by the less poetic Irishman. And, then,
Chopin is so desperately sentimental in some of these compositions.
They are not altogether to the taste of this generation; they seem to
be suffering from anaemia. However, there are a few noble nocturnes;
and methods of performance may have much to answer for the
sentimentalizing of some others. More vigor, a quickening of the
time-pulse, and a less languishing touch will rescue them from lush
sentiment. Chopin loved the night and its soft mysteries as much as did
Robert Louis Stevenson, and his nocturnes are true night pieces, some
with agitated, remorseful countenance, others seen in profile only,
while many are whisperings at dusk. Most of them are called feminine, a
term psychologically false. The poetic side of men of genius is
feminine, and in Chopin the feminine note was over emphasized--at times
it was almost hysterical--particularly in these nocturnes.
The Scotch have a proverb: "She wove her shroud, and wore it in her
lifetime." In the nocturnes the shroud is not far away. Chopin wove his
to the day of his death, and he wore it sometimes but not always, as
many think.
One of the most elegiac of his nocturnes is the first in B flat minor.
It is one of three, op. 9, dedicated to Mme. Camille Pleyel. Of far
more significance than its two companions, it is, for some reason,
neglected. While I am far from agreeing with those who hold that in the
early Chopin all his genius was completely revealed, yet this nocturne
is as striking as the last, for it is at once sensuous and dramatic,
melancholy and lovely. Emphatically a mood, it is best heard on a gray
day of the soul, when the times are out of joint; its silken tones will
bring a triste content as they pour out upon one's hearing. The second
section in octaves is of exceeding charm. As a melody it has all the
lurking voluptuousness and mystic crooning of its composer. There is
flux and reflux throughout, passion peeping out in the coda.
The E flat nocturne is graceful, shallow of content, but if it is
played with purity of touch and freedom from sentimentality it is not
nearly so banal as it usually seems. It is Field-like, therefore play
it as did Rubinstein, in a Field-like fashion.
Hadow calls attention to the "remote and recondite modulations" in the
twelfth bar, the chromatic double notes. For him they only are one real
modulation, "the rest of the passage is an iridescent play of color, an
effect of superficies, not an effect of substance." It was the E flat
nocturne that unloosed Rellstab's critical wrath in the "Iris." Of it
he wrote: "Where Field smiles, Chopin makes a grinning grimace; where
Field sighs, Chopin groans; where Field shrugs his shoulders, Chopin
twists his whole body; where Field puts some seasoning into the food,
Chopin empties a handful of cayenne pepper. In short, if one holds
Field's charming romances before a distorting, concave mirror, so that
every delicate impression becomes a coarse one, one gets Chopin's work.
We implore Mr. Chopin to return to nature."
Rellstab might have added that while Field was often commonplace,
Chopin never was. Rather is to be preferred the sound judgment of J. W.
Davison, the English critic and husband of the pianist, Arabella
Goddard. Of the early works he wrote:
Commonplace is instinctively avoided in all the works of
Chopin--a stale cadence or a trite progression--a hum-drum
subject or a worn-out passage--a vulgar twist of the melody or
a hackneyed sequence--a meagre harmony or an unskilful
counterpoint--may in vain be looked for throughout the entire
range of his compositions, the prevailing characteristics of
which are a feeling as uncommon as beautiful; a treatment as
original as felicitous; a melody and a harmony as new, fresh,
vigorous and striking as they are utterly unexpected and out
of the original track. In taking up one of the works of Chopin
you are entering, as it were, a fairyland untrodden by human
footsteps--a path hitherto unfrequented but by the great
composer himself.
Gracious, even coquettish, is the first part of the B major Nocturne of
this opus. Well knit, the passionate intermezzo has the true dramatic
Chopin ring. It should be taken alla breve. The ending is quite
effective.
I do not care much for the F major Nocturne, op. 15, No. I. The opus is
dedicated to Ferdinand Hiller. Ehlert speaks of "the ornament in
triplets with which he brushes the theme as with the gentle wings of a
butterfly," and then discusses the artistic value of the ornament which
may be so profitably studied in the Chopin music. "From its nature, the
ornament can only beautify the beautiful." Music like Chopin's, "with
its predominating elegance, could not forego ornament. But he surely
did not purchase it of a jeweller; he designed it himself, with a
delicate hand. He was the first to surround a note with diamond facets
and to weave the rushing floods of his emotions with the silver beams
of the moonlight. In his nocturnes there is a glimmering as of distant
stars. From these dreamy, heavenly gems he has borrowed many a line.
The Chopin nocturne is a dramatized ornament. And why may not Art speak
for once in such symbols? In the much admired F sharp major Nocturne
the principal theme makes its appearance so richly decorated that one
cannot avoid imagining that his fancy confined itself to the Arabesque
form for the expression of its poetical sentiments. Even the middle
part borders upon what I should call the tragic style of ornament. The
ground thought is hidden behind a dense veil, but a veil, too, can be
an ornament."
In another place Ehlert thinks that the F sharp major Nocturne seems
inseparable from champagne and truffles. It is certainly more elegant
and dramatic than the one in F major, which precedes it. That, with the
exception of the middle part in F minor, is weak, although rather
pretty and confiding. The F sharp Nocturne is popular. The "doppio
movemento" is extremely striking and the entire piece is saturated with
young life, love and feelings of good will to men. Read Kleczynski. The
third nocturne of the three is in G minor, and contains some fine,
picturesque writing. Kullak does not find in it aught of the fantastic.
The languid, earth-weary voice of the opening and the churchly refrain
of the chorale, is not this fantastic contrast! This nocturne contains
in solution all that Chopin developed later in a nocturne of the same
key. But I think the first stronger--its lines are simpler, more
primitive, its coloring less complicated, yet quite as rich and gloomy.
Of it Chopin said: "After Hamlet," but changed his mind. "Let them
guess for themselves," was his sensible conclusion. Kullak's programme
has a conventional ring. It is the lament for the beloved one, the lost
Lenore, with the consolation of religion thrown in. The "bell-tones" of
the plain chant bring to my mind little that consoles, although the
piece ends in the major mode. It is like Poe's "Ulalume." A complete
and tiny tone poem, Rubinstein made much of it. In the fourth bar and
for three bars there is a held note F, and I heard the Russian
virtuoso, by some miraculous means, keep this tone prolonged. The tempo
is abnormally slow, and the tone is not in a position where the
sustaining pedal can sensibly help it. Yet under Rubinstein's fingers
it swelled and diminished, and went singing into D, as if the
instrument were an organ. I suspected the inaudible changing of fingers
on the note or a sustaining pedal. It was wonderfully done.
The next nocturne, op. 27, No. I, brings us before a masterpiece. With
the possible exception of the C minor Nocturne, this one in the sombre
key of C sharp minor is the great essay in the form. Kleczynski finds
it "a description of a calm night at Venice, where, after a scene of
murder, the sea closes over a corpse and continues to serve as a mirror
to the moonlight." This is melodramatic. Willeby analyzes it at length
with the scholarly fervor of an English organist. He finds the
accompaniment to be "mostly on a double pedal," and remarks that
"higher art than this one could not have if simplicity of means be a
factor of high art." The wide-meshed figure of the left hand supports a
morbid, persistent melody that grates on the nerves. From the piu mosso
the agitation increases, and here let me call to your notice the
Beethoven-ish quality of these bars, which continue until the change of
signature. There is a surprising climax followed by sunshine and favor
in the D flat part, then after mounting dissonances a bold succession
of octaves returns to the feverish plaint of the opening. Kullak speaks
of a resemblance to Meyerbeer's song, Le Moine. The composition reaches
exalted states. Its psychological tension is so great at times as to
border on a pathological condition. There is unhealthy power in this
nocturne, which is seldom interpreted with sinister subtlety. Henry T.
Finck rightfully thinks it "embodies a greater variety of emotion and
more genuine dramatic spirit on four pages than many operas on four
hundred."
The companion picture in D flat, op. 27, No. 2, has, as Karasowski
writes, "a profusion of delicate fioriture." It really contains but one
subject, and is a song of the sweet summer of two souls, for there is
obvious meaning in the duality of voices. Often heard in the concert
room, this nocturne gives us a surfeit of sixths and thirds of
elaborate ornamentation and monotone of mood. Yet it is a lovely,
imploring melody, and harmonically most interesting. A curious marking,
and usually overlooked by pianists, is the crescendo and con forza of
the cadenza. This is obviously erroneous. The theme, which occurs three
times, should first be piano, then pianissimo, and lastly forte. This
opus is dedicated to the Comtesse d'Appony.
The best part of the next nocturne,--B major, op. 32, No. I, dedicated
to Madame de Billing--is the coda. It is in the minor and is like the
drum-beat of tragedy. The entire ending, a stormy recitative, is in
stern contrast to the dreamy beginning. Kullak in the first bar of the
last line uses a G; Fontana, F sharp, and Klindworth the same as
Kullak. The nocturne that follows in A flat is a reversion to the Field
type, the opening recalling that master's B flat Nocturne. The F minor
section of Chopin's broadens out to dramatic reaches, but as an
entirety this opus is a little tiresome. Nor do I admire inordinately
the Nocturne in G minor, op. 37, No. 1. It has a complaining tone, and
the choral is not noteworthy. This particular part, so Chopin's pupil
Gutmann declared, is taken too slowly, the composer having forgotten to
mark the increased tempo. But the Nocturne in G, op. 37, No. 2, is
charming. Painted with Chopin's most ethereal brush, without the
cloying splendors of the one in D flat, the double sixths, fourths and
thirds are magically euphonious. The second subject, I agree with
Karasowski, is the most beautiful melody Chopin ever wrote. It is in
true barcarolle vein; and most subtle are the shifting harmonic hues.
Pianists usually take the first part too fast, the second too slowly,
transforming this poetic composition into an etude. As Schumann wrote
of this opus:
"The two nocturnes differ from his earlier ones chiefly through greater
simplicity of decoration and more quiet grace. We know Chopin's
fondness in general for spangles, gold trinkets and pearls. He has
already changed and grown older; decoration he still loves, but it is
of a more judicious kind, behind which the nobility of the poetry
shimmers through with all the more loveliness: indeed, taste, the
finest, must be granted him."
Both numbers of this opus are without dedication. They are the
offspring of the trip to Majorca.
Niecks, writing of the G major Nocturne, adjures us "not to tarry too
long in the treacherous atmosphere of this Capua--it bewitches and
unmans." Kleczynski calls the one in G minor "homesickness," while the
celebrated Nocturne in C minor "is the tale of a still greater grief
told in an agitated recitando; celestial harps"--ah! I hear the squeak
of the old romantic machinery--"come to bring one ray of hope, which is
powerless in its endeavor to calm the wounded soul, which...sends forth
to heaven a cry of deepest anguish." It doubtless has its despairing
movement, this same Nocturne in C minor, op. 48, No. I, but Karasowski
is nearer right when he calls it "broad and most imposing with its
powerful intermediate movement, a thorough departure from the nocturne
style." Willeby finds it "sickly and labored," and even Niecks does not
think it should occupy a foremost place among its companions. The
ineluctable fact remains that this is the noblest nocturne of them all.
Biggest in conception it seems a miniature music drama. It requires the
grand manner to read it adequately, and the doppio movemento is
exciting to a dramatic degree. I fully agree with Kullak that too
strict adherence to the marking of this section produces the effect of
an "inartistic precipitation" which robs the movement of clarity.
Kleczynski calls the work The Contrition of a Sinner and devotes
several pages to its elucidation. De Lenz chats most entertainingly
with Tausig about it. Indeed, an imposing march of splendor is the
second subject in C. A fitting pendant is this work to the C sharp
minor Nocturne. Both have the heroic quality, both are free from
mawkishness and are of the greater Chopin, the Chopin of the mode
masculine.
Niecks makes a valuable suggestion: "In playing these nocturnes--op.
48--there occurred to me a remark of Schumann's, when he reviewed some
nocturnes by Count Wielhorski. He said that the quick middle movements
which Chopin frequently introduced into his nocturnes are often weaker
than his first conceptions; meaning the first portions of his
nocturnes. Now, although the middle part in the present instances are,
on the contrary, slower movements, yet the judgment holds good; at
least with respect to the first nocturne, the middle part of which has
nothing to recommend it but a full, sonorous instrumentation, if I may
use this word in speaking of one instrument. The middle part of the
second--D flat, molto piu lento--however, is much finer; in it we meet
again, as we did in some other nocturnes, with soothing, simple chord
progressions. When Gutmann studied the C sharp minor Nocturne with
Chopin, the master told him that the middle section--the molto piu
lento in D flat major--should be played as a recitative. 'A tyrant
commands'--the first two chords--he said, 'and the other asks for
mercy.'"
Of course Niecks means the F sharp minor, not the C sharp minor
Nocturne, op. 48, No. 2, dedicated, with the C minor, to Mlle. L.
Duperre.
Opus 55, two nocturnes in F minor and E flat major, need not detain us
long. The first is familiar. Kleczynski devotes a page or more to its
execution. He seeks to vary the return of the chief subject with
nuances--as would an artistic singer the couplets of a classic song.
There are "cries of despair" in it, but at last a "feeling of hope."
Kullak writes of the last measures: "Thank God--the goal is reached!"
It is the relief of a major key after prolonged wanderings in the
minor. It is a nice nocturne, neat in its sorrow, yet not epoch-making.
The one following has "the impression of an improvisation." It has also
the merit of being seldom heard. These two nocturnes are dedicated to
Mlle. J. W. Stirling.
Opus 62 brings us to a pair in B major and E major inscribed to Madame
de Konneritz. The first, the Tuberose Nocturne, is faint with a sick,
rich odor. The climbing trellis of notes, that so unexpectedly leads to
the tonic, is charming and the chief tune has charm, a fruity charm. It
is highly ornate, its harmonies dense, the entire surface overrun with
wild ornamentation and a profusion of trills. The piece--the third of
its sort in the key of B--is not easy. Mertke gives the following
explication of the famous chain trills:
[Musical score excerpt]
Although this nocturne is luxuriant in style, it deserves warmer praise
than is accorded it. Irregular as its outline is, its troubled lyrism
is appealing, is melting, and the A flat portion, with its hesitating,
timid accents, has great power of attraction. The E major Nocturne has
a bardic ring. Its song is almost declamatory and not at all
sentimental--unless so distorted--as Niecks would have us imagine. The
intermediate portion is wavering and passionate, like the middle of the
F sharp major Nocturne. It shows no decrease in creative vigor or
lyrical fancy. The Klindworth version differs from the original, as an
examination of the following examples will show, the upper being
Chopin's:
[Musical score excerpt]
The posthumous nocturne in E minor, composed in 1827, is weak and
uninteresting. Moreover, it contains some very un-Chopin-like
modulations. The recently discovered nocturne in C sharp minor is
hardly a treasure trove. It is vague and reminiscent The following note
was issued by its London publishers, Ascherberg & Co.:
The first question, suggested by the announcement of a new
posthumous composition of Chopin's, will be "What proof is
there of its authenticity?" To musicians and amateurs who
cannot recognize the beautiful Nocturne in C sharp minor as
indeed the work of Chopin, it may in the first place be
pointed out that the original manuscript (of which a facsimile
is given on the title-page) is in Chopin's well-known
handwriting, and, secondly, that the composition, which is
strikingly characteristic, was at once accepted as the work of
Chopin by the distinguished composer and pianist Balakireff,
who played it for the first time in public at the Chopin
Commemoration Concert, held in the autumn of 1894 at Zelazowa
Wola, and afterward at Warsaw. This nocturne was addressed by
Chopin to his sister Louise, at Warsaw, in a letter from
Paris, and was written soon after the production of the two
lovely piano concertos, when Chopin was still a very young
man. It contains a quotation from his most admired Concerto in
F minor, and a brief reference to the charming song known as
the Maiden's Wish, two of his sister's favorite melodies. The
manuscript of the nocturne was supposed to have been destroyed
in the sacking of the Zamojski Palace, at Warsaw, toward the
end of the insurrection of 1863, but it was discovered quite
recently among papers of various kinds in the possession of a
Polish gentleman, a great collector, whose son offered Mr.
Polinski the privilege of selecting from such papers. His
choice was three manuscripts of Chopin's, one of them being
this nocturne. A letter from Mr. Polinski on the subject of
this nocturne is in the possession of Miss Janotha.
Is this the nocturne of which Tausig spoke to his pupil Joseffy as
belonging to the Master's "best period," or did he refer to the one in
E minor?
The Berceuse, op. 57, published June, 1845, and dedicated to Mlle.
Elise Gavard, is the very sophistication of the art of musical
ornamentation. It is built on a tonic and dominant bass--the triad of
the tonic and the chord of the dominant seventh. A rocking theme is set
over this basso ostinato and the most enchanting effects are produced.
The rhythm never alters in the bass, and against this background, the
monotone of a dark, gray sky, the composer arranges an astonishing
variety of fireworks, some florid, some subdued, but all delicate in
tracery and design. Modulations from pigeon egg blue to Nile green,
most misty and subtle modulations, dissolve before one's eyes, and for
a moment the sky is peppered with tiny stars in doubles, each
independently tinted. Within a small segment of the chromatic bow
Chopin has imprisoned new, strangely dissonant colors. It is a miracle;
and after the drawn-out chord of the dominant seventh and the rain of
silvery fire ceases one realizes that the whole piece is a delicious
illusion, but an ululation in the key of D flat, the apotheosis of
pyrotechnical colorature.
Niecks quotes Alexandre Dumas fils, who calls the Berceuse "muted
music," but introduces a Turkish bath comparison, which crushes the
sentiment. Mertke shows the original and Klindworth's reading of a
certain part of the Berceuse, adding a footnote to the examples:
[Two musical score excerpts from Op. 57, one from the original version,
one from Klindworth's edition]
[Footnote: Das tr (flat) der Originale (Scholtz tr natural-flat)
zeigt, dass Ch. den Triller mit Ganzton und nach Mikuli den
Trilleranfang mit Hauptton wollte.] The Barcarolle, op. 60, published
September, 1846, is another highly elaborated work. Niecks must be
quoted here: "One day Tausig, the great piano virtuoso, promised W. de
Lenz to play him Chopin's Barcarolle, adding, 'That is a performance
which must not be undertaken before more than two persons. I shall play
you my own self. I love the piece, but take it rarely.' Lenz got the
music, but it did not please him--it seemed to him a long movement in
the nocturne style, a Babel of figuration on a lightly laid foundation.
But he found that he had made a mistake, and, after hearing it played
by Tausig, confessed that the virtuoso had infused into the 'nine pages
of enervating music, of one and the same long-breathed rhythm, so much
interest, so much motion, so much action,' that he regretted the long
piece was not longer."
Tausig's conception of the barcarolle was this: "There are two persons
concerned in the affair; it is a love scene in a discrete gondola; let
us say this mise-en-scene is the symbol of a lover's meeting generally."
"This is expressed in thirds and sixths; the dualism of two
notes--persons--is maintained throughout; all is two-voiced,
two-souled. In this modulation in C sharp major--superscribed dolce
sfogato--there are kiss and embrace! This is evident! When, after three
bars of introduction, the theme, 'lightly rocking in the bass solo,'
enters in the fourth, this theme is nevertheless made use of throughout
the whole fabric only as an accompaniment, and ON this the cantilena in
two parts is laid; we have thus a continuous, tender dialogue."
The Barcarolle is a nocturne painted on a large canvas, with larger
brushes. It has Italian color in spots--Schumann said that,
melodically, Chopin sometimes "leans over Germany into Italy"--and is a
masterly one in sentiment, pulsating with amorousness. To me it sounds
like a lament for the splendors, now vanished, of Venice the Queen. In
bars 8, 9, and 10, counting backward, Louis Ehlert finds obscurities in
the middle voices. It is dedicated to the Baronne de Stockhausen.
The nocturnes--including the Berceuse and Barcarolle--should seldom be
played in public and not the public of a large hall. Something of
Chopin's delicate, tender warmth and spiritual voice is lost in larger
spaces. In a small auditorium, and from the fingers of a sympathetic
pianist, the nocturnes should be heard, that their intimate, night side
may be revealed. Many are like the music en sourdine of Paul Verlaine
in his "Chanson D'Automne" or "Le Piano que Baise une Main Frele." They
are essentially for the twilight, for solitary enclosures, where their
still, mysterious tones--"silent thunder in the leaves" as Yeats
sings--become eloquent and disclose the poetry and pain of their
creator.
X. THE BALLADES:--FAERY DRAMAS
W. H. Hadow has said some pertinent things about Chopin in "Studies in
Modern Music." Yet we cannot accept unconditionally his statement that
"in structure Chopin is a child playing with a few simple types, and
almost helpless as soon as he advances beyond them; in phraseology he
is a master whose felicitous perfection of style is one of the abiding
treasures of the art."
Chopin then, according to Hadow, is no "builder of the lofty rhyme,"
but the poet of the single line, the maker of the phrase exquisite.
This is hardly comprehensive. With the more complex, classical types of
the musical organism Chopin had little sympathy, but he contrived
nevertheless to write two movements of a piano sonata that are
excellent--the first half of the B flat minor Sonata. The idealized
dance forms he preferred; the Polonaise, Mazurka and Valse were already
there for him to handle, but the Ballade was not. Here he is not
imitator, but creator. Not loosely-jointed, but compact structures
glowing with genius and presenting definite unity of form and
expression, are the ballades--commonly written in six-eight and
six-four time. "None of Chopin's compositions surpasses in masterliness
of form and beauty and poetry of contents his ballades. In them he
attains the acme of his power as an artist," remarks Niecks.
I am ever reminded of Andrew Lang's lines, "the thunder and surge of
the Odyssey," when listening to the G minor Ballade, op. 23. It is the
Odyssey of Chopin's soul. That 'cello-like largo with its noiseless
suspension stays us for a moment in the courtyard of Chopin's House
Beautiful. Then, told in his most dreamy tones, the legend begins. As
in some fabulous tales of the Genii this Ballade discloses surprising
and delicious things. There is the tall lily in the fountain that nods
to the sun. It drips in cadenced monotone and its song is repeated on
the lips of the slender-hipped girl with the eyes of midnight--and so
might I weave for you a story of what I see in the Ballade and you
would be aghast or puzzled. With such a composition any programme could
be sworn to, even the silly story of the Englishman who haunted Chopin,
beseeching him to teach him this Ballade. That Chopin had a programme,
a definite one, there can be no doubt; but he has, wise artist, left us
no clue beyond Mickiewicz's, the Polish bard Lithuanian poems. In
Leipzig, Karasowski relates, that when Schumann met Chopin, the pianist
confessed having "been incited to the creation of the ballades by the
poetry" of his fellow countryman. The true narrative tone is in this
symmetrically constructed Ballade, the most spirited, most daring work
of Chopin, according to Schumann. Louis Ehlert says of the four
Ballades: "Each one differs entirely from the others, and they have but
one thing in common--their romantic working out and the nobility of
their motives. Chopin relates in them, not like one who communicates
something really experienced; it is as though he told what never took
place, but what has sprung up in his inmost soul, the anticipation of
something longed for. They may contain a strong element of national
woe, much outwardly expressed and inwardly burning rage over the
sufferings of his native land; yet they do not carry with a positive
reality like that which in a Beethoven Sonata will often call words to
our lips." Which means that Chopin was not such a realist as Beethoven?
Ehlert is one of the few sympathetic German Chopin commentators, yet he
did not always indicate the salient outlines of his art. Only the Slav
may hope to understand Chopin thoroughly. But these Ballades are more
truly touched by the universal than any other of his works. They belong
as much to the world as to Poland.
The G minor Ballade after "Konrad Wallenrod," is a logical, well knit
and largely planned composition. The closest parallelism may be
detected in its composition of themes. Its second theme in E flat is
lovely in line, color and sentiment. The return of the first theme in A
minor and the quick answer in E of the second are evidences of Chopin's
feeling for organic unity. Development, as in strict cyclic forms,
there is not a little. After the cadenza, built on a figure of wavering
tonality, a valse-like theme emerges and enjoys a capricious, butterfly
existence. It is fascinating. Passage work of an etherealized character
leads to the second subject, now augmented and treated with a broad
brush. The first questioning theme is heard again, and with a
perpendicular roar the presto comes upon us. For two pages the dynamic
energy displayed by the composer is almost appalling. A whirlwind I
have called it elsewhere. It is a storm of the emotions, muscular in
its virility. I remember de Pachmann--a close interpreter of certain
sides of Chopin--playing this coda piano, pianissimo and prestissimo.
The effect was strangely irritating to the nerves, and reminded me of a
tornado seen from the wrong end of an opera glass. According to his own
lights the Russian virtuoso was right: his strength was not equal to
the task, and so, imitating Chopin, he topsy-turvied the shading. It
recalled Moscheles' description of Chopin's playing: "His piano is so
softly breathed forth that he does not require any strong forte to
produce the wished for contrast."
This G minor Ballade was published in June, 1836, and is dedicated to
Baron Stockhausen. The last bar of the introduction has caused some
controversy. Gutmann, Mikuli and other pupils declare for the E flat;
Klindworth and Kullak use it. Xaver Scharwenka has seen fit to edit
Klindworth, and gives a D natural in the Augener edition. That he is
wrong internal testimony abundantly proves. Even Willeby, who
personally prefers the D natural, thinks Chopin intended the E flat,
and quotes a similar effect twenty-eight bars later. He might have
added that the entire composition contains examples--look at the first
bar of the valse episode in the bass. As Niecks thinks, "This dissonant
E flat may be said to be the emotional keynote of the whole poem. It is
a questioning thought that, like a sudden pain, shoots through mind and
body."
There is other and more confirmatory evidence. Ferdinand Von Inten, a
New York pianist, saw the original Chopin manuscript at Stuttgart. It
was the property of Professor Lebert (Levy), since deceased, and in it,
without any question, stands the much discussed E flat. This testimony
is final. The D natural robs the bar of all meaning. It is insipid,
colorless.
Kullak gives 60 to the half note at the moderato. On the third page,
third bar, he uses F natural in the treble. So does Klindworth,
although F sharp may be found in some editions. On the last page,
second bar, first line, Kullak writes the passage beginning with E flat
in eighth notes, Klindworth in sixteenths. The close is very striking,
full of the splendors of glancing scales and shrill octave
progressions. "It would inspire a poet to write words to it," said
Robert Schumann.
"Perhaps the most touching of all that Chopin has written is the tale
of the F major Ballade. I have witnessed children lay aside their games
to listen thereto. It appears like some fairy tale that has become
music. The four-voiced part has such a clearness withal, it seems as if
warm spring breezes were waving the lithe leaves of the palm tree. How
soft and sweet a breath steals over the senses and the heart!"
And how difficult it seems to be to write of Chopin except in terms of
impassioned prose! Louis Ehlert, a romantic in feeling and a classicist
in theory, is the writer of the foregoing. The second Ballade, although
dedicated to Robert Schumann, did not excite his warmest praise. "A
less artistic work than the first," he wrote, "but equally fantastic
and intellectual. Its impassioned episodes seem to have been afterward
inserted. I recollect very well that when Chopin played this Ballade
for me it finished in F major; it now closes in A minor." Willeby gives
its key as F minor. It is really in the keys of F major--A minor.
Chopin's psychology was seldom at fault. A major ending would have
crushed this extraordinary tone-poem, written, Chopin admits, under the
direct inspiration of Adam Mickiewicz's "Le Lac de Willis." Willeby
accepts Schumann's dictum of the inferiority of this Ballade to its
predecessor. Niecks does not. Niecks is quite justified in asking how
"two such wholly dissimilar things can be compared and weighed in this
fashion."
In truth they cannot. "The second Ballade possesses beauties in no way
inferior to those of the first," he continues. "What can be finer than
the simple strains of the opening section! They sound as if they had
been drawn from the people's store-house of song. The entrance of the
presto surprises, and seems out of keeping with what precedes; but what
we hear after the return of tempo primo--the development of those
simple strains, or rather the cogitations on them--justifies the
presence of the presto. The second appearance of the latter leads to an
urging, restless coda in A minor, which closes in the same key and
pianissimo with a few bars of the simple, serene, now veiled first
strain."
Rubinstein bore great love for this second Ballade. This is what it
meant for him: "Is it possible that the interpreter does not feel the
necessity of representing to his audience--a field flower caught by a
gust of wind, a caressing of the flower by the wind; the resistance of
the flower, the stormy struggle of the wind; the entreaty of the
flower, which at last lies there broken; and paraphrased--the field
flower a rustic maiden, the wind a knight."
I can find "no lack of affinity" between the andantino and presto. The
surprise is a dramatic one, withal rudely vigorous. Chopin's robust
treatment of the first theme results in a strong piece of craftmanship.
The episodical nature of this Ballade is the fruit of the esoteric
moods of its composer. It follows a hidden story, and has the
quality--as the second Impromptu in F sharp--of great, unpremeditated
art. It shocks one by its abrupt but by no means fantastic transitions.
The key color is changeful, and the fluctuating themes are well
contrasted. It was written at Majorca while the composer was only too
noticeably disturbed in body and soul.
Presto con fuoco Chopin marks the second section. Kullak gives 84 to
the quarter, and for the opening 66 to the quarter. He also wisely
marks crescendos in the bass at the first thematic development. He
prefers the E--as does Klindworth--nine bars before the return of the
presto. At the eighth bar, after this return, Kullak adheres to the E
instead of F at the beginning of the bar, treble clef. Klindworth
indicates both. Nor does Kullak follow Mikuli in using a D in the coda.
He prefers a D sharp, instead of a natural. I wish the second Ballade
were played oftener in public. It is quite neglected for the third in A
flat, which, as Ehlert says, has the voice of the people.
This Ballade, the "Undine" of Mickiewicz, published November, 1841, and
dedicated to Mlle. P. de Noailles, is too well known to analyze. It is
the schoolgirls' delight, who familiarly toy with its demon, seeing
only favor and prettiness in its elegant measures. In it "the refined,
gifted Pole, who is accustomed to move in the most distinguished
circles of the French capital, is pre-eminently to be recognized." Thus
Schumann. Forsooth, it is aristocratic, gay, graceful, piquant, and
also something more. Even in its playful moments there is delicate
irony, a spiritual sporting with graver and more passionate emotions.
Those broken octaves which usher in each time the second theme, with
its fascinating, infectious, rhythmical lilt, what an ironically joyous
fillip they give the imagination!
"A coquettish grace--if we accept by this expression that half
unconscious toying with the power that charms and fires, that follows
up confession with reluctance--seems the very essence of Chopin's
being."
"It becomes a difficult task to transcribe the easy transitions, full
of an irresistible charm, with which he portrays Love's game. Who will
not recall the memorable passage in the A flat Ballade, where the right
hand alone takes up the dotted eighths after the sustained chord of the
sixth of A flat? Could a lover's confusion be more deliciously enhanced
by silence and hesitation?" Ehlert above evidently sees a ballroom
picture of brilliancy, with the regulation tender avowal. The episodes
of this Ballade are so attenuated of any grosser elements that none but
psychical meanings should be read into them.
The disputed passage is on the fifth page of the Kullak edition, after
the trills. A measure is missing in Kullak, who, like Klindworth, gives
it in a footnote. To my mind this repetition adds emphasis, although it
is a formal blur. And what an irresistible moment it is, this
delightful territory, before the darker mood of the C sharp minor part
is reached! Niecks becomes enthusiastic over the insinuation and
persuasion of this composition: "the composer showing himself in a
fundamentally caressing mood." The ease with which the entire work is
floated proves that Chopin in mental health was not daunted by larger
forms. There is moonlight in this music, and some sunlight, too. The
prevailing moods are coquetry and sweet contentment.
Contrapuntal skill is shown in the working out section. Chopin always
wears his learning lightly; it does not oppress us. The inverted
dominant pedal in the C sharp minor episode reveals, with the massive
coda, a great master. Kullak suggests some variants. He uses the
transient shake in the third bar, instead of the appoggiatura which
Klindworth prefers. Klindworth attacks the trill on the second page
with the upper tone--A flat. Kullak and Mertke, in the Steingraber
edition, play the passage in this manner:
[Musical score excerpt from the original version of the Op. 47. Ballade]
Here is Klindworth:
[Musical score excerpt of the same passage in Klindworth's edition]
Of the fourth and glorious Ballade in F minor dedicated to Baronne C.
de Rothschild I could write a volume. It is Chopin in his most
reflective, yet lyric mood. Lyrism is the keynote of the work, a
passionate lyrism, with a note of self-absorption, suppressed
feeling--truly Slavic, this shyness!--and a concentration that is
remarkable even for Chopin. The narrative tone is missing after the
first page, a rather moody and melancholic pondering usurping its
place. It is the mood of a man who examines with morbid, curious
insistence the malady that is devouring his soul. This Ballade is the
companion of the Fantaisie-Polonaise, but as a Ballade "fully worthy of
its sisters," to quote Niecks. It was published December, 1843. The
theme in F minor has the elusive charm of a slow, mournful valse, that
returns twice, bejewelled, yet never overladen. Here is the very
apotheosis of the ornament; the figuration sets off the idea in
dazzling relief. There are episodes, transitional passage work,
distinguished by novelty and the finest art. At no place is there
display for display's sake. The cadenza in A is a pause for breath,
rather a sigh, before the rigorously logical imitations which presage
the re-entrance of the theme. How wonderfully the introduction comes in
for its share of thoughtful treatment. What a harmonist! And consider
the D flat scale runs in the left hand; how suave, how satisfying is
this page. I select for especial admiration this modulatory passage:
[Musical score excerpt]
And what could be more evocative of dramatic suspense than the sixteen
bars before the mad, terrifying coda! How the solemn splendors of the
half notes weave an atmosphere of mystic tragedy! This soul-suspension
recalls Maeterlinck. Here is the episode:
[Musical score excerpt]
A story of de Lenz that lends itself to quotation is about this piece:
Tausig impressed me deeply in his interpretation of Chopin's
Ballade in F minor. It has three requirements: The
comprehension of the programme as a whole,--for Chopin writes
according to a programme, to the situations in life best known
to, and understood by himself; and in an adequate manner; the
conquest of the stupendous difficulties in complicated
figures, winding harmonies and formidable passages.
Tausig fulfilled these requirements, presenting an embodiment
of the signification and the feeling of the work. The Ballade--
andante con moto, six-eighths--begins in the major key of the
dominant; the seventh measure comes to a stand before a
fermata on C major. The easy handling of these seven measures
Tausig interpreted thus: 'The piece has not yet begun;' in his
firmer, nobly expressive exposition of the principal theme,
free from sentimentality--to which one might easily yield--the
grand style found due scope. An essential requirement in an
instrumental virtuoso is that he should understand how to
breathe, and how to allow his hearers to take breath--giving
them opportunity to arrive at a better understanding. By this
I mean a well chosen incision--the cesura, and a lingering--
"letting in air," Tausig cleverly called it--which in no way
impairs rhythm and time, but rather brings them into stronger
relief; a LINGERING which our signs of notation cannot
adequately express, because it is made up of atomic time
values. Rub the bloom from a peach or from a butterfly--what
remains will belong to the kitchen, to natural history! It is
not otherwise with Chopin; the bloom consisted in Tausig's
treatment of the Ballade.
He came to the first passage--the motive among blossoms and
leaves--a figurated recurrence to the principal theme is in
the inner parts--its polyphonic variant. A little thread
connects this with the chorale-like introduction of the second
theme. The theme is strongly and abruptly modulated, perhaps a
little too much so. Tausig tied the little thread to a doppio
movimento in two-four time, but thereby resulted sextolets,
which threw the chorale into still bolder relief. Then
followed a passage a tempo, in which the principal theme
played hide and seek. How clear it all became as Tausig played
it! Of technical difficulties he knew literally nothing; the
intricate and evasive parts were as easy as the easiest--I
might say easier!
I admired the short trills in the left hand, which were
trilled out quite independently, as if by a second player; the
gliding ease of the cadence marked dolcissimo. It swung itself
into the higher register, where it came to a stop before A
major, just as the introduction stopped before C major. Then,
after the theme has once more presented itself in a modified
form--variant--it comes under the pestle of an extremely
figurate coda, which demands the study of an artist, the
strength of a robust man--the most vigorous pianistic health,
in a word! Tausig overcame this threatening group of terrific
difficulties, whose appearance in the piece is well explained
by the programme, without the slightest effect. The coda, in
modulated harp tones, came to a stop before a fermata which
corresponded to those before mentioned, in order to cast
anchor in the haven of the dominant, finishing with a witches'
dance of triplets, doubled in thirds. This piece winds up with
extreme bravura.
The "lingering" mentioned by de Lenz is tempo rubato, so fatally
misunderstood by most Chopin players. De Lenz in a note quotes
Meyerbeer as saying--Meyerbeer, who quarrelled with Chopin about the
rhythm of a mazurka--"Can one reduce women to notation? They would
breed mischief, were they emancipated from the measure."
There is passion, refined and swelling, in the curves of this most
eloquent composition. It is Chopin at the supreme summit of his art, an
art alembicated, personal and intoxicating. I know of nothing in music
like the F minor Ballade. Bach in the Chromatic Fantasia--be not
deceived by its classical contours, it is music hot from the
soul--Beethoven in the first movement of the C sharp minor Sonata, the
arioso of the Sonata op. 110, and possibly Schumann in the opening of
his C major Fantaisie, are as intimate, as personal as the F minor
Ballade, which is as subtly distinctive as the hands and smile of Lisa
Gioconda. Its inaccessible position preserves it from rude and
irreverent treatment. Its witchery is irresistible.
XI. CLASSICAL CURRENTS
Guy de Maupassant put before us a widely diverse number of novels in a
famous essay attached to the definitive edition of his masterpiece,
"Pierre et Jean," and puzzlingly demanded the real form of the novel.
If "Don Quixote" is one, how can "Madame Bovary" be another? If "Les
Miserables" is included in the list, what are we to say to Huysmans'
"La Bas"?
Just such a question I should like to propound, substituting sonata for
novel. If Scarlatti wrote sonatas, what is the Appassionata? If the A
flat Weber is one, can the F minor Brahms be called a sonata? Is the
Haydn form orthodox and the Schumann heterodox? These be enigmas to
make weary the formalists. Come, let us confess, and in the open air:
there is a great amount of hypocrisy and cant in this matter. We can,
as can any conservatory student, give the recipe for turning out a smug
specimen of the form, but when we study the great examples, it is just
the subtle eluding of hard and fast rules that distinguishes the
efforts of the masters from the machine work of apprentices and
academic monsters. Because it is no servile copy of the Mozart Sonata,
the F sharp minor of Brahms is a piece of original art. Beethoven at
first trod in the well blazed path of Haydn, but study his second
period, and it sounds the big Beethoven note. There is no final court
of appeal in the matter of musical form, and there is none in the
matter of literary style. The history of the sonata is the history of
musical evolution. Every great composer, Schubert included, added to
the form, filed here, chipped away there, introduced lawlessness where
reigned prim order--witness the Schumann F sharp minor Sonata--and then
came Chopin.
The Chopin sonata has caused almost as much warfare as the Wagner music
drama. It is all the more ludicrous, for Chopin never wrote but one
piano sonata that has a classical complexion: in C minor, op. 4, and it
was composed as early as 1828. Not published until July, 1851, it
demonstrates without a possibility of doubt that the composer had no
sympathy with the form. He tried so hard and failed so dismally that it
is a relief when the second and third sonatas are reached, for in them
there are only traces of formal beauty and organic unity. But then
there is much Chopin, while little of his precious essence is to be
tasted in the first sonata.
Chopin wrote of the C minor Sonata: "As a pupil I dedicated it to
Elsner," and--oh, the irony of criticism!--it was praised by the
critics because not so revolutionary as the Variations, op. 2. This,
too, despite the larghetto in five-four time. The first movement is
wheezing and all but lifeless. One asks in astonishment what Chopin is
doing in this gallery. And it is technically difficult. The menuetto is
excellent, its trio being a faint approach to Beethoven in color. The
unaccustomed rhythm of the slow movement is irritating. Our young
Chopin does not move about as freely as Benjamin Godard in the scherzo
of his violin and piano sonata in the same bizarre rhythm. Niecks sees
naught but barren waste in the finale. I disagree with him. There is
the breath of a stirring spirit, an imitative attempt that is more
diverting than the other movements. Above all there is movement, and
the close is vigorous, though banal. The sonata is the dullest music
penned by Chopin, but as a whole it hangs together as a sonata better
than its two successors. So much for an attempt at strict devotion to
scholastic form.
From this schoolroom we are transported in op. 35 to the theatre of
larger life and passion. The B flat minor Sonata was published May,
1840. Two movements are masterpieces; the funeral march that forms the
third movement is one of the Pole's most popular compositions, while
the finale has no parallel in piano music. Schumann says that Chopin
here "bound together four of his maddest children," and he is not
astray. He thinks the march does not belong to the work. It certainly
was written before its companion movements. As much as Hadow admires
the first two movements, he groans at the last pair, though they are
admirable when considered separately.
These four movements have no common life. Chopin says he intended the
strange finale as a gossiping commentary on the march. "The left hand
unisono with the right hand are gossiping after the march." Perhaps the
last two movements do hold together, but what have they in common with
the first two? Tonality proves nothing. Notwithstanding the grandeur
and beauty of the grave, the power and passion of the scherzo, this
Sonata in B flat minor is not more a sonata than it is a sequence of
ballades and scherzi. And again we are at the de Maupassant crux. The
work never could be spared; it is Chopin mounted for action and in the
thick of the fight. The doppio movimento is pulse-stirring--a strong,
curt and characteristic theme for treatment. Here is power, and in the
expanding prologue flashes more than a hint of the tragic. The D flat
Melody is soothing, charged with magnetism, and urged to a splendid
fever of climax. The working out section is too short and dissonantal,
but there is development, perhaps more technical than logical--I mean
by this more pianistic than intellectually musical--and we mount with
the composer until the B flat version of the second subject is reached,
for the first subject, strange to say, does not return. From that on to
the firm chords of the close there is no misstep, no faltering or
obscurity. Noble pages have been read, and the scherzo is approached
with eagerness. Again there is no disappointment. On numerous occasions
I have testified my regard for this movement in warm and uncritical
terms. It is simply unapproachable, and has no equal for lucidity,
brevity and polish among the works of Chopin, except the Scherzo in C
sharp minor; but there is less irony, more muscularity, and more native
sweetness in this E flat minor Scherzo. I like the way Kullak marks the
first B flat octave. It is a pregnant beginning. The second bar I have
never heard from any pianist save Rubinstein given with the proper
crescendo. No one else seems to get it explosive enough within the
walls of one bar. It is a true Rossin-ian crescendo. And in what a wild
country we are landed when the F sharp minor is crashed out! Stormy
chromatic double notes, chords of the sixth, rush on with incredible
fury, and the scherzo ends on the very apex of passion. A Trio in G
flat is the song of songs, its swaying rhythms and phrase-echoings
investing a melody at once sensuous and chaste. The second part and the
return to the scherzo are proofs of the composer's sense of balance and
knowledge of the mysteries of anticipation. The closest parallelisms
are noticeable, the technique so admirable that the scherzo floats in
mid-air--Flaubert's ideal of a miraculous style.
And then follows that deadly Marche Funebre! Ernest Newman, in his
remarkable "Study of Wagner," speaks of the fundamental difference
between the two orders of imagination, as exemplified by Beethoven and
Chopin on the one side, Wagner on the other. This regarding the funeral
marches of the three. Newman finds Wagner's the more concrete
imagination; the "inward picture" of Beethoven, and Chopin "much vaguer
and more diffused." Yet Chopin is seldom so realistic; here are the
bell-like basses, the morbid coloring. Schumann found "it contained
much that is repulsive," and Liszt raves rhapsodically over it; for
Karasowski it was the "pain and grief of an entire nation," while
Ehlert thinks "it owes its renown to the wonderful effect of two
triads, which in their combination possess a highly tragical element.
The middle movement is not at all characteristic. Why could it not at
least have worn second mourning? After so much black crepe drapery one
should not at least at once display white lingerie!" This is cruel.
The D flat Trio is a logical relief after the booming and glooming of
the opening. That it is "a rapturous gaze into the beatific regions of
a beyond," as Niecks writes, I am not prepared to say. We do know,
however, that the march, when isolated, has a much more profound effect
than in its normal sequence. The presto is too wonderful for words.
Rubinstein, or was it originally Tausig who named it "Night winds
sweeping over the churchyard graves"? Its agitated, whirring,
unharmonized triplets are strangely disquieting, and can never be
mistaken for mere etude passage work. The movement is too sombre, its
curves too full of half-suppressed meanings, its rush and sub-human
growling too expressive of something that defies definition. Schumann
compares it to a "sphinx with a mocking smile." To Henri Barbadette
"C'est Lazare grattant de ses ongles la pierre de son tombeau," or,
like Mendelssohn, one may abhor it, yet it cannot be ignored. It has
Asiatic coloring, and to me seems like the wavering outlines of
light-tipped hills seen sharply en silhouette, behind which rises and
falls a faint, infernal glow. This art paints as many differing
pictures as there are imaginations for its sonorous background; not
alone the universal solvent, as Henry James thinks, it bridges the
vast, silent gulfs between human souls with its humming eloquence. This
sonata is not dedicated.
The third Sonata in B minor, op. 58, has more of that undefinable
"organic unity," yet, withal, it is not so powerful, so pathos-breeding
or so compact of thematic interest as its forerunner. The first page,
to the chromatic chords of the sixth, promises much. There is a clear
statement, a sound theme for developing purposes, the crisp march of
chord progressions, and then--the edifice goes up in smoke. After
wreathings and curlings of passage work, and on the rim of despair, we
witness the exquisite budding of the melody in D. It is an aubade, a
nocturne of the morn--if the contradictory phrase be allowed. There is
morning freshness in its hue and scent, and, when it bursts, a parterre
of roses. The close of the section is inimitable. All the more sorrow
at what follows: wild disorder and the luxuriance called tropical. When
B major is compassed we sigh, for it augurs us a return of delight. The
ending is not that of a sonata, but a love lyric. For Chopin is not the
cool breadth and marmoreal majesty of blank verse. He sonnets to
perfection, but the epical air does not fill his nostrils.
Vivacious, charming, light as a harebell in the soft breeze is the
Scherzo in E flat. It has a clear ring of the scherzo and harks back to
Weber in its impersonal, amiable hurry. The largo is tranquilly
beautiful, rich in its reverie, lovely in its tune. The trio is
reserved and hypnotic. The last movement, with its brilliancy and
force, is a favorite, but it lacks weight, and the entire sonata is, as
Niecks writes, "affiliated, but not cognate." It was published June,
1845, and is dedicated to Comtesse E. de Perthuis.
So these sonatas of Chopin are not sonatas at all, but, throwing titles
to the dogs, would we forego the sensations that two of them evoke?
There is still another, the Sonata in G minor, op. 65, for piano and
'cello. It is dedicated to Chopin's friend, August Franchomme, the
violoncellist. Now, while I by no means share Finck's exalted
impression of this work, yet I fancy the critics have dealt too harshly
with it. Robbed of its title of sonata--though sedulously aping this
form--it contains much pretty music. And it is grateful for the 'cello.
There is not an abundant literature for this kingly instrument, in
conjunction with the piano, so why flaunt Chopin's contribution? I will
admit that he walks stiffly, encased in his borrowed garb, but there is
the andante, short as it is, an effective scherzo and a carefully made
allegro and finale. Tonal monotony is the worst charge to be brought
against this work.
The trio, also in G minor, op. 8, is more alluring. It was published
March, 1833, and dedicated to Prince Anton Radziwill. Chopin later, in
speaking of it to a pupil, admitted that he saw things he would like to
change. He regretted not making it for viola, instead of violin, 'cello
and piano.
It was worked over a long time, the first movement being ready in 1833.
When it appeared it won philistine praise, for its form more nearly
approximates the sonata than any of his efforts in the cyclical order,
excepting op. 4. In it the piano receives better treatment than the
other instruments; there are many virtuoso passages, but again key
changes are not frequent or disparate enough to avoid a monotone.
Chopin's imagination refuses to become excited when working in the open
spaces of the sonata form. Like creatures that remain drab of hue in
unsympathetic or dangerous environment, his music is transformed to a
bewildering bouquet of color when he breathes native air. Compare the
wildly modulating Chopin of the ballades to the tame-pacing Chopin of
the sonatas, trio and concertos! The trio opens with fire, the scherzo
is fanciful, and the adagio charming, while the finale is cheerful to
loveliness. It might figure occasionally on the programmes of our
chamber music concerts, despite its youthful puerility.
There remain the two concertos, which I do not intend discussing fully.
Not Chopin at his very best, the E minor and F minor concertos are
frequently heard because of the chances afforded the solo player. I
have written elsewhere at length of the Klindworth, Tausig and
Burmeister versions of the two concertos. As time passes I see no
reason for amending my views on this troublous subject. Edgar S. Kelly
holds a potent brief for the original orchestration, contending that it
suits the character of the piano part. Rosenthal puts this belief into
practice by playing the older version of the E minor with the first
long tutti curtailed. But he is not consistent, for he uses the Tausig
octaves at the close of the rondo. While I admire the Tausig
orchestration, these particlar octaves are hideously cacaphonic. The
original triplet unisons are so much more graceful and musical.
The chronology of the concertos has given rise to controversy. The
trouble arose from the F minor Concerto, it being numbered op. 21,
although composed before the one in E minor. The former was published
April, 1836; the latter September, 1833. The slow movement of the F
minor Concerto was composed by Chopin during his passion for Constantia
Gladowska. She was "the ideal" he mentions in his letters, the adagio
of this concerto. This larghetto in A flat is a trifle too ornamental
for my taste, mellifluous and serene as it is. The recitative is finely
outlined. I think I like best the romanze of the E minor Concerto. It
is less flowery. The C sharp minor part is imperious in its beauty,
while the murmuring mystery of the close mounts to the imagination. The
rondo is frolicksome, tricky, genial and genuine piano music. It is
true the first movement is too long, too much in one set of keys, and
the working-out section too much in the nature of a technical study.
The first movement of the F minor far transcends it in breadth, passion
and musical feeling, but it is short and there is no coda. Richard
Burmeister has supplied the latter deficiency in a capitally made
cadenza, which Paderewski plays. It is a complete summing up of the
movement. The mazurka-like finale is very graceful and full of pure,
sweet melody. This concerto is altogether more human than the E minor.
Both derive from Hummel and Field. The passage work is superior in
design to that of the earlier masters, the general character
episodical,--but episodes of rare worth and originality. As Ehlert
says, "Noblesse oblige--and thus Chopin felt himself compelled to
satisfy all demands exacted of a pianist, and wrote the unavoidable
piano concerto. It was not consistent with his nature to express
himself in broad terms. His lungs were too weak for the pace in seven
league boots, so often required in a score. The trio and 'cello sonata
were also tasks for whose accomplishment Nature did not design him. He
must touch the keys by himself without being called upon to heed the
players sitting next him. He is at his best when without formal
restraint, he can create out of his inmost soul."
"He must touch the keys by himself!" There you have summed up in a
phrase the reason Chopin never succeeded in impressing his
individuality upon the sonata form and his playing upon the masses. His
was the lonely soul. George Sand knew this when she wrote, "He made an
instrument speak the language of the infinite. Often in ten lines that
a child might play he has introduced poems of unequalled elevation,
dramas unrivalled in force and energy. He did not need the great
material methods to find expression for his genius. Neither saxophone
nor ophicleide was necessary for him to fill the soul with awe. Without
church organ or human voice he inspired faith and enthusiasm."
It might be remarked here that Beethoven, too, aroused a wondering and
worshipping world without the aid of saxophone or ophicleide. But it is
needless cruelty to pick at Madame Sand's criticisms. She had no
technical education, and so little appreciation of Chopin's peculiar
genius for the piano that she could write, "The day will come when his
music will be arranged for orchestra without change of the piano
score;" which is disaster-breeding nonsense. We have sounded Chopin's
weakness when writing for any instrument but his own, when writing in
any form but his own.
The E minor Concerto is dedicated to Frederick Kalkbrenner, the F minor
to the Comtesse Deiphine Potocka. The latter dedication demonstrates
that he could forget his only "ideal" in the presence of the charming
Potocka! Ah! these vibratile and versatile Poles!
Robert Schumann, it is related, shook his head wearily when his early
work was mentioned. "Dreary stuff," said the composer, whose critical
sense did not fail him even in so personal a question. What Chopin
thought of his youthful music may be discovered in his scanty
correspondence. To suppose that the young Chopin sprang into the arena
a fully equipped warrior is one of those nonsensical notions which
gains currency among persons unfamiliar with the law of musical
evolution. Chopin's musical ancestry is easily traced; as Poe had his
Holley Chivers, Chopin had his Field. The germs of his second period
are all there; from op. 1 to opus 22 virtuosity for virtuosity's sake
is very evident. Liszt has said that in every young artist there is the
virtuoso fever, and Chopin being a pianist did not escape the fever of
the footlights. He was composing, too, at a time when piano music was
well nigh strangled by excess of ornament, when acrobats were kings,
when the Bach Fugue and Beethoven Sonata lurked neglected and dusty in
the memories of the few. Little wonder, then, we find this individual,
youthful Pole, not timidly treading in the path of popular composition,
but bravely carrying his banner, spangled, glittering and fanciful, and
outstripping at their own game all the virtuosi of Europe. His
originality in this bejewelled work caused Hummel to admire and
Kalkbrenner to wonder. The supple fingers of the young man from Warsaw
made quick work of existing technical difficulties. He needs must
invent some of his own, and when Schumann saw the pages of op. 2 he
uttered his historical cry. Today we wonder somewhat at his enthusiasm.
It is the old story--a generation seeks to know, a generation
comprehends and enjoys, and a generation discards.
Opus 1, a Rondo in C minor, dedicated to Madame de Linde, saw the light
in 1825, but it was preceded by two polonaises, a set of variations,
and two mazurkas in G and B flat major. Schumann declared that Chopin's
first published work was his tenth, and that between op. 1 and 2 there
lay two years and twenty works. Be this as it may, one cannot help
liking the C minor Rondo. In the A flat section we detect traces of his
F minor Concerto. There is lightness, joy in creation, which contrast
with the heavy, dour quality of the C minor Sonata, op. 4. Loosely
constructed, in a formal sense, and too exuberant for his strict
confines, this op. 1 is remarkable, much more remarkable, than
Schumann's Abegg variations.
The Rondo a la Mazur, in F, is a further advance. It is dedicated to
Comtesse Moriolles, and was published in 1827 (?). Schumann reviewed it
in 1836. It is sprightly, Polish in feeling and rhythmic life, and a
glance at any of its pages gives us the familiar Chopin
impression--florid passage work, chords in extensions and chromatic
progressions. The Concert Rondo, op. 14, in F, called Krakowiak, is
built on a national dance in two-four time, which originated in
Cracovia. It is, to quote Niecks, a modified polonaise, danced by the
peasants with lusty abandon. Its accentual life is usually manifested
on an unaccented part of the bar, especially at the end of a section or
phrase. Chopin's very Slavic version is spirited, but the virtuoso
predominates. There is lushness in ornamentation, and a bold, merry
spirit informs every page. The orchestral accompaniment is thin.
Dedicated to the Princesse Czartoryska, it was published June, 1834.
The Rondo, op. 16, with an Introduction, is in great favor at the
conservatories, and is neat rather than poetical, although the
introduction has dramatic touches. It is to this brilliant piece, with
its Weber-ish affinities, that Richard Burmeister has supplied an
orchestral accompaniment.
The remaining Rondo, posthumously published as op. 73, and composed in
1828, was originally intended, so Chopin writes in 1828, for one piano.
It is full of fire, but the ornamentation runs mad, and no traces of
the poetical Chopin are present. He is preoccupied with the brilliant
surfaces of the life about him. His youthful expansiveness finds a fair
field in these variations, rondos and fantasias.
Schumann's enthusiasm over the variations on "La ci darem la mano"
seems to us a little overdone. Chopin had not much gift for variation
in the sense that we now understand variation. Beethoven, Schumann and
Brahms--one must include Mendelssohn's Serious Variations--are masters
of a form that is by no means structurally simple or a reversion to
mere spielerei, as Finck fancies. Chopin plays with his themes
prettily, but it is all surface display, all heat lightning. He never
smites, as does Brahms with his Thor hammer, the subject full in the
middle, cleaving it to its core. Chopin is slightly effeminate in his
variations, and they are true specimens of spielerei, despite the
cleverness of design in the arabesques, their brilliancy and euphony.
Op. 2 has its dazzling moments, but its musical worth is inferior. It
is written to split the ears of the groundlings, or rather to astonish
and confuse them, for the Chopin dynamics in the early music are never
very rude. The indisputable superiority to Herz and the rest of the
shallow-pated variationists caused Schumann's passionate admiration. It
has, however, given us an interesting page of music criticism.
Rellstab, grumpy old fellow, was near right when he wrote of these
variations that "the composer runs down the theme with roulades, and
throttles and hangs it with chains of shakes." The skip makes its
appearance in the fourth variation, and there is no gainsaying the
brilliancy and piquant spirit of the Alla Polacca. Op. 2 is
orchestrally accompanied, an accompaniment that may be gladly dispensed
with, and dedicated by Chopin to the friend of his youth, Titus
Woyciechowski.
Je Vends des Scapulaires is a tune in Herold and Halevy's "Ludovic."
Chopin varied it in his op. 12. This rondo in B flat is the weakest of
Chopin's muse. It is Chopin and water, and Gallic eau sucree at that.
The piece is written tastefully, is not difficult, but woefully
artificial. Published in 1833, it was dedicated to Miss Emma Horsford.
In May, 1851, appeared the Variations in E, without an opus number.
They are not worth the trouble. Evidently composed before Chopin's op.
1 and before 1830, they are musically light waisted, although written
by one who already knew the keyboard. The last, a valse, is the
brightest of the set. The theme is German.
The Fantaisie, op 13, in A, on Polish airs, preceded by an introduction
in F sharp minor, is dedicated to the pianist J. P. Pixis. It was
published in April, 1834. It is Chopin brilliant. Its orchestral
background does not count for much, but the energy, the color and
Polish character of the piece endeared it to the composer. He played it
often, and as Kleczynski asks, "Are these brilliant passages, these
cascades of pearly notes, these bold leaps the sadness and the despair
of which we hear? Is it not rather youth exuberant with intensity and
life? Is it not happiness, gayety, love for the world and men? The
melancholy notes are there to bring out, to enforce the principal
ideas. For instance, in the Fantaisie, op. 13, the theme of Kurpinski
moves and saddens us; but the composer does not give time for this
impression to become durable; he suspends it by means of a long trill,
and then suddenly by a few chords and with a brilliant prelude leads us
to a popular dance, which makes us mingle with the peasant couples of
Mazovia. Does the finale indicate by its minor key the gayety of a man
devoid of hope--as the Germans say?" Kleczynski then tells us that a
Polish proverb, "A fig for misery," is the keynote of a nation that
dances furiously to music in the minor key. "Elevated beauty, not
sepulchral gayety," is the character of Polish, of Chopin's music. This
is a valuable hint. There are variations in the Fantaisie which end
with a merry and vivacious Kujawiak.
The F minor Fantaisie will be considered later. Neither by its
magnificent content, construction nor opus number (49) does it fall
into this chapter.
The Allegro de Concert in A, op. 46, was published in November, 1841,
and dedicated to Mlle. Friederike Muller, a pupil of Chopin. It has all
the characteristics of a concerto, and is indeed a truncated one--much
more so than Schumann's F minor Sonata, called Concert Sans Orchestre.
There are tutti in the Chopin work, the solo part not really beginning
until the eighty-seventh bar. But it must not be supposed that these
long introductory passages are ineffective for the player. The Allegro
is one of Chopin's most difficult works. It abounds in risky skips,
ambuscades of dangerous double notes, and the principal themes are bold
and expressive. The color note is strikingly adapted for public
performance, and perhaps Schumann was correct in believing that Chopin
had originally sketched this for piano and orchestra. Niecks asks if
this is not the fragment of a concerto for two pianos, which Chopin, in
a letter written at Vienna, December 21, 1830, said he would play in
public with his friend Nidecki, if he succeeded in writing it to his
satisfaction. And is there any significance in the fact that Chopin,
when sending this manuscript to Fontana, probably in the summer of
1841, calls it a concerto?
While it adds little to Chopin's reputation, it has the potentialities
of a powerful and more manly composition than either of the two
concertos. Jean Louis Nicode has given it an orchestral garb, besides
arranging it for two pianos. He has added a developing section of
seventy bars. This version was first played in New York a decade ago by
Marie Geselschap, a Dutch pianist, under the direction of the late
Anton Seidl. The original, it must be acknowledged, is preferable.
The Bolero, op. 19, has a Polonaise flavor. There is but little Spanish
in its ingredients. It is merely a memorandum of Chopin's early essays
in dance forms. It was published in 1834, four years before Chopin's
visit to Spain. Niecks thinks it an early work. That it can be made
effective was proven by Emil Sauer. It is for fleet-fingered pianists,
and the principal theme has the rhythmical ring of the Polonaise,
although the most Iberian in character. It is dedicated to Comtesse E.
de Flahault. In the key of A minor, its coda ends in A major. Willeby
says it is in C major!
The Tarantella is in A flat, and is numbered op. 43. It was published
in 1841 (?), and bears no dedication. Composed at Nohant, it is as
little Italian as the Bolero is Spanish. Chopin's visit to Italy was of
too short a duration to affect him, at least in the style of dance. It
is without the necessary ophidian tang, and far inferior to Heller and
Liszt's efforts in the constricted form. One finds little of the frenzy
ascribed to it by Schumann in his review. It breathes of the North, not
the South, and ranks far below the A flat Impromptu in geniality and
grace.
The C minor Funeral March, composed, according to Fontana, in 1829,
sounds like Mendelssohn. The trio has the processional quality of a
Parisian funeral cortege. It is modest and in no wise remarkable. The
three Ecossaises, published as op. 73, No. 3, are little dances,
schottisches, nothing more. No. 2 in G is highly popular in girls'
boarding schools.