 Chapter 11 of Chopin, The Man and His Music This is the LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Daniel Fraser. Chopin, The Man and His Music by James Hunaker. Chapter 11, 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 Quioti is one, how can Madame Bovary be another? If Les Miserables is included in the list, what are we to say to Huisman's laba? Just such a question I should like to propound, substituting sonata for novel. If Scarlatti wrote sonatas, what is the Apache sonata? If the A-flat Weber is one, can the F-minor Brahms be called a sonata? Is the Haydn form orthodox and the Huisman heterodox? These be enigmas to make worthy 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 Primorda, witnessed 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, Opus IV, 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 Ellsner, and, oh the irony of criticism, it was praised by the critics, because it was not so revolutionary as the variations Opus II. This too, despite the larghetto in V IV 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 colour. The unaccustomed rhythm of the slow movement is irritating. Our young Chopin does not move about as freely as Benjamin Goddard in the schizo of his violin and piano sonata in the same bizarre rhythm. Neax sees nought 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 Opus 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 poll'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 Hadoff 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 ballads and scherzi, and again we are at the Demo passant crux. The work never could be spared. It is Chopin mounted for action and in the thick of the fight. The doppio movimento is pulsed during 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 Kulak marks the first B-flat octave. It is a pregnant beginning. The second bar I have never heard from any pianist, say Rubenstein, given with the proper crescendo. No one else seems to get it explosive enough within the walls of one bar. It is a true Rossinian crescendo. And in what a wild country we are landed when the F-sharp minor is crushed 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 techniques are admirable that the scherzo floats in mid-air, flow-bear's ideal of a miraculous style, and then follows that deadly Marsch Funeble. 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 colouring. Schumann found it contained much that is repulsive, and Liszt raves rhapsodically over it. For Karasovsky it was the pain and grief of an entire nation. While Alert 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 morning? 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 regents of a beyond, as Neax 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. Rubenstein, or was it originally Torsig, who named it night wind sweeping over the churchyard graves. Its agitated, whirring, unharmonised triplets are strangely disquieting, and can never be mistaken for mere etude passagework. The movement is too sombre. It curves too full of half-suppressed meanings. It's rush and subhuman growling too expressive of something that defies definition. Shuman compares it to a sphinx with a mocking smile. Too enri-babadette. C'est le zal gratant des saisons la pierre des sons tombeaux. Or, like Mendelssohn, one may abhor it, yet it cannot be ignored. It has asiatic colouring, and to me seems like the wavering outlines of light-tipped hills seen sharply in 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, Opus 58, has more of that undefinable organic unity. Yet, with all, it is not so powerful, so pathosbreeding, 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 weavings and curlings of passagework, and on the rim of despair, we witness the exquisite budding of the melody in D. It is an au bord, a nocturne of the mourn, if the contradictory phrase be allowed. There is mourning 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 luxurians 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 breath and marmoreal majesty of blank verse. He sonnets to perfection, but the epical air does not fill his nostrils. Vervacious, charming, light as a hair-bell 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 lago 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 favourite, but it lacks weight. And the entire sonata is, as Niax writes, affiliated but not cognate. It was published in June 1845 and is dedicated to Comtes E de Pethui. 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 opus 65, for piano and cello. It is dedicated to Chopin's friend, Auguste Francois, the violin cellist. Now, while I by no means share Finx'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 schizo, 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, opus 8, is more alluring. It was published March 1833, and dedicated to Prince Anton Radserville. 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 a 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 accepting opus 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 colour when he breathes native air. Compare the wildly modulating Chopin of the Blards to the tame pacing Chopin of the sonata's 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 plurality. 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 Klindwerth, Tausig and the Burmeister versions of the two concertos. As time passes, I see no reason for amending my views on this troublesome subject. Edgar S. Kelly holds a potent brief for the original orchestration, contending that it suits the character of the piano part. Rosenthal puts the 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 particular octaves are hideously cacophonic. 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 Opus 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, malifluous and serene as it is. The recitative is finally outlined. I think I like best the romanza 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 clothes mounts to the imagination. The rondo is frolicsome, 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. Riccardo Burmeister has supplied the latter deficiency in a capital made cadenza, which Padarevsky 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 passagework is superior in design to that of the earlier masters, the general character episodical, but episodes of rare worth and originality. As Elhurt says, no bless 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 to 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 unequal to elevation, dramas unrivaled in force and energy. He did not need the great material methods to find expression for his genius. Neither saxophone nor ophicleid 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 wandering and worshiping world without the aid of saxophone or ophicleid. 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 contest Delphine Pototska. The latter dedication demonstrates that he could forget his only ideal in the presence of the charming Pototska. Ah, these vibratile and versatile poles. Robert Schumann, it is related, shook his head wearily when his early work was mentioned. Drury 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 holly chivers, Chopin had his field. The germs of his second period are all there. From Opus 1 to Opus 22, virtuosity for virtuosity's sake is very evident. Lister 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 nice strangled by excess of ornament, when acrobats were kings, when the bark fugue and Beethoven sonata lurked neglected and dusty in the memories of the few. Little wonder, then, we find this individual youthful poll, 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 virtuosy of Europe. His originality in this bejeweled work caused hummel to admire and calc-brenner to wonder. The supple fingers of the young man from Warsaw made quick work of existing technical difficulties. He needs must, indent some of his own, and when Schumann saw the pages of Opus 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 minor. Schumann declared that Chopin's first published work was his tenth, and that between Opus 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 contrasts with the heavy, dower quality of the C minor sonata Opus 4. Loosely constructed in a formal sense, and too exuberant for his strict confines, this Opus 1 is remarkable, much more remarkable than Schumann's Abbeg variations. The rondo à la mazur in F is a further advance. It is dedicated to Comtesse-Merriolet, and was published in 1827. Schumann reviewed it in 1836. It is sprightly, Polish-in-feeling and rhythmic life, and the glance at any of its pages gives us the familiar Chopin impression, florid passagework, chords in extensions, and chromatic progressions. The concert rondo, Opus 14 in F, called Cracovac, is built on the national dance in two foretime, which originated in Cracovia. It is, to quote Niax, 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 princess Zartoriska, it was published June 1834. The rondo Opus 16, with an introduction, is in great favour at the conservatories, and is neat rather than poetical, although the introduction has dramatic touches. It is to this brilliant piece, with its vaporish affinities, that Richard Burmeister has supplied an orchestral accompaniment. The remaining rondo, posthumously published as Opus 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 Cidade en la Mano seems to us a little overdone. Chopin had not much gift for variation in the sense that we now understand variation. Beethoven's 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 schpelerei as Finck fancies. Schopann plays with his themes prettily, but it is all surface display, all heat-lightning. He never smites, as does Brahms with his Thorhammer, the subject full in the middle, cleaving it to its core. Schopann is slightly effeminate in his variations, and they are true specimens of Schpelerei, despite the cleverness of design in the Arabesques, their brilliancy and euphony. Opus II 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 Schopann dynamics in the early music are never very rude. The indisputable superiority to herds and the rest of the shallow-pated variationists caused Schumann's passionate admiration. It has, however, given us an interesting page of music criticism. Relstab, grumpy old fellow, was near right when he wrote of these variations, that the composer runs down the theme with roulards and throttles and hangs it with chains of shakes. The skip makes its appearance in the fourth variation, and there is no gain saying the brilliancy and pecan spirit of the Alla Pollaccia. Opus II is orchestrally accompanied, an accompaniment that may be gladly dispensed with, and dedicated by Schopann to the friend of his youth, Titus Wojcichowski. Givonder Scapulaire is a tune in Herald and Hallery's Ludovic. Schopann varied it in his Opus XII. This rondo in B-flat is the weakest of Schopann's muse. It is Schopann and water, and gallic au supris 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 Schopann's Opus I, and before 1830, they are musically light-waisted, although written by one who already knew the keyboard. The last, Evals, is the brightest of the set. The theme is German. The Fantasie Opus XIII 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 Schopann brilliant. Its orchestral background does not count for much, but the energy, the colour, and Polish character of the piece, endeared it to the composer. He played it often, and as Klasinski 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 in life? Is it not happiness, gaiety, love for the world and men? The melancholy notes are there to bring out, to enforce the principal ideas. For instance, in the Fantasie Opus XIII, the theme of Kropinski 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, with the peasant couples of Mazovia. Does the finale indicate, by its minor key, the gaiety of a man devoid of hope, as the Germans say? Klasinski 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 so pulchral gaiety, is the character of Polish, of Chopin's music. This is a valuable hint. There are variations in the Fantasie, which end with a merry and vivacious kujaviak. The F minor Fantasie 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, Opus 46, was published in November 1841 and dedicated to Mamoiselle Frederique 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 Son's Orchestra. There are two T in the Chopin work, the solo part not really beginning until the 87th 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, ample scarves of dangerous double notes, and the principal themes are bold and expressive. The colour note is strikingly adapted for public performance, and perhaps Schumann was correct in believing that Chopin had originally sketched this for piano and orchestra. Niax asks if this is not the fragment of a concerto for two pianos. Which Schumann, in a letter written at Vienna December 21st 1830, said he would play in public with his friend Nideski if he succeeded in writing it to his satisfaction. And is there any significance in the fact that Schumann, when sending this manuscript to Fontana, probably in the summer of 1841, calls it a concerto? While it adds little to Schumann'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 70 bars. This version was first played in New York a decade ago by Marie Geselschapp, a Dutch pianist, under the direction of the late Anton Seidel. The original, it must be acknowledged, is preferable. The Bolero Opus 19 has a polonaise flavour. There is but little Spanish in its ingredients. It is merely a memorandum of Chopin's early essays and dance forms. It was published in 1834, four years before Chopin's visit to Spain. Nyex thinks it an early work. That it can be made effective was proven by Emile 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 Contesse E the flow. In the key of A minor, its coda ends in A major. Willoughby says it is in C major. The Tarantella is in A-flat and is numbered Opus 43. It was published in 1841 and bears no dedication. Composed at no-ont, 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 Ovidian tang and far inferior to Heller and Liszt's efforts in the constricted form. One finds little of the frenziest grub 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 cortège. It is modest and in no ways remarkable. The three ecossays, published as Opus 73 No. 3, are little dances, Scottish's, nothing more. No. 2 in G is highly popular in girls boarding schools. The grand duro concertant for cello and piano is jointly composed by Chopin and Francombe on themes from Robert Le Diable. It begins in E and ends in A major, and is without Opus No. 3. Schumann thinks Chopin sketched the whole of it, and that Francombe said yes to everything. It is for the salon of 1833 when it was published. It is empty, tiresome, and only slightly superior to compositions of the same sort, by De Berio and Osborne, full of rapid elegances and shallow passagework. This duro is certainly a pièce d'occasion, the occasion probably being the need of ready money. The 17 Polish songs were composed between 1824 and 1844. In The Psychology of the Laid, Chopin was not happy. Karasovsky writes that many of the songs were lost, and some of them are still sung in Poland, their origin being hazy. The third of May is cited as one of these. Chopin had a habit of playing songs for his friends, but neglected putting some of them on paper. The collected songs are under the Opus Head at 74. The words are by his friends, Stephen Witwicky, Adam Mickey of Ix, Bogdan Zaleski, and Sigismond Krasinski. The first in the key of A, The Familiar Maiden's Wish, has been brilliantly paraphrased by Liszt. This pretty mazurka is charmingly sung and played by Marcella Sembrick in the singing lesson of The Barber of Seville. There are several mazurkas in the list. Most of these songs are mediocre. Poland's dirge is an exception, and so is horsemen before the battle. Was ein junges Madchen liebt, has a short introduction, in which the reminiscence hunter may find a true bit of meister-singer colour. Simple in structure and sentiment, the Chopin laider seem almost rudimentary compared to essays in this form by Schubert, Schumann, Franz, Brahms, and Tchaikovsky. A word of recommendation may not be amiss here regarding the technical study of Chopin. Klasinski, in his two books, gives many valuable hints, and Izidor Philip has published a set of exceses coitidienne made up of specimens in double notes, octaves, and passages taken from the works. Here, skeletonised are the special technical problems. In these daily studies, and his addition of the etudes, are numerous examples dealt with practically. For a study of Chopin's ornaments, Mörtke has discussed at length the various editorial procedure in the matter of attacking the trill in single and double notes. Also, the easiest method of executing the flying scud and vapours of the fioreture. This may be found in No. 179 of the edition Steingrabber. Philip's collection is published in Paris by J. Hamel, and is prefixed by some interesting remarks of George Matthias. Chopin's portrait in 1833, after Vineron, is included. One composition more is to be considered. In 1837, Chopin contributed the sixth variation of the march from I. Pioritani. These variations were published under the title Exameron, morceau de concert, grande variation de bravure sur le marche de Pioriton de Bellini, composés pour le concert de madame, the princesse belgeogeoso, au bénéfice de pauvre, par l'est, talberg, pipsis, ash air, chenille et Chopin. List, wrote an orchestral accompaniment never published. His pupil, Maurice Rosenthal, is the only modern virtuoso who plays the Exameron in his concerts and play it he does with overwhelming splendour. Chopin's contribution in E major is in his sentimental salon mood. Musically it is the most impressive of this extraordinary mastodonic survival of the pianistic past. The newly published fugue, or fugato, in A minor, in two voices, is from a manuscript in the possession of Natalie Yanotha, who probably got it from the late princess Zatariska, a pupil of the composer. The composition is ineffective and in spots ugly, particularly in the stretta, and is no doubt an exercise during the working years with Elsner. The fact that in the coda the very suspicious octave pedal point and trills may be omitted, so the editorial note runs, leads one to suspect that out of a fragment, Yanotha has evolved, cuvier-like, an entire composition. Chopin as fugue maker does not appear in a brilliant light. It's the Polish composer to become a musical hue conway, while all these discect a member of a sketchbook. In these youthful works may be found the beginnings of the greater Chopin, but not his vast subjugation of the purely technical to the poetic and spiritual. That came later. To the devout Chopinist, the first compositions are so many proofs of the joyful, victorious spirit of the man, whose spleen and pessimism have been wrongly compared to Leopards and Baudelaire's. Chopin was gay, fairly healthy, and bubbling over with a pretty malice. His first period shows this. It also shows how thorough and painful the processes by which he evolved his final style. How is one to reconcile the want of manliness, moral, and intellectual, which Hado asserts is the one great limitation of Chopin's province, with the power, splendor, and courage of the Polyneses? Here are the canon, buried in flowers of Robert Schumann, here overwhelming evidences of versatility, virility, and passion. Chopin blinded his critics and admirers alike, a delicate puny fellow. He could play the piano on occasion like a devil incarnate. He, too, had his demon as well as list, and only, as Ellert puts it, theatrical fear of this spirit driving him over the cliffs of reason made him curve its antics. After all the collure del rose portraits and lollipop miniatures made of him by pensive poetical persons, it is not possible to conceive Chopin as being irascible and almost brutal. Yet he was, at times, even this. Beethoven was scarce, more vehement and irritable, writes Ellert. And we remember the stories of friends and pupils who have seen this slender refined pole wrestling with his wrath as one under the obsession of a fiend. It is no desire to exaggerate this side of his nature that impels this plain writing. Chopin left compositions that bear witness to his masculine side. Diminutive in person, bad temper became him ill. Besides, his whole education and tastes were opposed to scenes of violence, so this energy, spleen and raging at fortune found escape in some of his music, became psychial in its manifestations. But, you may say, this is feminine hysteria, the impotent cries of an unmanly, weak nature. Read the E flat minor, the C minor, the A major, the F sharp minor, and the two A flat major pollinases. Ballads, scaresies, studies, preludes, and the great F minor fantasy are purposely omitted from this owing scheme. Chopin was weak in physique, but he had the soul of a lion. Allied to the most exquisite poetic sensibilities, one is reminded here of Balzac's C'est bonjourni, aimons en musician quand dînes qui seront sensibles. There was another nature, fiery, implacable. He loved Poland. He hated her oppressors. There was no doubt he idealized his country in her wrongs until the theme grew out of all proportion. Politically, the poles and Celts rubbed shoulders. Nix points out that if Chopin was a flattering idealist as a national poet, as a personal poet, he was an uncompromising realist. So, in the pollinases, we find two distinct groups. In one, the objective, martial side, predominates. In the other is Chopin, the moody, mournful, and morose. But in all, the Polish element pervades. Barring the Mazurkas, these dances are the most Polish of his works. Appreciation of Chopin's wide diversity of temperament would have spared the world the false, silly, distorted portraits of him. He had the warrior in him, even if his mailed fist was seldom used. There are moments when he discards the gloves and soft phrases and deals blows that reverberate with formidable clanger. By all means, read Liszt's gorgeous description of the pollinase. Originating during the last half of the 16th century, it was at first a measured procession of nobles and their womankind to the sound of music. In the court of Henry of Anjou in 1574, after his election to the Polish throne, the pollinase was born and throve in the hardy war-like atmosphere. It became a dance political and had words set to it. Thus came the Kosciuszko, the Oginski, the Mnuszko, the Korpinski, and a long list written by composers with names ending in ski. It is really a march, a processional dance, grave, moderate, flowing, and by no means stereotyped. Liszt tells of the capricious life infused into its courtly measures by the Polish aristocracy. It is at once the symbol of war and love, a vivid pageant of martial splendor, a weaving, cadence, voluptuous dance, the pursuit of shy, coquettish women by the fierce warrior. The pollinase is in three-four time with the accent on the second beat of the bar. In simple binary form, ternary, if a trio is added, this dance has feminine endings to all the principal cadences. The rhythmical cast of the bass is seldom changed. Despite its essentially masculine mould, it is given a feminine title. Formerly, it was called pollinase. Liszt wrote of it. In this form, the noblest traditional feelings of ancient Poland are represented. The pollinase is the true and purest type of Polish national character, as in the course of centuries it was developed partly through the political position of the kingdom toward east and west, partly through an undefinable, peculiar, inborn disposition of the entire race. In the development of the pollinase, everything cooperated which specifically distinguished the nation from others. In the polls of departed times, manly resolution was united with glowing devotion to the object of their love. Their nightly heroism was sanctioned by high soaring dignity, and even the laws of gallantry and the national costume exerted an influence over the terms of this dance. The pollinases are the keystone in the development of this form. They belong to the most beautiful of Chopin inspirations. With their energetic rhythm, they electrify to the point of excited demonstration, even the sleepiest indifferentism. Chopin was born too late, and left his native hearth too early to be initiated into the original character of the pollinase as danced through his own observation. But what others imparted to him in regard to it was supplemented by his fancy and his nationality. Chopin wrote 15 pollinases, the authenticity of one in G-flat major being doubted by Nietz. This list includes the pollinase for violoncello and piano opus 3 and the pollinase opus 22 for piano and orchestra. This latter pollinase is preceded by an andante spianato in G in six eighth time and unaccompanied. It is a charming liquid-toned nocturne-like composition. Chopin in his most suave, his most placid mood. A barcarole, scarcely a ripple of emotion, disturbs the mirrored calm of this lake. After sixteen bars of a crudely harmonized tutti comes the pollinase in the widely remote key of E-flat. It is brilliant, every note telling, the figuration rich and novel, the movement spirited and flowing. Perhaps it is too long and lacks relief. The theme on each re-entrance is varied ornamentally. The second theme in C minor has a Polish and Puerto Gring, while the coda is effective. This opus is vivacious, but not characterized by great depth. Crystalline, gracious and refined, the piece is stamped Paris, the elegant Paris of 1830. Composed in that year and published in July 1836, it is dedicated to the Baron de St. Chopin introduced it at the Concertoire concert for the benefit of Habernick, April 26, 1835. This, according to Niek's, was the only time he played the pollinase with orchestral accompaniment. It was practically a novelty to New York when Raphael Josephi played it here, superlatively well, in 1879. The orchestral part seems wholly superfluous, for the scoring is not particularly effective, and there is a rumor that Chopin cannot be held responsible for it. Xaver Charvenka made a new instrumentation that is discreet and extremely well sounding. With excellent tact, he has managed to add accompaniment to the introduction, giving some thematic work of the slightest texture to the strings, and in the pretty coda to the woodwind. A delicately managed illusion is made by the horns to the second theme of the Nocturne in G. There are even five faint taps of the triangle, and the idyllic atmosphere is never disturbed. Charvenka first played this arrangement at the Sieti Memorial Concert in Chinkering Hall, New York, April 1898, yet I cannot truthfully say the pollinase sounds so characteristic as when played solo. The C-sharp minor pollinase, opus 26, has had them as fortune of being sentimentalized to death. What could be more appascianata than the opening with its grand rhythmical swing? It is usually played by timid persons in a sugar-sweet fashion, although FFF stares them in the face. The first three lines are hugely heroic, but the indignation soon melts away, leaving an apathetic humor. After the theme returns and is repeated, we get a genuine love motif tender enough in all faith wherewith to woo a princess. On this the pollinase closes, an odd ending for such a fiery opening. In no such mood does No. 2 begin. In E-flat minor, it is variously known as the Siberian, the revolt pollinase. It breathes defiance and rankor from the start. What suppressed and threatening rumblings are there? Volcanic mutterings these. Musical score excerpt. It is a sinister page, and all the more so because of the injunction to open with pianissimo. One wishes that the shrill high G-flat had been written in full chords as the theme suffers from a want of massiveness, then follows a subsidiary, but the principal subject returns relentlessly. The episode in B major gives pause for breathing. It has a hint of mayor bear. But again, with smothered explosions, the pollinase proper appears, and all ends in gloom and the impotent clanking of chains. It is an awe-provoking work, this terrible pollinase in E-flat minor opus 26. It was published July 1836, and is dedicated to M. J. Dessur. Not so the celebrated A major pollinase opus 40, La Militarre. To Rubenstein, this seemed a picture of Poland's greatness, as its companion in C minor is of Poland's downfall. Although Karasowski and Kleczynski give to the A-flat major pollinase the honor of suggesting a well-known story, it is really the A major that provoked it, so the Polish portrait painter Kwiatovski informs Nieks. The story runs that after composing it, Chopin, in the dreary watches of the night, was surprised, terrified as a better word, by the opening of his door and the entrance of a long train of Polish nobles and ladies, richly robed, who moved slowly by him. Troubled by the ghosts of the past he had raised, the composer, Hollowide, fled the apartment. All this must have been at Majorca for opus 40 was composed and finished there. Ailing, weak, and unhappy as he was, Chopin had grit enough to file and polish this brilliant and striking composition into its present shape. It is the best known, and, though the most muscular is compositions, it is the most played. It is dedicated to J. Fantana and was published November 1840. This pollinase has the festive glitter of Weber. The C minor pollinase of the same set is a noble, troubling composition, large in accents, and deeply felt. Can anything be more impressive than this opening? Musical score excerpts. It is indeed Poland's downfall. The trio in Ab, with its kaleidoscopic modulations, produces an impression of vague unrest and suppressed sorrow. There is a loftiness of spirit and daring in it. What can one say new of the tremendous F-sharp minor pollinase? Willoughby calls it noisy, and Stanislaw Pszczepiszewski, whom Vance Thomson Christianed, a prestigious noctambulist, has literally stormed over it. It is barbaric. It is perhaps pathologic, and of it, Liszt has said the most eloquent things. It is for him a dream poem, the lured hour that precedes a hurricane with a convulsive shutter at its close. The opening is very impressive, the nerve pulp being harassed by the gradually swelling prelude. There is defiant power in the first theme, and the constant reference to it betrays the composer's exasperated mental condition. This tendency to return upon himself, a tormenting introspection, certainly signifies a grave state. But consider the musical weight of the work, the recklessly bold outpourings of a mind almost distraught. There is no greater test for the poet pianist than the F-sharp minor pollinase. It is profoundly ironical. What else means the introduction of that lovely mizurka, a flower between two abysses. This strange dance is ushered in by two of the most enigmatic pages of Chopin. The A major intermezzo, with its booming cannons and reverberating overtones, is not easily defensible on the score of form, yet it unmistakably fits in the picture. The mizurka is full of interrogation and emotional nuancerne. The return of the tempest is not long delayed. It bursts, wanes, and with the coda comes sad yearning. Then the savage drama passes tremblingly into the night after fluid and wavering affirmations, a roar in F-sharp and finally a silence that marks the cessation of an agitating nightmare. No saber dance this, but a confession from the dark depths of a self-tortured soul. Obus 44 was published November, 1841, and is dedicated to Princesse de Beauvaux. There are few editorial differences. In the 18th bar from the beginning, Kulak, in the second beat, fills out an octave. Not so in Clindworth, nor in the original. At the 20th bar, Clindworth differs from the original as follows. The Chopin text is the upper one. Musical score excerpts. The Eight Flat Polyneses, Obus 53, was published December, 1843, and is said by Karasovsky to have been composed in 1840 after Chopin's return to Mallorca. It is dedicated to A. Leo. This is the one Karasovsky calls the story of Chopin's vision of the antique dead in an isolated tower of Madame Sans Chateau in Nuhant. We have seen this legend disproved by one who knows. This polonaise is not as feverish and as exalted as the previous one. It is, as Klesinski writes, the type of a war song. Named The Heroique, one hears it in Elhert's Ring of Damascene Blade and Silver Spur. There is imaginative splendor in this thrilling work with its thunder of horses hooves and fierce challenges. What fire, what sword thrust and smoke and clash of mortal conflict. Here is no psychical presentation, but an objective picture battle of concrete contours and with a cleaving brilliancy that excites the blood to boiling pitch. The Chopin ever played it as intended is incredible. None but the heroes of the keyboard may grasp its dense, cordial masses, its fiery projectiles of tone. But there is something disturbing, even ghostly, in the strange intermezzo that separates the trio from the polonaise. Both Mist and Starlight are in it. Yet the work is played too fast and has been nicknamed the drum polonaise, losing in majesty and force because of the vanity of virtuosy. The octaves in E major are spun out as if speed were the sole idea of this episode. Follow Klesinski's advice and do not sacrifice the polonaise to the octaves. Karl Tossig, so Giuseppe and the lens assert, played this polonaise in an unapproachable manner. Powerful battle tablo as it is, it may still be presented so as not to shock one's sense of the euphonious, of the limitations of the instrument. This work becomes vapid and unheroic when transferred to the orchestra. The polonaise Phantasie in A-flat opus 61, given to the world September 1846, is dedicated to Madame A Verret. One of three great polonises it is just beginning to be understood, having been derided as amorphous, febrile, of little musical moment, even list declaring that such pictures possesses but little real value to art. Deplorable visions which the artist should admit with extreme circumspection within the graceful circle of his charmed realm. This was written in the old fashioned days when art was aristocratic and excluded the baser and more painful emotions. For a generation accustomed to the realism of Richard Strauss, the fantasy polonaise seems vaporous and idealistic, with all new. It recalls one of those enchanted flasks of the magi, from which an opening smoke exhales that gradually shapes itself into fantastic and fearsome figures. This polonaise at no time exhibits the solidity of its two predecessors. Its plasticity defies the imprint of the conventional polonaise, though we ever feel its rhythms. It may be full of modelogues, interspersed cadenzas, improvised preludes and short phrases as Kulik suggests, yet there is unity in the composition, the units of structure and style. It was music of the future when Chopin composed, it is now music of the present, as much as Richard Wagner's. But the realism is a trifle clouded. Here is a duality of Chopin, the suffering man, and Chopin, the prophet of Poland. Undimmed is his poetic vision, Poland will be free, undaunted his soul though oppressed by a suffering body. There are in the work throws of agony blended with the trumpet notes of triumph. And what puzzled our fathers, the shifting lights and shadows, the restless tonalities, are welcome. For at the beginning of this new century, the chromatic is king. The ending of this polonaise is triumphant, recalling in key and climaxing the A-flat ballad. Chopin is still the captain of his soul, and Poland will be free. Are Kelton Slav doomed to follow ever the phosphorescent lights of patriotism? This acknowledges the beauty and grandeur of this last polonaise, which unites the characteristics of superb and original manipulation in the form, the martial, and the melancholic. Opus 71, three posthumous polonises given to the world by Julius Fontana, are in D minor, published in 1827, B-flat minor, 1828, and F minor, 1829. They are interesting to Chopinists. The influence of Weber, the past master of this form, is felt. Of the three, the last in F minor is the strongest, although if Chopin's age is taken into consideration, the first, in D minor, is a feat for a lat of 18. I agree with Nix that the posthumous polonaise, without Opus number, in G-sharp minor, was composed later than 1822, the date given in the Breitkopf and Hartel edition. It is an artistic conception, an enlightened figuration far more mature than the Chopin of Opus 71, really a graceful and effective little composition of the fluid order, but like his early music, without poetic depth. The Warsaw Echo Musicale, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Chopin's death, published a special number in October 1899, with a picture of a farmer named Krzysiek, born in 1810, the year after the composer. There at Finch remarked that it is not a case of survival of the fittest, a facsimile reproduction of a hitherto unpublished polonaise and a flat written at the age of 11 is also included in this unique number. This tiny dance shows, it is said, the characteristic physiognomy of the composer. In reality, this polac is thin, a tentative groping after a form that later was mastered so magnificently by the composer. Here is the way it begins, the autograph is Chopin's. Musical score excerpt. The a la polaca for piano and cello Opus 3 was composed in 1829, while Chopin was on a visit to Prince Horadziewil. It is preceded by an introduction and is dedicated to Josef Merck, the cellist. Chopin himself pronounced it a brilliant salon piece. It is now not even that, for it sounds antiquated in threadbare. The passage work at times marks of Chopin and Weber, a hint of the mouvement perpetual, and the cello has the better of the bargain, evidently written for my lady's chamber. Two polonaises remain. One in B flat minor was composed in 1826 on the occasion of the composer's departure for Reigns. A footnote to the addition of this rather elagic piece tells this. A du to Guillaume Colberg is the title, and the trio in D flat is accredited to an heir of Gaza Ladra, with a sentimental au revoir inscribed. Klitschenski has revived the Gepfenner and Wulf edition. The l'uncadense in chromatic double notes on the last page is of a certainty Chopin, but the polonaise in G flat major published by Schott is doubtful. It has a shallow ring, a brilliant superficiality that warrants Knicks in stamping it to a possible compilation. There are traces of the master throughout, particularly in the E flat minor trio, but there are some vile progressions and an heir of vulgarity surely not Chopin's. This dance form, since the death of the great composer, has been chiefly developed on the virtuoso side. Beethoven, Schubert, Weber, and even Bach, in his B minor suite for strings and flute, also indulged in this form. Wagner, as a student, wrote a polonaise for four hands in D, and in Schumann's papillons there is a charming specimen, Rubenstein composed a most brilliant and dramatic example in E flat in Le Bal. The list polonaises, all said and done, are the most remarkable in design and execution since Chopin, but they are more Hungarian than Polish. End of Chapter 12