 7. Moods in Miniature—The Preludes The Preludes bear the Opus No. 28 and are dedicated to J. C. Kessler, a composer of well-known piano studies. It is only the German edition that bears his name, the French and English being inscribed by Chopin, K. Son Omi Pléal. As Pléal advanced the pianist 2,000 francs for the Preludes, he had a right to say, quote, these are my Preludes, unquote. Nix's authority for Chopin's remark, quote, I sold the Preludes to Pléal because he liked them, unquote. This was in 1838 when Chopin's health demanded a change of climate. He wished to go to Majorca with Madame Son and her children and had applied for money to the piano maker and publisher, Camille Pléal. He received but 500 francs in advance, with the balance being paid on delivery of the manuscript. The Preludes were published in 1839, yet there is internal evidence which proves that most of them had been composed before the trip to the Balearic Islands. This will upset the very pretty legend of making music at the monastery of El De Mosa. Have we not all read, with sweet credulity, the eloquent pages in George Son, in which the storm is described that overtook the novelist and her son Maurice. After terrible trials, dangers, and delays, they reached their home and found Chopin at the piano. Uttering a cry, he arose and stared at the pair. Ah, I knew well that you were dead! It was the sixth Prelude, the one in B Minor, that he played, and dreaming, as Son writes, that, quote, he saw himself drowned in a lake. Heavy, ice-cold drops of water fell at regular intervals upon his breasts, and when I called his attention to those drops of water which were actually falling upon the roof, he denied having heard them. He was even vexed at what I translated by the term, imitative harmony. He protested with all his might, and he was right, against the puerility of these imitations for the ear. His genius was full of mysterious harmonies of nature. Yet this Prelude was composed previous to the Majorcan episode. The Preludes, says Nix, consist, to a great extent at least, of pickings from the composer's portfolios, of pieces, sketches, and memoranda written at various times and kept to be utilized when occasion might offer. Guttmann, Chopin's pupil, who nursed him to the last, declared the Preludes to have been composed before he went away with Madame Son, and to Nix personally he maintained that he had copied all of them. Nix does not credit him altogether, for there are letters in which several of the Preludes are mentioned as being sent to Paris, so he reaches the conclusion that, quote, Chopin's labors at Majorca on the Preludes were confined to selecting, filling, and polishing. This seems to be a sensible solution. Robert Schumann wrote of these Preludes, quote, I must signalize them as most remarkable. I will confess I expected something quite different, carried out in the grand style of his studies. It is almost the contrary here. These are sketches, the beginning of studies, or, if you will, ruins, eagles' feathers, all strangely intermingled. But in every piece we find in his own hand Frederick Chopin wrote it. One recognizes him in his pauses, in his impetuous respiration. He is the boldest, the proudest poet's soul of his time. To be sure the book also contains some morbid, feverish, repellent traits, but let everyone look in it for something that will enchant him. Philistines, however, must keep away, unquote. It was in these Preludes that Ignaz Moshele's first comprehended Chopin and his methods of execution. The German pianist had found his music harsh and dilatantish in modulation. But Chopin's originality of performance, quote, he glides lightly over the keys in a fairy-like way with his delicate fingers, unquote, quite reconciled the elder man to this strange music. To list, the Preludes seem modestly named, but, quote, are not the less types of perfection in a mode created by himself, and stamped, like all his other works with the high impress of his poetic genius. Written in the commencement of his career, they are characterized by a youthful vigor not to be found in some of his subsequent works, even one more elaborate, finished and richer in combinations, a vigor which is entirely lost in his latest productions, marked by an overexcited sensibility, a morbid irritability, and giving painful imitations of his own state of suffering and exoscience, unquote. Chopin, being essentially a man of moods, like many great men, and not necessarily feminine in this respect, cannot always be pinned down to any particular period. Several of the Preludes are very morbid. I purposely use this word, as is some of his early music, while he seems quite gay just before his death. The Preludes follow out, no technical idea, are free creations on a small basis, and exhibit the musician in all his versatility, says Louis L. Hurt, quote, no work of Chopin's portrays his inner organization so faithfully and completely. Much is embryonic. It is as though he turned the leaves of his fancy without completely reading any page. Still, one finds in them the thundering power of the scherzi, the half satirical, half coquettish elegance of the Misercas, and the southern, luxuriously fragrant breath of the Nocturnes. Often it is as though they were small, falling stars dissolved into tones as they fall, unquote. John Kliksenski, who is credited with understanding Chopin, himself a pole and a pianist, thinks that, quote, people have gone too far in seeking in the Preludes for traces of that misanthropy, of that weariness of life to which he was prey during his stay in the island of Majorca. Very few of the Preludes present this character of Inui, and that which is the most marked, the second one, must have been written, according to Count Tarnowski, a long time before he went to Majorca. What is there to say concerning the other Preludes, full of good humor and gaiety? Number 18 in E-flat, number 21 in B-flat, number 23 in F, or the last in D-minor. Is it not strong and energetic, concluding as it does with three canon shots? Willoughby, in his Frederick Crençoise Chopin, considers at length the Preludes. He agrees in the main with Niques, that certain of these compositions were written at Mosa. Numbers 4, 6, 9, 13, 20, and 21. And that Chopin, having sketches of others with him, completed the whole there, and published them under one opus number, quote, The atmosphere of those I have named is morbid and exotic, and to them there clings a faint flavor of disease, something which is overripe in its lusciousness and furbile in its passion. This in itself inclined me to believe they were written at the time named, unquote. This is all very well, but Chopin was faint and furbile in his music before he went to Majorca. And the plain facts adduced by Gutman and Niques cannot be passed over. Henry James, an old admirer of Madame Sond, admits her utter unreliability, and so he may look upon her evidence as romantic but by no means infallible. The case now stands. Chopin may have written a few of the preludes at Majorca, filed them, finished them, but the majority of them were in his portfolio in 1837 and 1838. Opus 45, a separate prelude in C. Sharp Minor, was published in December, 1841. It was composed at Nohont in August of that year. It is dedicated to Madame Ozel, La Princess Elizabeth Sezenchev, whose name, as Chopin confesses in a letter, he knows not how to spell. Theador Kulak is curt and pedagogic in his preface to the preludes. He writes, Chopin's genius nowhere reveals itself more charmingly than within narrowly bounded musical forms. The preludes are, in their aphoristic brevity, masterpieces of the first rank. Some of them appear like briefly sketched mood pictures related to the Nocturne style and offer no technical hindrance even to the less advanced player. I mean Numbers 4, 6, 7, 9, 15, and 20. More difficult are Numbers 17, 25, and 11, without, however, demanding eminent virtuosity. The other preludes belong to a species of character atude. Despite their brevity of outline, they are on a par with the great collections, Opus 10 and Opus 25. Insofar as it is practicable, special cases of individual endowments not being taken into consideration, I would propose the following order of succession. Begin with Numbers 1, 14, 10, 22, 23, 3, and 18. Very great bravura is demanded by Numbers 12, 8, 16, and 24. The difficulty of the other preludes, Numbers 2, 5, 13, 19, and 21, lies in the delicate piano and legato technique which, on account of the extended position, leaps and double notes, presupposes a high degree of development. This is eminently a common sense The first prelude, which, like the first atude, begins in C, has all the characteristics of an impromptu. We know the wonderful Bach preludes, which grew out of a free improvisation to a collection of dance forms called a suite, and the preludes which precede his fugues. In the latter, Bach sometimes exhibits all the objectivity of the study or tacata, and often wears his heart in full view. Chopin's preludes, the only preludes to be compared to Bach's, are largely personal, subjective, and intimate. This first one is not Bachian, yet it could have been written by no one but a devout Bach student. The pulsating, passionate, agitated, feverish, hasty qualities of the piece are modern, so is the change for modulation. It is a beautiful composition, rising to no dramatic heights, but questioning and full of life. Cleanedworth writes in triplet groups, Kulak and Quintalettes. Brett Kopp and Hartel do not. Dr. Hugo Riemann, who has edited a few of the preludes, phrases the first bars thus, musical excerpt. Desperate and exasperating to the nerves is the second prelude in A Minor. It is an asymmetric tune. Chopin's seldom wrote ugly music, but is this not ugly, forlorn, despairing, almost grotesque, and discordant? It indicates the deepest oppression in its sluggish, snake-like progression. Woolaby finds a resemblance to the theme of the first nocturne, and such a theme. The tonality is vague, beginning in A Minor. Chopin's method of thematic parallelism is here very clear. A small figure is repeated in descending key until hopeless gloom and depraved melancholy are reached in the closing chords. Chopin now is morbid. Here are all his most antipathetic qualities. There is a version to life. In this music he is a true lycanthrope. A self-induced hypnosis, a mental and emotional atrophy, are all present. Kulak divides the accompaniment, difficult for small hands between the two. Riemann detaches the eighth notes of the bass figures, as is his want for greater clearness. Like clean verve, he accents heavily the final chords. He marks his metronome fifty to the half note. All the additions are lento with alabravi. That the preludes are a sheaf of moods, loosely held together by a rather vague title, is demonstrated by the third, in the key of G. The rippling, rain-like figure for the left hand is in the nature of a study. The melody is delicate in sentiment, gaelic in a spirit. A true salon piece, this prelude has no hint of artificiality. It is a precise antithesis to the mood of the previous one. Graceful and gay, the G major prelude is a fair reflex of Chopin's sensitive and naturally buoyant nature. It requires a light hand and nimble fingers. The melodic idea requires no special comment. Kulak phrases it differently from Riemann and cleandverth. The latter is preferable. Cleandverth gives seventy-two to the half note as his metromonic marking. Riemann only sixty, which is too slow, while cleandverth contents himself by marking a simple vivace. Regarding the fingering one may say that all tastes are pleased in these three editions. Cleandverth's is the easiest. Riemann breaks up the phrase in the bass figure, but I cannot see the gain on the musical side. Neeks truthfully calls the fourth prelude in E minor, quote, a little poem, the exquisitely sweet, languid pensiveness of which defies description. The composer seems to be absorbed in the narrow sphere of his ego, from which the wide, noisy world is for the time shut out, unquote. Willoughby finds this prelude to be, quote, one of the most beautiful of these spontaneous sketches, for they are no more than sketches. The melody seems literally to wail and reaches its greatest pitch of intensity at the strato, unquote. For Karasowski it is a, quote, real gem, and alone would immortalize the name of Chopin as a poet, unquote. It must have been this number that impelled Rubenstein to assert that the preludes were the pearls of his works. In the Cleandverth edition, fifth bar from the last, the editor has filled in the harmonies to the first six notes of the left hand, added thirds, which is not reprehensible, although uncalled for. Kulak makes some new dynamic markings and several enharmonic changes. He also gives as metronome This tiny prelude contains wonderful music. The grave reiteration of the theme may have suggested to Peter Cornelius his song, Entone. Chopin expands a melodic unit, and one singularly pathetic. The whole is like some canvas by Rembrandt. Rembrandt, who first dramatized the shadow in which a single motif is powerfully handled, some somber effect of echoing light in the profound of a Dutch interior. For background Chopin has substituted his soul. No one in art, except Bach or Rembrandt, could paint as Chopin did in this composition. Its despair has the antique flavor, and there is a breath, nobility, and proud submission quite free from the tortured whimpering complaint of the second prelude. The picture is small, but the subject looms large in meanings. The fifth prelude, in D, is Chopin at his happiest. Its aboresque pattern conveys a most charming content, and there is a dewy freshness, a joy in life, that puts to flight much of the morbid tittle-tattle about Chopin's sickly soul. The few bars of this prelude, so seldom heard in public, reveal musicianship of the highest order. The harmonic scheme is intricate. The first verse phrases the first four bars so as to bring out the alternate B and B flat. It is Chopin spinning his finest, his most iridescent web. The next prelude, the sixth and B minor, is doleful, pessimistic. As George Sain says, quote, it precipitates the soul into frightful depression, unquote. It is the most frequently played, and oh, how meaninglessly prelude of the set, this and the one in D flat. Classical in its repression of feeling, its pure contour. The echo effect is skillfully managed, monotony being artfully avoided. Cleanverth rightfully slurs the duple group of eights. Coulop tries for the same effect by different means. The duality of the voices should be clearly expressed. The tempo, marked in both editions, lentos sigh, is fast. To be precise, Cleanverth gives 66 to the quarter. The plaint of Little Miserca of two lines, the seventh prelude, is a mere silhouette of the national dance. Yet in its measures is compressed all mazovia. Cleanverth makes a variant in the fourth bar from the last, a G-sharp instead of an F-sharp. The more pickwant climax, perhaps not admissible to the Chopin purist. In the F-sharp minor prelude, number eight, Chopin gives us a taste of his grand manner. For niques, the piece is jerky and agitated, and doubtless suggests a mental condition bordering on anxiety. But if frenzy there is, it is kept well in check by the exemplary taste of the composer. The sadness is rather elegiac, remote and less poignant than the E minor prelude. Harmonic heights are reached on the second page. Shirley Wagner knew these bars when he wrote Tristan and Esolden. While the ingenuity of the figure and avoidance of rhythmical monotone are evidences of Chopin's feeling for the decorative. It is a masterly prelude. Cleanverth accents the first of the bass triplets and makes an unnecessary and harmonic change at the sixth and seventh lines. There is a measure of grave content in the ninth prelude in E. It is rather gnomic and contains hints of both Brahms and Beethoven. It has an ethical quality, but that may be because of its churchly rhythm and color. The C-sharp minor prelude, number ten, must be the, quote, eagle's wings of Schumann's critique. There is a flash of steel gray deepening into black and then the vision vanishes, as though some huge bird aloft had plunged down through blazing sunlight leaving a color echo in the void as it passed to its quarry. Or, to be less figurative, this prelude is a study in Arpeggio, with double notes interspersed and is too short to make more than a vivid impression. Number eleven in B is all too brief. It is vivacious, dulci indeed, and most cleverly constructed. Cleaned-worth gives a more blinding character of the first double notes, quote, another gleam of the Chopin sunshine, unquote. Storm clouds gather in the G-sharp minor, the twelfth prelude, so unwittingly imitated by Grieg in his minuetto of the same key, and in its driving presto we feel the passionate clence of Chopin's hand. Involced 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 Brett Kopp and Hartel, the bass octaves are E both times. The coolie gives G-sharp the first time instead of E. Cleaned-worth, G-sharp the second time, Riemann, E, and also Kulak. The G-sharp seems more various. In the thirteenth prelude, F-sharp major, there is lovely atmosphere, pure and peaceful. The composer has found mental rest. Exquisitely poised are his pinions for flight, and in the pilento 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. In the fourteenth prelude, in the sinister key of E-flat minor, and its heavy, sullen arch triplets recalls forniks the last movement of the B-flat minor sonata. But there is less interrogation in the prelude, less sophistication, and the heat of the 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 Sahn's, quote, 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 funeral pomp, unquote. The work needs no program. Its serene beginning, the gibrious interlude, with the dominant pedal never ceasing, a baso ostinato, gives color to Clexensi's contention that the prelude in B minor is a mere sketch of the idea fully elaborated in number fifteen, quote. The foundation of the picture is the drops of rain falling at regular intervals, unquote. The echo principle again, which by their continual pattern 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 base 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 somber, notwithstanding the melancholy which seizes you, a feeling of tranquil grandeur revives you. To neaks, the C-sharp minor portion affects one as in an oppressive dream, quote. The re-utterance of the opening D-flat, which dispels the dreadful nightmare, comes upon one with the smiling freshness of dear, familiar nature. Unquote. 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 aclivities and sudden treacherous descents, this most brilliant of preludes is Chopin in riotous spirits. He plays with the keyboard. It is an avalanche, a naan, 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 a curious editorial discrepancy. Cleendworth uses an A-natural in the first of the four groups of sixteenths. Kulak, a B-natural. Riemann follows Kulak, nor is this all. Kulak in the second group, right hand, has an E-flat. Cleendworth, a D-natural. Which is correct. Cleendworth's texture is more closely chromatic and it sounds better, the chromatic parallelism being more carefully preserved. Yet I fancy that Kulak has tradition on his side. The seventeenth prelude, Niek's finds Mendelsinian. 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 tranquility. The soul loses itself in early autumnal reverie 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. Cleendworth 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 number eighteen and 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-breath 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. Sonorius, 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 in his offshore. This page is Chopin's, the torse of a larger idea, in nobly rhetorical. Musical excerpt What piano music is the nineteenth prelude in E-flat? Its widely dispersed harmonies, its murmuring grace and dune-like beauty, are they not Chopin, the Chopin we best love? He is ever the necromancer, ever invoking phantoms. But with its whirling melody and furtive caprice, this particular shape is an alluring one, and difficult it is to interpret with all its plangent lyric freedom. Number twenty 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 Sahn 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, number twenty-one. 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. Cleanworth employs a short appoggiatura who locked the long in the second bar. Judge of what is true editorial stylism 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, number twenty-two. Again, concise paragraphs filled with the smoke of revolt and conflict. The impetuosity of this largely molded 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 base of the third group of the sixteenths leaves the whole composition floating enigmatically in thin air. It deliciously colors the clothes, leaving a sense of suspense, of anticipation which is not totally 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, it must be delivered with spirituality. The horny hand of the toilsome pianist would shatter the delicate, swinging fantasy of the poet. Kulak points out a variant in the fourteenth bar, G instead of B natural being used by Riemann. Cleanvirt prefers the latter. We have reached the last prelude of Opus 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 Kulak that the thumb of the right hand to pick 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 reign, 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 theater is cosmic and no longer behind the closed doors of the cabinet of Chopin's soul. The sealant shriek of Stanislav Prespozowski is here. Explosions of wrath and revolt. Not Chopin suffers, but his countrymen. Klexensi speaks of the three tones at the close. They are the final clanger of a pressed, 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 in octaves. Powerful, repellent, 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, Kulak VIII, and Kleenverth XVI. Niek's writes of the prelude in C sharp minor, Opus 45, that it, quote, 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 for stalls in the progression of the menace chords, favorite effects of some of our most 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. Niek's does not think Chopin created a new type in the preludes, quote, they are too unlike each other in form and character, unquote. Yet notwithstanding the fleeting, evanescent moods of the preludes, there is designedly a certain unity of feeling and contrasted tonalities, all being grouped in a proved Bacchian 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 marvelously measured. Much in miniature are these sculptured preludes of the Polish poet. 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 ballad-like quality that hints of the tragic. The A-flat impromptu, Opus 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 denatural in the treble against the C and E-flat, 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 dupla 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 Klazinski 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, Opus 36. Here symmetry is abandoned, as Kulak remarks, but the compensation of intense or emotional issues is offered. There is something sphinx-like in the pose of this work. It's 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, then smurges 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. The week finds this impromptu lacking the pith of the first. To me it is a 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, Opus 51, is not often played. It may be too difficult for the vandal with an average technique, but it is neither so fresh and feeling, nor so spontaneous and utterance as its companions. There is a touch of the faded, blasé, and it is hardly healthy in sentiment. Here are some Ophidian curves and triplets, as in the first impromptu, but with interludes of double notes in colouring, 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 flavour 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 Fante Z impromptu in C sharp minor, Opus 66, was published by Fontana in 1855, and it is one of the few posthumous works of Chopin worthy of consideration. It was composed about 1834. A true impromptu, but the title of Fante Z given by Fontana is superfluous. The piece presents difficulties, chiefly rhythmical. Its involuted first phrases suggest the Bellinian fioritore so dear to Chopin, but the D flat part is without nobility. Here is the same kind of saccharine melody that makes moquish the trio in the March funèbre. There seems no danger that this Fante Z 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 Mademoiselle Lacontesse de Lobau, was published December 1837. The second, May 1840. The third, dedicated to Madame Lacontesse Esther Hazy, February 1843. Not one of these four impromptus is as naïve 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, ensouciant airs and brilliant coquettish atmosphere, the true atmosphere of the ballroom seem to smile at Ellert'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 sargassan seas of the nocturnes and scherzi. Nietzsche's Lagaia cienza, 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 to hide their intoxication and never a hint of the brawling peasants of Beethoven, Grieg, Brahms, Tchaikovsky 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 of necessity be more picturesque and less conventional than required by the average waltz, and there must be fluctuations of tempo, sudden surprises, and abrupt langurs. The Mazorkas and Polonaises are danced today 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. Kulak, stern old pedagogue, divides these dances into two groups, the first dedicated to Terpsichery, 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 bread of candlelight and the swish of silk in attire, and a few are poetically morbid and stray across the border into the rhythms of the Mazorka. 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. Kulak utters words of warning to the unquiet sex regarding the habitual neglect of the bass. It should mean something in valses tempo, but it usually does not. Nor need it to be brutally banged. The fundamental tone must be cared for, the subsidiary harmonies lightly indicated. The rubato and the valses need not obtrude itself, as in the Mazorkas. Opus 18 in E-flat was published in June 1834 and dedicated to Mademoiselle Laura Harford. 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 which informant content is inferior to Opus 34, number 1, A-flat. The three valses of this set were published December 1838. There are many editorial differences in the A-flat vals, owing to the careless way it was copied and pirated. Clindworth and Kulak are the safest for dynamic markings. This vals may be danced as far as its dithirambic coda. Notice in this coda, as in many other places, the debt Schumann owes Chopin for a certain passage in the preamble of his carnaval. The next vals 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 Miserca, and the A major section is of exceeding loveliness. Its coda is characteristic. This vals is a favorite and who need wonder. The F major vals, the last of this series, is a whirling wild dance of atoms. It has the perpetuo-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 appogiatores 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 there is a dog, vals, there had to be one for the cat. But, as Rossini would have said, sa-son de scarlatie. The A minor vals was, of the three, Chopin's favorite. When Stephen Heller told him that this, too, was his beloved vals, Chopin was greatly pleased, inviting the Hungarian composer, Nix relates, to luncheon at the café Riche. Not improvised in the ballroom as the preceding, yet a marvellous epitome A flat vals, Opus 42, published July, 1840. It is the best rounded specimen of Chopin's experimenting with the form. The prolonged trill on the E flat, summoning us to the ballroom, the suggestive intermingling of rhythms, duple and triple, the coca-tree, 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 novel, seizes the secret of young life and love, but his is not so finished, so glowing a tableau. Regarding certain phrasing of this vals, Moritz 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 in the after-tone, nachtal, 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 now consider 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 downbeat 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-Vors, Le Vors du Petit Chien, is of Georges Sans' own prompting. One evening at her home in the Scaire d'Oléans 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 opus 64 were published September 1847 and are respectively dedicated to the Contest d'Alphine Potocca, the Baron Nathaniel de Roschild and Boronica. I shall not presume to speak of the execution of the D-flat-Vors. 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, Monsieur Georges Batias, and he did not take it prestissimo. He ran up the D-flat-scale ending with his forçato at the top and gave a variety of nuance to the composition. The Cantabile is nearly always delivered to the sloppiness of sentiment. This vals has been served up in a highly indigestible condition for concert purposes by Taussig, Josephie, whose arrangement was the first to be heard here, Theodore Ritter, Rosenthal, and Isidore Philippe. The C-sharp minor vals 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 Coulac 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 on we returns. The elegic imprint is unmistakable in this soul-dance. The A-flat vals 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 Ellert imagines of certain other valses. The two valses in Opus 69, three valses Opus 70, and the two remaining valses in E minor and E major need not detain us. They are posthumous. The first of Opus 69 in F minor was composed in 1836, the B minor in 1829, G-flat Opus 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 vals Opus 69, number one, has a charm of its own. Kulak prints the Fontana and Clindworth variants. This vals is suavely melancholy as the B minor of the same Opus. It recalls in colour the B minor, Mazurka. Very gay and sprightly is the G-flat vals Opus 70, number one. The next in F minor has no special physiognomy while the third in D-flat contains, as Niques points out, germs of the Opus 42 and the Opus 34 valses. It recalls to me the D-flat study in the supplementary series. The E minor vals without Opus is very graceful and not without sentiment. The major part is the early Chopin. The E major vals is published in the Mecouli 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. CHAPTER VIII CHAPTER IX CHAPTER IX Here is the chronology of the Nocturnes. Opus 9, Three Nocturnes January 1833 Opus 15, Three Nocturnes January 1834 Opus 27, Two Nocturnes May 1836 Opus 32, Two Nocturnes December 1837 Opus 37, Two Nocturnes May 1840 Opus 48, Two Nocturnes November 1841 Opus 55, Two Nocturnes May 1840 Opus 55, Two Nocturnes August 1844 Opus 62, Two Nocturnes September 1846 In addition, there is a Nocturn written in 1828 and published by Fontana with the Opus No. 72, No. 2 and the lately discovered one in C-Sharp Minor written when Chopin was young and published in 1895. This completes the Nocturn list but following Niek's system of formal grouping I include the Berceres and the Barquerole 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 Clemente his beautiful touch and finished execution were certainly admired and imitated by the pole. The Nocturnes are now neglected. So curious are times 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 patronised Chopin for whose melancholy pose he had no patience. He has the talent of the hospital growled Field in the intervals between his wine-drinking, pipe-smoking and his linen the latter economical habit he contracted from Clemente. 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 by Field giving it dramatic breath passion and even grandeur. Set against Field's naive and idyllic specimens Chopin's efforts are often too bejeweled for true simplicity too lugubrious, too tropical Asiatic is a better word and they have the exotic savour 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 all together to the taste of this generation they seem to be suffering from anemia however there are a few noble Nocturnes and methods of performance may have much to answer for the sentimentalising of some others. More vigour 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 overemphasised 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 ilijac of his Nocturnes is the first in B flat minor it is one of three Opus 9 dedicated to Madame Camille Playaille 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 Nocturn is as striking as the last it is at once sensuous and dramatic melancholy and lovely emphatically a mood it is best heard on a grey day of the soul when the times are out of joint its silken tones will bring atreast 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 like cruding of its composer there is flux and reflux throughout passion peeping out in the coda the E flat Nocturn 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 Rubenstein in a field-like fashion Hado 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 colour an effect of superfaces not an effect of substance it was the E flat Nocturn that unloosed relstabs 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-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 Relstad 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 the works of Chopin a stale cadence or a trite progression a humdrum subject or a worn-out passage a vulgar twist of the melody or a hackneyed sequence a meagre harmony or an unskillful 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 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 nocturne of this opus well-knit but the passionate intermezzo has the true dramatic Chopin ring it should be taken à la bravais the ending is quite effective I do not care much for the F major nocturne opus 15 number one the opus is dedicated to Ferdin and Hiller Alert 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 surely he did not purchase it of a jeweler 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 dramatised 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 Eilhardt 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 movimento is extremely striking and the entire piece is saturated with young life, love and feelings of goodwill to men read Klesinski the third nocturne of the three is in G minor and contains some fine picturesque writing Kulak does not find in it ought 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 colouring 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 Kulak's programme has a conventional ring it is the lament for the beloved one the lost linoire 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 Ulalum 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 consensibly 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, opus 27 number 1 brings us before a masterpiece with the possible exception of the C minor nocturne this one in the somber key of C sharp minor is the great essay in the form Klesinski 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 Willoughby analyzes it at length with the scholarly fervour 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 persistence melody that grates on the nerves from the pew mosso the agitation increases and here let me call to your notice the Beethovenish quality of these bars which continue until the change of signature there is a surprising climax followed by sunshine and favour in the D flat part then after mounting dissonances a bold succession of octaves returns to the feverish plaint of the opening Kulak speaks of a resemblance to Meyerbeer's song Lemoine 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. Fink 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 opus 27 number 2 has as Karasowski writes a profusion of delicate fioretture 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 sixth 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 conforza 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 contest de Pogni the best part of the next nocturne b major opus 32 number 1 dedicated to madame de billing is the coda it is in the minor and is like the drumbeat of tragedy the entire ending a stormy recitative is in stern contrast to the dreamy beginning coulac in the first bar of the last line uses a g fontana f sharp and clindworth the same as coulac 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 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 major opus 37 number 1 it has a complaining tone and the chorale is not noteworthy this particular part so Chopin's pupil is taken too slowly the composer having forgotten the increased tempo but the nocturne in g opus 37 number 2 is charming painted with Chopin's most ethereal brush without the clawing splendours 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 in a volvain 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 Mallorca Nix writing of the G major nocturne urges us not to tarry too long in the treacherous atmosphere of this capure it bewitches and unmans Krasinski 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 endeavour 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 opus 48 number one but Krasinski is nearer right when he calls it broad and most imposing with its powerful intermediate movement a thorough departure from the nocturne style Willoughby finds it sick and laboured and even Nix 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 movimento is exciting to a dramatic degree I fully agree with Kulak that's too strict adherence to the marking of this section produces the effect of an inartistic precipitation which robs the movement of clarity Krasinski calls the work the contrition of a sinner and it votes several pages to its elucidation Delence chats most entertainingly with Tausig about it indeed an imposing march of splendour 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 morkishness and are of the greater Chopin the Chopin of the mode masculine Nix makes a valuable suggestion in playing these nocturnes Opus 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 judgement 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 multi-pulento however is much finer in it we meet again as we did in some other nocturnes with soothing simple chord progressions when Goodman studied the C sharp minor nocturne with Chopin the master told him that the middle section of the Pulento 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 NEX means the F sharp minor not the C sharp minor nocturne opus 48 number 2 dedicated with the C minor to mademoiselle L Dupère opus 55 two nocturnes in F minor and E-flat major need not detain us long the first is familiar Krasinski 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 Kulak 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 also has the merit of being seldom heard these two nocturnes are dedicated to mademoiselle J W Sterling opus 62 brings us to a pair in B major and E major inscribed to madame de conneritz 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 a charm a fruity charm it is highly ornate its harmony is 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 mezca 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 lyricism 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 nicks 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 clindworth 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 unshopin 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 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 recognise 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 Balakiref who played it for the first time in public at the Chopin commemoration concert held in the autumn of 1894 at the Zelozoa vola 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 favourite melodies the manuscript of the nocturne was supposed to have been destroyed in the sacking of the Zamoski 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. Polinsky 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. Polinsky on the subject of this nocturne is in the possession of Miss Jan Oethe is this the nocturne of which Taussig spoke to his pupil Josephi as belonging to the master's best period or did he refer to the one in E minor the Bursers Opus 57 published in June 1845 and dedicated to mademoiselle 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 grey 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 colours it is a miracle and after the drawn out chord of the dominant seventh and the rain of silvery fire ceases one realises that the whole piece is a delicious illusion but an ululation in the key of D-flat the apotheosis of pyrotechnical colourature Niek's quotes Alexander Dumar Fies who calls the Bursers muted music but introduces a Turkish bath comparison which crushes the sentiment Mertke shows the original and Klyndworth's reading of a certain part of the Bursers adding a footnote to the examples the Bacharole Opus 60 published in September 1846 is another highly elaborated work Niek's must be quoted here one day Tausig the great piano virtuoso promised W. Delentz to play him Chopin's Bacharole 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 innovating music of one and the same long-breathed rhythm of such interest, so much motion so much action that he regretted the long piece was not longer Tausig's conception of the Bacharole 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-scène is the symbol of a lover's meeting generally this is expressed in thirds and sixths the dualism of two notes contained throughout all is too voiced, too sold in this modulation in C-sharp major superscribed Dolce's Foggato 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 Bacharole is a nocturne painted on a large canvas with larger brushes it has Italian colour 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 splendours now vanished of Venice the Queen in bars 8, 9 and 10 counting backward Louis Eilhardt finds obscurities in the middle voices it is dedicated to the Baron de Stockhausen the nocturnes including the Bursers and Bacharole 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 nightside may be revealed many are like the music of Paul Vélén in his chanson d'automne or le piano c'est une main frère they are essentially for the twilight for solitary enclosures where there still mysterious tones silent thunder in the leaves as Yates sings become eloquent and disclose the poetry and pain of their creator End of Chapter 9 Chapter 10 of Chopin The Man and His Music This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Chopin, The Man and His Music by James Hunnaker Chapter 10 The Ballads Fairy Dramas W. H. Haddow 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 as 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 Haddow 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, mezurka and waltz were already there for him to handle but the ballad 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 ballads commonly written in 6-8 and 6-4 time None of Chopin's composition surpasses in masterliness of form and beauty and poetry of contents his ballads In them he attains the acme of his power as an artist remark sneaks I am ever reminded of Andrew Lang's lines The thunder and surge of the odyssey According to the G minor ballad opus 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 geni this ballad discloses surprising and delicious things there is the tall lily and 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 ballad and you would be aghast or puzzled With such a composition any program could be sworn to even the silly story of the Englishman who haunted Chopin beseeching him to teach him this ballad The Chopin had a program that was a very prominent one there can be no doubt but he has, wise artist, left us no clue beyond misgivets the Polish bard with Lithuanian poems In Leipzig Karasowski relates that when Schumann met Chopin the pianist confessed having been incited to the creation of the ballads by the poetry of his fellow countrymen The true narrative tone is in this symmetrically constructed ballad the most spirited, most daring to Schumann Louis Alert says of the four ballads 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 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 an 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 Alert is one of the few sympathetic German Chopin commentators yet he did not always indicate the salient outlines of his art only the slob may hope to understand Chopin thoroughly but these ballads 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 ballad after Conrad Vollenrod 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 false 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've called it elsewhere it is a storm of the emotions muscular in its virility I remember Dick Pachman 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-turvyed the shading it recalled most surely 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 ballad was published in june 1836 and is dedicated to Baron Stockhausen the last bar of the introduction has caused some controversy Gutmann, McCooley and other pupils declare for the E flat Kleinworth and Kulak use it Xavier Charvenka has seen fit to edit Kleinworth and gives a D natural in the Augenar edition that he is wrong internal testimony abundantly proves even Willoughby who personally prefers the D natural thinks Chopin intended the E flat and quotes a similar effect 28 bars later he might have added that the entire composition contains examples look at the first bar of the Volse episode in the base 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 arguments Ferdinand von Inten a New York pianist saw the original Chopin manuscript at Stuttgart it was the property of Professor Liebert 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 Kulak gives 60 to the half note at the moderator on the third page he uses F natural in the treble so does Kleinworth although F sharp may be found in some editions on the last page second bar first line Kulak writes the passage beginning with E flat in eighth notes Kleinworth 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 ballad I have witnessed children lay aside their games to listen there too it appears like some fairy tale that has become music the four voiced part has such a clearness with all it seems as if warm spring breezes were waving the life 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 Alert a romantic and feeling and a class assistant theory is the writer of the foregoing the second ballad 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 it's impassioned episodes seem to have been afterward inserted I recollect very well that when Chopin played this ballad for me it finished in F major it now closes in A minor Willoughby 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 Miskiewicz Le La Des Willis Willoughby accepts Schumann's dictum of the inferiority of this ballad to its predecessor Nix 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 ballad 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 storehouse 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 Rubenstein bore great love for this second ballad 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 night I can find no lack of affinity between the andantino and presto the surprise is a dramatic one with all rudely vigorous Chopin's robust treatment of the first theme results in a strong piece of craftsmanship the episodical nature of this ballad 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 my orca while the composer was only too noticeably disturbed in body and soul presto con foco Chopin marks the second section Colet gives 84 to the quarter and for the opening 66 to the quarter he also wisely marks crescendos in the base at the first thematic he prefers the e as does clindworth nine bars before the return of the presto at the eighth bar after this return Colet adheres to the e instead of f at the beginning of the bar treble clef clindworth indicates both nor does Colet follow mccooley in using a d in the coda he prefers a d sharp instead of a natural I wish the second ballad were played often or in public it is quite neglected for the third which is a alert says has the voice of the people this ballad the undeen of miskevits published november 1841 and dedicated to mademoiselle p. de nois 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 places of french capital is preeminently to be recognized that's shumon for sooth it is aristocratic gay graceful pecan and also something more even in its playful moments there is a 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 wilt an ironically joyous philip 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 chauvin's being it becomes a difficult task to transcribe the easy transitions full of an irresistible charm with which he portrays love's gain who will not recall the memorable passage in the a flat ballad 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 a alert above evidently sees a ballroom picture of brilliancy with the regulation tender of owl the episodes of this ballad are so attenuated of any grosser elements that none but meaningful meaning should be read into them the disputed passage is on the fifth page of the cullock edition after the trills a measure is missing in cullock who like clindworth gives it 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 nicks becomes enthusiastic over the insinuation and occasion 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 expresses 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 cullock suggests some variance he uses the transient shake in the third bar instead of the appoggiatura with which clindworth prefers clindworth attacks the trill on the second page with the uppertone a flat cullock and mertke in addition play the passage in this manner musical score excerpt from the original version of the opus 47 ballad here is clindworth musical score excerpt of the same passage in clindworth's edition of the fourth and glorious ballad in f minor dedicated to baron c. de Roth's child I could write a volume it is Chopin in his most reflective yet lyric mood lyricism is the keynote of his work a passionate lyricism 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 ballad is the companion tased polonaise but as a ballad fully worthy of its sisters to quote necks it was published december 1843 the theme in f minor has the elusive charm of a slow mournful vals that returns twice be jeweled yet never overlaid here is the very apotheosis of the ornament the figuration sets off the idea in dazzling relief there are episodes transitional passage work being extinguished by novelty in 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 harmonious and consider the D flat score runs in the left hand how swog how satisfying is this page I select for a special admiration this modulatory passage musical score excerpt and what could be more evocative of dramatic suspense than the 16 bars before the mad terrifying coda how the solemn splendors of the half notes weave an atmosphere of mystic tragedy this soul suspension recalls miterlink here is the episode musical score excerpt a story of delence 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 program as a whole for Chopin writes according to a program 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 in the feeling of the work the ballade on danti 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 firm or 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 an opportunity to arrive at a better understanding by this I mean a well chosen incision the sechura and a lingering letting in air tausig cleverly called it which in no way impairs rhythm and time but rather brings them to stronger relief a lingering which are 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 ballad he came to the first passage the motive among blossoms and leaves a figurated recurrence to the principal theme is in the inner parts it's 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 though tausig tied the little thread to a doppio movimento in two four time but thereby resulted sextileps which threw the chorale into much 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 dulcisimo 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 program 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 witch's dance of triplets doubled in thirds this piece winds up with extreme bravura the lingering mentioned by delence is tempo rubato so fatally misunderstood by most Chopin players delence in a note quotes Meyerbeer as saying Meyerbeer who quarreled with Chopin about the rhythm of a mozerka can one reduce women to notation they would breed mischief where they emancipated from the measure there is passion refined in 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 ballad 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 opus 110 and possibly Schumann in the opening of his C major fantasia are as intimate as personal as the F minor ballad which is as subtly distinctive as the hands and smile of Lisa Giaconda its inaccessible position preserves it from rude and irreverent treatment its witchery is is irresistible End of Chapter 10 Recording by Joy S. 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