 CHAPTER XIII 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. Recording by MJ Frank. Chopin, The Man and His Music by James Honaker. CHAPTER XIII Mazurkas, Dances of the Soul. CHAPTER XI QUOTE Coquettries, vanities, fantasies, inclinations, allergies, vague emotions, passions, conquests, struggles upon which the safety or favors of others depend. All, all, meet in this dance. UNQUOTE Thus LIST Delenz further quotes him. Of the Mazurkas one must harness a new pianist of the first rank to each of them. Yet LIST told Nyx he did not care much for Chopin's Mazurkas. One often meets in them with bars which might just as well be in another place, but as Chopin puts them perhaps nobody could put them. LIST, despite the rhapsodical praise of his friend, is not always to be relied upon. Capricious as Chopin, he had days when he disliked not only the Mazurkas but all his music. He confessed to Nyx that when he played a half hour for amusement it was Chopin he took up. There is no more brilliant chapter than this Hungarians on the dancing of the Mazurka by the Poles. It is a companion to his equally sensational description of the Polonais. He gives a wild, hurling, highly colored narrative of the Mazurka with a coda of extravagant praise of the beauty and fascination of Polish women. Angel through love, demon through fantasy, as Balzac called her. In none of the piano rhapsodies are there such striking passages to be met as in LIST's overwrought, cadenced prose, prose modeled after Chateaubriand. Niema iakpoki, nothing equals the Polish women and their divine coquetries. The Mazurka is their dance. It is the feminine complement to the heroic and masculine Polonais. An English writer describes the dancing of the Mazurka in contemporary Russia. In the salons of St. Petersburg, for instance, the guests actually dance. They do not merely shamble to and fro in a crowd, crumpling their clothes and ruffling their tempers and call it a set of quadrills. They have ample space for the sweeping movements and complicated figures of all the Orthodox ball dances and are generally gifted with sufficient plastic grace to carry them out in style. They carefully cultivate dances calling for a kind of grace which is almost beyond the reach of art. The Mazurka is one of the finest of these and it is quite a favorite at balls on the banks of the Neva. It needs a good deal of room, one or more spurred officers, and grace, grace, and grace. The dash with which the partners rush forward, the clinking and clattering of spurs as heel clashes with heel in mid-air, punctuating the staccato of the music. The loud thud of boots striking the ground, followed by their sibilant slide along the polished floor, then the swift springs and sudden bounds, the hurling gyrations and dizzy evolutions, the graceful genuflections and quick embraces, and all the other intricate and maddening movements to the accompaniment of one of Glinka's or Tchaikovsky's masterpieces. Awaken and mobilize all the antique heroism, medieval chivalry, and wild romance that lie dormant in the depths of men's being. There is more genuine pleasure in being the spectator of a soul-thrilling dance like that, than in taking an active part in the lifeless mate-believes performed at society balls in many of the more western countries of Europe. Absolutely slovanic, though a local dance of the province of Masofia, the Masorek, or Mazurka, is written in three-four time, with the usual displaced accent in music of eastern origin. Brudzinski is quoted as saying that in its primitive form, the Masorek is only a kind of krakowiak, less lively, less sautillant. At its best it is a dancing anecdote, a story told in a charming variety of steps and gestures. It is intoxicating, rude, humorous, poetic, above all melancholy. When he is happiest, he sings his saddest, does the poll. Hence his predilection for minor modes. Masurka is in three-four or three-eight time. Sometimes the accent is dotted, but this is by no means absolute. Here is the rhythm most frequently encountered, although Chopin employs variants and modifications. The first part of the bar has usually the quicker notes. The scale is a mixture of major and minor. Melodies are encountered that grew out of a scale shorn of a degree. Occasionally the augmented second, the Hungarian, is encountered, and skips of a third are frequent occurrence. This, with progressions of augmented fourths and major sevenths, gives to the Masurkas of Chopin an exotic character apart from their novel and original content. As was the case with the Polonaise, Chopin took the framework of the national dance, developed it, enlarged it, and hung upon it his choicest melodies, his most pecanth harmonies. He breaks and varies the conventionalized rhythm in a half-hundred ways, lifting to the plane of a poem the heavy hoofed peasant dance. But in this idealization he never robs it altogether of the flavor of the soil. It is in all its wayward disguises the Polish Masurka, and is with the Polonaise, according to Rubenstein, the only Polish reflective music he has made. Although in all of his compositions we hear him relate rejoicingly of Poland's vanished greatness, singing, mourning, weeping over Poland's downfall and all that, and the most beautiful, the most musical way. Besides the hard inartistic modulations, the startling progressions and abrupt changes of mood that jarred on the old-fashioned Moskiles, and dipped in vitriol the pen of relstab, there is in the Masurkas the greatest stumbling block of all the much-exploited rubato. Berlioz swore that Chopin could not play in time, which was not true, and later we shall see that Meyerbeer thought the same. What to the sensitive critic is a charming wavering and swaying in the measure, Chopin leans about freely within his bars, wrote an English critic. For the classicists was a rank departure from the timebeat. According to Liszt's description of the rubato, a wind plays in the leaves. Life unfolds and develops beneath them, but the tree remains the same. That is the Chopin rubato. Elsewhere, a tempo agitated, broken, interrupted, a movement flexible, yet at the same time abrupt and languishing and vacillating as the fluctuating breath by which it is agitated. Chopin was more commonplace in his definition. Supposing, he explained, that a piece lasts a given number of minutes. It may take just so long to perform the whole, but in detail deviations may differ. The tempo rubato is probably as old as music itself. It is in Bach, it was practiced by the old Italian singers. Mikuli says that no matter how free Chopin was in his treatment of the right hand in melody, or arabesque, the left kept strict time. Mozart and not Chopin, it was, who first said, let your left hand be your conductor and always keep time. Hal, the pianist, once asserted that he proved Chopin to be playing four-four instead of three-four measure in a berserker. Chopin laughingly admitted that it was a national trait. Hal was bewildered when he first heard Chopin play, for he did not believe such music could be represented by musical signs. Still, he holds that this style has been woefully exaggerated by pupils and imitators. If a Beethoven symphony or a Bach fugue be played with metronomical rigidity, it loses its quintessential flavor. Is it not time the ridiculous falsehoods about the Chopin rubato be exposed? Naturally abhorring anything that would do violence to the structural part of his compositions, Chopin was a very martinet with his pupils if too much license of tempo was taken. His music needs the greatest lucidity in presentation, and naturally a certain elasticity of phrasing. Rhythms need not be distorted, nor need there be absurd and vulgar haltings, silly and explosive dynamics. Chopin sentimentalized, is Chopin butchered. He loathed false sentiment, and a man whose taste was formed by Bach and Mozart, who was nurtured by the music of these two giants, could never have indulged in exaggerated, jerky, tempi in meaningless expression. Come, let us be done with this fetish of stolen time of the wonderful and so seldom-comprehended rubato. If you wish to play Chopin, play him in curves. Let there be no angularities of surface of measure, but in the name of the beautiful do not deliver his exquisitely balanced phrases with the jolting, Bach-y eloquence of a café chantant singer. The very balance and symmetry of the Chopin phraseology are internal. It must be delivered in a flowing, waving manner, never square or hard, yet with every accent showing like the supple muscles of an athlete beneath his skin. Without the skeleton a musical composition is flaccid, shapeless, weak, and without character. Chopin's music needs a rhythmic sense that to us, fed upon the few simple forms of the West, seems almost abnormal. The Chopin rubato is rhythm liberated from its scholastic bonds, but it does not mean anarchy, disorder. What makes this popular misconception all the more singular is the freedom with which the classics are now being interpreted. A Beethoven and even a Mozart symphony no longer means a rigorous execution in which the measure is ruthlessly hammered out by the conductor, but the melodic and emotional curve is followed and the tempo fluctuates. Why then is Chopin singled out as the evil and solitary representative of a vicious time beat? Play him as you play Mendelssohn and your Chopin has evaporated. Again play him lawlessly, with his accentual life topsy-turveyed, and he is no longer Chopin, his caricature only. Pianists of Slavic descent alone understand the secret of the tempo rubato. I have read in a recently started German periodical that to make the performance of Chopin's works pleasing it is sufficient to play them with less precision of rhythm than the music of other composers. I on the contrary do not know a single phrase of Chopin's works including even the freest among them in which the balloon of inspiration as it moves through the air is not checked by an anchor of rhythm and symmetry. Such passages as occur in the F minor ballade, the B flat minor scherzo, the middle part, the F minor prelude and even the A flat impromptu are not devoid of rhythm. The most crooked recitative of the F minor concerto, as can be easily proved, has a fundamental rhythm not at all fantastic and which cannot be dispensed with when playing with orchestra. Chopin never overdoes fantasy and is always restrained by a pronounced aesthetical instinct. Everywhere the simplicity of his poetical inspiration and his sobriety saves us from extravagance and false pathos. Klesinski has this in his second volume for he enjoyed the invaluable prompting of Chopin's pupil, the late Princess Marceline Chaturiska. Nyax quotes Madame Frédéric Stretcher, named Muller, a pupil who wrote of her master. He required adherence to the strictest rhythm, hated all lingering and lagging misplaced rubatoes as well as exaggerated retardandos. Je vous prie de vous asseoir, he said, on such an occasion with gentle mockery. And it is just in this respect that people make such terrible mistakes in the execution of his works. And now to the Misercas, which Delenz said were Heinrich Heiney's songs on the piano. Chopin was a phoenix of intimacy with the piano. In his nocturnes and Misercas, he is unrivaled, downright fabulous. No compositions are so Chopin-ish as the Misercas. Ironical, sad, sweet, joyous, morbid, sour, sane and dreamy, they illustrate what was said of their composer. His heart is sad, his mind is gay. That subtle quality for an occidental enigmatic which the Poles call Saul is in some of them. In others the fun is almost rough and roaring. Saul, a poisonous word, is a baleful compound of pain, sadness, secret ranker, revolt. It is a Polish quality and is in the Celtic peoples. Oppressed nations with a tendency to mad lyricism develop this mental secretion of the spleen. List writes that the Saul colors with a reflection now argent, now ardent, the whole of Chopin's works. This sorrow is the very soil of Chopin's nature. He so confessed when questioned by Contest Agu. List further explains that the strange word includes in its meanings, for it seems packed with them, all the tenderness, all the humility of a regret born with resignation and without a murmur. It also signifies excitement, agitation, ranker, revolt, full of reproach, premeditated vengeance, menace never ceasing to threaten if retaliation should ever become possible. Feeding itself meanwhile with a bitter if sterile hatred. Sterile indeed must be such a consuming passion. Even where his patriotism became a lyric cry, this Saul tainted the source of Chopin's joy. He made him irascible and with his powers of repression this smoldering, smothered rage must have well nice suffocated him and in the end proved harmful alike to his person and to his art. As in certain phases of disease it heightened the beauty of his later work, unhealthy, feverish, yet beauty without doubt. The pearl is said to be a morbid secretion so the spiritual ferment called Saul gave to Chopin's music its morbid beauty. It is in the B minor scherzo but not in the A flat ballad. The F minor ballad overflows with it and so does the F sharp minor polonaise but not the first impromptu. Its dark introspection colours many of the preludes and mazurkas and in the C sharp minor scherzo it is an acrid flowering, truly fleur du mal. Heine and Baudelaire, two poets far removed from the Slavic, show traces of the terrible drowsy Saul in their poetry. It is the collective sorrow and tribal wrath of a downtrodden nation and the mazurkas for that reason have ethnic value. As concise, even as curt as the preludes, they are for the most part highly polished. They are dancing preludes and often tiny single poems of great poetic intensity and passionate plaint. Chopin published during his lifetime 41 mazurkas in 11 cahiers of 3, 4 and 5 numbers. Opus 6, 4 mazurkas and Opus 7, 5 mazurkas were published December 1832. Opus 6 is dedicated to Contest Pauline Plataire. Opus 7 to Mr. Johns. Opus 17, 4 mazurkas, May 4th, dedicated to Madame Lina Freppa. Opus 24, 4 mazurkas, November 1835, dedicated to Conte de Pertuis. Opus 30, 4 mazurkas, December 1837, dedicated to Princess Charterisca. Opus 33, 4 mazurkas, October 1838, dedicated to Contest Mostafska. Opus 41, 4 mazurkas, December 1840, dedicated to E. Whitwicky. Opus 50, 3 mazurkas, November 1841, dedicated to Leon Smytsovsky. Opus 56, 3 mazurkas, August 1844, dedicated to Mamzell C. Maverny. Opus 59, 3 mazurkas, April 1846, no dedication. And Opus 63, 3 mazurkas, September 1847, dedicated to Conte de Pertuis. Besides, there are Opus 67 and 68 published by Fontana after Chopin's death, consisting of eight mazurkas. And there are a miscellaneous number, two in A minor, both in the Kulak, Klindworth, and Mukuli editions. One in F-sharp major said to be written by Charles Mayer in Klindworths, and four others in G, B-flat, D, and C major. This makes an all 56 to be grouped and analyzed. Niek thinks there is a well-defined difference between the mazurkas as far as Opus 41 and those that follow. In the latter he misses savage beauties and spontaneity. As Chopin gripped the forum as he felt more, suffered more, and knew more, his mazurkas grew broader, revealed more Veldschmerz, became elaborate and at times impersonal, but seldom lost the racial snap and hue. They are sonnets in their well-rounded mechanism, and, as Schumann says, something new is to be found in each. Toward the last a few are Blythe and Jokund, but they are the exceptions. In the larger ones the universal quality is felt, but to the detriment of the intimate Polish characteristics. These mazurkas are just what they are called, only some dance with the heart, others with the heels. Comprising a large and original portion of Chopin's compositions, they are the least known. Perhaps when they wander from the map of Poland, they lose some of their native fragrance. Like hardy, simple wildflowers, they are mostly for the open air, the only out-of-doors music Chopin ever made. But even in the open, under the moon, the note of self-torture, of sophisticated sadness, is not absent. Do not accuse Chopin, for this is the sign manual of his race. The pole suffers in song, the joy of his sorrow. Part 2 The F-sharp minor mazurka of Opus 6 begins with a characteristic triplet that plays such a role in the dance. Here we find a Chopin fuller-fledged than in the nocturnes and variations, and probably because of the form. This mazurka, first in publication, is melodious, slightly mournful, but of a delightful freshness. The third section with the apogiaturas realizes a vivid vision of country couples dancing determinedly. Who plays number two of this set? It, too, has the native wood note wild with its dominant pedal bass, its slight twang, and its sweet sad melody in C-sharp minor. There is hearty delight in the major and how natural it seems. Number three in E is still on the village green, and the boys and girls are romping in the dance. We hear a drone bass, a favorite device of Chopin, and the chatter of the gossips, the bustle of a rural festival. The harmonization is rich, the rhythmic life vital. But in the following one in E-flat minor a different note is sounded. Its harmonies are closer and there is sorrow abroad. The incessant circling around one idea as if obsessed by fixed grief is used here for the first, but not for the last time, by the composer. Opus 7 drew attention to Chopin. It was the set that brought down the thunders of Relstab who wrote, If Mr. Chopin had shown this composition to a master, the latter wood, it is to be hoped, have torn it and thrown it at his feet, which we hereby do symbolically. Criticism had its amenities in 1833. In a later number of the iris in which a caustic notice appeared of the studies Opus 10, Relstab printed a letter signed Chopin, the authenticity of which is extremely doubtful. In it Chopin is made to call the critic really a very bad man. Niek's demonstrates that the Polish pianist was not the writer. It reads like the effusion of some indignant, well-meaning, female friend. The B-flat major, Miss Urka, which opens Opus 7, is the best known of these dances. There is an expansive swing, a less AIA, to this piece, with its air of elegance, that are very alluring. The rubato flourishes and at the close we hear the footing of the peasant. A jolly, reckless composition that makes one happy to be alive and dancing. The next, which begins in A minor, is as if one danced upon one's grave. A change to major does not deceive, it is too heavy-hearted. Number three, in F minor, with its rhythmic pronouncement at the start, brings us back to earth. The triplet that sets off the phrase has great significance. Guitar-like is the bass in its snapping resolution. The section that begins on the dominant of D-flat is full of vigor and imagination. The left hand is given a solo. This Miss Urka has the true ring. The following one in A-flat is a sequence of moods. Its assertiveness soon melts into tenderer hues, and in an episode in A we find much to ponder. Number five in C consists of three lines. It is a sort of coda to the opus and full of the echoes of lusty happiness, a silhouette with a marked profile. Opus 17, number one in B-flat, is bold, chivalric, and I fancy I hear the swish of the warrior's saber. The peasant has vanished, or else gapes through the open window, while his master goes through the paces of a courtly or dance. We encounter sequential chords of the seventh, and their use, rhythmically framed as they are, gives a line of sternness to the dance. Niex thinks that the second Miss Urka might be called the Request. So pathetic, playful, and persuasive is it. It is an E minor and has a plaintive appealing quality. The G major part is very pretty. In the last lines the passion mounts, but is never shrill. Kulak notes that in the fifth and sixth bars there is no slur in certain editions. Klinworth employs it, but marks the B sforzando. A slur on two notes of the same pitch, with Chopin, does not always mean a tie. The A-flat Miss Urka, number three, is pessimistic, threatening, and irritable. Though in the key of E major the trio displays a relentless sort of humor, the return does not mend matters. A dark page. In A minor the fourth is called by Skolk the Little Jew. Skolk, who wrote anecdotes of Chopin and collected them with the title of Friedrich Chopin, told the story to Kliginski, it is this. Chopin did not care for program music, though more than one of his compositions, full of expression and character, may be included under that name. Who does not know the A minor Miss Urka of Opus 17 dedicated to Lena Freppa? It was already known in our country as the Little Jew, before the departure of our artist abroad. It is one of the works of Chopin which are characterized by distinct humor. A Jew in slippers and a long robe comes out of his inn, and seeing an unfortunate peasant, his customer, intoxicated, tumbling about the road and uttering complaints, exclaims from his threshold. What is this? Then, as if by way of contrast to this scene, the gay wedding party of a rich Burgess comes along on its way from church with shouts of various kinds, accompanied in a lively manner by violins and bagpipes. The train passes by, the tipsy peasant renews his complaints, the complaints of a man who had tried to drown his misery in the glass. The Jew returns indoors, shaking his head and again asking, What was this? The story strikes one as being both childish and commonplace. The Miss Urka is rather doleful, and there is a little triplet of interrogation standing sentinel at the fourth bar. It is also the last phrase, but what of that? I too can build you a program as lofty or lowly as you please, but it will not be Chopin's. Nyx, for example, finds this very dense, bleak and joyless of intimate emotional experience and with jarring tones that strike in and pitilessly wake the dreamer. So there is no predicating the content of music except in a general way. The mood-key may be struck, but in Chopin's case this is by no means infallible. If I write with confidence it is that begot of desperation, for I know full well that my version of the story will not be yours. The A Minor Miss Urka, for me, is full of hectic despair, whatever that may mean, and its serpentining chromatics and apparently suspended clothes on the court of the sixth gives an impression of morbid irresolution modulating into a sort of desperate gaiety. Its tonality accounts for the moods evoked being indeterminate and restless. Opus 24 begins with the G Minor Miss Urka, a favorite because of its comparative freedom from technical difficulties. Although in the Minor mode there is mental strength in the piece with its exotic scale of the augmented second and its trio is hearty. In the next in C we find, besides the curious content, a mixture of tonalities, Lydian and medieval church modes. Here the trio is occidental. The entire piece leaves a vague impression of discontent and the refrain recalls the Russian bargeman's songs, utilized at various times by Tchaikovsky. Klindworth uses variants. There is also some editorial differences in the metronomic markings, Mikuli being, according to Kulak, too slow. Mention has not been made, as in the studies and preludes, of the tempi of the Miss Urkas. These compositions are so capricious, so varied, that Chopin I am sure did not play any one of them twice alike. They are creatures of moods, melodic air plants swinging to the rhythms of any vagrant breeze. The metronome is for the student, but metronome and rubato are, as Delenz would have said, mutually exclusive. The third Miss Urka of Opus 24 is in A-flat. It is pleasing, not deep, a real dance with an ornamental coda. But the next, ah, here is a gem, a beautiful and exquisitely colored poem. In B-flat minor it sends out perhensal filaments that entwine and draws into the center of a wondrous melody, laden with rich odors, odors that almost intoxicate. The figuration is tropical, and when the major is reached and those glancing thirty seconds so coily as sailors, we realize the seductive charm of Chopin. The reprise is still more festooned, and it is almost a relief when the little tender unison begins with its positive chord assertions closing the period. Then follows a fascinating cadence step, with lights and shades, sweet melancholy driving before it joy, and being routed itself, until the enunciation of the first theme and the dying away of the dance, dancers and the solid globe itself, as if earth had committed suicide for loss of the sun. The last two bars could have been written only by Chopin. They are ineffable size. And now the chorus of praise begins to mount in burning octaves. The C minor mezzurca opus thirty is another of those wonderful heartfelt melodies of the master. What can I say of the deepening feeling at the conanima? It stabs with its pathos. Here is the poet Chopin, the poet who, with burns, interprets the simple strains of the folk, who blinds us with colour and rich romanticism like Keats, and lifts us shelly-wise to transcendental azure. And his only apparatus, a keyboard. As Schumann wrote, Chopin did not make his appearance by an orchestral army, as a great genius is accustomed to do. He only possesses a small cohort, but every soul belongs to him to the last hero. Eight lines is this dance, yet its meanings are almost endless. Number two in B minor is called the cuckoo by Kleginski. It is sprightly and with the lilt notwithstanding its subtle progressions of Matsovia. Number three in D flat is all animation, brightness, and a determination to stay out the dance. The alternate major minor of the theme is truly Polish. The graceful trio and cannerous brilliancy of this dance make it a favoured number. The ending is epigrammatic. It comes so suddenly upon us, our cortical cells peeling with the minor, that its very abruptness is witty. One can see Chopin making a mocking mouet as he wrote it. Tchaikovsky borrowed the effect for the conclusion of the chinoise in a miniature orchestral suite. The fourth of this opus is in C sharp minor. Again I feel like letting loose the dogs of enthusiasm. The sharp rhythms and solid build of this ample work give it a massive character. It is one of the big misercas and the ending, raw as it is, consecutive, bare faced fifths and sevenths, compasses its intended meaning. Opus 33 is a popular set. It begins with one in G sharp minor, which is curt and rather depressing. The relief in V major is less real than it seems on paper. Moody with all a tender heart of miserca. Number two in D is bustling, graceful and full of unrestrained vitality. Bright and not particularly profound, it was successfully arranged for voice by Vierdo Garcia. The third of the opus in C is the one described by DeLenz as almost precipitating a violent row between Chopin and Meyerbeer. He had christened it the epitaph of the idea. Two-four said Meyerbeer after DeLenz played it. Three-four answered Chopin, flushing angrily. Let me have it for a ballet in my new opera and I'll show you, retorted Meyerbeer. It's three-four scolded Chopin and played it himself. DeLenz says they parted cruelly, each holding to his opinion. Later in St. Petersburg Meyerbeer met this gossip and told him that he loved Chopin. I know no pianist, no composer for the piano like him. Meyerbeer was wrong in his idea of the tempo. Though Chopin slurs the last beat, it is there nevertheless. This Mazurka is only four lines long and is charming, as charming as the brief specimen in the preludes. The next Mazurka is another famous warhorse. In B Minor it is full of veiled coquetries, hazardous mood transitions, growling recitatives, and smothered planks. The continual return to the theme gives rise to all manner of fanciful programs. One of the most characteristic is by the Polish poet Zelinsky, who, so Klasinski relates, wrote a humorous poem on this Mazurka. For him it is a domestic comedy in which a drunken peasant and his much-abused wife enact a little scene. Returning home, the worse for where, he sings, Oj ta dana, o dear me, and rumbles in the bass in a figure that answers the treble. His wife reproaching him, he strikes her. Here we are in B Flat. She laments her fate in B Major, then her husband shouts, Be quiet, old vixen! This is given in the octaves a genuine dialogue, the wife tartly answering, Shant be quiet! The gruff grumbling in the bass is heard, an imitation of the above, When suddenly the man cries out the last eight bars of the composition, Kitty, kitty, come, do come here, I forgive you! Which is decidedly masculine in its magnanimity. One does not care for the rather coarse realism of this reading. Klasinski offers the poem of Yujajeski called the ragoon. The soldier flatters a girl at the inn. She flies from him, and her lover, believing she has deceived him, Despairingly drowns himself. The ending, with its ring, ring, ring the bell there, Horses carry me to the depths. It has more poetic contour than the other. Without grafting any libretto on it, this miserca is a beautiful tone piece in itself. Its theme is delicately mournful, and the subject in B Major simply entrancing In its broad, flowing melody. In C-sharp minor Opus 41 is a miserca that is beloved of me. Its scale is exotic, its rhythm convincing, Its tune a little saddened by life, but courage never fails. This theme sounds persistently in the middle voices, in the bass, And at the close in full harmonies, unisons, giving it a startling effect. Octaves take it up in profile until it vanishes. Here is the very apotheosis of rhythm. Number two in E Minor is not very resolute of heart. It was composed soniacs avers at Palma when Chopin's health fully accounts For the depressed character of the piece, for it is sad to the point of tears. Of Opus 41 he wrote to Fontana from Nohont in 1839. You know I have four new misercas, one from Palma in E Minor, Three from here in B Major, A Flat Major, and C-sharp minor. They seem to be pretty as the youngest children usually do when the parents grow old. Number three is a vigorous sonorous dance. Number four, over which the editors deviate on the serious matter of text, In A Flat is for the concert room, and is allied to several of his gracious pulses. Playful and decorative, but not profound in feeling. Opus 50, the first in G Major, is healthy and vivacious. Good humor predominates. Kulak notes that in some editions it closes pianissimo, which seems a little out of drawing. Number two is charming. In A Flat it is a perfect specimen of the aristocratic Mazurka. The D Flat Trio, the answering episode in B Flat Minor, and the grace of the return make this one to be studied and treasured. Delenz finds Bakke and influences in the following in C-sharp minor. It begins as though written for the organ and ends in an exclusive salon. It does him credit and is worked out more fully than the others. Chopin was much pleased when I told him that in the construction of this Mazurka the passage from E Major to F Major was the same as that in the Agatha Aria in Fryshoots. Delenz refers to the opening Bakke-like mutations. The texture of this dance is closer and finer spun than any we have encountered. Perhaps spontaneity is impaired. May que vous les vous? Chopin was bound to develop and his Mazurkas, fragile and constricted as is the form, were sure to show a like record of spiritual and intellectual growth. Opus 56 in B Major is elaborate even in its beginning. There is decoration in the Returnal in E Flat and one feels the absence of a compensating emotion despite the display of contrapuntal skill. Very virtuoso-like but not so intimate as some of the others. Kerasovsky selects No. 2 in C as an illustration. It is as though the composer had sought for the moment to divert himself with narcotic intoxication only to fall back the more deeply into his original gloom. There is the peasant in the first bars in C but the A Minor and what follows soon disturb the air of Bonomi. Theoretical ease is in the imitative passages. Chopin is now master of his tools. The third Mazurka of Opus 56 is in C Minor. It is quite long and does not give the impression of a whole. With the exception of a short break in B Major it is composed with the head not the heart nor yet the heels. Not unlike in its sturdy affirmation the one in C Sharp Minor Opus 41 is the next Mazurka in A Minor Opus 59. That Chopin did not repeat himself is an artistic miracle. A subtle turn takes us off the familiar road to some strange glade wherein the flowers are rare in scent and odor. This Mazurka like the one that follows has a dim resemblance to others yet there is always a novel point of departure, a fresh harmony, a sudden melody or an unexpected ending. Hadal, for example, thinks the A Flat of this Opus the most beautiful of them all. In it he finds legitimately used the repetition in various shapes of a single phrase. To me this Mazurka seems but an amplification, an elaboration of the lovely one in the same key Opus 50, No. 2. The double sixth and more complicated phraseology do not render the later superior to the early Mazurka, yet there is no gain saying the fact that this is a noble composition. But the next in F Sharp Minor, despite its rather Saturnine gaze, is stronger in interest if not in workmanship. While it lacks Niek's Botte Sauvage, is it not far loftier in conception and execution than Opus 6 in F Sharp Minor? The inevitable triplet appears in the third bar and is a hero throughout. Oh, here is charm for you. Read the close of the section in F Sharp Major. In the major it ends, the triplet fading away at last, a mere shadow, a turn on D sharp, but victor to the last. Chopin is at the summit of his invention. Time and tune that wait for no man are now his bond slaves. Pathos, delicacy, boldness, a measured melancholy, and the art of euphonious presentiment of all these, and many factors more, stamp this Mazurka a masterpiece. Niek's believes there is a return of the early freshness and poetry in the last three Mazurkas Opus 63. They are indeed teaming with interesting matter, he writes. Looked at from the musician's point of view, how much do we not see novel and strange, beautiful and fascinating with all? Sharp dissonances, chromatic passing notes, suspensions and anticipations, displacement of accent, progressions of perfect fifths, the horror of schoolman, sudden turns and unexpected digressions that are so unaccountable, so out of the line of logical sequence, that one's following that composer is beset with difficulties. But all this is a means to an end, the expression of an individuality with its intimate experiences. The emotional content of many of these trifles, trifles of considered only by their size, is really stupendous. Spoken like a brave man and not a pedant. Full of vitality is the first number of Opus 63. In B major it is sufficiently various configuration and rhythmical life to single it from its fellows. The next in F minor has a more elegiac ring. Brief and not difficult of matter or manner is this dance. The third of winning beauty is in C-sharp minor, surely appendant to the C-sharp minor vols. I defy anyone to withstand the pleading, eloquent voice of this Mazurka. Slender in technical configuration, yet it impressed Louis Ehler so much that he was impelled to write. A more perfect canon in the octave could not have been written by one who had grown gray in the learned arts. The four Mazurkas published posthumously in 1855 that comprise Opus 67 were composed by Chopin at various dates. To the first, in G, Clindworth affixes 1849 as the year of composition. Niek's gives a much earlier date, 1835. I fancy the latter is correct as the piece sounds like one of Chopin's more youthful efforts. It is jolly and rather superficial. The next in G minor is familiar. It is very pretty and its date is set down by Niek's as 1849 while Clindworth gives 1835. Here again Niek's is correct although I suspect that Clindworth transposed his figures accidentally. Number three in C was composed in 1835. On this both biographer and editor agree. It is certainly an early effusion of no great value although a good dancing tune. Number four A minor of this Opus composed in 1846 is more mature but in no wise remarkable. Opus 68 the second of the Fontana set was composed in 1830. The first in C is commonplace. The one in A minor composed in 1827 is much better being lighter and well made. The third in F major, 1830, weak and trivial. And the fourth in F minor, 1849. Interesting because it is said by Julius Fontana to be Chopin's last composition. He put it on paper a short time before his death but was too ill to try it at the piano. It is certainly morbid in its sick insistence in phrase repetition, close harmonies and wild departure in A from the first figure. But it completes the gloomy and sardonic loop and we wish after playing this veritable song of the tomb that we had parted from Chopin in health not disease. This page is full of the premonitions of decay. Too weak and faltering to be febrile. Chopin is here a debile prematurely exhausted young man. There are a few accents of a forced gaiety but they are swallowed up in the mists of dissolution. The dissolution of one of the most sensitive brains ever wrought by nature. Here we may echo without any saver of Liszt's condescension or de Lenz's irony. Poor Frederick. Klindworth and Kulak have different ideas concerning the end of this Mazurka. Both are correct. Kulak, Klindworth and Mikuli include in their editions two Mazurkas in A minor. Neither is impressive. One, the date of composition unknown, is dedicated a Sonamie Emin Gayard. The other first appeared in a musical publication of shots about 1842 or 1843 according to Niek's. Of this set I prefer the former. It abounds and octaves and ends with a long trill. There is in the Klindworth edition a Mazurka the last in the set in the key of F-sharp. It is so unchopanish and artificial that the doubts of the pianist's Ernst power were aroused as to its authenticity. On inquiry, Niek's quotes from the London monthly musical record July 1st, 1882. Power discovered that the piece was identical with the Mazurka by Charles Mayer. Gauthard, being the publisher of the alleged Chopin Mazurka, declared he bought the manuscript from a Polish Countess, possibly one of the fifty in whose arms Chopin died, and that the lady parted with Chopin's autograph because of her dire poverty. It is, of course, a clear case of forgery. Of the four early Mazurkas in G major and B-flat major dating from 1825, D major composed in 1829 and 30, but remodeled in 1832, and C major of 1833, the latter is the most characteristic. The G major is of slight worth. As Niek's remarks it contains a harmonic error. The one in B-flat starts out with a phrase that recalls the A minor Mazurka, numbered 45 in the Breitkopf and Hartel edition. This B-flat Mazurka, early as it was composed, is nevertheless pretty. There are breadth and decision in the C major Mazurka. The recasting improves the D major Mazurka. Its trio is lifted and octave, and the doubling of notes throughout gives more weight and richness. In the minor key laughs and cries, dances and mourns the slog, says Dr. J. Schuchte in his monograph on Chopin. Chopin here reveals not only his nationality, but his own fascinating and enigmatic individuality. Within the tremulous spaces of this immature dance is enacted the play of a human soul, that voices the sorrow and revolt of a dying race of a dying poet. They are epigrammatic, fluctuating, crazy and tender these Mazurkas, and some of them have a soft melancholy light as if shining through alabaster, true corpse light leading to a morass of doubt and terror. But a fantastic disheveled debonair spirit is the guide, and to him we abandon ourselves in these precise and vertiginous dances. End of Chapter 13. Recording by M. J. Frank, Portland, Oregon. Chapter 14 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. Recording by Robert Hoffman. Chopin, The Man and His Music, by James Hunnaker. Chapter 14. Chopin, The Conqueror. The scarcity of Chopin are of his own creation. The type, as illustrated by Beethoven and Mendelssohn, had no meaning for him. Whether in earnest or serious jest, Chopin pitched on a title that is widely misleading when the content is considered. The Beethoven scherzo is full of a robust sort of humor. In it, he is seldom poetical, frequently given to gossip, and at times he hints at the mystery of life. The demoniacal element, the fierce jollity that mocks itself, and almost titanic anger of Chopin would not have been regarded by the composer of the Aeroica symphony as adapted to the form. The pole practically built up a new musical structure. Boldly called it a scherzo, and, and, as in the case of the ballads, poured into its elastic mold most disturbing and incomparable music. Chopin seldom compasses sublimity. His arrows are tipped with fire, yet they do not fly far. But in some of his music he skirts the regions where abide the gods. In at least one scherzo, in one ballad, in the F minor Fantasia, in the first two movements of the B-flat minor sonata, in several of the etudes, and in one of the preludes, he compasses grandeur. Individuality of utterance, beauty of utterance, and the eloquence we call divine are his. Criticism then bows its questioning brows before this anointed one. In the scherzi, Chopin is often prophet as well as poet. He fumes and frets, but upon his countenance is the precious fury of the Sibles. We see the soul that suffers from secret convulsions, but forgive the writhing for the music made. These four scherzi are physical records, confessions committed to paper of outpourings that never could have passed the lips. From these alone we may almost reconstruct the real Chopin, the inner Chopin, whose conventional exterior so ill-prepared the world for the tragic issues of his music. The first scherzo is a fair model. There are a few bars of introduction, the porch, as Naix would call it, a principal subject, a trio, a short working-out section, a skillful return to the opening theme, and an elaborate coda. This edifice, not architecturally flawless, is better adapted to the florid beauties of the Byzantine treatment than to the severe Hellenic line. Yet Chopin gave it dignity, largeness, and a classic massiveness. The interior is romantic, is modern, personal, but the facade shows gleaming minarets, the strangely-builded shapes of the Orient. This B minor scherzo has the acid note of sorrow and revolt, yet the complex figuration never wavers. The walls stand firm despite the hurricane blowing through and around them. Elert finds this scherzo tornadic. It is gusty, and the hurry and overemphasis do not endear it to the pianist. The first pages are filled with wrathful sounds. There is much tossing of hands and cries to heaven, calling down its fire and brimstone. A climax mounts to a fine frenzy until the lyric intermezzo in B is reached. Here, love chants with honeyed tongues. The widely dispersed figure of the melody has an entrancing tenderness. But peace does not long prevail against the powers of Iblis, and infernal is the wild jagged of the finale. After shrillest of dissonances, a chromatic uproar pilots the doomed one across the desperate sticks. What Chopin's program was, we can but guess. He may have outlined the composition in a moment of great ebullition, a time of soul laceration arising from a cat scratch, or a quarrel with Maurice Sain in the garden over the possession of the goat cart. The Cleendworth edition is preferable. Kulak follows his example in using the double note stems in the B major part. He gives the A sharp in the bass six bars before the return of the first motif. Cleendworth and other editions prescribe a natural, which is not so effective. This scherzo might profit by being played without the repeats. The chromatic interlocked octaves at the close are very striking. I find at times, as my mood changes, something almost repellent in the B minor scherzo. It does not present the frank physiognomy of the second scherzo, Opus 31 in B flat minor. A alert cries that it was composed in a blessed hour. Although DeLens quote Chopin is saying of the opening, quote, it must be a charnel house, unquote. The defiant challenge of the beginning has no saber of the scorn and drastic mockery of its forerunner. We are conscious that tragedy impends, that after the prologue may follow fast catastrophe. Yet it is not feared with all the pretentious thunder of its index. Nor are we deceived. A melody of winning distinction unrolls before us. It has a noble tone, is of a noble type. Without relaxing pace it passes and drops like a thunderbolt into the bowels of the earth. Again the story is told, and tearing not at all we are led to a most delectable spot in the key of A major. This trio is marked by genius. Can anything be more bewitching than the episode in C-sharp minor merging into E major with the overflow at the close? The fantasy is notable for variety of tonality, freedom in rhythmical incidents, and genuine power. The coda is dizzy and overwhelming. For Schumann this scherzo is bironic in tenderness and boldness. Karasowski speaks of its Shakespearean humor, and indeed it is a very human and lovable piece of art. It holds richer, warmer, redder blood than the other three and like the A-flat ballad is beloved of the public, but then it is easier to understand. Opus 39, the third scherzo in C-sharp minor, was composed or finished at Majorca and is the most dramatic of the set. I confess to see no littleness in the polished phrases, though irony lurks in its bars and there is fever in its glance, a glance full of enigmatic and luring scorn. I heartily agree with Hado, who finds the work clear-cut and of exact balance, and noting that Chopin founded whole paragraphs, quote, either on a single phrase repeated in similar shapes or on two phrases in alternation, unquote, a primitive practice in Polish folk songs. He asserts that, quote, Beethoven does not attain the lucidity of his style by such parallelism or phraseology, unquote, but admits that Chopin's methods made for, quote, clearness and precision may be regarded as characteristic of the national manner, unquote, a thoroughly personal characteristic, too. There is veral clanger in the firmly struck octaves of the opening pages. No hesitating, morbid view of life, but rank, harsh assertiveness, not untinged with splatonic anger. The chorale of the trio is admirably devised and carried out. Its piety is a bit of liturgical make-believe. The contrasts here are most artistic, sonorous harmony set off by broken chords that deliciously tinkle. There is a coda of frenetic movement, and the end is in major, a surprising conclusion when considering all that has gone before. Never to become the property of the profane, the C-sharp minor scherzo, notwithstanding its marked asperities and agitated moments, is a great work of art. Without the inner freedom of its predecessor, it is more sober and self-contained than the B minor scherzo. The fourth scherzo, opus 54, is in the key of E. Built up by a series of cunning touches and climaxes in without the mood depth or variety of its brethren, it is more truly a scherzo than any of them. It has tripping lightness and there is sunshine imprisoned behind its open bars. Of it Schumann could not ask, quote, how is gravity to clothe itself if jest goes about in dark veils, unquote. Here, then, is intellectual refinement and jesting of a superior sort. Nyx thinks it fragmentary. I find the fairy-like measures delightful after the doleful mutterings of some of the other scherzi. There is the same spirit of opposition, but of arrogance none. The C-sharp minor theme is of lyric beauty, the coda with its scales brilliant. It seems to be banned by classicists and Chopin worshipers alike. The agnostic attitude is not yet dead in the piano playing world. Rubenstein most admired the first two scherzi. The B minor has been criticized for being too much in the etude vein. But with all their shortcomings these compositions are without peer in the literature of the piano. They were published and dedicated as follows. December 1843. Mayel de Karaman. DeLenz relates that Chopin dedicated the C-sharp minor scherza to his pupil Gutmann, because this giant, with a prize-fighter's fists, could, quote, knock a hole in the table, unquote, with a certain chord for the left hand, sixth measure from the beginning, and adds quite naively, quote, nothing more was ever heard of this Gutmann. He was a discovery of Chopin's, unquote. Chopin died in the same Gutmann's arms, and, despite DeLenz, Gutmann was in evidence until his death as a, quote, favorite pupil, unquote. And now we have reached the grandest, oh, banal and abused word, of Chopin's compositions. The Fantasia in F minor, Opus 49. Robert Schumann, after remarking the cosmopolitan must, quote, sacrifice the small interests of the soil on which he was born, unquote, notices that Chopin's later works, quote, begin to lose something of their especial Sarmatian physiognomy to approach partly more nearly the universal ideal cultivated by the divine Greeks, which we find again in Mozart, unquote. The F minor Fantasia has hardly the Mozartian serenity, but parades of formal beauty, not disfigured by an excess of violence, either personal or patriotic, and its melodies, if restless by melancholy, are of surprising nobility and dramatic grandeur. Without including the Beethoven sonatas, not strictly born of the instrument, I do not fear to maintain that this Fantasia is one of the greatest of piano pieces. Never properly appreciated by pianists, critics, or public, it is, after more than half a century of neglect, being understood at last. It was published November 1843, and probably composed at Nohant, as a letter of the composer indicates. The dedication is to Princess C. de Souso. It's interminable countesses and princesses of Chopin. For Nikes, who could not at first discern its worth, it suggests a Titan in commotion. It is Titanic. The torso of some Faust-like dream. It is Chopin's Faust, a macabre march containing some dangerous dissonances, gravely ushers us to ascending staircases of triplets, only to precipitate us to the very abysses of the piano. That first subject, is it not almost as ethically, puissant, and passionate as Beethoven in his F minor sonata? Chopin's lack of tenaciousness is visible here. Beethoven would have built a cathedral on such a foundational scheme, but Chopin, ever prodigal in his melody making, dashes impetuously to the Ab episode, that heroic love-chant erroneously marked dolci, and played with the effeminacies of a salon. Three times, does it resound in this strange hall of glancing mirrors? Yet not once should it be caressed. The bronze fingers of Tosig are needed. Now are arching the triplets to the great, thrilling song beginning in C minor, and then the octaves, in contrary motion, split wide asunder the very earth. After terrific chordal reverberations, there is the rapid retreat of vague armies, and once again has begun the ascent of the rolling triplets to inaccessible heights, and the first theme sounds in C minor. The modulation lifts to G flat, only to drop to abysmal depths. What mighty dismal cause is being espoused? When peace is presaged in the key of B, is this the prize for which strive these agonized hosts? Is some forlorn princess locked behind these solemn inaccessible bars? For a few moments there is contentment beyond all price. Then the warring tribe of triplets recommence, after clamorous G flat octaves reeling from the stars to the sea of the first theme. Another rush into D flat ensues, the song of C minor reappears in F minor, and the miracle is repeated. Aracular octaves quake the cellarage of the palace. The warriors hurry by, their measured tramp is audible after they vanish, and the triplets obscure their retreat with chromatic vapors. Then, an adagio in this fantastic old world tale, the curtain prepares to descend. A faint, sweet voice sings a short, appealing cadenza, and after billowing A flat arpeggios, soft, great humux of tone, two giant chords are sounded, and the ballad of love and war is over. Who conquers? Is the lady with the green eyes and moon-white face rescued? Or is all this a de Quincey's dream-fugue translated into tone? A sonorous, awesome vision. Like de Quincey, it suggests the apparition of the Empire of Fear, the fear that is secretly felt with dreams, wherein the spirit expands to the drummings of infinite space. Alas, for the validity of subjective criticism, Franz Liszt told Vladimir de Pochman the programme of the Fantasia, as related to him by Chopin. At the close of one desperate immemorial day, the pianist was crooning at the piano. His spirits vastly depressed. Suddenly came a knocking at his door, a Po-like, sinister tapping, which he at once rhythmically echoed upon the keyboard, his phono motor centre being unusually sensitive. The first two bars of the Fantasia describe these wrappings, just as the third and fourth stand for Chopin's musical invitation, Entrez and Trezla. This is all repeated until the doors wide open, swinging, admit Liszt, Georges Sain, Madame Camilla Playa-Dimac, and others. To the solemn measures of March they enter, and rames themselves about Chopin, who after the agitated triplets begins his complaint in the mysterious song in F Minor. But Sain, with whom he has quarreled, falls before him on her knees and pleads for pardon. Straightway the chant merges into the appealing A-flat section. This sends skyward my theory of its interpretation, and from C Minor the current becomes more tempestuous until the climax is reached, and to the second march the intruders rapidly vanish. The remainder of the work, with the exception of the lento sostenuto in B, where it is to be hoped Chopin's perturbed soul finds momentary peace, is largely repetition and development. This far from ideal reading is an authoritative one, coming as it does from Chopin by way of Liszt. I console myself for its rather commonplace character with the notion that perhaps in the retelling the story has caught some personal cadences of the two historians. In any case I shall cling to my own version. The f-miter Fantasia will mean many things to many people. Chopin has never before maintained so artistically, so free from delirium, such a level of strong passion, mental power, and exalted euphony. It is his largest canvas, and though there are no long-breathed periods such as in the B-flat Minor Scherzo, the phraseology is amply broad, without padding of paragraphs. The wrapped interest is not relaxed until the final bar. This transcendental work more than nearly approaches Beethoven in its unity, its formal rectitude, and its brave economy of thematic material. While few men have dared to unlock their hearts thus, Chopin is not so intimate here as in the Mazurkas, but the pulse beats ardently in the tissues of this composition. As art for art, it is less perfect. The gain is on the human side. Nearing his end Chopin discerned, with ever widening, ever brighter vision, the great heartthrob of the universe. Master of his material, if not of his mortal tenement, he passionately strove to shape his dreams into abiding sounds. He did not always succeed, but his victories are the precious prizes of mankind. One is loath to believe that the echo of Chopin's magic music can ever fall upon unheating ears. He may become old-fashioned, but like most art, he will remain eternally beautiful.