Part 11
The single, but perhaps sufficing, good fortune in Chopin's in many ways unhappy lot was that he was able to find a refuge from the irritations, failures, and disappointments of everyday existence in artistic expression. However stubborn an aspect life presented to him, in art at least he was successful. The great law of compensation never wrought more subtly than when it made the very qualities which defeated him in the one realm the sources of his joyful conquest in the other. The keenness of sense which found in the hurly-burly of the world so many painful impressions, also discovered, as we have seen, wonderful new possibilities of tonal coloring in pianoforte music. The minute discrimination which made him unpleasantly conscious of all that was vulgar, crude, and ugly in human nature, also enabled him to winnow out unerringly, from his musical resources, all trite formulæ, all hackneyed conventional progressions, all threadbare adornments, and so to attain a marvellous individuality and distinction of style. The very exclusiveness which condemned the man to solitude, safeguarded the artist against dissipation of energy and futile eclecticisms of method. Finally, his ideal of perfection, a cruel autocrat to serve in a world so imperfect, proved the best of guides in the less refractory medium of art, and led him near to the verge of complete realization. In a word, the paradox of Chopin is that his fastidious taste--the radical, fundamental trait of his nature--plunges him, as a human being, into a jungle of distresses, but guides him, as a musician, to a mountain-top of commanding superiority.
The unfailing interest of the analysis of his music lies in the recognition, at every turn, of this fineness of nature, this mental and spiritual high-breeding, this exquisitely sensitive taste, and in the detection of the various kinds of excellence it produces. One easily traces it through several planes of achievement, in an ascending series. On the first and lowest plane it appears merely as an inimitable finesse in the execution of light, playful, and even frivolous designs: no one has brought so delicate and yet firm a touch, and so sure an instinct for dainty elegance of style, to the treatment of the _salon_-piece (a _genre_ for which we find perhaps the best parallel in the paintings of Watteau or the verses of Mr. Austin Dobson) as the Chopin of the waltzes, the mazurkas, many of the études and preludes, and even of the more old-fashioned concert fantasias and "_variations_ _brillantes_." Weber is as polished, but less subtle; Schubert is as spontaneous, but by no means so distinguished. Schumann exerts the same fascination, but with less ingratiation, less _politesse_; Liszt's musical garment is equally sparkling, but it is gemmed with rubies rather than with diamonds. The technical sources of Chopin's success in this _genre_ are his graceful, smoothly-moulded melodies, frequently recalling those of Bellini and other Italians, with whom he had much in common; his simple, transparent harmonies, built up always with an unfailing sense of tone-color; and his lambent, coruscating ornamentation, which always seems to effloresce spontaneously from the melody. In all these matters he is the supreme model of purity and felicity in this style.
But the same punctilious taste which guided him so safely among the pitfalls of virtuosity and bravura soon led him beyond this entire scheme of art, which is, after all, based on the somewhat frivolous ideal of ostentation, up to the higher level of lyrical expression, based on quiet and deep personal feeling. The virtuoso was transformed into the poet. In the nocturnes, some of the études and preludes, portions even of the ballades and polonaises, and most strikingly of all in the slow movements of the concertos and sonatas, his object is no longer to dazzle his audience, but to portray subjective emotion, often of a profound earnestness and spiritual beauty. If in his early pieces he was the prestidigitator, the brother-in-art of Thalberg and Liszt, here he is the dreamer, the rhapsodist, and his nearest of kin is Robert Schumann. The largo of the B-minor Sonata is Schumannesque in its contemplativeness, its _innigkeit_, its marked note of mysticism; the funeral march in the B-flat minor Sonata equals that of the great quintet in poignancy and dignity, though it is a feminine version of what in the German composer we find expressed with more virile force. In the nocturnes the feminine quality is even more evident. Their tender beauty has a pallor, a fragility, almost an emaciation, which has often brought upon them the charge of morbidity. It is certain that in the pieces of this type Chopin has carried his fastidiousness a stage farther than in the display pieces, attaining an even greater distinction and a rarer individuality. The nocturnes and preludes, the larghettos of the two concertos, the largo of the Sonata in B-minor, and a few other things of the same sort constitute one of the few perfect manifestations of the romantic spirit in music.
There is still a third phase of Chopin's work, which some will probably consider as much higher than the lyrical phase as that is higher than the decorative. This may be called the heroic or epic phase, and is exemplified in the polonaises, the ballades, the Fantaisie, opus 49, the twelfth étude, the thirteenth nocturne, and the finale of the Sonata in B-minor.[27] A study of these works will open the eyes of any one who knows Chopin only through his virtuoso or lyrical pieces to the scope and many-sidedness of his genius. There is about them a largeness of utterance, a sustainment of mood, an intensity of emotion hardly ever degenerating into the hysterical or the sentimental, which it is strange to find in the graceful _salon_ writer, the delicate miniaturist. Yet this final quality, too, by which Chopin proves himself akin to Beethoven as well as to Thalberg and Schumann (an oddly assorted trio), is, like the others, due to his characteristic fineness of nature. It is the heroism of high breeding, the vigor of intelligence, the dignity of impeccable taste. It bespeaks a strength rather subtle than brutal--the strength of the mettlesome thoroughbred, not that of the stolid dray-horse. It is a spiritual superiority (like the technical and emotional superiority) born of distinction and nourished by exclusiveness. Even in the most virile of the polonaises, with the possible exception of the so-called "Military Polonaise," which is unique in its fresh, open-air athleticism, we feel that the power which surges through them is a nervous rather than a muscular power. Thus when he is heroic, no less than when he is gay or introspective, Chopin remains true to his slender, aquiline, subtle, aristocratic self.
It is interesting to examine the evolution of technique that went hand in hand with his growth in emotional earnestness. In the first place the Bellini-like tunefulness, illustrated in the theme of the Rondeau, opus 1, with its agile turns and trills and its skipping staccato movement, gives place in the maturer works to a freer, more chromatic, more impassioned and rhapsodic type of melody. It recrudesces, to be sure, here and there, as in the ninth nocturne, the larghetto of the E-minor concerto, the moderato cantabile of the "Fantaisie Impromptu"; for the languid southern luxuriousness was once for all a part of Chopin's temperament. But the deeper and more intimate the mood he is trying to express, the broader and less trammelled becomes his melodic curve. How sinuous the line, how gradual the climax, how deliberate the subsidence, of this theme from the fourteenth nocturne (_a_, in Figure XX):
[Illustration: score] (_a_)
[Illustration: score] (_b_)
Figure XX.
How majestically the phrases rise, tier on tier, in the chief melody of the Polonaise, opus 44! How nobly rhapsodical, how genially spontaneous and flexible, is the phraseology of the second theme in the allegro of the B-minor Sonata (_b_, in Figure XX)! Well may Mr. Edward Dannreuther call Chopin "the supreme master of elegiac melody."
In his greatest tunes Chopin indeed touches a point which few purely romantic writers ever reach. We have noted, from time to time, in the course of these studies, the tendency of all lyrical composers to build up their music out of a few short phrases many times repeated, like the patterns in a wall-paper; we have seen how Schubert, Schumann, and Mendelssohn fell into this pitfall even in their orchestral works, which therefore, in comparison with Mozart's or Beethoven's, seem patchy, breathless, or monotonous. We have seen that melodies of "long breath" are conceivable only by minds of sufficient synthetic power to entwine many phrases, diverse in length, contour, and rhythm, into a single organism. Now Chopin, like the rest, writes only too often in the "wall-paper" style, as may be seen especially in the waltzes, mazurkas, and nocturnes. But at other times he shows a synthetic faculty rare among lyrists, by which he attains a noble breadth. Look, for example, at the passage marked "sostenuto" in the Grande Valse, opus 42, at the surging bass theme of the Polonaise, opus 40, no. 2, or at the second theme of the allegro of the B-flat minor Sonata, noting the sustained flight of the second eight measures of the tune. Better still, examine with some particularity, studying the diversity of the rhythmic figures employed, the two melodies in Figure XXI, one from the Ballade, opus 23, and one from the finale of the Sonata, opus 58. Mark the deliberation, the suspension of interest, of the sequence in measures 5-8 of the first, the exciting inevitability of the chromatic descending scale near the end of the second.[28] In such tunes as these, which are frequent in his later works, Chopin proves himself capable of the veritable "_longue haleine_" of the epic melodist.[29]
[Illustration: score] (_a_)
[Illustration: score] (_b_)
Figure XXI.
A second technical result of the gradual deepening of Chopin's ideal of expression was a wonderful development of his harmonic sense. In the works of his prime he is one of the greatest of all masters of expressive harmony. His originality in modulation and enharmonic transition, his employment of chromatic progressions cheek by jowl with passages based on the old diatonic modes of the Polish folk-music, his daring use of consecutive fifths and other such bugbears of the scholastic, entitle him to a high place among the pioneers of modern methods. He constantly surprises us with premonitions of Liszt, Wagner, the French and Russian composers of to-day, and even Richard Strauss. Thus, for instance, the opening of the great Polonaise-Fantaisie, with its constantly shifting tonality, its groping bass, its murky, mysterious minor-ninth and diminished-seventh chords, seems like a page from "Tristan"; the series of kaleidoscopic modulations, marked "stretto," near the end of the fourth ballade, recall Tschaïkowsky in one of his most reckless moods; and we must go to César Franck to find a parallel for the lapsing chromatic dominant-seventh chords of the twenty-first mazurka.
[Illustration: score] Figure XXII.
Nor does Chopin make the mistake, so fatal to some modern writers, of surfeiting our ears on these complexities until they become apathetic. His taste is too sensitive for that. Scarcely are we launched on an admiring study of his harmonic intricacies (which it must be confessed became in his latest pieces, as Mr. Niecks suggests, almost too fine-spun) before we are arrested by some fascinating bit of utter simplicity and bell-like clarity. How grateful, after the ominous harmonics at the beginning of the Polonaise, opus 26, no. 2, in the lower register, the restless seventh chords of the principal tune, and the clanging dissonances above the pedal-point on F at the middle of the first section--how grateful, after all this clamor and stridency, are the triads and dominant sevenths of the Meno mosso (see Figure XXII). It is as if some bright band of pilgrims marched, to the clear peal of trumpets, out of the dust and blood of a battlefield. Exquisitely beautiful, again, is the celestial purity of those chords, transparent and colorless as crystal, which are introduced near the beginning of the second impromptu:--
[Illustration: score] Figure XXIII.
Other similar passages are the "religioso" section in the sixth nocturne, and the middle section of the eleventh, both of which, in their ecclesiastical serenity and severity, take one back to Palestrina. And with all his diversity of vocabulary, Chopin never confuses his effects. He can pass from the extreme plainness of the fifth étude to the chromatic complexity of the sixth, without the least adulteration of either.
Why the works of a master so various yet always so elevated in style, animated by so high an ideal of what it is worth while to say, and of how it should be said, should be specially marked out for sentimentalization and degradation at the hands of performers too dull to divine their distinction, is one of the mysteries of perverse destiny. It is hard to see what justification can be found, either in the internal evidence of the works themselves or in the recorded opinions of their composer, by the misguided enthusiasts who drag out his lovely melodies into mawkish recitatives, break his chords into arpeggios, and vulgarize his _tempo rubato_ into license of meter and confusion of rhythm. There is, to be sure, in much of his music, a subjective quality, an intimacy of mood, which gives the debauchee of sentiment an opportunity he does not find in abstract classic art. There are even a few instances, to give him countenance, of actual affectation, the tiresome posturing of the "dramatic" tone-poet, as in the pompous ending of the ninth nocturne and the theatrical opening of the third scherzo, where Chopin seems to borrow a gesture from his friend Liszt. But the entire object of the foregoing analysis will have been missed if it has not convinced the reader of the essential distinction, the superiority to all claptrap eloquence and feverish emotion, of Chopin's mind. He was not a man to strut and pose; he was too busy with an artistic ideal, too bent upon expressing a high vein of feeling in a faultless technical medium.
There is also plenty of documentary evidence to prove his abhorrence of all sickly sentiment, and of the messy technique it induces. Take, for example, the matter of the much discussed _tempo rubato_. Chopin regarded this as a sensitive adjustment of time values, a delicate elasticity or flexibility of pace--by no means as a departure from essential metrical accuracy. "The left hand," he said to his pupil Von Lenz, "is the conductor; it must not waver or lose ground; do with the right hand what you will and can." "He required adherence," says another pupil, "to the strictest rhythm, hated all lingering and dragging, misplaced _rubatos_ and exaggerated _ritardandos_. 'Je vous prie de vous asseoir,' he said on such an occasion, with gentle mockery." His aversion to melodramatic expressiveness, in which the artist surrenders himself weakly to a momentary excitement, may be inferred from his remark on Liszt's performance of a Beethoven sonata: "Must one, however, always speak so declamatorily (_si declamatoirement_)?" and from a comment on his own playing by Cramer, a pedant who, without entirely comprehending him, yet could not but discern the dignity of his art: "I do not understand him, but he plays beautifully and correctly, he does not give way to his passion like other young men." Finally, if Chopin had really been a mere voluptuary and sentimentalist, is it likely that he would have composed with such concentrated intensity of labor? "He shut himself up in his room for whole days," writes George Sand, "weeping, walking, breaking his pens, repeating and altering a bar a hundred times, writing and effacing it as many times, and recommencing the next day with a minute and desperate perseverance."
No, Chopin may not be a giant like Bach, or Mozart, or Handel, or Beethoven, but he is a sincere and earnest artist, who feels vividly, and spares no pains to give his feelings worthy expression, and to attain a supreme plastic beauty. Above all, he is a man of the most delicate sensibility, the most discriminating taste, the most exacting ideal of artistic perfection. In leaving him, it is pleasant to attend less to the sufferings to which these qualities condemned him as a man, than to the achievements to which they led him as an artist. This shifting of emphasis is what he would himself have desired, for his aspirations and standards were æsthetic rather than ethical; he lived as he could, it was only in composing that his will was free and efficient; his very individuality takes definite shape only in the favoring medium of musical imagination and emotion. In that firmament of music he will continue to shine, a fixed star, not perhaps of the first magnitude, but giving a wondrously clear, white light, and, as he would have wished, in peerless solitude.
FOOTNOTES:
[20] Bach's "Well-tempered Clavichord" is an example of a work to which, since its beauty is largely one of line, the piano cannot do justice. See, for instance, Prelude IV, in C-sharp minor, in the first book, measures 4-7, inclusive. The tenor part, of a wonderful nobility, is concealed by the more rapidly moving, and therefore on the piano more sonorous, soprano. In order fully to bring it to our consciousness we must sing or otherwise reinforce it.
[21] Schumann reports of Chopin's playing of this étude: "It would be a mistake to suppose that he brought out every one of the little notes with distinctness; it was more like a billowing of the A-flat major chord, swelled anew here and there by means of the pedal; but through the harmonies were heard the sustained tones of a wondrous melody, and only in the middle of it did a tenor part once come into greater prominence amid the chords, along with that principal cantilena."
[22] Of course, the amount of dissonance acceptable is not a fixed quantity, but increases as the perceptive power of the ear develops.
[23] More daringly, because the lower the pitch of a dissonant tone, the greater the number of its audible harmonics, and hence the greater the degree of its obscuration of the harmony. Even a consonance, such as the major third, sounds "muddy" when placed in the lower register. Readers interested in this matter should consult some convenient handbook of acoustics, such as Broadhouse's "The Student's Helmholtz," on the subjects of harmonics or partial tones, sympathetic vibration, etc., and Mr. Arthur Whiting's "Pedal Studies," for a highly suggestive discussion of color in piano music.
[24] It is, however, interesting to note that, lavish as Chopin's use of the pedal seems when compared to the general practice of his time, the fondness for the turbid and cloudy colors produced by commingled dissonances has grown so rapidly that to-day we prefer sometimes even more pedal than he gives us. In the Ballade, opus 52, during that brilliant passage which debouches into the simple chords in B-flat major, modern taste would prefer a continuous pedal through six measures, instead of through only three, as Chopin has directed. We should also blur the eleventh Étude more recklessly than he does, and many other instances will occur to the reader.
[25] _Schwärmerisch_--visionary, imaginative, dreamy.
[26] Three of his pieces are dedicated to baronesses, nine to countesses, and four to princesses.
[27] It is noteworthy that most of these compositions bear opus numbers higher than 40, and belong to the last decade of the composer's life.
[28] Cf. also the subsequent, even more extended, treatment in the sequel.
[29] It may be asked why, possessing this enviable _longue haleine_, Chopin did not turn it to better advantage in writing his sonatas and concertos, which are structurally not satisfactory examples of their types. In answer it may be suggested (1) that in the concertos he was hampered by the orchestra, his technique being essentially pianistic; and (2) that his melodies, however broad in scope, are generally lyrical in character, and hence not adapted to symphonic treatment. With his characteristic caution, however, he used these most extended forms but sparingly; and in the more rhapsodic long forms, such as the polonaises and ballades on a large scale, he is highly successful.
VI HECTOR BERLIOZ
[Illustration: HECTOR BERLIOZ]
VI HECTOR BERLIOZ
Not many years ago three Americans, coming, late one afternoon, in the course of a walking tour in northern France, to the little cathedral town of Beauvais, found its ordinarily quiet air filled with tumult, bustle, and confusion. The streets, gay with colored bunting and venders' booths, were thronged with crowds of merrymakers; the hum of insatiable conversation was everywhere; no rooms were to be had at the hotels, and their dining rooms were preëmpted by crowds of men in uniform, engaged in an endless round of toasts and speeches. Beauvais was, in a word, the scene of a "Grande Fête des Pompiers," or Firemen's Festival. The firemen of all the surrounding country had assembled there, had taken possession of the town, and had surrendered themselves to conviviality and joy. It was a spectacle interesting from many points of view; but the fancy of the American observers was most of all struck by certain long strips of bunting which spanned the streets at intervals, bearing in large letters the legend, "Honneur aux victimes du devoir." This, it seemed to them, was the note in this motley symphony most perfectly, inimitably, and deliciously French. These festive firemen, in the midst of their jollifications, did not forget for a moment that it was their proud privilege to stand before the world, so long as cognac allowed them to stand at all, as the honored victims of duty. One hardly knew whether to smile at their ingenuousness, or to thrill in sympathy with their emotion, which, however theatrical, was perfectly sincere; on consideration one did both.
Something of the quandary of these American observers of the very Gallic firemen of Beauvais must perhaps always be experienced by the Anglo-Saxon who tries to understand the French attitude toward life or art, so essentially different are the two types of temperament. It is hard for the stolid, matter-of-fact, insensitive, self-satisfied Anglo-Saxon, singly set upon his business, indifferent to what the world may think of him, to comprehend the subtleties and indirections of the Gaul, who conceives personal conduct as an actor conceives a rôle, spares no pains or labor to do justice to his part, and feeds on the applause or starves on the indifference of his audience. To your Englishman or American such an ideal seems trivial, artificial. His sense of humor, a faculty in which it must be confessed that the French, for all their wit, are deficient, seizes at once upon the incongruities that must always exist between an ordinary human life and a histrionically conceived rôle, and in his amusement he often fails to do justice to the intelligence, imagination, and courage that may be brought into play by such a dramatic exercise. Possibly to a higher point of view his own attitude, which he likes to call "practical," and which less friendly critics sometimes call stupid, might seem essentially no better than the playful chivalry of his fellow.