CHAPTER VII

CHOPIN

Chopin’s music and its relative value in musical value; racial and personal characteristics; influences and preferences; Chopin’s playing--His instinct for form; the form of his sonatas and concertos; the _Polonaise-Fantaisie_; the preludes--Chopin as a harmonist; Chopin’s style analyzed: accompaniment figures, inner melodies, polyphonic suggestions, passages, melodies and ornaments--His works in general: salon music; waltzes; nocturnes; mazurkas; polonaises; conclusion.

I

No music for the pianoforte is more widely known than that of Chopin. None has been more generally accepted. None has been exposed so mercilessly to the mauling of sentimentality and ignorance; nor has any other suffered to such an extent the ignominy of an affable patronage. Yet it has not faded nor shown signs of decay. Rather year by year the question rises clearer: is any music more irreproachably beautiful? Less and less timidly, thoughtful men and women now demand that Chopin be recognized truly as equal of the greatest, even of Bach, of Mozart, of Beethoven. There are no fixed standards by which to measure the greatness of music. We adore the sacredness of forms and names. At the best we have a sort of tenacity of faith, supported by a wholly personal enthusiasm. To many this demand on behalf of Chopin will appear to be based on an enthusiasm that is not justifiable; but by what shall enthusiasm be justified? It is an emotion, something more powerful in music than reason. One must grant that no pianoforte music has shown a greater force than Chopin’s to rouse the emotions of the general world. That it moves the callow heart to sighs or that the ignorant will fawn upon it is no proof of weakness in it. Your ignoramus will dote on Beethoven almost as much. Chopin’s music has depth upon depth of beauty into which the student and the artist may penetrate. It can never be fully comprehended and then thrown aside. To study it year after year is to come ever upon new wonders.

It is urged against Chopin that he wrote only for the pianoforte. But this cannot have any weight in estimating the value of his music. It is generally acknowledged that the pianoforte is of all instruments the most difficult to write for. Chopin was absolute master of these difficulties, just as Wagner was master of the orchestra. He was therefore in a position to give perfect expression to his ideas, as far as color of sound is concerned. Mr. Edgar Stillman Kelley in his recent book on Chopin[35] brings forward the interesting point that at the time Chopin was composing--roughly between 1830 and 1845--the orchestra would have been quite inadequate to the expression of his ideas; both because of the imperfections of many of the instruments and because of the lack of virtuoso skill among the players. For Chopin’s music is above all things intricate. There is a ceaseless interweaving of countless strands of harmony, a subtle chromaticism of which the brass instruments would have been incapable, and elaborate figures and passages which violinists would not have been able to play. The pianoforte on the other hand was relatively perfect. To it Chopin turned, as to a medium that would not restrict his expression. And so accurately and minutely did he shape his music in accordance with the instrument, that the many attempts by clever and skillful men to arrange it for the orchestra have almost entirely failed.

At any rate we have Chopin’s ideas perfectly expressed, almost without a blemish, thanks to the piano. It is by the nature and quality of these ideas that he must be judged. In beauty of melody, in wealth of harmony, in variety, force, and delicacy of rhythm, he has not been excelled. As to the quality of emotion back of these ideas, it has been said that it is perfervid, sickly or effeminate; but such a statement would hardly be borne out by the facts that his music remains fresh in expressiveness and that it is generally acceptable. Delicate most of it is, and it is all marked by a perhaps unique fineness of taste. This, however, rarely if ever belittles the genuine and lasting emotion which it modifies. Chopin’s character was undoubtedly one that wins the love and sympathy of some men, and wholly antagonizes others. The last years of his life he was weak and ailing and he was never robust. Still it cannot be fairly said that his physical weakness has affected his music. It should be remembered that Beethoven and Schumann were sick men, the one sick in body, the other sick in mind. The wonder is but greater when we think that such works as the Ballade in F minor and the Barcarolle were written by a man so feeble that he had always to be carried up flights of stairs.

Several points in Chopin’s character are more than usually interesting in connection with his music. To begin with he was half Polish in blood and wholly Polish in sympathies. It was his ambition to be for Poland in music what the poet Uhland had been for Germany in literature.[36] This does not by any means signify that many of the startling originalities in his music are due to racial influences. Only in the Polonaises and in the Mazurkas, both national dances of Poland, does Chopin make use of Polish forms. Even in the Polonaises there is more of universal than of national spirit, though in the Mazurkas, rhythms, melodies, and harmonies have for the most part a distinctly Polish stamp. Elsewhere in his music there are but rarely suggestions of a tonality not common to the music of Western Europe, or of melodies more Slavic than Latin or Teutonic.

It is in spirit that his music hints of another race, by its passionate intensity, by its glowing color, and perhaps most of all by its restraint. This may seem strange when we think of the almost barbaric abandon of other Slavic composers. But Liszt in his book on Chopin speaks at length of the peculiar reserve, not to say secretiveness, of the Polish people in general and of Chopin in particular. He is emphatic in his statement that only Poles came near the inner nature of this musician; that others felt themselves delicately but surely held at a distance. So in no small measure the meaning of his music, its true beauty, eludes the player. There is a secret in it which perhaps no player has the skill fully to reveal. It is not often explicit; it is nearly always suggestive. We need not think that only a Pole can penetrate the mystery. Perhaps only Poles can play the Polonaises and the Mazurkas with full sympathy; but the Preludes, the Ballades and Études and Scherzos, to speak of but a few of his works, are music for the whole world. That they elude the efforts of most players is due to no peculiar tricks of rhythm or of melody; but to the quality of secretiveness which has somehow been transfused from the composer into his music. Even in the most splendid of his compositions, as in the most intimate, there is a touch of personal aristocracy, of reserve.

He was by nature the most selective of all musicians. In matters of music he accepted only what was pleasing to his fine taste. Therefore the music of Beethoven seemed to him often rough and noisy; that of Schubert a mixture of sublime and commonplace; for that of Schumann he seems to have had little or no appreciation. This has often been held to signalize a fault in his musical understanding; and those who so regard it have been pleased to take his love of Italian opera,

## particularly of Bellini, as further proof of their point. One must not

forget, however, that a group of some of the greatest singers the world has ever known were engaged at the Italian opera in Paris, among them Malibran-Garcia, Pasta, Rubini, Lablache; and that such performances as they gave must have been distinguished by consummate artistry. Chopin often advised his pupils to hear great singers, that they might give to their playing something of the grace of song. At the Italian opera there was perfect singing; and there, very likely more than elsewhere, Chopin’s exquisite, artistic nature found satisfaction.

His delight in the music of Hummel, like his pleasure in that of Field, is easy to understand. In neither is there distortion of line, nor harshness. More than any other music of that time it was intimately suited to the piano. As delicate, fluent sound it must even today be granted excellent; and for Chopin no fury or power of emotion could justify sound that was unpleasant. His understanding of and love for the piano were so perfect and exacting that one can easily imagine him more willing to forgive triviality of emotion, for the sake of a delicate expression, than to tolerate a harsh or clumsy treatment of the instrument, for the sake of any emotional stress whatsoever.

But neither the Italian opera nor the music of Hummel and Field was the favorite music of Chopin. The two composers whose works he accepted unqualifiedly were Sebastian Bach and Mozart. Here he found a rich emotion and a flawless beauty of style. Here there was no distortion, no struggle of ideas, no harshness. Here was for him perfection of form and, what is perhaps rarest in any art, a just proportion between form and content, an unblemished union of all the elements which make music not only great but wholly beautiful.

As a player he aimed first and always for beauty of tone and fineness of shading. He was not often successful before a large public. This was due in part to the weakness of his body, but probably more to the nature of his temperament. On account of the first he was unable to ‘thunder,’ and therefore, in his own words, to overwhelm his audience if he could not win them. But on account of his extremely sensitive nature a large audience, full of strange faces, was frightful to him. He shrank from displaying his art before a crowd. This was no doubt bitter to him. The triumphant general fame of a Liszt or a Thalberg was denied him. Yet in many respects he was the most remarkable pianist the world has been privileged to enjoy. Among friends in his rooms his playing had more than an earthly charm. It seems to have been distinguished not only by rare delicacy of touch, but by a skill with the pedal, with both the sustaining pedal and the soft pedal. He was master of blending his harmonies in a way that raised those who heard him at his best into a veritable ecstasy. Under his fingers the piano seemed to breathe out a music that floated in air. Though he was not, as we have implied, a powerful player, he was capable of flashes of extraordinary vigor; but it was less by sharp contrasts and extremes that he got his effects, than by infinite nuances. And he was above all else a poet of sound, a man of swift fancies, of infinite moods and changes.

Chopin spent the years of his boyhood and youth in Warsaw. In the summer of 1829 he spent some weeks in Vienna, and played there twice in public. In the list of those who were present at these concerts--which, by the way, were wholly successful--one reads the names of men and women who had known Beethoven and Schubert, even friends of Mozart. He went again to Vienna in the fall of 1830 and remained there, more or less idling, until uncertain political conditions and an outbreak of cholera drove him in July, 1831, to seek Paris. Here he arrived about the end of September, and here with few exceptions he lived the rest of his life.

He found himself at once in the midst of a society made up of people who were enthusiasts, and were in favor of, or actually apostles of, some radical reform in society or in the arts. Thus at their gatherings there was a great deal of animated and even polemical conversation. It was largely self-conscious. Each talker felt himself the oracle of a new doctrine. But Chopin was silent at most of these reunions. He talked little or not at all about himself and his work. His conduct seems an advocacy of conservatism; but as a matter of fact his music proves him to have been one of the great innovators in the art.

II

It is evident that in many respects Chopin’s innovations sprang from instinct. They are not the conscious putting to test of a theory of reform, as are, in a small way, the _Carnaval_ of Schumann, and in a more grandiose one, the B minor sonata of Liszt. As regards form, for example, he was in many cases not in the least dependent upon past or contemporary standards. Such pieces as the _Ballades_ and the _Barcarolle_ are without precedent. But they are the spontaneous growth of his genius; not the product of an experimental intelligence. The intellectually formal element which Berlioz, Schumann, and Liszt made bold with, Chopin quite ignored.

The theories of those of his contemporaries just mentioned have been made convenient apologies by many of their subsequent critics. Though the present day is beginning to show a wisdom free of controversy, it is still difficult to judge Liszt’s sonata solely from the standpoint of musical vitality. If one is left by it cold or suspicious, one cannot wholly disregard, in estimating its worth, the scheme upon which it is devised. In perhaps no music is there less need of such an intellectual justification than in Chopin’s. The man’s instinct was his only guide, and in most cases the results of it were singularly faultless.

Therefore, attempts to reduce such pieces as the _Ballades_ and the _Barcarolles_ to one of the few orthodox formal schemes are gratuitous. In the first place the music is positively in no need of such a justification as many still believe the respectable names of sonata or fugue or rondo provide. In the second place, though a work like the Ballade in F minor can be forced into the mold of the triplex or sonata-form, it can be so forced only by distorting the lovely features which make it the thing of beauty that it is. It is only fair to recognize that Chopin has created something new, in forms of a graceful and subtle proportion that speaks of a higher force than theory. The mind of man has yet to understand the logic of their beauty. Chopin is still unique.

The very elusiveness of the formal element in Chopin’s music persistently raises a question as to the extent of his mental grasp on the materials of his art. It is foolish to discuss how much of great genius is intellectual, how much emotional. It would seem as if the great emotion gave the spark of life to any work of art, that the powerful mind gave it shape. But in the music of Chopin an instinct rather than a thought gives shape. It is interesting to observe the working of this instinct in forms to the grasp of which an intellectual power has generally been considered essential; namely, in the sonatas. Of these there are three: an early one in C minor, published posthumously; one in B-flat minor, opus 35; and one in B minor, opus 58.

The first of these is almost in no way representative of the composer. It was completed by 1828 and sent to Vienna for publication; but it did not appear in print until two years after Chopin’s death. Neither in melodiousness nor in harmonic richness does it show the mark of his genius. It is ordinary in treatment of the piano. One can hardly attach even an historical significance to it, since works composed at or about the same time give more than a suggestion of his future greatness. For example, it was in connection with the contemporary variations on Mozart’s aria, _La ci darem la mano_, that Schumann wrote, ‘Hats off, gentlemen: a genius!’ It is true that the return of the first theme, at the beginning of the last section of the first movement, in B-flat minor instead of C minor, is at variance with conventional usage; but this was by no means unprecedented. The 5/4 rhythm of the Largo is evidently an attempt at originality; but it is self-conscious, not spontaneous. In spite of these features the work goes to prove only one thing: that in such a familiar and well-established form as the sonata, Chopin at that time either dared not or felt he should not trust to his own instinct, even as to the treatment of the instrument.

But the other two sonatas are worthy of his full maturity, and they show, like the _Études_, the _Scherzi_ and the _Ballades_, the perfection and sureness of his art of self-expression. And in thus revealing himself he could not but be an innovator. He brought something new to the sonata. Consequently the opinion that he is ill at ease in the form, which may be interpreted to mean (or generally is so interpreted) that he had not the intellectual grasp of music necessary to the composing of a great sonata. This, it is to be feared, is one of the ready-made opinions in music. There are many such at hand. A few great critics have given the hint. Liszt, in writing of the concertos, ventured to say that they showed _plus de volonté que d’inspiration_. The remark has been applied to explain the uneasiness of the two great sonatas. Mr. J. S. Shedlock in his book on the pianoforte sonata wrote that ‘the real Chopin is to be found in his nocturnes, mazurkas, and ballads, not in his sonatas.’ But, though it is nearly absurd to pick from many supremely great works one that is superior to the others, and we do not in the least wish to infer that Chopin’s B-flat minor sonata is his masterpiece, we think it may be fairly questioned whether he ever wrote anything greater. It is thoroughly impregnated with his unique spirit. There is not a note of it that is not of the ‘real’ Chopin. Furthermore, the B minor sonata is not less thoroughly Chopin.

It may be reserved to the trained critical mind to decide what is great art of any kind; but the decision as to what is great music must ultimately rest with time and its changing voice of expression--the general world. Upon no sonatas, except some of those of Beethoven, does the public set such store as upon these two of Chopin. The sonatas of Weber, Schubert, Schumann and Brahms hold no such place in the general favor. In the case of the first three of these men a looseness in the grasp of form is responsible for the gradual degradation of their long works. It is logical to infer, then, that a similar looseness is not evident in the sonatas of Chopin. At any rate it has not yet become palpable to the public, whatever critics may have said. And the sonatas have undergone and are still undergoing a tremendous test. Therefore, however much men may declare the intellectual weakness in Chopin’s music, one must conclude that his instinct gave sufficient vitality even to his sonatas to enable them, alone among sonatas, to hold their public place with those of Beethoven. And it would seem that the undisputed intellectual power of Brahms failed where the instinct of Chopin succeeded.

Of course it will be urged in explanation of the popular acceptance of the sonatas of Chopin, that they are eminently gratifying to the pianist, suitable to the instrument, and consequently delicious to the public. At the most this is but a grace which no other sonatas have in so great measure. It is not a virtue by which alone music endures. Music cannot last without a positive strength of form; and this, no matter what the source of it, the Chopin sonatas have.

So then, what do men mean when they state, in the face of the enduring strength and beauty of these works, that Chopin has shown himself ill at ease in them? Chiefly that these sonatas are different from those of Beethoven. For the most part they choose to condemn the difference, rather than to understand and appreciate it. But if the verdict of time is worthy of consideration, this difference is not condemnable, and an analysis of it will bring us face to face with Chopin the innovator, not Chopin the insufficient.

It is usually in the first movement of a sonata that a composer either proves his skill or discloses his weakness. It is the first movements of these two sonatas that are brought into question before the courts of theory. They will be found to differ in at least two distinct if not radical features from movements of similar form by Beethoven. First, in the self-sufficient breadth and splendor of the second themes. Through these themes the composer speaks with his most intense meaning; on them the music soars to its highest, flaming pinnacle of beauty. This is obviously at variance with what we may call the classical procedure. Early in the evolution of the triplex form, a powerful tendency became evident to give to the first theme a vigorous, declarative character, and to the second a softer, more songful one. The first theme usually dominated the movement, and the development of its significance was the life and flow of the music. Generally the second theme, by reason of its contrasting character, served to accentuate the meanings of the first. Chopin handled his material otherwise. Though he preserved in a measure the conventional character of the two themes, the first undergoes no logical development, but whirls here and there in a sort of tempestuous chaos for which the second theme offers sublime justification. Except in the opening measures, the first theme is given no definite shape. Neither in the B-flat minor sonata nor in the B minor sonata does it reappear at the beginning of the third section. In the development section of both sonatas it is but a fragment tossed here and there on stormy harmonies.

The result is of course a lack of logical coherence. But one may well ask if the hot intensity of utterance has not welded the notes and parts of these movements into a complete fusion, if there is need of logic in such molten music.

In the second place, the Chopin sonatas owe not a little of their unique appearance to the composer’s great gift of harmony. The foundation of the classical sonata form was harmonic, and, be it said with due regard to exceptions, was rigid. Nothing was more characteristic of it, both in the early and late stages of its use, than the harmonic clearness of what one may call the approach to themes, episodes, or sections, and the sharp definition of these sections by what were fundamentally conventional cadences. Chopin in his sonatas obliterated at least one of these sectional lines. It is impossible to decide in the first movements where the middle section ends and the last section begins. It is not only that the first theme fails to make its reappearance. The harmonies surge on from the development section into the last section with no trace of break in their current. Even the cadences at the end of the first sections are incomplete, and the modulations by which they progress sudden and remote. Such procedures foretell unmistakably the endless harmonies of Wagner. So does the treatment of the development section in both sonatas, with the scattering of motives over never-ending progressions of chords.

No sonatas, not even those of Beethoven, present such radical variations from the accepted form; and naturally the question arises whether such movements as these of Chopin’s are properly in sonata form at all. One can only answer that Chopin named them sonatas, and that they represent at least what he felt a sonata should be. Mr. Shedlock has said of Beethoven that in aiming at a higher organization, he actually became a disorganizer. One cannot attribute such a conscious aim to Chopin; yet it is plain that his instinct led him to the complete demolition of one or two of the conventional restrictions of the sonata form.

Before leaving the sonatas there is a word to be said of Chopin’s comprehension of the group of four movements as a whole. It is such a comprehension on the part of a Beethoven that makes many of his later sonatas and a few of his earlier ones indisputably grand. In his case the successive dependence of the various movements on each other is often made plain either by the actual merging of one into the other, or by the employment of the same or cognate thematic materials in all. Of such structural unity there is no trace in the two great sonatas of Chopin. The separate movements are formally complete in themselves, and not materially related. Any other union between the separate movements of suite, sonata, or symphony, if, indeed, it is not a matter of familiarity with the whole work, or of respect for the composer, exists only in the mind of the hearer according to his or her sensibilities. Of the Chopin sonatas that in B-flat minor will probably impress most people as an impassioned and powerful whole; that in B minor as less unified.

The Funeral March of the former has a double existence, one within and one without the sonata. It is known that it was completed perhaps before the sonata was thought of; and that certainly the other movements were written in some sort of relation to it. The finale which follows it cannot possibly be dissociated from the sonata; and the first and second movements share a common intensity of passion. Organic unity the series may not have, but its phases of emotion lead, and almost blend, one into the other.

The two concertos, written as Chopin was on the verge of manhood, have evidently not held, if ever they won, so high a place in pianoforte literature as the two great sonatas. For one thing, Chopin’s treatment of the orchestra is, according to most critics, uninspired and unsatisfactory. But for another thing, their form is conventional, and in submitting to a conventional ideal Chopin is unquestionably ill at ease. Ten years later when he wrote the B-flat minor sonata he was all past his age of submission, and made of the form something new, shaped it fearlessly to his need of self-expression. The _Fantasia_ in F minor, written about this time (1840), is longer than any single movements in the sonatas. Though unconventional in structure it is none the less faultless.

There still remains a profoundly moving work of Chopin’s, which, from the point of view of form, is astonishing. This is the _Polonaise-Fantaisie_, opus 61, seemingly his last work for the piano in large proportions. The _Barcarolle_, opus 60, was written probably about the same time; and it is worthy of note that this perfect piece escapes the grasp of most who would play it--i.e., interpret it in the only way that music can be truly interpreted. The difficulty is usually ascribed to its apparently rambling structure. But here, as in most cases where the composer may seem to be at fault, the imperfection exists in the player, not in the music. The right touch and the right quality of fervid yet delicate poetic imagination will reveal in the _Barcarolle_ a poem in music of the most exquisite proportions. It is a work of matchless beauty. But the _Polonaise-Fantaisie_ is not lyrical; it is intensely dramatic. It builds itself out of the strength, the weakness, the despair of unnamed forces in conflict. It is the cry of Poland in her agony, the pride of her people, crushed and tormented, in a broken voice.

The clashing moods of the piece are not of the sort that can be regulated and made orderly within even the expanded forms of conventional art. The grief and despair, the wrath, the pity, the unconquerable pride and hope of Chopin, shuddering like a great harp in the wind of destruction that has swept over his country, here demand and take on unfettered freedom of expression. The result is a work which reaches over Liszt to the symphonic poems of modern writers. It is probably not of historical importance; but it is of great significance as testimony to Chopin’s constructive originality. Liszt said of it that because of its ‘pathological contents,’ it must be excluded from the realm of art. If Chopin had chosen to supplement the piece with a few words as to its meaning, a program, as the phrase goes, Liszt would have had to judge differently, or else by the same token exclude other great works from the hallowed aristocracy to which he denied this one entrance.

At the other extreme of Chopin’s achievements stand the twenty-four _Préludes_. Some of these, like the eighth, fifteenth, sixteenth, nineteenth, for example, are well-rounded and completed pieces, which have not more of the spirit of improvisation which one associates with the term ‘prelude’ than his longer works. But many others are hardly more than fragments, or sketches, or instantaneous impressions. In pieces of such length, form is of no importance. What is perhaps unparalleled is their vividness. They seem now like a veiled glow, fading into darkness, now like a momentary flash from that region of secret fire in the light of which Chopin ever lived.

So Chopin’s power of expression showed itself new, fine, and broad. He is a master of presentation. There are but three or four of his considerable works of which one may say that they show uncertainty in judgment, an awkwardness in line, a clumsiness in balance. The vast majority of his compositions are perfect in shape and form, and flawlessly put together. If only we at this day might hear them unfold through his magic fingers! For, no doubt, what seems weak or unstable to the cautious judgment that relies upon standards of more rational genius, seems so only because the key is lost that will open to view the delicate machinery in all its perfect assemblage.

III

Chopin is second to no composer as a harmonist. In this respect, it now seems he stands directly in line with Bach and Mozart. The fabric of the music of all three is chromatic; but it is usually so delicately woven that its richness is accepted almost unconsciously by the listener. Like Bach, Chopin wanders where he will in the harmonic field. Like Mozart, he is ineffably graceful and subtle. The foundation of his music is a series of widely varied, yet blending chords. He is rarely startling. His modulations are swift and flashing; but they seldom if ever seem abrupt.

On the whole his music has few conspicuously unusual chords. The crashing dissonances just before the end of the Scherzo in B minor are exceptional. So are the wild bursts in the prelude in D minor. But there are sequences of chords which, when analyzed, show an amazing boldness. For example, the opening measures of the scherzo in the B-flat minor sonata; the middle section of the study in C minor; the swirl of chords before the coda in the F minor Ballade; the long modulating passage between the A major and E-flat major portions of the G minor Ballade; the whole of the study in broken chords; and countless others.

He is fond of shifting the harmony down through chromatic steps, as in the prelude in E minor and the mazurka, opus 17, No. 4. Rushes of chromatic sixths and fourths, such as are in the E minor concerto, at the beginning of the great polonaise in A-flat major, and the scherzo of the B-flat minor sonata, are effects of color more than of harmony. But he gets magnificent harmonic effects by sending wide, whirring chords through half-steps down or up the scale, as in the first _meno mosso_ section of the scherzo in C-sharp minor, or in the cadenza-style passage of the study, opus 10, No. 3. Yet again, before the return of the first motives in the study, opus 25, No. 6, there is a long cascade of diminished seventh chords. Sometimes he leads his music through broader progressions, which are in effect diatonic. The dropping of the music from its dramatic height in the C-sharp minor portion of the ballade in A-flat major, the long descending play with the triplet motive in the middle section of the second scherzo, and all the second part of the scherzo in the B-flat minor sonata offer examples of this bold harmonic stride.

One may take up a handful of Chopin’s music almost at random and find signs of his harmonic boldness, and there is hardly a line of it which does not reveal his ever subtle power over chromatic alterations. This is so fine and really so ever present as almost to defy analysis. Yet one or two pages in which it is unusually suggestive may be cited. All the first part of the scherzo in B minor, particularly the second section of it, is but a play with chords which, but for the unpleasant connotation of the word, might almost be said to writhe, so are they twisted and interwoven by a ceaseless alteration of their fundamental notes. By reason of this same chromatic litheness, both the study in C major, opus 10, No. 7, and the coda of the second ballade take on a shimmer of harmonic light.

The chromatic scale has often been used for a sort of windy or surging effectiveness in pianoforte music. Witness the first movement of Beethoven’s concerto in G major, Weber’s Rondo in C major. But rarely in any music has it been used so melodiously as in Chopin’s. Sometimes it is but a strand over which other strands are woven, as in the colossal Étude in A minor; but even more remarkable are those cases in which he contented himself with the unadorned scale. The studies in A minor, opus 10, No. 2, and G-sharp minor, opus 25, No. 6, rest upon the ordinary familiar chromatic scale, perhaps the gaudiest of the virtuoso trappings; yet even the first of these, in its frankly étude manner, has an uncommon beauty, and the second has more than an earthly charm. Neither study depends upon a vague, windy effect. Both demand rather a distinct touch. We have then a chromatic scale in which the separate notes are constantly audible throughout the entire piece, a chromatic scale, turned by some alchemy of which Chopin alone possessed the secret, into graceful melody.

It is in a sense this power in Chopin to turn every note to melody that is the secret of the perfection of his style. We may pass over his characteristics in the broader melody. These, like the qualities of Bach’s, Mozart’s and Schubert’s melodies, are of an essence that escapes words. The metaphor is perhaps sickly--but one may as well attempt to catch firmly in words the fragrance of flowers. But the power over a more subtle melody, what one might call an inner melodiousness, is so striking in Chopin that it may not be passed at least without special comment. Bach and Couperin possessed the same kind of skill; and this, though manifested in almost radically different forms, and applied upon a wholly different instrument, makes their music unqualifiedly welcome upon the modern pianoforte. In the case of Chopin, it was brought to bear upon our own instrument, and wrought the perfect style for pianoforte music, a style which conforms to the special qualities in the instrument of which we have elsewhere spoken at length. (See Introduction.)

In Chopin accompaniment figures for the piano are brought to their highest perfection. It may be fundamentally his choice of harmonies that gives them a richness not to be found so generally in any other music for the instrument. Here must lie the secret of the beauty of certain passages, like that of the melodious second theme in the scherzo in B-flat minor, where the accompaniment is only a series of chords, the movement or rolling of which is not at all unusual. But in the formation of figures there is often a distinction peculiar to Chopin alone.

First one notices the wide spacing of the notes, the avoidance of all thickness such as often makes the pianoforte music of Brahms unsatisfactory from the point of view of the pianist. By means of these widely spaced figures he obtains a sonority of after-sounds from the piano in which the overtones and sympathetic vibrations play a great part. It is never muddy or thick. There are many pages of his music which show group after group of these figures employed to give only a shimmering, not a distinct harmonic background to the melody which he wishes to set forth. One remembers the nocturnes in C-sharp minor and D-flat major, the study in A-flat major, opus 25, No. 1, and countless passages in other works.

[Illustration]

Frédéric Chopin. _After the portrait by Ary Scheffler._

These undulating figures are no more than the Alberti bass, developed to suit the piano. To the student they offer little more than an example of wholly satisfactory spacing of notes on the keyboard. But Chopin is rarely so simple. In almost all his accompaniments based on broken chords he introduces something of an independent spirit. This shows itself either in the suggestion of an inner melody which here and there joins richly with the chief subject; or in the accentuation of certain notes of harmonic significance. In neither case does the accompaniment take on a definite line, as it so often does in the music of Brahms. Particularly in the latter case, the accompaniment is still vaguely sonorous, the separate notes not more distinct than they must be to preserve a sense of gentle or vigorous movement.

It must not be supposed that these notes, which accentuate harmonic coloring, are literally to be emphasized. They are rarely marked with accent signs. But Chopin has so placed them at the height of the figure that they must stand out, even if played more lightly than the notes with which they are associated. The accompaniment of the second theme in the sonata in B minor, especially the later portions of it where it is broken into groups of sixteenth notes, offers proof of a subtlety in awakening a sensuous volume of sound out of the piano which is at once vague and distinct, that can hardly be matched.

As for the flashes of counter-melodies, of hidden strands of music which enrich his accompaniments, we approach here into one of the mysteries of Chopin’s genius. It is in suggesting these that the technique of the pianist frequently fails. There is need of a touch at once pointed and yet often as gentle as a breath. Sometimes these magical notes are at the extremity of a wide space. Chopin has written a study--opus 10, No. 9--which deals almost wholly with this difficulty. Again they are concealed in the very middle of the figure, as in parts of the accompaniment of the nocturne in D-flat major. Finally there are accompaniments which are all elusive melody. How many melodies are there, for example, within the accompaniment, if so it may be called, of the nineteenth prelude; in the magnificent passages of the fourth ballade, before the coda; in the first E-flat major section of the first ballade? Even where figures have given way in passages of utmost sonority to chords, there is a full melodic life here and there. The accompanying chords in the big passages of the Barcarolle, just before the end, have indeed almost a polyphonic significance.

Here then is that inner melodiousness of Chopin’s music which goes far towards making it the great work of art that it is. It is so little explicit, often hardly more than suggested, so delicate and so infinitely varied that one must for ever question just what the nature of it is. Yet if one tries to analyze Chopin’s style, his treatment of the keyboard, his unmatched grace and elegance and fervor, it is precisely against this inner musical life that one must ultimately come to pause. There are conceptions of emotion expressed in pianoforte music which are perhaps grander than his because less personal; there are other works for the piano that are more abstract and seemingly therefore less capricious; but there is perhaps no music which quite like his has called forth the full spirit of the most mechanical of the string instruments.

Is it essentially polyphonic music? The first canon of the pianoforte style is _movement_. That is a mechanical necessity. The strings must be kept in vibration, constantly touched. In music so fine as Chopin’s this movement must be found to have a beauty in itself. It must be ever varied. It must take on an independent character of its own. So far, in studying accompaniment figures, one finds in them an almost never-absent suggestion of such a life. Perhaps one of the greatest proofs of Chopin’s skill is that he rarely attempted more than to suggest it. For he knew above all things his piano. He knew its great power over chords and harmony, that music for it must first of all bring out this richness of vibration of which it was capable. He knew that the logical, consecutive movement of the polyphonic style left his piano more than half dumb. Polyphony was no outlandish book to him. Many an anecdote testifies to his worship of the ‘Well-Tempered Clavichord’; many to his ability to reveal as few, perhaps no others, have been able to do, the beauty of the preludes and fugues in it. But in his own music he submerged polyphony, so to speak, just beneath the sea of moving harmonies. Over and through the fine silver network his harmonies swirl and flow like waters. Only now and then a strand of it shines clear; but always its presence may be seen, though its lines quiver and break.

Now and again one comes across measures in his music which do more than hint at the sterling imitative style of the old masters, or that show a grasp of that sort of logical technique which is able to weave a single motive or two into various shapes, a highly concentrated sort of music. These are neither more nor less beautiful than other measures, and surely their value is the value of all his music, not enhanced by the evidence of a highly respected technical skill. The fourth ballade gives surprising examples of this intensive art. The few measures in canonic style which bring back the principal subject are worthy of study; but even more remarkable is the page of music which precedes them. Here, following an episode in which the steady rhythm of the whole great work takes on almost the gaiety of a dance, we come upon music of the most profound character, fully and sonorously scored, rich in harmony, expressive of passion. The bass part is one variant of the chief subject, the treble part is another. Here is skill of the sort that brings praise to Brahms; but in the music of Chopin to mention it is hardly worth while, so little, rather so entirely not at all, is it an end in itself.

Finally there are pages of his music in which the movement of his accompaniment are so free and extended, or so interwoven with what seems the chief idea, that one is at loss to classify them as to style. These it seems to us are the result of his finest art of writing for the piano. In some cases it is easy to speak of the accompaniment as an arabesque, with the implied meaning that, delicately and carefully as it has been shaped and perfected, it remains of secondary importance. So, for instance, with the little prelude in G major, and, to a somewhat greater extent, the study in C minor, opus 10, No. 12. But the prelude in D major is a net of sounds from which nothing but shimmering harmony shines out, though there are two voices for ever entwining about each other. Which is melody and which accompaniment in the prelude in F major? What is going on within the prelude in F-sharp minor, that outwardly seems but a broad melody with whirring accompaniment? At last, in the later works, one comes across accompaniments running from top to bottom of the keyboard, every note of which is but part of a melody. Take as examples of this art the following passages from the fourth scherzo:

[Illustration: Music score]

These few measures are typical of the essence of the keyboard, rather the pianoforte, style of Chopin, a style showing a grace and flexibility highly characteristic of his music in general. One finds such art only very rarely in the works of other composers since the time of Bach and Couperin, as, for example, in the second Intermezzo in the second number of the _Kreisleriana_ and at the end of Brahms’ Caprice in F-sharp minor, opus 76, No. 1. It is the sort of music which sounds best on the pianoforte, which cannot give the same effect on any other instrument nor by any combination of instruments. There are the constant movement which is necessary to keep the piano vibrating, and the richness of harmony which belongs to no other single instrument except the organ. The homogeneous nature of the scale gives to the runs a continuity of line and of color that is almost uniquely proper to the piano. The single notes of the runs drop with the bell-like quality which likewise belongs only to this instrument. At last it must be noted how the sound of it all floats and changes. This is strikingly a sonority of after-sounds.

In the case of the above selection from the Scherzo this is obtained by the arrangement of chords with the broad melody of the left hand. Of the six chords that are struck four are left to vibrate during two measures; that is to say, that five-sixths of their value is given only in after-sounds. Against this tonal background are arranged the rapidly moving notes of the right hand, which a careful study will show accentuates in varying fashion the floating harmonies of the left. So that the whole passage has not only a vague shimmer but a sparkling radiance as well.

In the following selection from the same piece it will be noticed that this sonority is built up by the movement of the accompanying figures which at the same time sprinkle their own mist with sparks. It is like the passage of a faint comet through the sky, leaving a trail of apparently substantial light. And here this drifting light of sound resolves itself into definite harmonies, in the third, fifth, seventh, ninth, fourteenth and fifteenth measures. The substantial harmonies of the passage are very obviously established by the chords in the left hand part; but it is the movement of the right hand that makes them glow and darken as it were. In those measures not mentioned above, this movement seems to weave a mist about these harmonies, which, in the measures we have numbered, clears for an instant and lets the light through. And that the notes in this movement which have such an harmonic clarity may be not so much emphasized as retained is one of the fine points in the playing of Chopin which the unskilled player is likely wholly to miss, and with it the elusive subtlety of Chopin.

[Illustration: Music score]

The ordinary pianoforte style of running figuration generally is made up of simple arpeggios or scales. Liszt does not often show himself master of more than such. It is only Chopin who envelopes his harmonies in such an exquisitely spun thread of melody. The last measures of the Barcarolle show such a thread of pure gold, woven and twisted as no other composer for the piano has been able to spin.

[Illustration: Music score]

In such passages as these three we find a movement which entered the pianoforte style as a necessity (to keep harmonies in vibration) metamorphosed into a line of melody which still retains the power to suggest harmonies. It demands the virtuoso but is in no sense virtuoso music. For virtuoso music is a music in listening to which one hardly knows whether it is sound itself or the rapid movement of sound that thrills. Figures have little musical significance in it. Notice how in the music of the two greatest virtuoso composers for the piano, D. Scarlatti and Liszt, a few figures are repeated endlessly with no variation. The necessity of movement has become a luxury, oftenest not truly beautiful, nor of any but a gymnastic worth.

It was Chopin who entirely appreciated the true value of movement on the keyboard; who where it was necessary made it beautiful, and never made it an end in itself. Hence it may be questioned if there is figure work, mere display, in Chopin’s music. There is hardly a passage of rapid notes in his music which has not a pure melodic significance and which does not weave itself about harmonies that are constantly varied. He delighted in rapid notes. The coda of the waltz in A-flat major, op. 34, No. 2, the study in F minor, op. 25, No. 2, the scherzo of the sonata in B minor, the variation of the chief subject in the third part of the fourth ballade, these come to mind among a host of other examples of his inimitable grace and musical worth in such music. And when he combined such a fleet melodiousness with broader themes and harmonies did he not prove himself a master of the science of music in a new light? Not without a reason are the preludes and fugues of the ‘Well-Tempered Clavichord’ a masterpiece of everlasting and inimitable worth. We may call it concentration, intensity, economy of musical means which gives them their enduring firmness. And much of this firmness is in the music of Chopin, because there are no empty notes, none without two and even threefold significance. This complication of movement with melody, this ever-whispering inner melodiousness, these spring from Bach, the greatest of masters.

Other essentials of the pianoforte style may be found in the work of other masters as well as in that of Chopin. Such are the contrast of registers and the variety of rhythm. One more feature of his style, however, is pronounced enough to demand attention. This will be observed in his treatment of many melodies. Here any composer will find himself face to face with one of the most difficult problems the piano presents; for, as we have said, he must if possible arrange his melody in such a way that one will not feel it would have been more suitable to the voice or the violin. Movement is again necessary. Without belittling the value of an accepted masterpiece one may call attention to the long pause of the melody at the end of the first phrase of Schumann’s _Warum?_, which barely escapes destroying the piece as a work for the piano. There must be not only a pronounced but a secondary melodic movement in such pauses in pianoforte music, as Schumann himself introduced subsequently in _Warum?_ In many cases the composer contents himself with giving a touch of melodic life to the accompaniment, as Chopin does, for example, in the pauses of the second theme in the first movement of the B-flat minor sonata. But most remarkable in Chopin’s treatment of melodies, noticeably in his later and broader style, is his fondness for secondary melodies that have almost the consecutive movement of an obbligato part. This is one step in organization beyond the inner melodiousness of his accompaniments. Without selecting examples from a number of his works, one may call attention to the study in C-sharp minor, opus 25, No. 7, to the various treatments of the melodic material in the fourth ballade, to the whole Barcarolle, especially to the imitations in the middle section and in the coda. By means of this the piano speaks with a voice made sonorous by its own peculiar abilities, and Chopin’s melodies stand apart from melodies for violin or voice.

What has been said of his ability to give to rapid notes a genuinely musical significance applies in general to the ornaments which now and again are brought into his music. Of the older standardized ornaments which were thickly sprinkled through the music of Couperin and Emanuel Bach, only a few survived the harpsichord, to which they were appropriate. The turn, the trill and the grace-note are the chief of these, all of which, it will be noted, are used as frequently in music for other instruments as in music for the pianoforte. The others were expanded into much greater form or gave way entirely to a new sort of ornament which covered wide intervals and a wide range, and was intended less to add grace to the melodic line than to introduce a variety of sonority into the music.

These more pretentious frills were added _ex tempore_ by men like Hummel, Field, and even Liszt, not only to their own music but to that of other composers. Liszt, in his remarks prefatory to an edition of Field’s ‘Nocturnes,’ said that the little pieces as they appeared on the engraved page hardly gave more than a suggestion of the richness which their composer gave to them by means of his improvised adornments. Whatever may have been the practice of Chopin in playing, he angrily resented the addition of extemporized ornaments to his own music by any player whatsoever, even one so brilliant as Liszt. It seems likely that such ornaments _d’occasion_ were pretty conventional stuff. Liszt has filled up his music with a great deal of them, laboriously written out. Chopin’s ornaments rarely lack the distinction which is characteristic of his style in general; that is to say they are rarely a series of figures, oftenest a tracery of melody. Those such as we find in the nocturne in F-sharp major, the impromptu in the same key, and even in the first polonaise, are finely and carefully drawn, and their effect in the piece, like the effect of the piece as a whole, calculated down to the smallest note. Even in this regard Chopin’s music is perfected, and the addition of extra notes, especially of the breathless, virtuoso kind, cannot, as Chopin himself well knew, but distort its proportions. There is practically none of these passages which is massive, which has not a value in detail that the pianist must reveal.

Excepting always the music of Bach, there is almost no keyboard music save Chopin’s in which every note is thus fraught with meaning and delight. Therein lies the secret of his style, its clearness, flexibility and charm. As a work of art it is flawless, and in that may well rest its best assurance of an immortal life.

IV

There is little to be said of the quality of Chopin’s music in general, and that little has often been fervidly spoken, now in praise, now in blame. His music may be variously classified. There are works of his young manhood, works of more mature stamp, finally works written in the last years of his relatively short life which are very noticeably more profound and more involved than earlier ones. To study his music in the order of its creation is to trace the deepening and the sobering of his emotional life. An intensity is common to it all, a fervor which a long and painful illness had not the power to assuage. Neither the Ballade in F minor nor the _Polonaise-Fantaisie_ is less impassioned than the study in C minor, opus 10, No. 12. Outwardly they all show the same restlessness and tumultuousness. But the passion of the later works is deeper if not more calm than that of the earlier, and the expression of it is more varied and full of contrasts. Works like the fourth Scherzo, the fourth Ballade, and the Barcarolle have an under meaning so hard to grasp that perhaps the majority of those who study them or hear them find fault with the structure and say they are rambling. There is in all his music a reserve which puts it beyond the touch of most who would play it. In these last great pieces one discerns vaguely something of the holiness of that inner life of his which no one ever heard him speak of, of the intense, yearning idealism that tortured him. His was a spirit that underwent the chastening brought upon us by suffering in body and mind in silence, this fastidious, dainty, malicious, little man, for ever suffering, for ever unconquerable in pride.

But the compositions may be more definitely classified than by the signs they show of Chopin’s general development. There are, for example, three distinct groups: salon pieces, such as the Waltzes and Nocturnes; pieces in which he speaks as it were his native Polish language, such as the Mazurkas and the Polonaises, and finally works which seem the unrestricted expression of his emotions: the Ballades, Scherzos, Sonatas, Preludes, and Études.

All the salon pieces are characterized by elegance. In addition, the Waltzes have in most cases a sparkle, the Nocturnes a discrete melancholy. Yet Chopin is full of surprises, and there are waltzes like that in A minor and that in C-sharp minor which pass out of the category of elegant salon music based on dance rhythms, and may be treated as among the most thoughtful and the sad expressions of his experience. The first two waltzes, and the great waltz in A-flat major, opus 42, reveal him delighting in poignant and lively rhythms, in a grace from which a certain chivalric gallantry is not lacking, and above all in the captivating qualities of his instrument.

Perhaps the majority of the Nocturnes show a sentiment a little too much perfumed for the salon. They are commonly considered the weakest of his compositions; and it can hardly be denied that some of them lack virility and health. On the other hand, one like that in C minor is fit to stand among the most impassioned and noble of his compositions; and those in G major and in D-flat major must long be redeemed from commonplaceness by the perfection of their style as pianoforte music.

In the Mazurkas, harmonies, rhythm, and melodies have a distinctly Polish character. In the Polonaises only the rhythm is national; and this has been so long in the favor of the international world of music that it carries with it little of Polish spirit. Most of the Mazurkas and the Polonaises never shake off an under mood of deep sadness, and there is none of them, however gracious, which does not sing of a national pride. Pride and sorrow are the keynote to them, sorrow that is often hopeless, pride that rises to anger and defiance. There are among the Mazurkas many which have an elegiac sadness, which are poems of meditation and lamentation, as if by the ruins of his beloved country he, like the great prophet, sat down and wept. They are often as short as the short preludes, but share with them a vividness and intenseness that place them among the most remarkable of compositions for the instrument.

The Polonaises are in broad form. Those in A major, A-flat major, and F-sharp minor are truly colossal works, ringing, clashing, marching music, without a touch of bombast. It is astonishing how all polonaises, polaccas, and even marches by other composers lose their light beside them. Those in C minor and in E-flat minor are sombre and gloomy, the former full of heaviness, the latter of mysterious agitation as of a band of conspirators, in the apt phrase of Professor Niecks. That in C-sharp minor lacks the dignity of its companion pieces. The first part is fretful and nervous. The Trio section in D-flat has, however, a more measured, though an effeminate speech.

Of his other great works one would be glad to say nothing. We have already attempted to analyze the perfection of their style, the richness of their harmonies, the firm proportions of their form. To the discovery of their particular beauties each lover must be led by his own enthusiasm. The rapture they may charm him to is his own joy. Chopin the artist may be held up to the critical inspection of the whole world, and in such an inspection few will pass with higher praise than his.

But Chopin the musician speaks to each ear apart. His music is a fervid, aristocratic, essentially noble soul made audible, if so we may translate Balzac’s remark that he was _une âme qui se rendait sensible_. Illness held him in an inexorable grip during those years of his life when he wrote many of his greatest works. His pride, which no one may measure, made his life one agony with that of his broken country. Yet there was the saving streak of iron in him, and that is in his music behind all the vehemence, the fever, and the passion.

And what may not be overlooked is his love of gaiety. His wit was malicious and keen, but he had a pleasing humor as well, one that overflowed in mimicry and an almost childish love of fun. This too is constantly coming to the surface in his music. It would be wholly mistaken to think of Chopin as a composer of only sad or turbulent music. A whole list of masterpieces could be chosen from those of his compositions which are gay without _arrière-pensée_, which are witty and vivacious, and clear as happy laughter. It is perhaps this very spirit which saves his music always from heaviness, which makes it in the last analysis more healthy and more sane than much of that of Schumann or Brahms. Never are his moods heavy, stagnant, or inert. Intense as they may be they are swift-changing and vivid.

Are they not thus in their nature suited to the piano more than to all other instruments? To the piano, the sounds of which are no sooner struck than they float away, the very breath of whose being is in constant movement?

The mass of Chopin’s compositions remains unique in the literature of pianoforte music as an expression of emotion that is without alloy. There is no trace in it of experiment, of theory, or of symbolism. Its idealism is the idealism of beauty of sound, both in form and detail. If we call it poetical it is because it seems a fire of the imagination. Yet here is a faculty in Chopin which deals only with sound. His music is most decidedly abstract and absolute. Poetical as it may be, there is no meaning in it but the meaning of sound. Not only does it not call for supplementary explanations in terms of another art or of definite, emotional activities in life; it defies the effort that would so relate it to a world of perceptions. Like fire it burns the thought that would frame it.

FOOTNOTES:

[35] ‘Chopin the Composer.’ New York, 1914.

[36] Professor Frederick Niecks in his ‘Frederic Chopin’ (1888) has presented practically all that is known of Chopin to the public, in a manner that is no less accurate than it is wholly just and impartial. Needless to say that we are greatly indebted for this chapter to that excellent and wise book, especially in the matter of biographical and personal details.

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