Chopin : the Man and His Music Part 10

But as Rossini would have said, "Ca sent de Scarlatti!"

The A minor Valse was, of the three, Chopin's favorite. When Stephen h.e.l.ler told him this too was his beloved valse, Chopin was greatly pleased, inviting the Hungarian composer, Niecks relates, to luncheon at the Cafe Riche.

Not improvised in the ballroom as the preceding, yet a marvellous epitome is the A flat Valse, op. 42, published July, 1840. It is the best rounded specimen of Chopin's experimenting with the form. The prolonged trill on E flat, summoning us to the ballroom, the suggestive intermingling of rhythms, duple and triple, the coquetry, hesitation, pa.s.sionate avowal and the superb coda, with its echoes of evening--have not these episodes a charm beyond compare? Only Schumann in certain pages of his "Carneval" seizes the secret of young life and love, but his is not so finished, so glowing a tableau.

Regarding certain phrasing of this valse Moriz Rosenthal wrote to the London "Musical Standard":

In Music there is Liberty and Fraternity, but seldom Equality, and in music Social Democracy has no voice. Notes have a right to the Aftertone (Nachton), and this right depends upon their role in the key. The Vorhalt (accented pa.s.sing note) will always have an accent. On this point Riemann must without question be considered right. Likewise the feeling player will mark those notes that introduce the transition to another key.

We will consider now our example and set down my accents:

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In the first bar we have the tonic chord of its major key as ba.s.s, and are thus not forced to any accent. In the second bar we have the dominant harmony in the ba.s.s, and in the treble, C, which falls upon the down beat as Vorhalt to the next tone (B flat), so it must be accented. Also in the fourth bar the B flat is Vorhalt to the B flat, and likewise requires an accent. In bars 6, 7 and 8 the notes, A flat, B flat and C, are without doubt the characteristic ones of the pa.s.sage, and the E flat has in each case only a secondary significance.

That a genius like Chopin did not indicate everything accurately is quite explainable. He flew where we merely limp after. Moreover, these accents must be felt rather than executed, with softest touch, and as tenderly as possible.

The D flat Valse--"le valse du pet.i.t chien"--is of George Sand's own prompting. One evening at her home in the Square d'Orleans, she was amused by her little pet dog, chasing its tail. She begged Chopin, her little pet pianist, to set the tail to music. He did so, and behold the world is richer for this piece. I do not dispute the story. It seems well grounded, but then it is so ineffably silly! The three valses of this op. 64 were published September, 1847, and are respectively dedicated to the Comtesse Delphine Potocka, the Baronne Nathaniel de Rothschild and the Baronne Bronicka.

I shall not presume to speak of the execution of the D flat Valse; like the rich, it is always with us. It is usually taken at a meaningless, rapid gait. I have heard it played by a genuine Chopin pupil, M.

Georges Mathias, and he did not take it prestissimo. He ran up the D flat scale, ending with a sforzato at the top, and gave a variety of nuance to the composition. The cantabile is nearly always delivered with sloppiness of sentiment. This valse has been served up in a highly indigestible condition for concert purposes by Tausig, Joseffy--whose arrangement was the first to be heard here--Theodore Ritter, Rosenthal and Isidor Philipp.

The C sharp minor Valse is the most poetic of all. The first theme has never been excelled by Chopin for a species of veiled melancholy. It is a fascinating, lyrical sorrow, and what Kullak calls the psychologic motivation of the first theme in the curving figure of the second does not relax the spell. A s.p.a.ce of clearer skies, warmer, more consoling winds are in the D flat interlude, but the spirit of unrest, ennui returns. The elegiac imprint is unmistakable in this soul dance. The A flat Valse which follows is charming. It is for superior souls who dance with intellectual joy, with the joy that comes of making exquisite patterns and curves. Out of the salon and from its brilliantly lighted s.p.a.ces the dancers do not wander, do not dance into the darkness and churchyard, as Ehlert imagines of certain other valses.

The two valses in op. 69, three valses, op. 70, and the two remaining valses in E minor and E major, need not detain us. They are posthumous.

The first of op. 69 in F minor was composed in 1836; the B minor in 1829; G flat, op. 70, in 1835; F minor in 1843, and D flat major, 1830.

The E major and E minor were composed in 1829. Fontana gave these compositions to the world. The F minor Valse, op. 69, No. 1, has a charm of its own. Kullak prints the Fontana and Klindworth variants.

This valse is suavely melancholy, but not so melancholy as the B minor of the same opus. It recalls in color the B minor mazurka. Very gay and sprightly is the G flat Valse, op. 70, No. I. The next in F minor has no special physiognomy, while the third in D flat contains, as Niecks points out, germs of the op. 42 and the op. 34 Valses. It recalls to me the D flat study in the supplementary series. The E minor Valse, without opus, is beloved. It is very graceful and not without sentiment. The major part is the early Chopin. The E major Valse is published in the Mikuli edition. It is commonplace, hinting of its composer only in places. Thus ends the collection of valses, not Chopin's most signal success in art, but a success that has dignified and given beauty to this conventional dance form.

IX. NIGHT AND ITS MELANCHOLY MYSTERIES:--THE NOCTURNES

Here is the chronology of the nocturnes: Op. 9, three nocturnes, January, 1833; op. 15, three nocturnes, January, 1834; op. 27, two nocturnes, May, 1836; op. 32, two nocturnes, December, 1837; op. 37, two nocturnes, May, 1840; op. 48, two nocturnes, November, 1841; op.

55, two nocturnes, August, 1844; op. 62, two nocturnes, September, 1846. In addition there is a nocturne written in 1828 and published by Fontana, with the opus number 72, No. 2, and the lately discovered one in C sharp minor, written when Chopin was young and published in 1895.

This completes the nocturne list, but following Niecks' system of formal grouping I include the Berceuse and Barcarolle as full fledged specimens of nocturnes.

John Field has been described as the forerunner of Chopin. The limpid style of this pupil and friend of Clementi, his beautiful touch and finished execution, were certainly admired and imitated by the Pole.

Field's nocturnes are now neglected--so curious are Time's caprices--and without warrant, for not only is Field the creator of the form, but in both his concertos and nocturnes he has written charming, sweet and sane music. He rather patronized Chopin, for whose melancholy pose he had no patience. "He has a talent of the hospital," growled Field in the intervals between his wine drinking, pipe smoking and the washing of his linen--the latter economical habit he contracted from Clementi. There is some truth in his stricture. Chopin, seldom exuberantly cheerful, is morbidly sad and complaining in many of the nocturnes. The most admired of his compositions, with the exception of the valses, they are in several instances his weakest. Yet he enn.o.bled the form originated by Field, giving it dramatic breadth, pa.s.sion and even grandeur. Set against Field's naive and idyllic specimens, Chopin's efforts are often too bejewelled for true simplicity, too lugubrious, too tropical--Asiatic is a better word--and they have the exotic savor of the heated conservatory, and not the fresh scent of the flowers reared in the open by the less poetic Irishman. And, then, Chopin is so desperately sentimental in some of these compositions.

They are not altogether to the taste of this generation; they seem to be suffering from anaemia. However, there are a few n.o.ble nocturnes; and methods of performance may have much to answer for the sentimentalizing of some others. More vigor, a quickening of the time-pulse, and a less languishing touch will rescue them from lush sentiment. Chopin loved the night and its soft mysteries as much as did Robert Louis Stevenson, and his nocturnes are true night pieces, some with agitated, remorseful countenance, others seen in profile only, while many are whisperings at dusk. Most of them are called feminine, a term psychologically false. The poetic side of men of genius is feminine, and in Chopin the feminine note was over emphasized--at times it was almost hysterical--particularly in these nocturnes.

The Scotch have a proverb: "She wove her shroud, and wore it in her lifetime." In the nocturnes the shroud is not far away. Chopin wove his to the day of his death, and he wore it sometimes but not always, as many think.

One of the most elegiac of his nocturnes is the first in B flat minor.

It is one of three, op. 9, dedicated to Mme. Camille Pleyel. Of far more significance than its two companions, it is, for some reason, neglected. While I am far from agreeing with those who hold that in the early Chopin all his genius was completely revealed, yet this nocturne is as striking as the last, for it is at once sensuous and dramatic, melancholy and lovely. Emphatically a mood, it is best heard on a gray day of the soul, when the times are out of joint; its silken tones will bring a triste content as they pour out upon one's hearing. The second section in octaves is of exceeding charm. As a melody it has all the lurking voluptuousness and mystic crooning of its composer. There is flux and reflux throughout, pa.s.sion peeping out in the coda.

The E flat nocturne is graceful, shallow of content, but if it is played with purity of touch and freedom from sentimentality it is not nearly so ba.n.a.l as it usually seems. It is Field-like, therefore play it as did Rubinstein, in a Field-like fashion.

Hadow calls attention to the "remote and recondite modulations" in the twelfth bar, the chromatic double notes. For him they only are one real modulation, "the rest of the pa.s.sage is an iridescent play of color, an effect of superficies, not an effect of substance." It was the E flat nocturne that unloosed Rellstab's critical wrath in the "Iris." Of it he wrote: "Where Field smiles, Chopin makes a grinning grimace; where Field sighs, Chopin groans; where Field shrugs his shoulders, Chopin twists his whole body; where Field puts some seasoning into the food, Chopin empties a handful of cayenne pepper. In short, if one holds Field's charming romances before a distorting, concave mirror, so that every delicate impression becomes a coa.r.s.e one, one gets Chopin's work.

We implore Mr. Chopin to return to nature."

Rellstab might have added that while Field was often commonplace, Chopin never was. Rather is to be preferred the sound judgment of J. W.

Davison, the English critic and husband of the pianist, Arabella G.o.ddard. Of the early works he wrote:

Commonplace is instinctively avoided in all the works of Chopin--a stale cadence or a trite progression--a hum-drum subject or a worn-out pa.s.sage--a vulgar twist of the melody or a hackneyed sequence--a meagre harmony or an unskilful counterpoint--may in vain be looked for throughout the entire range of his compositions, the prevailing characteristics of which are a feeling as uncommon as beautiful; a treatment as original as felicitous; a melody and a harmony as new, fresh, vigorous and striking as they are utterly unexpected and out of the original track. In taking up one of the works of Chopin you are entering, as it were, a fairyland untrodden by human footsteps--a path hitherto unfrequented but by the great composer himself.

Gracious, even coquettish, is the first part of the B major Nocturne of this opus. Well knit, the pa.s.sionate intermezzo has the true dramatic Chopin ring. It should be taken alla breve. The ending is quite effective.

I do not care much for the F major Nocturne, op. 15, No. I. The opus is dedicated to Ferdinand Hiller. Ehlert speaks of "the ornament in triplets with which he brushes the theme as with the gentle wings of a b.u.t.terfly," and then discusses the artistic value of the ornament which may be so profitably studied in the Chopin music. "From its nature, the ornament can only beautify the beautiful." Music like Chopin's, "with its predominating elegance, could not forego ornament. But he surely did not purchase it of a jeweller; he designed it himself, with a delicate hand. He was the first to surround a note with diamond facets and to weave the rushing floods of his emotions with the silver beams of the moonlight. In his nocturnes there is a glimmering as of distant stars. From these dreamy, heavenly gems he has borrowed many a line.

The Chopin nocturne is a dramatized ornament. And why may not Art speak for once in such symbols? In the much admired F sharp major Nocturne the princ.i.p.al theme makes its appearance so richly decorated that one cannot avoid imagining that his fancy confined itself to the Arabesque form for the expression of its poetical sentiments. Even the middle part borders upon what I should call the tragic style of ornament. The ground thought is hidden behind a dense veil, but a veil, too, can be an ornament."

In another place Ehlert thinks that the F sharp major Nocturne seems inseparable from champagne and truffles. It is certainly more elegant and dramatic than the one in F major, which precedes it. That, with the exception of the middle part in F minor, is weak, although rather pretty and confiding. The F sharp Nocturne is popular. The "doppio movemento" is extremely striking and the entire piece is saturated with young life, love and feelings of good will to men. Read Kleczynski. The third nocturne of the three is in G minor, and contains some fine, picturesque writing. Kullak does not find in it aught of the fantastic.

The languid, earth-weary voice of the opening and the churchly refrain of the chorale, is not this fantastic contrast! This nocturne contains in solution all that Chopin developed later in a nocturne of the same key. But I think the first stronger--its lines are simpler, more primitive, its coloring less complicated, yet quite as rich and gloomy.

Of it Chopin said: "After Hamlet," but changed his mind. "Let them guess for themselves," was his sensible conclusion. Kullak's programme has a conventional ring. It is the lament for the beloved one, the lost Lenore, with the consolation of religion thrown in. The "bell-tones" of the plain chant bring to my mind little that consoles, although the piece ends in the major mode. It is like Poe's "Ulalume." A complete and tiny tone poem, Rubinstein made much of it. In the fourth bar and for three bars there is a held note F, and I heard the Russian virtuoso, by some miraculous means, keep this tone prolonged. The tempo is abnormally slow, and the tone is not in a position where the sustaining pedal can sensibly help it. Yet under Rubinstein's fingers it swelled and diminished, and went singing into D, as if the instrument were an organ. I suspected the inaudible changing of fingers on the note or a sustaining pedal. It was wonderfully done.

The next nocturne, op. 27, No. I, brings us before a masterpiece. With the possible exception of the C minor Nocturne, this one in the sombre key of C sharp minor is the great essay in the form. Kleczynski finds it "a description of a calm night at Venice, where, after a scene of murder, the sea closes over a corpse and continues to serve as a mirror to the moonlight." This is melodramatic. Willeby a.n.a.lyzes it at length with the scholarly fervor of an English organist. He finds the accompaniment to be "mostly on a double pedal," and remarks that "higher art than this one could not have if simplicity of means be a factor of high art." The wide-meshed figure of the left hand supports a morbid, persistent melody that grates on the nerves. From the piu mosso the agitation increases, and here let me call to your notice the Beethoven-ish quality of these bars, which continue until the change of signature. There is a surprising climax followed by sunshine and favor in the D flat part, then after mounting dissonances a bold succession of octaves returns to the feverish plaint of the opening. Kullak speaks of a resemblance to Meyerbeer's song, Le Moine. The composition reaches exalted states. Its psychological tension is so great at times as to border on a pathological condition. There is unhealthy power in this nocturne, which is seldom interpreted with sinister subtlety. Henry T.

Finck rightfully thinks it "embodies a greater variety of emotion and more genuine dramatic spirit on four pages than many operas on four hundred."

The companion picture in D flat, op. 27, No. 2, has, as Karasowski writes, "a profusion of delicate fioriture." It really contains but one subject, and is a song of the sweet summer of two souls, for there is obvious meaning in the duality of voices. Often heard in the concert room, this nocturne gives us a surfeit of sixths and thirds of elaborate ornamentation and monotone of mood. Yet it is a lovely, imploring melody, and harmonically most interesting. A curious marking, and usually overlooked by pianists, is the crescendo and con forza of the cadenza. This is obviously erroneous. The theme, which occurs three times, should first be piano, then pianissimo, and lastly forte. This opus is dedicated to the Comtesse d'Appony.

The best part of the next nocturne,--B major, op. 32, No. I, dedicated to Madame de Billing--is the coda. It is in the minor and is like the drum-beat of tragedy. The entire ending, a stormy recitative, is in stern contrast to the dreamy beginning. Kullak in the first bar of the last line uses a G; Fontana, F sharp, and Klindworth the same as Kullak. The nocturne that follows in A flat is a reversion to the Field type, the opening recalling that master's B flat Nocturne. The F minor section of Chopin's broadens out to dramatic reaches, but as an entirety this opus is a little tiresome. Nor do I admire inordinately the Nocturne in G minor, op. 37, No. 1. It has a complaining tone, and the choral is not noteworthy. This particular part, so Chopin's pupil Gutmann declared, is taken too slowly, the composer having forgotten to mark the increased tempo. But the Nocturne in G, op. 37, No. 2, is charming. Painted with Chopin's most ethereal brush, without the cloying splendors of the one in D flat, the double sixths, fourths and thirds are magically euphonious. The second subject, I agree with Karasowski, is the most beautiful melody Chopin ever wrote. It is in true barcarolle vein; and most subtle are the shifting harmonic hues.

Pianists usually take the first part too fast, the second too slowly, transforming this poetic composition into an etude. As Schumann wrote of this opus:

"The two nocturnes differ from his earlier ones chiefly through greater simplicity of decoration and more quiet grace. We know Chopin's fondness in general for spangles, gold trinkets and pearls. He has already changed and grown older; decoration he still loves, but it is of a more judicious kind, behind which the n.o.bility of the poetry shimmers through with all the more loveliness: indeed, taste, the finest, must be granted him."

Both numbers of this opus are without dedication. They are the offspring of the trip to Majorca.

Niecks, writing of the G major Nocturne, adjures us "not to tarry too long in the treacherous atmosphere of this Capua--it bewitches and unmans." Kleczynski calls the one in G minor "homesickness," while the celebrated Nocturne in C minor "is the tale of a still greater grief told in an agitated recitando; celestial harps"--ah! I hear the squeak of the old romantic machinery--"come to bring one ray of hope, which is powerless in its endeavor to calm the wounded soul, which...sends forth to heaven a cry of deepest anguish." It doubtless has its despairing movement, this same Nocturne in C minor, op. 48, No. I, but Karasowski is nearer right when he calls it "broad and most imposing with its powerful intermediate movement, a thorough departure from the nocturne style." Willeby finds it "sickly and labored," and even Niecks does not think it should occupy a foremost place among its companions. The ineluctable fact remains that this is the n.o.blest nocturne of them all.

Biggest in conception it seems a miniature music drama. It requires the grand manner to read it adequately, and the doppio movemento is exciting to a dramatic degree. I fully agree with Kullak that too strict adherence to the marking of this section produces the effect of an "inartistic precipitation" which robs the movement of clarity.

Kleczynski calls the work The Contrition of a Sinner and devotes several pages to its elucidation. De Lenz chats most entertainingly with Tausig about it. Indeed, an imposing march of splendor is the second subject in C. A fitting pendant is this work to the C sharp minor Nocturne. Both have the heroic quality, both are free from mawkishness and are of the greater Chopin, the Chopin of the mode masculine.

Niecks makes a valuable suggestion: "In playing these nocturnes--op.

48--there occurred to me a remark of Schumann's, when he reviewed some nocturnes by Count Wielhorski. He said that the quick middle movements which Chopin frequently introduced into his nocturnes are often weaker than his first conceptions; meaning the first portions of his nocturnes. Now, although the middle part in the present instances are, on the contrary, slower movements, yet the judgment holds good; at least with respect to the first nocturne, the middle part of which has nothing to recommend it but a full, sonorous instrumentation, if I may use this word in speaking of one instrument. The middle part of the second--D flat, molto piu lento--however, is much finer; in it we meet again, as we did in some other nocturnes, with soothing, simple chord progressions. When Gutmann studied the C sharp minor Nocturne with Chopin, the master told him that the middle section--the molto piu lento in D flat major--should be played as a recitative. 'A tyrant commands'--the first two chords--he said, 'and the other asks for mercy.'"

Of course Niecks means the F sharp minor, not the C sharp minor Nocturne, op. 48, No. 2, dedicated, with the C minor, to Mlle. L.

Duperre.

Opus 55, two nocturnes in F minor and E flat major, need not detain us long. The first is familiar. Kleczynski devotes a page or more to its execution. He seeks to vary the return of the chief subject with nuances--as would an artistic singer the couplets of a cla.s.sic song.

There are "cries of despair" in it, but at last a "feeling of hope."

Kullak writes of the last measures: "Thank G.o.d--the goal is reached!"

It is the relief of a major key after prolonged wanderings in the minor. It is a nice nocturne, neat in its sorrow, yet not epoch-making.

The one following has "the impression of an improvisation." It has also the merit of being seldom heard. These two nocturnes are dedicated to Mlle. J. W. Stirling.

Opus 62 brings us to a pair in B major and E major inscribed to Madame de Konneritz. The first, the Tuberose Nocturne, is faint with a sick, rich odor. The climbing trellis of notes, that so unexpectedly leads to the tonic, is charming and the chief tune has charm, a fruity charm. It is highly ornate, its harmonies dense, the entire surface overrun with wild ornamentation and a profusion of trills. The piece--the third of its sort in the key of B--is not easy. Mertke gives the following explication of the famous chain trills:

[Musical score excerpt]