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; thePolonaise-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.
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 agreater 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 ofPoland, 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 Beethovenseemed 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. Herewas 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 thenames 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.
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, theCarnavalof 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 theBalladesand theBarcarolleare 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 isbeginning 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 theBalladesand theBarcarollesto 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 inB-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 theÉtudes, theScherziand theBallades, 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 theyshowedplus 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. Generallythe 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 proceduresforetell 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. TheFantasiain 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 thePolonaise-Fantaisie, opus 61, seemingly his last work for the piano in large proportions. TheBarcarolle, 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 delicatepoetic imagination will reveal in theBarcarollea poem in music of the most exquisite proportions. It is a work of matchless beauty. But thePolonaise-Fantaisieis 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-fourPréludes. 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 nowlike 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.
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 measuresof 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 firstmeno mossosection 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 Couperinpossessed 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.