Chapter III (4)

In the heart of Lithuania lies the beautiful, sequestered Lake Switez, its forest-mantled shores rarely visited by the foot of a stranger, but peopled by the peasant fancy with wild legends, shadowy traditions, and wraith-like memories of bygone days. Its blue waves murmur, at the foot of giant oaks, their strange tales of nymphs and sprites and water-kelpies, while through the long and still summer nights the sleepy branches make answer, in dreamy whisperings, of elves and gnomes and the uncanny doings of the little people of the forest. At least so the belated countryman affirms, overtaken by nightfall in this haunted region; and many are the tales of that awesome place and hour with which he terrifies his companions around the winter fire.

Once, many years ago, a gallant knight, of a most ancient and lofty lineage, with dauntless courage and a pious heart, whose castle crowned a neighboring height, resolved to sound and solve the mystery hid in its depths; and, taking with him a mammoth net of stoutest cords, a score of brawny henchmen to draw its meshes, and a venerable priest, to bless the catch and exorcise spirits, he proceeded to the shore. Prayer was said, the net was flung and sank, and mighty was the struggle that ensued. The tightened meshes strained to bursting, the taut ropes writhed and moaned like things alive, and dragged upon the arms that strained to draw them shoreward. The water raved and churned against the trembling banks, and black clouds, thunder-voiced, concealed the sky. The pious father’s constant prayers at last prevailed, and the net, with its strange burden, was safely landed. A pale but exquisitely lovely maid, with sweet, calm dignity in face and mien, a wreath of snow-white water-lilies on her shining hair, arose from out the tangles of the net, and in a voice like the low murmur of soft waves at twilight, thus she spoke:

“Rash knight! Thy lineage and piety combined protect thee, else hadst thou found a grave, with all thy following, in this adventure. But as thou art of godly mind and as we are akin by blood, through long descent, it is vouchsafed to me this once to break the mystic silence of the centuries, and to reveal to thee the secret of the lake, and mine, its lily queen.

“Know then, where now is forest dark and dense, a noble city reared its lofty battlements in former years. My sire, its ruling prince, held all but regal sway; and I, his child, a princess well beloved by all, counted my sunny years beside the Switez waves, as blithe as they. One morning, in that ne’er-to-be-forgotten spring, the trumpet voice of war through all our streets rang out the call to arms. Our royal master, Mindog, Lithuania’s king, had summoned all who wielded lance, to join him in the field, against a horde of merciless Russian barbarians, wasting all the land. And forth my father hastened, with him all his goodly company of knights and men at arms, and left us women, trembling and defenseless, in the town, trusting in God and in our innocence, till their return. That very night, by a circuitous route, evading Mindog’s might and my stout father’s sword, the Russians came, many as the sands upon the shore, ruthless as wolves in winter’s dearth. Our gates unguarded proved an easy prize, and in they poured, thronging our streets, demoniac in their lust for blood, exulting in the havoc of our homes. My maidens, wild with terror, crowded round, imploring succor; while I, as weak as they, saw our dishonor, worse than death, stalking upon us from the barbarian ranks.

“Then, in the frenzied panic, some one cried, ‘Our only hope is mutual destruction! Let us slay each other, cursed be she who falters!’ Like sudden inspiration, the mad purpose seized us all. And then was seen a sight to set red war atremble with affright, and blanch the lurid sun to sickly pallor. Fair hands, used only to the lute and broidery frame, unsheathed the dagger and made bare the breast. With clinging arms and lips together pressed, and sad eyes beaming love-light through their tears, each sought to find her sister’s heart and still its throbbing with her poniard’s point. Yet strength and courage faltered at the fatal stroke. In my great agony I raised my voice in prayer to Him who guides the storm-clouds’ wrath and curbs the tempest in its wild career. ‘Prevent,’ I cried, ‘this awful crime, and save us in this hour of direst need! Send us in mercy the swift death we needs must find, but let not maiden blood by maiden hands be shed!’

“The prayer was heard. An earthquake shook our city, until it rocked and reeled, crumbling and sinking like the snow-drifts in a springtime rain; while from the lake a mighty wall of water rose and rushed upon us, whelming alike pursuer and pursued, foeman and friend; hushing the din of war and shriek of victim in one common flood of cool, safe silence.

“So our city fell. My maidens, all transformed to water-lilies, blossom here in happy purity through long summers, and palsy-withered is the impious hand that strives to drag them from the friendly shelter of the waves; while I, their lily queen, within my crystal realm hold quiet sway, safe from the rude approach of man’s destructive passions. Now thou knowest the story, all save this. My father fell by Russian spears. My princely brother, on returning from the wars, found all his realm a waste, his capital destroyed, found home and sister vanished in the flood; and wandering in other lands, when years had passed, he wedded a stranger bride. From this their union, through a long, illustrious line of heroes, thou art sprung. Hence thou art safe upon these shores, despite this day’s temerity, so long as with a pure heart and noble mind, thou dost guard our name and honor in the world. Remember this. But seek no more to pierce the kindly veil of mysteries, not meant for mortal eyes; and never hope or strive to see again the lily queen of Switez.”

So speaking, with a smile of saddest sweetness, she turned slowly to the lake, and vanished in its whelming waters, which closed with laughing ripples round her.

No one familiar with Chopin’s ballade in F can fail to perceive the close and accurate application of the music to this romantic tale. It begins at and deals with the appearance and story of the lily queen, and her gentle, pure, and winning personality, and soft-voiced narration, figure symbolically in the opening melody. The sudden burst of the terrific war cloud, the maiden’s trust in and confident appeal to a higher power, the final whelming of the city in the friendly flood, follow successively in almost literal portrayal, the work closing in the mood of the maiden’s final farewell and warning to the adventurous knight who had disturbed her repose.

Viewed from the standpoint of the subject-matter, the startling, almost drastic, contrasts of the work seem not only intelligible, but legitimate and artistic.

Ballade No. 3, in A Flat, Op. 47

This is the best known, the most played, and most popular of all the Chopin ballades. Its warm, lyric opening theme, its strikingly original rhythmic effects, its piquant, bewitching second subject, full of playful grace, as well as its magnificently developed climax, one of the finest in the piano literature, have all endeared it to the hearts of Chopin lovers and rendered it one of the most effective of concert solos.

Like the second ballade in F major, this composition is founded upon an ancient legend of Lake Switez, which seems to be a center about which cluster many of the Lithuanian myths. The one in question had been previously treated by Chopin’s friend and compatriot, Adam Mickiewicz, in the form of a ballad in Polish verse, and the substance of the story, briefly and simply told, is as follows:

A young and fearless knight, whose ancestral castle crowned a forest-covered eminence above the beautiful blue lake, was wont to wander on its lone and wooded shores at evening and to meet there clandestinely his radiant, beautiful, mysterious lady-love, whose name, home, and origin he was unable to discover, and which she persistently refused to disclose. She always appeared to him suddenly, without warning or visible approach, as if born anew each night of the filtering moonlight and shifting forest shadows, or as if drawing her ethereal substance at will from the floating mist wreaths above the lake. And she vanished as miraculously, when she chose to end their interview, dissolving from his very arms into mist once more. Perhaps the very mystery which enveloped her enhanced her charms. In any case, her power grew upon the knight till he became most desperately enamoured, pressing his suit with growing ardor. At first she coquetted with his passion, laughing at his fervor and meeting his fiery protestations with playful, incredulous mockery; but, finally touched by his fiery eloquence, she made him a conditional promise. If he would prove his fidelity, would remain true to her and her memory during her absence, no matter what temptations might arise, for the space of just one little passing moon, she would then return, reveal her identity, and become his bride, if he still desired it.

Of course, he swore eternal fidelity, and she, with a little half-sad, half-incredulous smile, vanished into the night mist. For several evenings he wandered, lonely and disconsolate, on the shores of the lake, longing and vainly seeking for his absent love and cursing the tardy hours of his probation. Then, when his patience was about exhausted, he was met there, on the selfsame spot, in the same mystic moonlight and with the same suddenness and mystery, by another maiden, even more beautiful than the first, and not inclined to be so distant. She jeered at him for his depression, for his useless and stupid fidelity to an absent prude, while with many lures and graces she beckoned him on to join her in the moonlit mazes of the dance.

At first, remembering his promise, he made some show of resistance, but very soon he yielded completely to her seductions, declaring his admiration for this new beauty in ardent terms, and followed her with extended arms, as she flitted on before him, keeping always just a little out of reach; followed, heedless where his steps might lead, reckless of consequences, conscious only of her tender glances and her beckoning hand, till, borne up and on by the spell of her enchantment, she had led him far out upon the treacherous surface of the lake, whose placid ripples seemed magically to sustain both pursuer and pursued. Then, when midway across the lake, she turned upon him, indignation blazing in her eyes. With a single impatient gesture she flung off her disguise and faced him, poised upon a curling wave, in all the airy grace and winsomeness of his first abandoned love. “False lover!” she cried, “where is now thy true love, thy sworn love? Forgotten, forsaken, ere the moon that witnessed thy plighted vows hath run one-quarter of its little circle. Behold thy doom! So perish the faithless!” Her white arms waved in mystic incantation, a sudden storm-wind swept the lake, the billows heaved and swirled beneath him, and a yawning chasm opened at his feet. With a last passionate appeal he sank to its chilly depths, while she, laughing in mocking derision, vanished in a shower of silver spray.

The peasants declare that to this day, on quiet moonlit nights, one may still see the white form of the Switez maid wandering, as if in search, among the shadows of the forest-mantled shores or gliding over the surface of the lake; while mingling with the whisper of the wind among the trees and the murmurs of the waves upon the strand, one still hears the echo of her words: “Forsaken, forsworn. So perish the faithless.”

Such is the story of the Switez maid, as told by Mickiewicz in inimitable Polish verse, and translated into the symbolic language of music by the Polish tone-poet, Chopin, in the A flat ballade.

The first warmly emotional theme of the composition, with its tender, persuasive cadences, its ever-growing passionateness, symbolizes the ardent and impulsive hero of the legend; while the bright, piquant second theme admirably portrays the arch, coquettish heroine, with her airy witcheries and playful grace. It cannot be mistaken, for it compels attention as it enters, after a moment of suspense, in radical contrast to what precedes, with the dainty rhythmic effect, so difficult to render for most players. Its introduction later in a different key, with different accompaniment and embellishments, represents the disguise with which the maid attempts to cloak her identity, but the same melody is distinctly traceable through all changes. The superb climax near the close of the work forcibly depicts at once the swift approach and resistless sweep of the tempest upon the lake and the intensity of the emotional situation at the moment of the final catastrophe. Here, too, is heard again the first melody, the hero theme, in a brief return, as he makes his last, vain appeal, and we even catch the vanishing ripple of the maiden’s mocking laughter.

The details of the story are not so literally worked out in the music, or followed with so much realistic fidelity, as would have been the case with Liszt or Wagner, or with some other more recent writers. Chopin’s art is always rather suggestive than descriptive, dealing directly with the moods evoked by a given situation or event, rather than with the physical aspect of the events themselves; with the awe and terror produced by the tempest, for instance, rather than with the audible or visible phenomena of the tempest. In this particular case he deals mainly with the general emotional and mental elements which underlie the legend and the characteristics of the two personages who figure in it, instead of treating its successive incidents in detail, or in definite chronological order. The work is therefore sketched on broad, fundamental lines, and leaves the setting and filling in in large measure to the imagination of the hearer. This must always be the ideal method in an art so ethereal and, in one sense, so vague as that of music. Still, the connection between the music of this ballade and the actual scenes and development of the legend is distinct enough to be easily traced by those familiar with the story, and players or listeners will find, as always, that the purely musical interest of this and all the Chopin ballades is materially deepened and increased by the background of relevant facts—by an acquaintance with the material on which they are based and which gave to the composer the impulse for their creation.

Chopin: Polonaise, A Flat Major, Op. 53

Interesting from a historic as well as a musical standpoint is the origin of the polonaise. In the year 1573, when the Polish throne became vacant on the extinction of the royal dynasty of Jagiello, a national assembly of electors was convened at the then capital, Cracow, to decide upon a new sovereign. The candidates for the throne were all of royal blood—Ernest of Austria, Henry of Anjou of the house of Valois, brother to the ruling king of France, a Swedish prince, and Ivan the Terrible of Russia. But the real struggle lay between the Austrian and French princes. The choice fell at last on Henry of Anjou, later himself king of France as Henry III.

In the following autumn he ascended the Polish throne, and among the many gorgeous ceremonials attending his coronation, was one quite natural and proper under the circumstances—a formal presentation to the new monarch, of the leading dignitaries and personages of his realm. It took place in the vast and magnificent throne hall of the royal castle at Cracow. The nobles and officials, each with his lady on his arm, defiled before the throne where the monarch was seated, in a stately procession, and as they passed before the king were presented by the master of ceremonies. This formal march was accompanied by suitable music, written expressly for the occasion and performed by the royal band. Whether this embryonic polonaise is still in existence, no one knows; probably not; but two distinct ideas were, or should have been, before the composer’s mind in penning the harmonies for this solemn ceremonial.

First, of course, to write music eminently suited to the occasion, to embody, and, if possible, enhance all the pomp and splendor of the magnificent, august assembly; second, to portray through the music, so far as might be, something of the national characteristics of this Polish race which the Frenchman came as a stranger to rule over. The music in its own way was to serve as a species of introduction.

Little by little, from this crude but characteristic beginning was developed through the centuries the peculiar national dance, or, more strictly speaking, march of the Poles; and the music performed during its progress came to have among dance forms the same title. It partook of the various stages of evolution to which all music was subject at different epochs, and within the last hundred years has been modified to keep pace with the general development of musical resources. But however it may vary in minor details of form and treatment, every polonaise which is true to itself must express the original ideas upon which the form was primarily based—on the one hand a splendid ceremonial, on the other Polish national life.

In the present day the polonaise is a universally accepted musical form, common property with the composers of all nations. But Chopin, Polish by birth, education, and sympathies, found it strictly within his scope, and has easily surpassed all other writers in number, quality, and characteristic force as a polonaise writer.

Of his many works in this vein, the Op. 53, in A flat, is in my opinion decidedly the best, both as regards virile power and direct, forceful expression of the original polonaise idea. It begins with a wild, impetuous introduction, brief but stirring, a sort of fanfare of drums and trumpets, intended to call the people to order and to establish at the outset the tonality of the mood, so to speak. Then follows the swinging, pompous measure of the polonaise proper, readily suggesting by its splendid martial harmonies the proud military bearing, the gorgeous armor, and the stately tread of those steel-clad feudal heroes, as they defiled before the throne.

In place of the trio, usually of a more quiet nature in works of this kind, Chopin has introduced a very singular passage, the most strikingly original portion of the whole composition—a long-sustained, stupendous octave climax of the left hand, consisting of a little rhythmic figure of four notes, constantly reiterated with growing power, against a sort of trumpet obligato in brilliant measured chords for the right. The movement vividly suggests the tramp of cavalry. The composer had in mind the Polish light-horse of medieval fame, a very aristocratic body of picked horsemen, composed of the flower of Polish chivalry and disciplined in constant warfare with the Turks. A number of the brilliant officers of this division were necessarily present at the coronation ceremony when the polonaise form originated, and these with their exploits Chopin endeavors to introduce by means of this singular passage.

There is a curious anecdote afloat concerning the effect of this movement on the composer himself. On one occasion, when playing the nearly completed work, his nervous organism enfeebled by illness and his imagination intensely excited by the fever-glow of composition, he was seized by a peculiar hallucination. He fancied that a band of the knights he had been attempting to portray, came riding in from the gloom of the outer night, in through the opening walls of his apartment, arrayed in their antique war panoply, horse and rider just as they might have arisen from their century-old graves in Poland. He was so overcome by this self-invoked apparition that he actually fled from the room, and it was some days before he could be induced to re-enter it or resume work on the mighty polonaise.

Immediately following the great octave climax referred to is a subdued, vague, fearsome little passage in light running figures, totally foreign in movement, mood, and even key to the remainder of the work, for which we would be at a loss to account if unacquainted with the circumstances narrated, but which, with the light just thrown upon it, is readily understood. The author seems to have lost for the time the thread of the composition, to have drifted far from its martial mood and swinging rhythm, but after a period of groping indecision, through which we hear the trepidation and reluctant fascination with which he again approaches this monster of his own creation, with a sudden boldness of attack he regains the clew, resumes with energy the march movement, and the work sweeps to its close with even more than its original power and splendor.

Chopin: Impromptu in A Flat, Op. 29

Light, graceful, dainty, capricious, full of playful tenderness and delicate fancy is this little work, written for and presented as a wedding gift to one of his favorite pupils, La Comtesse de Lobau, to whom it is dedicated. The first movement embodies the joyous, hopeful, congratulatory spirit of the occasion, expressed with all that refined elegance and polished perfection of style of which Chopin was so preëminently the master, both in music and language. It is the most unqualifiedly optimistic strain from his pen with which I am acquainted.

The trio, in F minor, brings a touch of half-veiled sadness and irrepressible regret, as if called forth by the thought that their art work together is now to end. She has been for years one of his most talented, diligent, and interesting students. She is, like himself, a Polish exile in a foreign land, and their community of sympathies and sorrows, combined with her charming personality and congenial temperament, have tended to merge the relations of teacher and pupil into the closer bonds of a life-long friendship. He is naturally reluctant to lose her, but this mood of depression is soon subordinated to the thought that she has found the philosopher’s stone, the fabled blue flower of the German poets, the subtile, yet supreme panacea for all human ills—love. This idea is expressed in the last half of the trio as only Chopin could express it; and the work ends with a repetition of the first strain, brightly, happily, with a certain restful completeness of fulfilled desire in the reiterated closing chords.

Chopin: Fantasie Impromptu, Op. 66

Among other manuscripts found on Chopin’s writing-table after his death was the original of this composition, complete in every detail, but written across the back, in his own trembling hand, were the words, “To be destroyed when I am gone.”

It is difficult to account for this injunction, except upon the theory that he feared that both the form and the content of the work were too original, too subtle and complex, and too wholly unfamiliar to the musical world of his day, to be readily comprehended, and that it would either suffer from incorrect rendition or be condemned and ignored. So he preferred a quick death by fire for this child of his sad later days, to a slow death by mutilation or cruel neglect.

Fortunately the request was disregarded by his friends. The work was published and has become one of his most beloved, as it is one of his most faultlessly beautiful compositions. The peculiarity of form referred to is familiar to all who have attempted the study of this impromptu. The whole first movement, consisting of a continuous rapid figure of four notes in the right hand against three in the left, is one of the most unusual and difficult musical problems to solve satisfactorily, and only to be mastered by long and special practice—a case, as I have often said, where it is well to remember the biblical injunction, “let not thy right hand know what thy left hand doeth.” But when smoothly played, it produces just that sinuous, interwoven, flowing effect which the composer desired, and which could not have been obtained, in such perfection, in any other way.

The content of this composition, like that of many of Chopin’s smaller works, is purely emotional, like a strictly lyric poem, by his literary counterpart Tennyson, for instance; it is a wholly subjective expression of a mental state, an emotional condition, not of any scene or any action. It touches the minor key and sounds the plaintive harmonies to which his heart-strings were tuned and vibrating at the time when it was written. It voices a soft summer twilight mood, half sad, half tender, full of vague regrets, of indefinite longings and aspirations, of fluttering hope, never destined to be realized, and bright fleeting memories that rise and pass, dimmed by intervening clouds of sorrow and disappointment, like the shifting forms and hues of a kaleidoscope seen through a misty glass, or the luminous phantoms of dead joys and shadowy suggestions of the “might have been,” against the gray background of a sad present and an uncertain, promiseless future. It is a strange, delicately complex mood, a mood of life’s sunset hour, colored by the pathetic glories of the dying day, and the depressing, yet tranquilizing shadows of the coming night—a mood well-nigh impossible to express, but perfectly embodied in the music.

The following simple little verses, in which, as will be seen, has been made a somewhat free use of the suggestive symbolism of nature, may serve to illustrate, though by no means to the writer’s satisfaction, his conception of the artistic significance of this composition:

THE FANTASIE IMPROMPTU.

The sigh of June through the swaying trees,
The scent of the rose, new blown, on the breeze,
The sound of waves on a distant strand,
The shadows falling on sea and land;
All these are found
In this stream of sound,
This murmuring, mystical, minor strain.

And stars that glimmer in misty skies,
Like tears that shimmer in sorrowing eyes,
And the throb of a heart that beats in tune
With tender regrets of a happier June,
When life was new
And love was true,
And the soul was a stranger to sorrow and pain.

Chopin: Tarantelle, A Flat, Op. 43

Brilliant, effective, and not excessively difficult though it be, this admirably constructed and thoroughly characteristic _tarantelle_ in A flat is but little played; perhaps because it appeals less to the love of the “true Chopinism of Chopin” than most of his compositions, as being out of the recognized Chopin vein, deficient in the special melodic and emotional elements usually distinguishing his works. Nevertheless, considered objectively as a tarantelle, from the standpoint, not of Chopinism, but of what the true tarantelle should be, it is one of the best ever written,—hence one of his masterpieces,—and furnishes another proof of the almost infinite versatility of his creative power, both in style and in mood.

The origin of the tarantelle, as a musical form, is interesting and must be considered in judging the real merit of this or any similar work. The name is derived from that of the tarantula, that venomous denizen of southern climes, of the spider species, whose bite is usually fatal. There is a generally prevalent belief among the peasants of both Spain and Italy, a belief founded, no doubt, upon centuries of experience, that there is but one reliable cure for this poison, and one which Nature herself prescribes and imperatively demands—that of violent and protracted bodily exercise, and the consequent excessively profuse perspiration, enabling the system to throw off the poison through the pores. The idea has the same pathological base as the ancient Arabic cure for hydrophobia, recently revived with great success in this day of resurrection of buried wisdom—an extremely hot and long-continued steam bath.

It is claimed that the victim of the tarantula is seized by a delirious desire, an uncontrollable madness for dancing, which, if fully gratified, in fact encouraged and stimulated to the utmost, may save his life by means of the prosaic but practical process above suggested. So his friends assemble in haste, form a circle on the village green or plaza, strike up the wildest, most furiously rapid and exciting music possible, on any instrument that may be at hand, preferably the mandolin and tambourine, as the most rhythmic and inspiring, and take turns dancing with him, until each is exhausted and gives place to the next, and until the victim recovers or dies of fatigue. The faster the tempo, the more intoxicating the music, the better the purpose will be served, and the greater the hope of a successful cure.

From this crude and primitive germ the modern musical art form, known and used all over the world, has gradually developed, retaining, of course, as must every characteristic dance form, the spirit and fundamental element of the situation and circumstances which gave it birth.

The true tarantelle may be either in a major or minor key, the latter being most common; but it must be wild, stirring, exceedingly rapid, with a strong rhythmic swing and a certain dash and go, irresistibly suggesting the fever of the dance at its most delirious ecstasy. It is always written in six-eight time, which is somewhat singular, as it has none of the usual rhythmic peculiarities of that measure, but invariably produces the impression of twelve-eight, or, perhaps still more strongly, that of four-four with the beats divided into triplets. In fact, this is generally the best method of counting it for the pupil. It should contain no harmonic or technical complexities to distract the attention of either player or listener from the regular rhythmic swing and form and movement of the dance; and the melodic trio, occasionally introduced by some composers, is always an incongruous artistic absurdity, wholly out of place.

Though the musical form is common property of all composers in all lands, the actual dance, as such, is specially identified with southern Spain and Italy, and is rarely used elsewhere. To the tourist one of the most unique and vividly interesting episodes of his sojourn in these localities is the performance of the tarantelle by one of the trained dancing girls, which may be witnessed almost any evening, given with all the dash and verve of the southern temperament, a perfect embodiment of grace and fire and dance frenzy.

This tarantelle by Chopin possesses all the essential characteristics in a high degree, with not a single lapse or irrelevant digression in mood, in form, even in the details of accompaniment. It may be taken as a model of the true tarantelle, spirited, well sustained throughout, and eminently playable.

Chopin: Berceuse, Op. 57

The Chopin Berceuse (which is the French word for cradle-song) is a most unique as well as most ideally beautiful composition, standing alone in all piano literature, as regards its form and harmonic structure, the only one of its species. It is beyond all question or comparison, the finest cradle-song ever written for the piano, an exceptionally perfect example of that rare blending of spontaneous genius and mechanical ingenuity, for which Chopin was so preëminent, resulting in a work matchless in its originality, its suggestive realism, its delicacy of finish, and its poetic content. An organ point on D flat, which is its only bass note, sustained throughout the entire composition, and a couplet of the simplest chords, the tonic and dominant seventh, alternating back and forth in a swinging, rocking motion, form the accompaniment, continued practically without change, from first measure to last, portraying naturally, easily, yet unmistakably, the soothing monotony of the rockaby movement. The left hand may be said to rock the cradle throughout the whole composition, while in the soft, continually intertwining melody in the right hand, like an endless, infolding circle of maternal love, we find the lullaby song of the mother, sung as she sits there in the hush of the twilight, rocking her little one to sleep.

Around and over this melody Chopin has flung, with his own inimitable delicacy, a silver lace-work of embellishment, falling soft and light as the moonlight spray from fountains in fairyland, as through the idealizing summer haze, half veiling a distant landscape, we seem to catch dim glimpses of the dream-pictures, the fleeting fancies, the changing phantasmagoria of prophetic visions, that drift through the brain of the mother as she sits there in the gathering dusk, waiting for the little eyes to be tightly closed, and wondering vaguely to herself on what scenes they will open in the far future years.

Slower and gentler grows the motion of the cradle, softer and lower the lullaby song, further and further the dream pictures drift into the shadows, until at last the wings of slumber are folded about the little one. Silence reigns. The mother’s daily task of loving ministry is ended and she, too, may rest. The two lingering closing chords, soft and slow, suggest the moment when she rises from the cradle and spreads her hands in silent benediction over the sleeping child.

Infinite tenderness and delicacy are needed for the interpretation of this composition; a tone like violet velvet, and a light, fluent finger technic, to which its really extreme difficulties seem like dainty play.

Chopin: Scherzo in B Flat Minor, Op. 31

A very familiar, yet always fresh and intensely interesting composition is this scherzo. The name is an Italian word signifying a jest, and we find in musical nomenclature a number of derivatives from it, as _scherzino_ (little jest) and _scherzando_ (jestingly, playfully). The term is used by most composers to designate compositions that are bright, playful, humorous in character. Nearly all the leading composers have written more or less in this vein. Mendelssohn particularly excelled in it, and even serious old Beethoven became quite jocose at times in the scherzo movements of his symphonies; though it always reminds one of the sportive dancing of an elephant.

Chopin applied the name to four of his greatest, most intense and impassioned works, seemingly without the smallest reason or relevancy. Why, no one can even surmise, unless it may have been in a mood of sardonic perversity, of sarcastic bitterness, purposely to mislead the public as to the real artistic intention and significance of the music, and see if they would have sufficient perception to discover it for themselves. It is a sad commentary on the insight of many of our so-called musicians, that they have not done so even to this day, and persist in playing the Chopin scherzi jestingly and as trivially as possible, which may be the subtle, covert jest which Chopin intended. Who knows? In reality these four works, especially the first three of them, are among his greatest and grandest. They are broad, heroic, seriously and profoundly emotional productions, marking the high-water line of his creative power; full of the strength and virile energy which those acquainted only with his nocturnes and waltzes are inclined to deny him altogether, but in which he far exceeds all other composers, past or present, with the possible exception of Beethoven and Wagner. Jests only in name, or, if in fact, then in the sense of bitterest satire, aimed at the world and at life, jests written in the heart’s blood of the composer; written when Poland, his beloved native land, lay in her death agony, when three great European powers had combined to write the word _finis_ in Polish blood and tears, across the last page of her history. What wonder that the music throbs with intense but conflicting emotions—fiery indignation, fierce defiance, bitter scorn, and, in the next breath, pitiful tenderness for the wronged and the suffering, heart-breaking sorrow for the unavailing heroism and wasted lives of his countrymen!

All these moods will be found in swift and sharply contrasting succession in all the four scherzi, but notably in the one in B flat minor, which I regard as the best of the four. The seeming incongruity between its name and its musical content, its ostensible and its real significance, always recalls to me famous lines:

“The lip that’s first to wing the jest
Is first to breathe the secret sigh;
The laugh that rings with keenest zest
But chokes the flood-gates of the eye.”

Chopin: Prelude (D Flat Major), Op. 28, No. 15

A unique position in pianoforte literature is occupied by these Preludes, Op. 28. They derive their name rather from their form than from their musical import. Like the usual preludes to songs, or more extended musical works, they are short, fragmentary tone sketches rather than complete pictures; each consisting, as a rule, of a single, simple movement, and embodying but a single concrete idea, and seeming to imply by its brevity and its suggestive rather than fully descriptive character, that a more elaborately developed composition is to follow, to which this has been but an introduction and in which the idea, here merely outlined, will receive more exhaustive treatment. In reality, however, each of these preludes is complete in itself; an exquisite musical vignette containing, like some dainty vial of hand-cut Venetian glass, the distilled essence of dead flowers of memory and experience from Chopin’s past; particularly of scenes, episodes, and emotional impressions of his romantic life on the island of Majorca. Just as a painter might have sketched, with hasty but truthfully graphic pencil, on the pages of his portfolio, the fleeting impressions produced upon his senses and imagination by this novel, picturesque environment, so the composer has preserved in these bits of offhand but vivid tone painting, glimpses into his daily life, his moods and experiences during that winter of 1838-39.

Banished by his physicians to this Mediterranean isle, in the hope of benefit to his fast failing health, and refused shelter in any hotel or private residence, on account of the there prevalent belief that consumption was contagious, Chopin and the little party of devoted friends who accompanied him (most notable among whom was the famous French novelist, George Sand) were forced to improvise a temporary abode in the semi-habitable wing of an old ruined convent, which had been abandoned by the monks. It was picturesquely situated on a rocky promontory, commanding a view, on the one side, of the open sea, dotted with the countless white sails of Mediterranean commerce; on the other, of the sheltered bay, the village beyond, and the lofty volcanic mountains in the background. Here they spent the winter, and here nearly all of the preludes, with many others of Chopin’s most poetic smaller works, originated—artistic crystallizations of passing impressions and experiences, concerning which and the life in which they originated, George Sand writes: “While staying here he composed some short but very beautiful pieces which he modestly entitled preludes. They were real masterpieces. Some of them create such vivid impressions that the shades of the dead monks seem to rise and pass before the hearer in solemn and gloomy funeral pomp. Others are full of charm and melancholy, glowing with the sparkling fire of enthusiasm, breathing with the hope of restored health. The laughter of the children at play, the distant strains of the guitar, the twitter of birds on the damp branches, would call forth from his soul melodies of indescribable sweetness and grace. But many also are so full of gloom and sadness that, in spite of the pleasure they afford, the listener is filled with pain. Some of his later tone-poems bring before us a sparkling crystal stream reflecting the sunbeams. Chopin’s quieter compositions remind us of the song of the lark as it lightly soars into the ether, or the gentle gliding of the swan over the smooth mirror of the waters; they seem filled with the holy calm of nature. When Chopin was in a despondent mood, the piercing cry of the hungry eagle among the crags of Majorca, the mournful wailing of the storm, and the stern immovability of the snow-clad heights, would awaken gloomy fancies in his soul. Then again, the perfume of the orange blossoms, the vine bending to the earth beneath its rich burden, the peasant singing his Moorish songs in the fields, would fill him with delight.”

The Prelude in D flat, No. 15, which I select as one of the most beautiful and characteristic of these sketches, embodies a strange day dream of the composer in which, as he says, “vision and reality were indistinguishably blended.”

One bright, late autumn morning the little party of friends had taken advantage of the weather, and of the fact that Chopin seemed in unusually good health and spirits, to make a long-talked-of excursion to the neighboring village, promising to return before sunset. During their absence a sudden tropical tempest of terrific severity swept the island. The wind blew a hurricane, the rain descended in floods, the streams rose, bridges and roadways were destroyed, and it was only with extreme difficulty and considerable danger that they succeeded in reaching the convent about midnight, having spent six hours in traversing the last mile and a half of the distance. They found Chopin in a state bordering on delirium. The physical effect of the storm on his shattered nerves, combined with his own depression and his keen anxiety for them, had combined to work his sensitive, and at that time morbid, temperament up to a state of feverish excitement, in which the normal barriers between perception and hallucination had well-nigh vanished. He told them afterward that he had been a prey to a gruesome vision of which this prelude is the musical portrayal.

He fancied that he lay dead at the bottom of the sea; that near him sat a beautiful siren singing in exquisitely sweet and tender strains, a song of his own life and love and sorrow. But though her voice was soothing in its dreamy pathos, and though he felt oppressed by a crushing languor and fatigue and longed for rest, he could not lose consciousness, because tormented by the regular, relentlessly monotonous fall of great drops upon his heart. As the drops continued increasing steadily in weight and in importunate demand upon his attention, as if burdened with some great and sad significance which he must recognize, he became aware that they were the tears of his friends on earth whom he had loved and lost. With this knowledge, vivid memory and poignant pain awoke together, and his anguish grew to an overpowering climax of intensity. Then, nature’s limit being reached, the force of his tempest of grief finally exhausted itself, and he sank gradually into a state of dull, despairing lethargy, and at last into welcome unconsciousness, the last sound in his ears being the soothing strains of the siren, and his last sensation the now faint and feeble, but still regular falling of his friends’ tears upon his heart.

This composition should be conceived and executed so as to render, to the full, its intensely emotional character. The first theme in D flat major, with its sweetly languorous tone, should be given quite slowly, with pressure touch, producing a penetrating, but not loud, singing quality of tone, while the reiterated A flat in the accompaniment, which, throughout the whole work suggests the falling drops, must be at first vaguely hinted rather than distinctly struck. The middle part in chords should be commenced very softly with a whispering, mysterious tone, affecting the hearer like the first shadow of an approaching thunder cloud, or the presentiment of coming woe. Then the power should steadily increase—gradually, relentlessly, like the stealthy, irresistible rising of the dark cold tide about some chained victim in an ocean cave, where the light of day has never penetrated; mounting steadily—not rapidly—to the overwhelming climax of the reiterated octave B in the right hand.

In the repetition of this passage the same effect should be produced, with the climax still more intensified. Then let the power as gradually decrease, till at the return of the siren’s song it has sunk into pianissimo and the closing measure should fade away into silence, like the echo of dream bells.

I have dwelt at some length upon this prelude because it is the best known of the set; the most complete and, generally speaking, the most effective; and because, in connection with the suggestive quotation from George Sand, it will serve as a helpful illustration to the student in arriving at an intelligent comprehension of the others. But a few words in further elucidation of some of them may be in place.

The first, in somber, sonorous chords, expresses Chopin’s initial impressions of the stately, but half-ruined monastery in which he and his little party had found refuge, and the solemn thoughts called up by its decaying grandeur, its silent loneliness, its vast, gloomy, memory-haunted halls and cloisters.

The third represents an evening scene, with the setting sun kindling to crimson and gold the spires and picturesque whitewashed cottages of the village of Majorca, a mile away across the little bay, while the gentle breeze, like the sigh of departing day, brings the sound of silvery bells from the little village church ringing the vesper chimes.

The fifth and sixth embody the same mood, in an almost identically similar setting. They may be effectively combined into one picture of a dark, depressing, late autumnal day; a day of gray skies and leaden sea; of heavy, windless calm, the calm of exhaustion and utter weariness, with the low, sad rain dripping monotonously upon the roof like the tears of the gods for a dying world. In one, the melody expressing the element of human sorrow is in the soprano, plaintively, touchingly, sweetly pathetic. In the other, it is placed in the lower register of Chopin’s favorite orchestral instrument, the ’cello, which it reproduces, throbbing with a more passionate intensity, a more poignant pain. But in general character and treatment the two belong together.

No. 8 tells of the gay carol of the birds at dawn, floating in at the open windows of Chopin’s chamber. No. 17 is a rustic dance of the Majorcan peasants. No. 24, the last, is a graphic description of a tropical storm with the flash of lightning and the ominous roll of the thunder literally portrayed.

Space does not permit of a detailed analysis of all the numbers, but each has its special character and suggestive import, and is a picture of some episode or mood during that winter’s sojourn on Majorca.

Chopin: Waltz, A Flat, Op. 42

Every dance, the waltz included, is based upon and adapted to some particular dance movement. All its effects, whether of melody, harmony, rhythm, or embellishment, are carefully calculated by the composer to meet the requirements of this special movement, to conform to and express its general character and be governed by its usual rate of speed. Each of these dance movements embodies in itself some peculiar quality or characteristic, such as stately grace in the minuet, martial pomp in the polonaise, impetuous vivacity in the galop, which the music must indicate and supplement. The Chopin waltzes are no exception to this rule. They are distinctly and preëminently waltzes; and though of course not for actual dance purposes, they are intended as idealized tone-pictures of the waltz, and of ball-room scenes and experiences.

The one in question, Op. 42 in A flat, is planned upon a broader scale, contains more variety, and taxes more thoroughly the resources of the accomplished pianist than any other work of Chopin in this vein. Its tender, floating melodies, bright, delicate passage work, and swinging, swaying rhythms are replete with all that eloquent, gliding grace, that arch coquetry, that passionate warmth of mood, which we so invariably associate with the festive scenes,

“Where youth and pleasure meet
To chase the glowing hours with flying feet.”

Lights sparkle, delicate draperies are afloat, like perfumed clouds, upon the languid air, bright eyes scintillate with mirth or soften with emotion, and

“All goes merry as a marriage bell.”

And yet throughout all there runs a half-hidden undertone that tells of deeper, sterner thought and far intenser feeling; that tells of dark forebodings, of distant alarms, of sudden trumpet calls; so that the work in its entirety cannot but seem to us the counterpart in music of that familiar, almost hackneyed, but immortal word-picture of Byron, describing the great ball on the eve of the battle of Waterloo, to whose thunderous music the fate of nations was reversed, like the steps of the dancers in a ball-room, and France changed monarchs as a lady shifts her partners.

The somber trio strain, about the middle of the composition, suggests to us “Brunswick’s fated chieftain,” who sat apart and watched the dancers and listened to the revelry with “Death’s prophetic ear.” Later, where the rhythmic pulsation of the waltz is abruptly and violently interrupted in the midst of its flowing cadences, by a strong emphasized G natural F, repeated twice by both hands in unison, we are forcibly reminded of the line—

“But hush! hark! a deep sound strikes like a rising knell!”

After a moment of consternation and suspense, the waltz movement proceeds, appearing almost flippant by contrast, and seeming to say, like the verse which follows,

“On with the dance, let joy be unconfined!”

Lastly, the breathless, impetuous finale indicates the “hurrying to and fro,” the “mounting in hot haste,” and “marshalling in arms,” with which the dance broke up at midnight, as cavaliers rushed from the ball-room to the battlefield. Both Chopin, the greatest musician of Poland, and Mickiewicz, her greatest poet, were powerfully impressed by the personality and poetry of Lord Byron, and there is no doubt that our composer had the stanzas of the contemporaneous English writer in mind in the creation of this work.

The first duty of the performer in rendering this composition should be to suggest irresistibly to the listeners both the mood and movement of the waltz, and to force them to feel, as far as may be, the elastic swing of the rhythm and the warm, voluptuous mood of the music. The tone quality employed should constantly change to suit the contrasting colors of the different strains; now warmly lyric, now sparkling and vibrant, at times deeply somber, and again strikingly dramatic and declamatory.

As to tempo, I would caution the player against an extreme rate of speed. Remember that the usual waltz step is, approximately at least, our guide in choosing the proper movement. I am aware that many pianists, of the greatest skill and reputation, are guilty of the cardinal error of playing one of these beautiful poetic little compositions of Chopin’s at _prestissimo_ tempo, so as to display their phenomenal finger dexterity at the expense of all musical and artistic truth; so fast, indeed, that even if the notes were all struck with accuracy, which is by no means always the case, its graceful rhythmic swing and all its melodic and harmonic effects are utterly lost, leaving nothing but an incoherent, formless, purposeless whirlwind of tone, as dry and unlovely as the eddies of dust in a September gale, suggesting neither the mood nor movement of a waltz.

Chopin’s Nocturnes

In derivation and general significance the term nocturne coincides with our English word nocturnal. It is music appertaining to the night, a night piece, suited to and expressing its usually quiet, dreamful, pensive mood, and frequently portraying some nocturnal scene or episode. The name nocturne was originally used as synonymous with that of serenade, and they were virtually identical in character. But in later times it has come to have a much broader application, and to-day, though every serenade is of course a nocturne, all nocturnes are by no means serenades.

The serenade is a real or imaginary song of love, and presupposes a fair listener at a lattice window and a lover singing beneath the stars, to the accompaniment of a harp, mandolin, or guitar. The nocturne may legitimately embody any phase of human emotion or experience, or any aspect of inanimate nature, which can rationally be conceived of as appropriately emanating from or environed by nocturnal conditions.

It must not be supposed that this vein of composition was Chopin’s only or even his most important field of activity. To judge him exclusively by his nocturnes and waltzes is precisely like judging Shakespeare solely by his sonnets. But it was a vein in which, owing to his peculiarly poetic temperament and fertile imagination, he far excelled all other writers, no less in the quality than in the number and variety of his creations.

Chopin: Nocturne in E Flat, Op. 9, No. 2

This perhaps is the easiest and certainly the best known of Chopin’s nocturnes. Scarcely a student but has played it at one time or another. In fact, it has been worn well-nigh to shreds; yet still retains its simple, tender charm, if approached in the proper spirit. It is replete with melodic beauty and warm harmonic coloring, and is an excellent study in tone-production and shading, as well as a model of symmetrical form. It was one of his early works, and the glow of first youth still lingers about it, in spite of its over-familiarity and much abuse. As a teaching-piece it sometimes surprises the weary teacher with a waft of unexpected freshness, like the fleeting odor from an old and much-used school-book in which violets have been pressed.