Chapter V: An "open Sesame" to Chopin

The goal of all pianists is Chopin. As the list of one hundred favorite compositions for the pianola includes no less than twenty-six works by this composer, he would seem to be the goal of the pianolist as well.

Chopin now is recognized universally as one of the great composers. But during his lifetime he was much criticised, called morbid and effeminate and a composer of small ideas because he wrote almost entirely in the smaller forms. As if size had anything to do with the beauty of a work. In every art the best work of each great man should be ranked with the best of all other great men. Some geniuses express themselves on a larger, but not necessarily on a greater scale, than others. In poetry, for example, Poe's "Raven" is not to be ranked below Milton's "Paradise Lost" because shorter; nor in music need a Chopin ballad be placed below a Beethoven symphony because not so extended as the latter. Every genius, however, must expect to be condemned until Time silences criticism of his work. For ever since men began to create rare and beautiful things, there have been other men who, having failed therein, have found a bitter consolation in sitting in crabbed and ill-tempered judgment upon their successful betters.

Another point raised against Chopin was, that practically he confined himself to composing for pianoforte. A sufficient answer to this is, that his music made the pianoforte what it is. For he was the first composer who appreciated the genius of the instrument, discovered its latent tone colors and developed its resources to their full capacity for artistic beauty and expression. Chopin was the first to make the pianoforte both shimmer and sing. Rubinstein said that the art of music could go no further than Chopin and called him the pianoforte bard, rhapsodist, mind and soul. "How he wrote for it I do not know, but only an entire passing over of one into the other could call such music into life." George Sand (Mme. Dudevant) the famous French authoress with whom Chopin had a love affair that was one of the tragedies of his life, said that "he made the instrument speak the language of the infinite. He did not need the great material methods of the orchestra to find expression for his genius. Neither saxophone nor ophicleide was necessary for him to fill the soul with awe. Without church organ or human voice he inspired faith and enthusiasm."

Although Chopin figures on almost every pianoforte recital program the average amateur has comparatively slight knowledge of the range of his genius. Only the player able to go over his works in person can acquire such knowledge, and the number of amateurs possessed of sufficient technique to play Chopin's music is very small. "But to-day," writes Mr. Ashton Johnson in his "Hand-Book to Chopin's Works," "owing to the invention of the pianola and the fact that all Chopin's works, including even the least important of the posthumous compositions, are now available for that instrument, the whole domain of his music is, for the first time, open to all. Those who wish may pass the portal hitherto guarded by the dragon of technique and roam at will in his entrancing music land."

Chopin was a native of Poland. He was born near Warsaw in 1810. When the Poles lost their country it was as if their grief and the melancholy of their exile found expression through Chopin's music. He became the musical poet of an exiled race. The most significant years of his life he spent in Paris surrounded by the aristocracy of his own country, who yet had no country, and by the aristocrats of art. Liszt, Heine, Meyerbeer, Bellini and other famous men, as well as famous women, were his personal friends.

The affair with George Sand left on his music the imprint of sorrow, poignant grief, and a pathos reaching down into the depths of tragedy. Different in character was his idealization of the beautiful Countess Delphine Potocka. The episode is fully set forth in my "Loves of the Great Composers." One of Chopin's favorite musical amusements, when a guest in the house of intimate friends, was to play on the pianoforte "musical portraits" of the company. One evening in the salon of Delphine's mother, he played the portraits of the two daughters of the house. When it came to Delphine he gently drew her light shawl from her shoulders, and then played through it, his fingers, with every tone they produced, coming in touch with the gossamer like fabric, still warmed and hallowed for him from its contact with her. It was Delphine who soothed his last hours by singing for him as he lay upon his death bed.

She was one of the very few people to whom he dedicated more than one of his works. Both his second concerto (in F minor, Op. 21) and his most familiar waltz, the Op. 64, No. 1, bear her name. Chopin as a pianist, showed decided preference for the slow movement of the concerto, a movement which is of almost ideal perfection, "now radiant with light and anon full of tender pathos," to quote from Liszt. It is indeed, an exquisite idyll, beautifully melodious and replete with delicate ornamentation. Because of its beauty and its association with Delphine, I would suggest that the pianolist begin with this larghetto. There is another reason for the suggestion. In its ornamentation it illustrates to perfection that characteristic of Chopin's music known as the "tempo rubato." Much of Chopin's music has in addition to inspired melody, an iridescence as if produced by cascades of jewels. These are ornamental notes which yet are not ornamental in the limited meaning of the word; for in spite of all their light and shade and their play of changeable colors, they form part of the great undercurrent of melody. There are various technical definitions of tempo rubato, but Liszt described it poetically and yet exactly when he said, "You see that tree? Its leaves move to and fro in the wind and follow the gentlest motion of the air; but its trunk stands there immovable in its form." Or the effect might be compared with the myriad shafts from the facets of a jewel, vibrating brilliance in all directions, while the jewel itself remains immovable, the center of its own rays. These effects readily are discoverable in the larghetto of the Potocka concerto.

The pianolist should then take up the valses of Chopin beginning with Op. 64, No. 1, like the concerto, dedicated to Delphine. This is the most familiar of all the Chopin waltzes, so familiar that it frequently is referred to in a derogatory way as hackneyed. Yet, when properly played, it is one of the most effective of his compositions in this genre. Of the Chopin waltzes in general, it should first be said that they are not dance-tunes but expressions, alternately brilliant, charming and sad, of the intimacy of the ballroom, and that they possess an innate grace which no other composer has been able to impart to the form. They have been characterized as salon music of the noblest kind and were well described by Schumann when he said that if they were played for dances, half the ladies present should be countesses--which exactly hits off the distinguished quality of these valses. To play them is like looking at a dance through a fairy lens; they seem like improvizations of a musician during a dance and to reflect the thoughts and feelings that arise as he looks on, playing the waltz rhythm with the left hand, while the melody and the ornamental note groups indicate his fancy--love, a jealous plaint, joy, ecstasy and the tender whisperings of enamored couples as they glide past.

"Gliding" is the word that has been applied to the smooth brilliance of the Potocka valse. There runs a story regarding this composition that George Sand had a little dog that used to chase its own tail around in a circle, and that one evening, she said to Chopin, "If I had your talent, I would improvise a valse for that dog," whereupon the composer promptly seated himself at the pianoforte and dashed off this fascinating little improvisation. It is Parisian in its grace and coquetry and ends with a rapid run, the last note of which is like the rhythmic tap of the foot with which a dainty ballet dancer might conclude a lightly executed _pas_.

In striking contrast to this is the "Valse," Op. 34, No. 2. This is in a minor key and instead of representing the abandon of the dance, it seems rather to depict a melancholy lover allowing his eyes to travel slowly around the ballroom in a futile search of his heart's desire. The prevailing tone of the composition rather is that of an elegy--the burial of fond hopes. Stephen Heller, pianist and composer, tells of meeting Chopin in the store of a Paris music publisher. Heller had come in to order all the valses. Thereupon Chopin asked him which he liked best, and when Heller mentioned this sad one in slow time, Chopin exclaimed, "I am glad you like that one, for it also is my favorite," and he invited Heller to have luncheon with him.

Perhaps the most brilliant and extended of the valses is Op. 42. In this Chopin imposes upon the triple waltz time, a melody that is in double time--that is, while you count "one, two, three" for the accompaniment, "one, two" will suffice for the melody above it. The effect of this device has been described as indicative in this waltz of the loving, nestling and tender embracing of the dancing couples. It is followed in the music by sweeping motions free and graceful like those of birds. The prolonged trill with which the piece begins, seems to summon the dancers to the ballroom, while the waltz itself, is an intermingling of coquetry, hesitation and avowal, with a closing passage that is like an echo of the evening's events.

These three waltzes, if played in the order in which I have mentioned them, make a capital valse suite, and another could be made by taking in the following order, the dashing "Posthumous Waltz" in E minor, the C minor, Op. 64, No. 2, with its veiled, sad beauty; and the brilliant Op. 34, No. 1.

In his "Nocturnes" those sombre poems of night, Chopin seems weaving his own shroud. But if, like Robert Louis Stevenson, Chopin loved the darkness and its melancholy murmuring, and if there was a touch of morbidness in his nature, yet, like Stevenson, he had in him a strain of chivalry. Mr. Huneker, therefore, in his book on Chopin, is quite right when he says of the nocturnes that if they were played with more vigor, a quickening of the time pulse and a less languishing touch, they would be rescued from a surplus of lush sentiment.

Undoubtedly, the most popular of the nocturnes is the one in E flat, Op. 9, No. 2. In fact it is so popular that when any one is asked to play "Chopin's Nocturne," this one is meant. Because it is popular, it is sneered at by some critics, but it possesses a lyric beauty quite its own and "sometimes surprises even 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." A sustained love song, it ends with a cadence that should be played with a rippling delicacy suggestive of moonlight on a lake in the garden of an old chateau.

There are nocturnes of Chopin's composed on a larger scale than the Opus 37, No. 2, but to my taste there is none more beautiful. It bears a striking resemblance to a passage in George Sand's diary describing a voyage with Chopin to the island of Majorca. "The night was warm and dark, illumined only by an extraordinary phosphorescence in the wake of the ship; everybody was asleep on board except the steersman, who, in order to keep himself awake, sang all night, but in a voice so soft and so subdued that one might have thought he feared to arouse the men of the watch. We did not weary of listening to him, for his singing was of the strangest kind. He observed a rhythm and modulation totally different from those we are accustomed to, and seemed to allow his voice to go at random, like the smoke of the vessel carried away and swayed by the breeze. It was a reverie rather than a song, a kind of careless floating of the voice, with which the mind had little to do, but which kept time with the swaying of the ship and the faint lapping of the dark water, and resembled a vague improvization restrained, nevertheless, by sweet and monotonous forms."

How suggestive this is of the nocturne! The undulating accompaniment, the scintillation of the treble, suggests the gliding, gently rocking motion of the vessel and the phosphorescence in its wake; while the second theme of the nocturne would, even without any suggestion from the passage in George Sand's diary, be taken for a barcarolle, a reverie sung at night, now rising, now dying away, but with the pulse of a musical poet throbbing through every note--the most beautiful melody, I think, Chopin ever wrote.

And speaking of this melody as an improvization, reminds me of those other improvizations by Chopin, the "Impromptus," in which he has displayed his genius as convincingly as in any of his other works. They are fresh and untrammeled in their development, and as full of sunlight as the nocturnes are of darkness. The one in A flat major was dedicated to the Countess de Loban as a wedding present, and was a farewell to her as a pupil. Brilliant, joyous and iridescent in its opening and closing sections, that in the middle voices vague and tender regret. The composition sometimes is spoken of as the "Trilby" impromptu. It is the one Du Maurier made Trilby sing under the hypnotic influence of Svengali.

Had Chopin's directions for the destruction of certain of his manuscripts after his death been carried out, the world would be the poorer by the loss of his "Fantaisie Impromptu," published as Op. 66. It is difficult to understand why he should have wanted this work destroyed, since it produces a sinuous, interwoven, flowing effect, interrupted by a middle melody of much sentiment and beauty. It has been very well described by Mr. Perry in a brief poem entitled "The Fantaisie 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.

A reading of this poem conveys to the player the correct mood in which to interpret the impromptu.

By way of contrast I follow these careless raptures--careless only in their effect of spontaneity--with the famous "Marche Funèbre," the funeral march which forms the third movement of Chopin's sonata in B flat minor, Op. 35. This has been called the best funeral march ever written for the pianoforte. At Chopin's own funeral it was played scored for orchestra. In my opinion it is not only "the best funeral march ever written for the pianoforte," but the most intrinsically beautiful and sad funeral march ever composed. Its opening suggests the solemn tolling of great bells, the heavy march rhythm gives the effect of the slow procession of mourners; and the dirgelike music, soft and muffled at first, grows in power like the measured, inflexible rhythm of fate. Then it seems as if the mourners had arrived at the open grave, for the music voices a weeping melody, pure and tender and sweet; then the march rhythm makes itself heard again and the procession leaves the grave, the music dying away in the distance. This is the funeral march of a nation, of Chopin's own beloved Poland.

Chopin wrote two sets of twelve "Etudes." They gave an entirely new significance to the term. For the Chopin etudes not only are supreme as studies. They are supreme as music as well. Before they were published the usual musical study was something very dry and set. How different these superb compositions are from studies such as are comprised in Czerny's "School of Velocity," which make you feel like employing the "velocity" you have acquired to run away as quickly as possible from the "school," whereas the Chopin etudes are so full of melody and of the rarest and the most beautiful musical effects, that to play any one of them suffices to whet the appetite for the others. The pianolist might well go through the entire two sets of twelve. It would open up a new musical world to him. Here I can only point out three. Opus 10, No. 5, is the "Black Key" etude, so called because all the notes of the right hand are on black keys. This is a brilliant study with a very charming ending. Opus 25, No. 9, is the so called "Butterfly Wings" etude, a designation which expresses its general characteristic of lightness and grace, but fails to make allowance for the accent of passion in the rising and descending passage that occurs about the middle and which should be brought out when it is correctly interpreted--which usually it is not. The greatest of all the etudes is the "Revolutionary," Op. 10, No. 12. It was written by Chopin in 1831, when he heard the news that Warsaw had been taken by the Russians, and it expresses the tornado of emotion that swept over him when he realized that Poland was about to sink beneath the triple onslaught of Russia, Austria and Germany. This composition which, mind you, goes by the simple name of "study," is one of the most tremendous outbursts of wrath in music--a storm of the soul without even such lyric episodes as those which form islands of calm in the torrential last movement of Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata." Well may Mr. Huneker say that the end "rings out like the crack of creation. It is elemental."

This etude, certain of the "Polonaises," the "Scherzos," the "Ballades" and the "Fantaisie" in F minor, reveal a fire, passion and virile power that will surprise those who have formed their estimate of Chopin from the mournful nocturnes and brilliant waltzes. The so-called "Military Polonaise," Op. 40, No. 1, is so replete with the spirit of war that in the middle portion it is easy to hear the roll of drums and the clash of battle. It was of this polonaise Chopin said, "If I had the strength to play it as it should be played I would break all the strings of the pianoforte."

The most effective of the polonaises, his opus 53, also breathes forth martial ardor and defiance. It begins with a stirring call to arms, followed by the swinging measure of the polonaise proper with a melody that suggests soldiery on prancing steeds and with flashing sabres, defiling in review before battle. This is followed by a "trio" in which a rapid octave figure in the bass, beginning softly and growing louder and louder until it reaches a crashing climax, with strains like a bugle call ringing out above it, depicts a cavalry charge coming from the distance, drawing nearer and nearer and sweeping past with a mighty roar. There is a story that while Chopin was composing this polonaise, he was so affected when playing over the nearly completed work, that, seized by a peculiar hallucination, he saw the walls of the room open and, approaching from the outer night, a band of medieval Polish knights mounted and in armor, as if they had risen from their ancient graves and ridden on the clouds to appear in response to the summons of his music. The somewhat vague passage which follows the climax of the cavalry charge and leads back to the main subject possibly may be accounted for by this strange experience.

Unfortunately there is no opportunity here to take up the "Scherzos," so unlike the coquettish, bantering pieces of the same name by other composers, Chopin seemingly representing tragedy mocking itself, as any one playing the B flat minor "Scherzo," Op. 31, may hear for himself; the "Ballades," so eloquently narrative of love and adventure, the A flat major and the G minor being especially popular in the pianolist's repertory; and the "Fantaisie," in F minor, one of the greatest compositions for pianoforte. As for the "Mazurkas" and "Preludes," pieces that are among their composer's happiest creations, I can do no more than call the pianolist's attention to their existence and advise him not to neglect them.