Part 8

The _finale_, in presto movement, an impetuous sweep of gloomy, exultant harmonies, suggests the mood of a brave but sorely tried spirit, dominating distress, rising superior to disaster, and proudly triumphant in spite of seeming defeat. At the close, in form of a coda, a few measures of the first melody return, saddened, but still gentle, ending plaintively in the minor, as if to say, “There have been great wrong and suffering and bitterness, but now is peace.”

Unquestionably this work presents two radically opposing elements in sharpest contrast; the one, reposeful purity; the other, infuriate passion. Of this much we are sure in simply listening to the music, without searching for historical origin or collateral information. It is interesting to note Rubinstein’s words with regard to it, and to see how near his art instinct led him to the discovery of its realistic significance, presumably without the aid of any definite knowledge as to its actual origin. He writes of it:

“Is it possible that the interpreter does not feel the necessity of representing to his hearers a field flower caught by a gust of wind, a caressing of the flower by the wind, the resistance of the flower, the stormy struggle of the wind, the entreaty of the flower, which at last lies broken there? This may be paraphrased: the field flower, a rustic maiden; the wind, a knight.”

Let us now examine the substance at least of the poetic material from which Chopin derived the mood and suggestion of this musical work. Again it is a ballad upon a Lithuanian theme, from the pen of Mickiewicz. But this time it is a legendary and not a historical subject which is treated. The Polish ballad is entitled “The Switez Lake,” and its substance is here given in a somewhat abbreviated and simplified form:

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.