Part 9

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.