Part 10

We now trench upon a sacred and not often explored territory of the Chopin music. The scherzo in E flat minor is one of the most powerful of the six. To play it effectively one needs breadth of style, a heroic spirit and fingers and wrists of steel. The tremendous crescendo in one bar taxes the strength of most pianists. The composition has something elemental about it. It is true storm music, and the whistling of the wind in the chromatic successions of chords of the sixth has an eerie effect on one’s nerves. None of the Chopin scherzi stir me as this one. There is menacing gloom in the second bar, and the rush and grandeur of the movement take my breath away. The blissful song in G flat is not uninterrupted bliss. There is a threatening undercurrent, as if the howling tempest might return; it does, and how originally Chopin manages this! The descending octaves, which seem to carry us to the mouth of hell, are burst in upon by the first stormy theme, and again we are madly projected through space, a victim of the elements. Defiance, satanic pride, the majesty of the microcosm, a spiritual challenge to fate are all here. The lulling, lovely lines of the piu lento steal in again and the curtain rings down on a great picture of passion and pain.

Chopin’s first scherzo in B minor bears an early opus number. It is his twentieth work--the most sombre, yet the most shrill and hysterical of the scherzi. It is in his most ironic, yet most reckless, vein; Chopin throwing himself to the very winds of remorse. A terrible mood, a Manfred mood, a torturing mood. A soul-shriek from the first chord to the last, with one dream inclosed within its gates of brass, it reminds one of the struggles of an imprisoned soul beating with wounded palms its prison door. It is the unhappiest, the most riotous of Chopin’s works and suffers from prolixity. Its keynote is too tense for the da capos marked by the composer, and unsuited for latter-day taste. Some virtuosi play this scherzo without the repeats, and the piece gains greatly. It is so harsh, so drastic, that the wondrous melody in B, with its lapping, lilting tenths--“the sweet slumber of the moonlight on the hills”--after the tragic strain, comes like a benediction. This scherzo has almost had a special message. Chopin, like Robert Louis Stevenson, was afflicted with weak health, was slender of frame, but his spirit was brave as the lion’s. Both men could write terrible things, even though they could not compass them. The sense of impotence, of stifled longings, fills this scherzo with inarticulate moans and bewailings. What a life tragedy is the opus 20!

The arabesque-like figure after the eight bar introduction--muted bars some of them, as was Chopin’s wont--has a certain spiritual likeness to the principal figure in the C sharp minor fantaisie-impromptu. But instead of the ductile triplets, as in the bass of the impromptu, we divide the figure in the scherzo between the two hands, and the harshness of the mood is emphasized by the anticipatory chord in the left hand. The vitality of the first page of this scherzo is marvellous. The questioning chords at the close of the section are as imaginative as any passages Chopin ever wrote. The half notes E and the up-leaping appogiatura are also evidences of his originality in minor details. These occur just before the modulation into the lyric theme in B and with a slight change just at the dash into the coda. The second section, an agitato, contains some knotty harmonic problems. But they must be skimmed over at tempestuous speed, else cacophony. Bold here is Chopin to excess, as if his spirit would knock at the very gate of heaven, but the surge and thunder waxes, wanes, wastes itself; the soul has stormed itself to slumber. The molto piu lento of this scherzo is, by consent, one of Chopin’s masterpieces. It is written in the richly colored, luscious key of B major. It is so fragrant, so replete with woven enchantment, that the air becomes divinely dense. With broken tenths, Chopin produces subtle effects. It is all a miracle of tender beauty, and is like some old world Armida’s garden, when time was young and men and women lived to love and not to sorrow. It is only comparable to the B major episode in the B minor étude or to the Tuberose nocturne of the same key. Mark how the composer returns to his first savage mood! It is a picture of contrasted violence. But beware of the da capo. It grows wearisome. Far better repeat the first section only and attack the coda--the finest coda ever made by the master. I know nothing of his that can equal its boldness, its electrifying ride across country, its almost barbaric impetuosity. The heavy accentuation on the first note of every bar must not blind one’s rhythmical sense to the second beat in the left hand, which is likewise accented. This produces a mixed rhythm that greatly adds to the general murkiness and despair of the finale. Those daring chordal dissonances, so logical, so effective, how they must have agitated and scratched the nerves of Chopin’s contemporaries! And they must be vigorously insisted upon; no veiled half lights, for the worst is over; the ships are burned; nothing remains but the awful catastrophe. To his death goes this musical Childe Roland, and the dark tower crumbles and creation crumbles at the close. The scherzo ends in chaos, overwhelming, supreme!

I think it was Tausig who first taught his pupils to use the interlocked octaves at the close instead of the chromatic scale in unison. I suppose Liszt did it before anyone else; he always thought of such things, even if the composer did not. I doubt not but that Chopin would have objected to the innovation, although it seems admissible. After the furious Hercules-vein of the coda, to finish with a chromatic scale sounds tame and ineffectual.

Even though the sneer, the peevishness and fretfulness of a restless, unhappy, sick-brained man disturb it, the C sharp minor scherzo is yet the most dramatic, the most finely moulded of the six. It is capricious to madness, but the dramatic quality is unmistakable. It seethes with scorn, if such an extravagant figure is permissible. It is all extravagance, fire and fury, but it signifies something. Just a word about the tempo. Nearly all the scherzi are marked presto, but it should be remembered that it is the presto of Chopin’s day, and, above all, of Chopin’s piano action. The action of the pianos of his time, especially of the Pleyel piano, was superlatively light and elastic. The Chopin tempi should be moderated, as Theodore Kullak has so often insisted. You lose in ponderability and dignity by adopting the swift, old-fashioned time markings. The first part of the B minor scherzo may be taken at a presto--a comfortable presto, the scherzo in E must be played presto; also the one in E flat; but where the thought takes on a graver hue, where majesty of utterance or nobility of phrase are to be considered, moderate your pulses, I conjure you, master pianists. The C sharp minor scherzo is an especial sufferer from a too hurried speed. The architectonics are consequently blurred, details jumbled and the indescribable power of the piece lost. And if you start out with such a fiery presto, where will you get your contrast of speed in the coda, which should be fairly shot out from your finger-tips? Or would you emulate Schumann and start in with a prestissimo possible and follow with still more of a prestissimo? You remember his sonata? Try a presto by all means, but remember the heavier tone mass of the modern piano. This scherzo is a massive composition, yet full of fitful starts and surprises. The bits of chorale in the trio are hugely Chopin as to fioritura and harmonic basis. More than all the others this one reminds you of some pulse-stirring drama. It is audacious and declamatory. Even in the meno mosso it never tarries, and the coda is built of one of those familiar figures cumulative in effect through repetition and all written eminently for the instrument. The scherzo in C sharp minor is grotesque; it is original. It has affinities with the darkling conceptions of Poe, Coleridge, Hoffman, and is Heine-like in its bitter irony. It is like some fantastic, sombre pile of disordered farouche architecture, and about it hovers perpetual night and the unspeakable and despairing things that live in the night. It is a tale from Poe’s “iron bound, melancholy volume of the magi,” and on its face is written the word Spleen. Chopin might have said with Poe: “Then I grew angry and cursed, with the curse of Spleen, the river and the lilies and the wind and the forest and the heavens and the thunder and the sighs of the water lilies. And they became accursed and were still. And the moon ceased to totter up its pathway to heaven--and the thunder died away--and the lightning did not flash--and the clouds hung motionless--and the waters sunk to their level and remained--and the trees ceased to rock--and the water lilies sighed no more--and the murmur was heard no longer from among them, nor any shadow of sound throughout the vast illimitable desert. And I looked upon the characters of the rock, and they were changed, and the characters were Spleen.”

All this was told in the dreary region in Lybia by the borders of the Zaïre, where the waters have a sickly and saffron hue. But Poe wrote the word Silence, which I have changed to Spleen. Three of the Chopin scherzi are the very outpourings of a soul charged with the spiritual spleen of this age of disillusionment.

III

Mr. Krehbiel once wrote, in discussing the question of the re-scoring of the Chopin concertos: “It is more than anything else a question of taste that is involved in this matter and, as so often happens, individual likings, rather than artistic principles, will carry the day.”

It is admitted at the outset by all musicians that the orchestrations of the two concertos in E and F minor of Chopin are meagre and conventional, not to say hackneyed.

Written in the pre-Beethoven style they simply rob the piano soli of their incomparable beauty, become a clog instead of an aid, and have done more to prejudice musicians against Chopin than any other compositions he has written. That they were penned by Chopin himself is more than doubtful, as his knowledge of instrumentation was somewhat slender, and the amazing fact will always remain that while his piano compositions are ever fresh and far removed from all that is trite or commonplace, the orchestration of his concertos is irksome and uninteresting to a degree. In both concertos the opening tuttis are long and take off all the cream and richness of the soli that follow.

The tone of the piano can scarcely vie with that of the orchestra, yet in the first movement of the E minor concerto the lovely, plaintive solo of the first subject in E minor is deliberately played through; the audience and the pianist must patiently wait until it is finished and then, like an absurd anti-climax, the piano breaks in, repeating the same story, only dwarfed and colorless in comparison. In the Tausig version of the E minor opening the tutti differs, in that it omits entirely the piano solo, contenting itself after the first theme, with the small secondary subject in E minor that is afterward played by the piano. Then come the rich opening E minor chords on the piano, and we are once more plunged in medias res without further ado.

The orchestral tutti before the piano enters in C major, is in the Tausig version very effective despite the dreaded trombones. It must be admitted that here we get some Meistersinger color which is--so the story runs--because Wagner had a hand in the arrangement. Certainly Tausig submitted it to him for judgment.

The orchestral canvas is broadened, the tints brighter, deeper, richer and offering a better background for the jewelled passage work of the piano.

The brass choir is so balanced as to float the staccato tone of the piano, giving it depth and sonority.

Take for example the horn pedal-point in E, which occurs in the middle of the romanza where the piano has the delicate, crystalline chromatic cadenza of three bars only. What a stroke of genius for Tausig to introduce the brass here! It floats the fairy-like progressions of the solo and in what ethereal hues! But orthodox pianists will say this is not Chopin, and raise their Czerny-hands in horror.

The changes in the piano parts of the first movement of the E minor concerto are effective, they in no sense destroy the integrity of the ideas; where there is a chromatic scale in unison, Tausig breaks it into double sixths and fourths and chordal figures which are not simplifications or mere pyrotechnics but decidedly more “pianistic” and brilliant.

One thing seems to be forgotten in discussing Chopin piano literature--his music is more than abreast of our times. Consider the fantasy, opus 49, the scherzi, the ballades, the sonatas--the two later ones--the études and it will be seen that the figures are modern even to novelty; that Schumann, Liszt and Rubinstein borrowed, even if they amplified, and Tausig, if he did alter a few details, did not commit a sin against good taste. Carl Tausig of all virtuosi penetrated deeper into the meanings of the Polish tone-poet, interpreting his music in an incomparable manner.

As regards the coda of the first movement of the E minor concerto Tausig simply takes the awkward trill from the left hand and gives it to the ’celli and contrabasso and the piano plays the passage in unison. Most pianists, Rosenthal excepted, acknowledge that the trill is both distracting and ineffective.

The chromatic work at the end of this movement is broad and infinitely more klaviermässig than the older version, the piano closing at the same moment with the orchestra, the audience not being compelled to listen to cadences of the Hummel type to the bitter end. The piano part of the second movement is hardly touched by Tausig; it could not be improved, but the orchestration is so spiritualized and so delicately colored that even a purist may not groan in disapproval.

Against the Tausig version of the rondo the war of complaint is frequently raised. “What, he dares to tamper with the very notes, introducing sixteenths where Chopin wrote eighths!” Yes, this is true, but what an improvement! How much brighter and livelier the rhythm sounds; how much more joyful and elastic! and when the piano part enters it is with added zest we listen to its cheerful song. It is a relief too, when the flute and oboe take up the theme, the piano contenting itself with a trill. The other changes in the solo part in this movement are all in admirable taste and effective but they are not easier to play than the original. The movement loses none of its freshness by the additions, while it gains in tone and dignity. The octaves at the end destroy in some degree the euphony but add in brilliancy. It is seldom one hears them played with clearness and lightness; but when pounded out they become distressingly monotonous.

If a concerto is an harmonious relationship between the solo instrument and the orchestra then the Tausig version of the E minor concerto fulfils perfectly the idea. Of course if a poor conductor who wishes to make a scandal out of each tutti takes hold of the work and a mediocre pianist attempts the solo part, critics may indeed carp and say that Tausig has spoiled the concerto with his additions.

The argument that holds good in the case of added accompaniments of Robert Franz to Handel is the same here but best of all remains the unalterable fact that the Tausig version is more effective and what pianist can resist such an argument! Tausig in the E minor and Richard Burmeister in the F minor concerto have given these two works of Chopin a better frame; the picture appears clearer and more beautiful, details becoming more significant making both works better understood.

Mr. Burmeister has not only re-orchestrated the F minor concerto, but his cadenza at the close of the first movement--a cadenza that embodies in an admirable manner the spirit of its themes--in reality supplies a missing coda. There are also some important changes in the last movement. Mr. Krehbiel justly says, Tausig’s emendations have greatly added “to the stature of the concerto.”

IV

George Mathias has sketched Chopin in a few sincere, exquisite strokes. His alluring, hesitating, gracious, feminine manner and air of supreme distinction are touched upon, and M. Mathias--dear, charming old gentleman, how well I remember him in 1879!--speaks of Chopin’s shoulders, held high after the style of the Poles. Chopin often met Kalkbrenner, his antipodes in everything but breeding. Chopin’s coat was buttoned high but the buttons were black; Kalkbrenner’s were gold. And how Chopin disliked the pompous old pianist, with his airs and stinginess. As Mathias writes with glee of the idea of Chopin’s profiting from the instructions of Kalkbrenner:

“Je crois qu’il n’y a eu qu’une leçon de prise,” he adds most emphatically.

At Louis Viardot’s Chopin met Thalberg, and that great master of the arpeggio and also of one of the finest singing touches ever heard on a keyboard, received with haughty humility the Polish pianist’s compliments, not quite believing in their sincerity. Perhaps he was right, for Chopin made mock of his mechanical style when his back was turned; his imitation of the Moïse fantasy being astoundingly funny, according to Mathias.

“What a jury of pianists,” he cries, “in the old days of the Salle Erard! Doehler, Dreyschock, Leopold de Meyer, Zimmerman, Thalberg, Kalkbrenner--how they all curiously examined the Polish black swan, with his original style and extraordinary technique!” A row over Liszt’s transcription of Beethoven’s Adelaïde is mentioned.

And Chopin, pianist? He played as he composed--in an absolutely unapproachable manner. He would doubtless be shocked to hear his music in the hands of some modern Sandow of the keyboard, torn into unmelodic splinters, yet every splinter exhaling a melodic sound under the furious fingers of the misguided pianist. Mathias examines his rubato and settles the much debated question, although Liszt’s happy illustration of the unshaken tree with the shimmering leaves, still holds good. Chopin admired Weber. Their natures were alike aristocratic. Once after Mathias had played the noble, chivalrous sonata in A flat Chopin exclaimed:

“Un ange passait dans le ciel.”

Mathias first knew Chopin in 1840 in the rue de la Chaussée d’Antin, 38. The house no longer stands, having been demolished by the cutting of the rue Lafayette. Later he moved to the rue Tronchet, number 5. The house is still there. He occupied the rez-de-chaussée. The first piece Mathias brought him was by Kalkbrenner and called Une Pensée de Bellini. Chopin regarded it without horror, then gave the boy the Moscheles studies and the A minor concerto of Hummel. His pupil, Fontana, gave lessons when the master was sick. One day Chopin was ill but received his visitors lying on a couch. Mathias noticed the Carneval of Schumann. It was the first edition, and Chopin on being asked what he thought of the music answered in icy accents as if the work were painful even to know. He could not speak well of music where want of form shocked his classical instincts, so he said as little as possible. And poor old Robert Schumann down in Leipsic pouring out inky rhapsodies over Chopin!

Mathias tells us that Chopin was a simple man--“Je ne veux pas dire simple esprit”--was no critic, was without literary pretensions and not of the intellectual fibre of Liszt or Berlioz. When the aide-de-camp of King Louis Philippe asked him why he did not compose an opera he answered in that small, slightly stifled voice of his: “Ah, M. Le Comte, let me compose piano music; it’s all I know how to do.”

Bach, Hummel and Field, Mathias says, were his strongest musical influences. You may well imagine his horror if forced to listen to the Ring. A tender-souled creature yet with the fire of a hero in his veins! More masculine, heroic music--free from Liszt’s and Wagner’s grandiloquence of accent--than the F sharp minor polonaise, some of the ballades, preludes and études, has yet to be written.

V

In the city of Boston, January 19, 1809, a son was born to David and Elizabeth Poe. On March 1, 1809, in the little village of Zelazowa-Wola, twenty-eight miles from Warsaw, in Poland, a son was born to Nicholas and Justina Chopin. The American is known to the world as Edgar Allan Poe, the poet; the Pole as Frederic François Chopin, the composer. October 7, 1849, Edgar Poe died neglected in Washington Hospital at Baltimore, and October 17, 1849, Frederic Chopin expired in Paris surrounded by loving friends. Poe and Chopin never knew of each other’s existence yet--a curious coincidence--two supremely melancholy artists of the beautiful lived and died almost synchronously.

It would be a strained parallel to compare Chopin and Poe at many points yet the chronological events referred to, are not the only comparisons that might be made without the fear or flavor of affectation. There are parallels in the soul-lives as well as in the earth-lives of these two men--Poe and Chopin seem ever youthful--that may be drawn without extravagance. True, the roots of Chopin’s culture were more richly nurtured than Poe’s, but the latter, like a spiritual air plant, derived his sustenance none know how. Of Poe’s forbears we may hardly form any adequate conception; his learning was not profound, despite his copious quotations from almost forgotten and recondite authors; yet his lines to Helen were written in boyhood. The poet in his case was indeed born, not made. Chopin, we know, had careful training from the faithful Elsner; but who could have taught him to write his opus 2, the variations over which Schumann rhapsodized, or even that gem, his E flat nocturne--now, alas! somewhat stale from conservatory usage?

Both these men, full fledged in their gifts, sprang from the Jovian brain and, while they both improved in the technics of their art, their individualities were at the outset as sharply defined as were their limitations. Read Poe’s To Helen, and tell me if he made more exquisite music in his later years. You remember it:

Helen, thy beauty is to me Like those Nicéan barks of yore That gently, o’er a perfumed sea, The weary, way-worn wanderer bore To his own native shore.

On desperate seas long wont to roam, Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face, Thy naïad airs have brought me home To the glory that was Greece, And the grandeur that was Rome.

I refrain from giving the third verse; but are not these lines remarkable in beauty of imagination and diction when one considers they were penned by a youngster scarcely out of his teens!

Now glance at Chopin’s earlier effusions, his opus 1, a rondo in C minor; his opus 2 already referred to; his opus 3, the C major polonaise for ’cello and piano; his opus 5, the Rondeau à la Mazur in F; his opus 6, the first four mazourkas, perfect of their kind; opus 7, more mazourkas; opus 8, the G minor trio, the classicism of which you may dispute; nevertheless it contains lovely music. Then follow the nocturnes, the concerto in F minor, the latter begun when Chopin was only twenty, and so on through the list. Both men died at forty--the very prime of life, when the natural forces are acting freest, when the overwrought passions of youth had begun to mellow and yet there were several years before the close, a distinct period of decadence, almost deterioration. I am conscious of the critical claims of those who taste in both Poe’s and Chopin’s later music the exquisite quality of the over-ripe, the savor of morbidity.