Part 10

The first great merit of Chopin was that he carried to its logical extreme this system of counteracting the piano's defective sonority. The great advance made by him is shown even in the brief quotations of Figure XV. The Mozart example is rudimentary--the device at its lowest terms. In the Beethoven passage the chords are placed too low; they sound muddy, opaque, inelastic. In the Schubert passage the sonority is better, but the figures are so arranged as to be very difficult to play, on account of the wide jump the hand has to make at the middle of each measure. Chopin, on the other hand, avoids muddiness by clustering his harmony fairly high (about the region of middle C), at the same time gets a sufficient bass for his chords, which he is able to do by covering a great deal of ground in each figure, and in spite of the wide space traversed on the keyboard respects the comfort of the player by not requiring any sudden leaps. It is furthermore worthy of note that by introducing two tones foreign to the harmony (the fourth and the sixteenth) he gains a richness of sound lacking in the other examples. We get here, however, but the merest inkling of the inexhaustible ingenuity with which he manages this matter of "figuration," or the ornamental disintegration of chords. In order really to appreciate it we should have to examine those nocturnes, say, like the second, third, seventh, and eighth, in which with the left hand unaided he supplies a good firm bass and an intricate texture of accompaniment; we should have to study those pieces, such as the first, fifth, and eighth of the Études, opus 10, and the Prelude, opus 28, no. 23, in which it is the right hand that, racing back and forth over the keyboard, fills in the chinks of the harmony as a painter "stipples" an even tint with an infinite number of tiny brush-strokes; we should have to analyze in detail such a masterpiece as the Étude in A-flat major, opus 25, no. 1, in which it is both hands that weave together a diaphanous web of sound, while the outer fingers of one sing the tune, and those of the other the bass.[21]

Chopin's negative merit of minimizing the disadvantages of his instrument is, however, very intimately connected with a more positive skill in utilizing its peculiar advantages, in order to understand which we shall have to revert for a moment to our examination of the mechanism of the piano. The most characteristic feature of this mechanism--a feature so vital that it has been called the soul of the piano, and so unique that no other instrument except the harp presents a parallel to it--is the damper pedal, generally known by the inaccurate and misleading name of "the loud pedal." Its function is to raise all the dampers which control the vibrations of the strings, leaving them free to respond to any impulse they may receive. It thus secures two important results.

In the first place, it counteracts the non-sustainment of single tones by fusing a great many such individual tones, separately produced, into one impression. It will readily be seen, for instance, how indispensable is the pedal to the intended effect of the broken chords of Figure XV: only through its coöperation do they become worthy equivalents, in the piano idiom, of what the organ or voices would present in the form of sustained chords in long notes. Moreover, every tone sounded on the piano, with the pedal down, is reinforced, through what is known as sympathetic vibration, by many other tones not sounded by the hands at all. For, since every tone produced by a piano string is in reality, as proved by scientific analysis, by no means simple, but a complex of many elements known as "partial tones," and since any elastic body capable of producing a given tone will actually produce it, through sympathetic vibration, whenever the tone is already being otherwise sounded in its vicinity, it will readily be understood that all the partial tones set going by striking a piano key will, if the dampers are, by means of the pedal, kept from interfering, start into activity whatever strings are tuned to their respective pitches. Thus the pedal turns the entire body of strings into one vast Æolian harp, ready to take up, reëcho, and multiply the slightest breath of sound produced through the keyboard.

Some idea of the extraordinary enrichment of timbre or tone-quality which accrues to the piano through the sympathetic vibration made possible by the pedal may be gained by striking a single key, say middle C, first without, then with, the pedal. The first tone stands out hard and angular, like a leafless tree in a desert; the second is liquid, murmurous, palpitant, its outlines softened as a landscape is softened by a misty atmosphere. When a chord rather than a single key is struck, the effect is, of course, multiplied in direct proportion to the number of its constituent tones. The hard nucleus of the impression is clothed in a soft web of subordinate sounds, the result of sympathetic vibration. Suppose, for example, we play the chord of four whole notes in Figure XVI. If at the same time we free the strings by pressing the pedal, we shall summon from them an attendant train of ghostly "harmonics" for each of the four, represented in the figure by quarter-notes. These auxiliary tones, to be sure, will be exceedingly faint and individually indistinguishable, but they will nevertheless give to the impression that curious mellowness, depth, or liquidity (one calls vainly on the divers experiences of other senses to describe it) which is one of the fundamental charms of the piano tone.

Now Chopin is one of the supreme masters in the coloristic use of the dissonance. His nocturnes, especially the first, seventh, eighth, and fourteenth, may fairly be said to inaugurate by this means a new era in music, comparable in many respects to the era of impressionism in painting. Their tremulous, vaporous harmonies seem to come from no common piano, but from some wind-swept Æolian harp. Take, for instance, such a passage as the following, at the end of the third nocturne:--

Figure XVII.

Here it is as if, after placing on his canvas the two main chords of the cadence, dominant and tonic, he took, while the colors were still wet, a brush, and with the softest imaginable touch drew it across the entire face of the picture. The grace-notes, most of which, it will be noted, are dissonant to the main harmony, are no more meant to be heard individually than the spots of paint in a Monet are meant to be seen individually; they are a running of the colors, blurring the otherwise too bald outline. Chopin's scores are full of these delicate veilings and obscurations. In a majority of cases they are produced, as in this instance, by the right hand, above a clear harmony in the lower register. But sometimes, more daringly,[23] he assigns the web of dissonance to the left hand, in the middle register or even in the bass, thus gaining an extraordinary lurid gorgeousness of coloring. The passage in the third ballade, beginning at the change of signature to four sharps (Figure XVIII), is an instance.

And later

Figure XVIII.

Or again, as in the "Meno mosso" of the Scherzo, opus 39, both hands first deliver bold, clear chords, and then weave a shimmer of light above them. In all such cases, it is obvious that the dissonances in question do not belong to the essential melodic and harmonic lines of the composition; they are, as Mr. Hadow says, "effects of superficies, not effects of substance," and may be compared to those local blurs made by a draughtsman's stump in a charcoal sketch, or, as before suggested, to those surprisingly rich mixed tints produced in impressionistic paintings by a multitude of minute brush-strokes.

The at first sight very elaborate modulations of Chopin which have provoked so much discussion are but a further application of the same principle. They are really not modulations at all, in the classic sense of transitions from one key to another having a structural value, but rather amplifications of the groups of grace-notes that constantly embroider the tunes. Their function is sensuous rather than structural, and we might describe them by coining the word "grace-chords." Of the twelfth measure of the second nocturne, for example, Mr. Hadow well says that "when we see it on paper it seems to consist of a rapid series of remote and recondite modulations, but when we hear it played ... we feel that there is only one real modulation, and that the rest of the passage is an iridescent play of color." Another striking instance is the following measure in the "Polonaise-Fantaisie," a composition in which effects of this sort abound.

The unprecedented individuality of the style he thus developed profoundly impressed all observers. "In the marvellous art of carrying and modulating the tone, in the expressive, melancholy manner of shading it off," says Marmontel in his "Pianistes Célébres," "Chopin was entirely himself. He had quite an individual way of attacking the keyboard, a supple, mellow touch, sonorous effects of a vaporous fluidity of which only he knew the secret." "Imagine," writes Schumann in the _New Journal of Music_, "an Æolian harp that had all the scales, and that these were jumbled together by the hand of an artist into all sorts of fantastic ornaments, but in such a manner that a deeper fundamental tone and a softly singing higher part were always audible, and you have an approximate idea of his playing." Liszt's testimony is that he "imprinted on all his pieces one knows not what nameless color, what vague appearance, what pulsations akin to vibration," and that "his modulations were velvety and iridescent as the robe of a salamander."

Nor do the scholastic musicians of the time fail to pay this pioneer the eloquent tribute of misunderstanding him. Moscheles, a man of the old _régime_, writes, after hearing him play, "The harsh modulations which strike me disagreeably when I am playing his compositions no longer shock me, because he glides over them in a fairylike way with his delicate fingers." This comment is most significant. Moscheles found Chopin's modulations harsh because he played them with the punctilious accuracy, the absolute literalness, which is appropriate to the music of line, but not to the music of color. In rendering a Bach fugue we cannot get each tone too distinct, since it is sure to be a part of some melody, a clear perception of which is necessary to our appreciation of the design. But Chopin's polyphony is not Bach's polyphony, as is illustrated by the former's Prelude, opus 28, no. 1. Both the right- and the left-hand parts here are melodic; but if both are played with an equally salient touch, the conflicts between the voices become unpleasant. The proper way is to let the lower part sink into the background, giving merely a certain depth and opacity to the general impression; the two melodies are as it were on different planes, the lower one more remote and heard but dimly as through a slight haze. So it is everywhere in Chopin. To play him too distinctly is as fatal an error as to examine a charcoal sketch with a magnifying glass, or to bend over a canvas of Monet and peer curiously at each spot of paint. One must stand off, and half close one's eyes, until the details are lost in the masses. In a word, here is a new type of art, demanding a new mode of apperception. If a Bach fugue and a Mozart quartet are the steel engravings of music, Chopin's pieces are its impressionistic paintings and pastels.

But it is time to pass to some other phases of the extraordinary sensibility and unerring taste of Chopin, thus evidenced by his originality in technique, as they showed themselves in his everyday life and in the more intellectual aspects of his art. The chief events of his short career may be very summarily recounted. Born in Zelazowa-Wola, a small village in Poland, in 1809, he studied music in Warsaw, and at twenty-two established himself as a pianist and teacher in Paris, where he passed most of his life. In 1837 ill health, which soon developed into the pulmonary disease of which he died, compelled him to seek a warmer climate, and he passed the winter in the island of Majorca with George Sand, the eminent novelist, and her children. Thus began a connection which lasted for ten years, and which has given rise to endless discussion. The true inner history of this love-affair will probably never be known, as the evidence is fragmentary and distorted by prejudice. It is obvious, however, that neither the composer nor the novelist (whose real name was Madame Dudevant, but who had obtained a divorce from her husband before she met Chopin) was sufficiently unselfish to sustain permanently such a relation; nor were their temperaments fundamentally congenial. They separated in 1847. By this time Chopin's consumption was far advanced, and after two more years of extreme feebleness, complicated by poverty, he died at Paris, October 17, 1849.

In physique Chopin was slender and of middle height, fragile even before disease had wasted him, but supple and elastic; his hands and feet were small, his gestures varied and full of grace; with his pale, almost sallow, complexion, his long, fine, chestnut-brown hair, parted at one side, his high aquiline nose, limpid yet bright eyes, and sweet half-melancholy smile, he impressed Moscheles as "exactly like his music, tender and _schwärmerisch_."[25] Liszt says that the timbre of his voice was subdued, and that his movements had such a distinction and his manners such an impress of good society that one treated him unconsciously like a prince. In the matter of dress he was as fussy as a woman, sparing no pains (to the friends who served him in these affairs) to secure just the distinguished mean between the insignificant and the ostentatious. "I forgot," he writes from Nohant, George Sand's country estate, to his friend Fontana, "to ask you to order for me a hat from my Duport, in your street, Chaussée d'Antin. Let him give the hat of this year's shape, not too much exaggerated, for I do not know how you are dressing yourself just now.... Call at my tailor's, on the Boulevards, and order him to make me at once a pair of gray trousers--something respectable, not striped, but plain and elastic. Also a quiet black velvet waistcoat, but with very little and no loud pattern, something very quiet but very elegant. Should he not have the best velvet of this kind, let him make a quiet, fine silk waistcoat, but not too much open."

Another letter of the same time amply proves the truth of his biographer's statement that he had the "_coquetterie des appartements_." "Select wall-paper," he directs, "such as I had formerly, dove-color, only bright and glossy, for the two rooms, also dark green with not too broad stripes. For the anteroom something else, but still _respectable_. If there are any nicer and more fashionable papers that are to your liking, take them. I prefer the plain, unpretending, and neat ones to the shopkeeper's staring colors. Therefore pearl-color pleases me, for it is neither too loud nor does it look vulgar." In his later years, as health waned, the habit of luxury grew upon him. Near the end, just before leaving London for home, he writes another of his willing servitors, this time his friend Grzymala: "Please see that the sheets and pillows are quite dry, and cause fir-nuts to be bought; Madame Étienne is not to spare anything, so that I may warm myself when I arrive. I have written to D---- that he is to provide carpets and curtains. I shall pay the paper-hanger at once after my arrival. Tell Pleyel to send me a piano on Thursday; let it be closed and a nosegay of violets be bought, so that there may be a nice fragrance in the _salon_. I should like to find a little poesy in my rooms and in my bedroom, where in all probability I shall lie down for a long time."

The same fastidiousness is discernible in his musical and intellectual tastes. Liszt says that he ranked Mozart above all other masters, "because Mozart condescended more rarely than any other composer to cross the steps which separate refinement from vulgarity." "Yet," adds Liszt, "his sybaritism of purity, his apprehension of what was commonplace, were such that even in 'Don Giovanni' he discovered passages the presence of which we have heard him regret." Next to Mozart came Bach, whose works were the only music he carried with him to Majorca, and whose exquisitely lucid style exercised an important formative influence on his own. His pupil Mikuli says it was difficult to tell which of the two composers he loved better. Beethoven he accepted only with reservations. "Certain parts of Beethoven's works," says Liszt, "seemed to him too rudely fashioned. Their structure was too athletic to please him; their wraths seemed to him too violent." Mendelssohn he considered "common"; of Schumann's "Carnaval" he remarked that it was not music; Meyerbeer and Berlioz he heartily disliked, though for different reasons; Liszt, according to Niecks, he often found "guilty of making concessions to bad taste for the sake of success," a sin which he "viewed with the greatest indignation." On the other hand, he liked the music of Bellini and Rossini, on account of its southern suavity and grace.

Chopin took slight interest in philosophy and literature, and detested argument, whether political or religious. "Of universality" says Niecks, "there was not a trace in him;" and the composer Stephen Heller, himself a man of marked cultivation, pronounced him "uneducated." What little we do learn of his reading, however, is most characteristic. His friend Gavard, who read to him, in his last illness, out of Voltaire's "Dictionnaire Philosophique," remarks: "He valued very highly the finished form of that clear and concise language, and that so sure judgment on questions of taste. Thus, for instance, I remember that the article on taste was one of the last I read to him." The graphologist will supplement these bits of evidence with the testimony of his handwriting, inimitably neat and small. His manuscripts are marvels of penmanship: the notes like pin-points, the slurs mere filaments of spider's web, the stems painstakingly vertical, even the erasures ornamental latticework, so that the whole is as much a drawing as a writing.

The least pleasing of all the manifestations of Chopin's exquisiteness is seen in his social habits. Here his refinement, his shrinking aversion to all that was crude, ugly, or grotesque, his sybaritic love of ease and elegance, made of him an ultra-aristocrat, a _précieux_,--one is often tempted to say, in good round English, a "snob." Dazzled by the brilliance and poisoned by the perfume of those _salons_ to which his talent gave him access, his taste, so unerring in matters of art, failed to distinguish between the genuine aristocracy of mind and the spurious aristocracy of wealth and fashion. It is at once pathetic and exasperating to see such a genius, of whom an honest, simple man like Delacroix could say, "he was the most true artist I have met," anxiously striving to be borne aloft by that _haute volée_ which was so immeasurably beneath him, limiting his society to that small section of humankind which proudly styled itself "_le monde_," and dedicating his leisure and his compositions, not to brother artists, but to the baronesses, countesses, and princesses who gave him their half-patronizing homage.[26] In his letters one too frequently comes upon passages like this, from Vienna: I have pleased the nobility here exceedingly. As a proof I may mention the visit which Count Dietrichstein paid me on the stage," or this from Paris, on his first arrival: "I move in the highest society--among ambassadors, princes, and ministers."