Part 3

Almost any page, almost any stanza of Shelley--most ethereal of word-poets--would indicate an unobstructed outpouring which the first drafts of even his wholly sustained inspirations quite disprove. Beethoven's collected sketch-books are a study in the evolution of themes afterward impressed with the seal of spontaneity. We are told by one who ought to know, that Chopin's every opus was born only after soul-travail both long and sore. Against these curious facts can be set this apparent contradiction: facility is the rule among the merely talented, and many such have with ease dashed off their best efforts, of which doing they are wont to boast because, to the popular way of thinking, facility is proof of genius. Now why should Shelley and Beethoven and Chopin wrestle with the idea, and Pollok and Czerny and their kind be so easily victorious?

As we have said, our human world is subdivisible into manifold states of consciousness, each a world to its dwellers. The world of the man of talent may be, and usually is, but a step inward from the world of the multitude; hence few obstacles hinder communication between these nearly-related worlds. The ideas of the inner are with ease translated to the understanding of the outer. Evidently this is untrue of those inmost worlds where dwell the deep- and high-dreaming Poet and Musician whose respective domains are almost outside of time and space, those limitations wherewith the human mind divides the known from the unknown, the sensible from the super-sensible, the finite from the Infinite. Having in them little or nothing of the quantitative, the ideas of those worlds elude the mental grasp of all save the finely-organized man of genius.

How to come into touch with the great, common world by giving fixed form to that which is formless and by rendering tangible the intangible, making seen the unseen, felt the unfelt, and heard the unheard, is the problem of Genius. It was the problem of Michel Angelo before the unchiselled «David»; the problem of Raphael musing upon the Madonnaless canvas; the problem of the absorbed Beethoven when, in his seemingly aimless meanderings, the trees by the roadside and in the forest would prompt him to solution with their whispered «Holy! Holy!» and it was the problem of Chopin as in the quiet of his study, apart from the roar of the great city, the empty page tormented him with the thought of unwritten and perhaps unwritable beauties.

That within the space of twenty-four days, Handel penned the notes of his most glorious work, proves nothing but his enormous powers of mental concentration, and the endurance of a brain supported by a vigorous body; but to the vital question: How long had «The Messiah» been maturing in him? history affords no conclusive answer. Rossini was no doubt a facile composer, yet from what soul-deep his operas came is proved by his deliberate estimate of their longevity. He believed that as an entirety nothing but «Il Barbiere» would survive.

The well-attested fact that Beethoven and Chopin, those cautious and self-critical composers, were both extempore performers par excellence, goes far toward proving the impromptu inferior to the finished after-product. And does not all this favor our view that from the birth-throes, and not from the painlessness of Genius, are born the masterpieces of every art?

II

Genius is essentially sympathetic and would draw all men into rapport with its world of light and love. Companioned it must be, aye, close companioned! But descend it will never because to Genius its world embodies more of reality than does all this terrestrial globe.

Happy the master gathering around him his little following! Happy indeed the genius, the solitary being, who finds among men an ideal friend; one to whom self-explanation, so hateful to Genius, is needless; one who knows instinctively the soul life of the other! To Genius that friend is a proof of its mission; a witness that it lives not a thing more useless than the most ordinary mortal; an assurance that it yet will come into the fullness of its own. Such a friend Chopin was now to find within that great Paris which like a gigantic lodestone was drawing him to herself.

Franz Liszt, the Hungarian composer, pianist and litterateur, was born in 1811, and in 1831, the date of Chopin's advent in the French capital, he was but twenty years of age, and so by two years the junior of the Pole. Soon the fame of the younger man would eclipse even that of Kalkbrenner, esteemed the first pianist of the day. Liszt was steadily nearing an eminence ever afterward his own against all comers, that of the world's unparalleled pianoforte virtuoso.

The artist who, in days to come, would first divine and adequately measure the comprehensiveness of Wagner; the timely helper who would deem it a duty, a privilege, to aid and cheer the impecunious political refugee in the despondent years of his exile; the whole-hearted enthusiast whose determined arm would open for the composer of «Lohengrin,» the close-shut door of the Temple of Fame, was the friend in whom Chopin now saw reflected his own peculiar genius. As the painter, stepping backward from his easel, scans his work as a whole, and in the most favorable light, so, from the view-point of Liszt's intuitive rendering, Chopin better estimated his own productions than could otherwise have been possible.

That consummate interpretation of a work proves not one's ability to create its like is shown by the coming together of Chopin and Liszt. While Liszt was indubitably of advantage to Chopin, the latter in turn reacted upon the former. In the nature of the fiery Hungarian, and that of the dreamy Pole, were those resemblances and differences which make high friendship a possibility and also a means of mutual growth through reciprocity of ideas.

The fascinating and dominating Liszt was by nature a Bohemian. From first to last he dwelt in the realm of those laxities and unconventionalities which dismay the ordinary mortal, but whose glamour is over the life of many an artist. And yet, despite every shortcoming, Liszt had that which was much indeed, a virtue frequently the saving one of genius, to wit, the artistic conscience.

Beneath a demeanor disguising rather than revealing his inner self, Chopin was an ardent soul, a Polish patriot from whose heart overflowed, to his every page, the sorrows of his native land. Those sorrows were a cloud shadowing the radiance of his ideal world, and at times dulling it almost to the sombre hues of this earth, begetter of many sorrows.

It is regrettable that Chopin sought to bind within the limits of conventional forms, already half outgrown, his poetical ideas amenable only to the requirements of those freer forms for which Berlioz and Schumann were striving, and to which Wagner ultimately attained.

In his Impromptus, and a few other ventures beyond self-imposed barriers, Chopin made most praiseworthy use of freedom, but quickly he returns to contemplation of his beloved Mozart, that perfect master of classical form. Naturally the polished frequenter of the Parisian drawing-room and salon, found no lasting pleasure in the wild freedom and amplitude of the forest of Romanticism. The change was too abrupt and novel. Those far-reaching vistas of unfrequented shade! How different from the metropolitan thoroughfare! Those mighty but fantastically-growing trees thick-planted by Nature's careless hand! those never-trimmed and irregular branches! those fallen and dismantled trunks! How unlike the well-kept parks of Paris and Versailles!

While composing, Chopin never quite divorced himself from the keyboard of his piano, and yet the writer who would attain to untrammeled expression, in both matter and form, should compose beneath a roof no narrower than the dome of heaven. Let the study be his reference room, his library, and, for convenience, his place of final elaboration. Like Beethoven and Wordsworth, let him receive at first hand the impartings of Nature that needed teacher of us all.

In the heart of Chopin the melodies of his beloved Poland, mingling with his own imaginings, became invested with a subtle, poetical charm and a delicate sweetness idealizing their own quaint loveliness.

The Mazurka! does it not bring the peasant gathering on the green; the evening or the holiday of swaying forms and agile feet and rustic beauty in the graceful round? The Polonaise! does it not bring the brilliant hall; the jewelled fair; the stately-moving, king-led company of lords and noble dames? Yes, such were the scenes which, to the dances of his people, Chopin had conjured from the happy, bygone days. How appealing this music to those of the old Polish nobility then finding in Paris their most congenial abode in exile! Largely through the influence of these the Parisian success of Chopin was speedier, although more circumscribed, than that of Meyerbeer, who, only by laborious and painstaking adaptation of his methods to the requirements of the French operatic stage, won the Parisian public and brought them to their knees before the shrine of «Robert.»

In the homes of rank and wealth, Chopin now mingles with princes, ministers, ambassadors and literary notables. Titled ladies are his pupils and, because he would have it so, he deems his musical self best understood by the lionizing fashionables of French society who, in fact, looked not beneath the finished, but by no means robust virtuoso, and polished gentleman conforming to their every convention.

The fashionables of French society! Oh for a moment natural and true amidst the false and artificial hours! A candid, soul-sprung greeting to shame the outward suavity where envy rankles, or where hatred burns within! Oh for a laden word to prove the hollowness of empty tongues! A normal heart of innocence in that blasé assembly! Oh for an individuality unrepressed; a potent unit in that crowd of merest ciphers!

It is almost incredible that in such environment Chopin composed many of his noblest works. His Rondo in C minor Op. 1, published in 1825, when he was but sixteen years of age, and therefore in the old Warsaw days, had announced the advent of a writer of the highest rank, one authoritatively proclaimed by Schumann on the appearance of the variations in B flat Op. 2. Arriving in Paris late in the year 1831, the man of two-and-twenty was already known to musicians like Franz Liszt and Ferdinand Hiller, as creator of such music as the Concerto in F minor, the Concerto in E minor, and the Funeral March in C minor. This last was afterward eclipsed by the great march in the B flat minor Sonata. But the bulk of Chopin's pianoforte works was written during the next seventeen years, and despite adverse conditions other than those of environment.

III

Chopin's compositions, aside from his Waltzes, were in his day too novel and strange to attract more than the discerning and progressive few. Obtuse and ignorant critics vented their wrath upon them. Even Moscheles found them full of abrupt and harsh modulations, and the attitude of Mendelssohn was one of mingled like and loathing. Liszt alone accepted them in their entirety. Because of all this, their inevitably small sale made Chopin's office of composer comparatively an unremunerative one.

Unlike Beethoven who, from choice as well as necessity, lived most frugally and solitary as a lion in his den, Chopin was somewhat of a Sybarite in his tastes, and, furthermore, improvident and accustomed to extravagant expenditures. Therefore, while esteeming himself at par value as a composer, he was of necessity a teacher also. In addition to the distractions and fatigues of regular lesson-giving, an ever-present misfortune, a wasting and fatal malady, crippled what should have been his years of physical prime. Yet despite all that certainly hindered and probably impaired the result of Chopin's Parisian years of creative effort, that result may be summarized as follows:

First and foremost, are those «Soul-animating strains, alas too few!» the four incomparable Ballades of which Schumann said that a poet inspired them, and a poet might easily write words to them. In the Ballades, Chopin encompasses a height and breadth and depth elsewhere unattained in his works. Here the local is indeed outgrown, and almost the universal is in the sweep of his vision. Abreast of the bardic view, he develops a world theme, he rings a story of the antique and the modern.

Next in enumeration come the great Polonaises, epics of Poland in heroic meter, Iliads of battle on her native soil. The bitter taunt of rage and scorn; the hurled defiance and the fierce reply; the rush, the crash of the onset; the broken swords and splintered lances; the vanquished rider and the fallen war-horse; the anguished cries of dying men; the hopeless wail of captives; the harsh rattle of galling chains; the deep and solemn notes of dirge. Iliads of Poland! Iliads of her olden glory and her prone defeat; and then an Iliad of her proud-arisen days to be!

In marked contrast, and therefore proving the versatility of Chopin, we have what outlasts a thousand ballroom waltzes every one of which, like the gay butterfly, joys through its little day and then is gone forever. Of the poetic and perfect Waltzes of Chopin, evidently not written for the mere dancer, may be instanced the one in A flat op. 42; also the set of three op. 34. The second of them, tenderly melancholy in both minor and major, was an especial favorite of its author. Nor should we overlook the celebrated waltz in D flat which, while fulfilling all musical requirements, has proved universally popular, being, in fact, what its history indicates, the unpremeditated outpour of a happy hour.

The greater number of the forty-one Mazurkas published by Chopin, date from the Paris period. They are easy of execution and often brief, some being held within the limits of sixty measures. In these Mazurkas the poet of the epic turns to polish the line, the stanza; the painter of the heroic perfects the miniature. Each Mazurka is a tiny picture of Polish life; a little draught from the well of Polish folk-song. How readily these dances lend themselves to an exaggerated rubato, the common fault of would-be interpreters!

Because of its noble, singing quality, the key of D flat was chosen for some of Chopin's most exquisite melodies. In this markedly individual key, whose tone color is but the veil of some unimagined splendor, was set the «Berceuse,» most ethereal and lovely of cradle songs. A sweet murmur of waters, it glides and ripples and gently falls from no earth-born spring. No upland snows make clear its limpid, winding way. From loftier far than ever rain-clouds find, the home of innocence which slumbering infancy beholds, it brings of Wisdom's fount what, hidden from the wise, is yet revealed to babes.

Another of the Paris pieces is the somewhat long Barcarolle in nocturne form; an Italian scene beneath the skies of Venice. Not the palaced Venice of marble and porphyry and alabaster, but that mobile Venice which mirrors the rising moon touched at times by filmy shades, yet light enough for lovers borne upon the sparkling tides. Though devoid of striking contrasts, this Barcarolle contains probably more of variety than Mendelssohn could have woven into it.

In Paris were composed all save one of the nineteen Nocturnes bearing the name of Chopin. On these, and the Polonaise in A major, and such Waltzes as op. 18 in E flat, mostly rests his popular estimate.

As a producer in this lighter vein, Chopin encounters no rival. A few, a very few of the earlier Nocturnes betray the influence of John Field originator of this somewhat sentimental style of salon music; but shortly the Chopinesque quality asserts itself and lo, the night of lulled winds, heavy with the tropical odor of flowers! Night of indolent southern stars, and the chaste Diana grown languorous and tender! Night of little clouds that weep they know not why! Night of the bashful, subdued bird that lifts not to the cheerful sun his notes of love and grief and yearning.

Without underestimating the musical and technical value of Clementi's «Gradus ad Parnassum» on whose broad and solid foundation rests all modern pianoforte playing, and without in the least belittling the contributions of Cramer, it may be asserted that the Etudes of Chopin are revelations in technique. Of all their class, they alone anticipate the virtuoso requirements of to-day, while some, like Nos. 3 and 6 of op. 10, are, as inspired music, unmatched in the world's repertory of piano studies. Painstaking authorities have edited, and eminent critics have almost extravagantly praised them. Hunaker holds them monumental of our nineteenth century attainment in piano music. However, Chopin's twenty-seven Etudes have little place in this present enumeration, for, excepting two or three in the second book, op. 25, they, like the Concertos, the Bolero, the Rondos op. 1 and op. 16, and the Variations op. 2, all of them antedate the year 1831.

The weight of evidence would prove that of the twenty-four Preludes op. 28, the bulk was composed prior to Chopin's visit to Majorca in 1839. Schumann called them «ruins, eagle feathers all strangely intermingled.» To Kullak they are «little masterpieces of the first rank.» Hunaker holds them «a sheaf of moods.» Rubinstein believes them the pearls of Chopin's works. They are in fact autobiographical poems in brief stanzas. Though we grant the excellence and completeness of many, and the individuality of all these Preludes, certain of them seemed fragmentary. The sixteen measures comprised in No. 7, may be the sole remnant of some discarded Mazurka. Those thirteen measures of solemn moving chords in C minor, the total of No. 20, suggest the episode in the G minor Nocturne, and may have been preserved from some such composition.

We have, by Chopin, four Impromptus all written later than the year 1831: op. 29 in A flat, op. 36 in F sharp major, op. 51 in G flat, and the posthumous Fantaisie-Impromptu in C sharp minor. The word Impromptu is usually a misnomer betraying, to the discerning, the vanity of an author who would have his public suppose him capable of off-hand effusions in all ways superior to the careful work of others.

That Chopin is here not altogether innocent is at once shown by the premeditated consecutive minor ninths between the melody and accompaniment in the first and second measures of op. 29. The six introductory measures of op. 36 are a carefully written two-part bass which, blending with the treble melody entering at the seventh measure, forms with it a three-part harmony worthy of the most painstaking writer. In op. 51, Chopin is chromatic and winding and premeditating as is his wont. Op. 66 comes nearest the title, «Impromptu.» Interest here centers in the right hand, which, throughout the first and the third sections, is an uninterrupted torrent of semiquavers, and, in the D flat middle movement, is a sustained and melodious cantabile which yet is not the master's true cantabile, that noble and tender and pensive poetry pervading, for instance, the con anima of the B flat minor Scherzo.

The instrumental music of Haydn and Mozart furnishes many models of the true Scherzo. The Sonatas and Symphonies of Beethoven exhibit in its fullness this evolution of the old Minuet, but, coming to the four Scherzos of Chopin, the mere classifier is puzzled and halted while the real musician is exalted and led onward. Leaving the consideration of name and structure and logical sequence to the hypercritical, he enters without cavil this unique, forest-encompassed temple of art where joy and laughter indeed are not, for an elegiac sadness murmurs from the over-roofing green, and oftentimes the winds without, those whisperers in their woodland tongue, will swell to impassioned euphony or hopeless, wild lament, and suddenly midst Nature's momentary hush, a solemn, deep-toned temple hymn is breathed around, and then, above, the swaying branches make their moan anew, and hark! the harsh, capricious blast is pouring once again its tale of wretchedness and woe.

The mind of Chopin, like that of every man and woman of true genius, exhibits both male and female characteristics, for the sexless human soul, the source of those characteristics, would stamp itself clearly and wholly on the impressionable brain of such as he. Chopin's masculineness, so often in abeyance, as throughout the Nocturnes, at once asserts itself in the noble Fantaisie op. 49, whose recurring first figure requires no fortissimo to drive it deep into the heart.

The true genius has his moment when, sole and venturous, he lifts him loftier than the eagle. The sun beyond--the light he failed to reach--did it not from the airless heaven scorn his defeat and leave him humbled in the height? And yet the tree-tops, far beneath upon the mountain, were proud with wings that never dared as he. Many fanciful and imaginative interpretations we have of that empyrean flight the F minor Fantaisie, but, as if too conscious of failure in the unattainable, the author would discredit them all with a commonplace explanation.

Inevitably the collected works of great authors, in whatever department, contain that which as a whole adds little or nothing to their eminent reputation. Of the works of Chopin's mature years, the Allegro de Concert, the Tarantelle, and the Rondo op. 16, belong in this category. And yet any of these, the first especially, would make famous a pianoforte composer not already high in the first rank.

Chopin, as we have seen, studied well the compositions of Bach, and to that study should be traced his comprehensive knowledge of harmonic possibilities. This is wholly proved by his every important work; but in daring how he distances the profound and methodical contrapuntist of Leipsic! Only Wagner and Richard Strauss are bolder than he. As a harmonist Chopin was bent on notable things, and with equal zeal he essayed that most difficult and hazardous of undertakings, the Sonata. Had our Romanticist but given to the pianoforte Sonatas of Beethoven somewhat of those hours devoted to «The Well-tempered Clavichord,» the effect on op. 35 and op. 58, probably had been an enrichment of our repertory of high-class piano Sonatas. After all, the Sonata is a perfected growth of Classicism, and so lends itself most ungraciously to the looser treatment of the Romanticist, for it demands not only sequence of ideas and systematic development of themes, but also a unification of its constituent movements that as a whole it shall be homogeneous.

During his Parisian career, Chopin composed three Sonatas, op. 35 and op. 58, for piano, and op. 65, for piano and violoncello. This last, a most unequal work, has provoked more of adverse criticism than any other bearing his name.

Chopin's chief defect, one almost always apparent, originated in his somewhat narrow sympathies, which, though deep, did yet by no means fathom the joys underlying and destined to outlast the waves of sorrow, which, to his circumscribed vision, were sufficient for the engulfing of the world. What, we ask, was the partition, the virtual obliteration of Poland, to that universal freedom, which, since the Napoleonic days, was known as a blessing yet to be? As already said, Chopin allowed these earth-clouds of sorrow to darken greatly the radiance of his ideal world. The pessimist could not sink himself in the deeper and wider optimist. We suspect his predilection for the gay and thoughtless dwellers on the surface of life, to be but desire to rid himself of a weight of sadness engendered by solitary musings.