Frédéric Chopin
François Frédéric Chopin, genius of music for the piano, was born in Zelazowa Wola, Poland, on February 22, 1810. He began to study the piano at six. One year later he made his first public appearance and wrote his first piece of music. His later music study took place privately with Joseph Elsner and at the Warsaw Conservatory from which he was graduated with honors in 1829. In that year he visited Vienna where he gave two successful concerts of his works. He left Poland for good in 1830, settling permanently in Paris a year after that. He soon became one of the most highly regarded musicians in France, even though he gave only a few public concerts. In 1837 he first met the writer, George Sand, with whom he was involved emotionally for about a decade, and under whose influence he composed some of his greatest music. Always sensitive in physique and of poor health, Chopin suffered physically most of his adult life. He died in Paris on October 17, 1849 and was buried in Père Lachaise.
Chopin produced 169 compositions in all. Practically all of them are for the piano, and most within the smaller forms. In writing for the piano he was an innovator who helped change the destiny of piano style and technique. He is often described as the poet of the keyboard, by virtue of his sensitive and deeply affecting lyricism (usually beautifully ornamented), his always exquisite workmanship, and his profound emotion. Many of his works are nationally Polish in expression.
The Etude in E major, op. 10, no. 3 (1833) is one of two of Chopin’s most famous works in the etude form. While an etude is essentially a technical exercise, Chopin produced twenty-seven pieces for piano which, though they still probe various technical problems, are nevertheless so filled with poetic thought and musical imagination that they belong in the realm of great art and must be numbered with his most significant compositions. That in E major is one of his most beautiful melodies, a soulful song rather than a technical exercise; Chopin himself regarded this as one of his most inspired pages. One of the many transcriptions of this composition existing is for the voice.
The so-called Revolutionary Etude—C minor, op. 10, no. 12 (1833)—was inspired by the tidings received by Chopin while he was traveling from Vienna to Paris that Warsaw had fallen to the Russians. His first impulse was to rush back home and join in the battle. He was dissuaded from doing this by his family, and instead he sublimated his intense patriotic feelings by writing a fiery piece of national music, full of the spirit of defiance. Since then this etude has become as inextricably associated with Poland and its national aspirations and ideals as, for example, is Sibelius’ Finlandia with Finland. This etude was repeatedly played over the Polish radio when Nazi Germany first attacked Poland in 1939, a continual inspiration to the defenders of Warsaw; it was the last piece of music played over the Polish radio before the Germans took over.
In the Fantaisie-Impromptu in C-sharp minor, op. 66 (1834), Chopin makes a structural compromise between the forms of the fantasy and the impromptu. In doing so, he produced one of his best known melodies, a melody that appears after a fast bravura opening. This is a flowing sentimental song that was used for the popular American tune, “I’m Always Chasing Rainbows.”
The Funeral March is surely the most celebrated funeral music ever written. It is found as the third movement of the Sonata No. 2 in B-flat minor, for piano, op. 35 (1839). In various arrangements, especially for orchestra, for band and for organ, this music has accompanied the dead to their final resting place in every part of the civilized world. In three-part form, the first section consists of a slow, mournful march. In the middle trio a more reflective mood is projected, almost like a kind of gentle recollection of the dead and the good he had performed. The opening mournful tread returns after this trio to bring the composition to its conclusion.
The fifty-five Mazurkas are among the most national of Chopin’s compositions, those in which he most fervently expressed his strong feelings about his native land. The Mazurka is a Polish dance in ¾ time, somewhat slower in tempo than the waltz, and highly varied in rhythm and emotion. In Chopin’s Mazurkas we find, on the one hand, brief mood pictures, and on the other, a fiery romantic temperament which expresses itself in rapid and at times abrupt alternations of feeling from the gay to the melancholy, from the energetic to the pensive. One of the most beautiful of the Mazurkas is that in A minor, op. 17, no. 4 (1833), of which Stokowski made an excellent orchestral arrangement. One of the most dramatic is that in B-flat minor, op. 24, no. 4 (1835) orchestrated by Stokowski, Auber, among others. Two other Chopin Mazurkas that have been orchestrated are found in Les Sylphides (see below): that in D major, op. 33, no. 2 (1838) and C major, op. 67, no. 3 (1835).
Chopin wrote nineteen Nocturnes, each one a slow, poetic and atmospheric piece of “night music.” “Chopin loved the night,” wrote James Gibbons Huneker, “and its soft mysteries, and his nocturnes are true night pieces, some with agitated, remorseful countenance, others seen in profile only, while many others are whisperings at the dusk.” The most celebrated of Chopin’s Nocturnes is that in E-flat major, op. 9, no. 2 (1833), truly a “whispering at the dusk.” This is a beautiful, romantic song that begins without preliminaries. As this spacious melody unfolds, it acquires even new facets of beauty through the most exquisite embellishments. Among the many transcriptions that have become popular, besides those for orchestra, is one for violin and piano by Pablo de Sarasate, and another for cello and piano by David Popper.
There are two Chopin Polonaises that are particularly favored by audiences everywhere. One is the Heroic, the other the Military. Chopin was especially successful in endowing artistic dimensions and significance to this old courtly folk dance which is technically characterized by its syncopations and accents on the half beat. He wrote twelve for piano. The Heroic, in A-flat major, op. 53, no. 6 (1842) is fiery music, its first robust theme being the reason why the entire work has been designated as “heroic.” This main melody was borrowed for the American popular song, “Till the End of Time,” a big hit in 1945. (Sigmund Spaeth has pointed up the interesting fact that while “Till the End of Time” was at the head of the “Hit Parade” in 1945, the polonaise itself from which this song was derived was in fifteenth place, “competing with all the light and serious music of the world.” And one of the reasons why the Polonaise suddenly became so popular was because it was featured prominently in the screen biography of Chopin released that year, A Song to Remember.) The Military Polonaise, in A major, op. 40, no. 1 (1839) is one of Chopin’s most commanding pieces of music. Both principal themes have a pronounced military character, though the second is somewhat more subdued and lyrical than the first. Glazunov’s transcription for orchestra, for the ballet Chopiniana, is one of several adaptations.
Of Chopin’s twenty-six Preludes, two should be singled out for their enormous popular appeal. Chopin’s Preludes are brief compositions suggesting a mood or picture, but at the end leaving the impression with the listener that much more could be spoken on that subject. These Preludes, as Robert Schumann wrote, “are sketches, the beginnings of studies, or, if you will, ruins; eagles’ pinions, wild and motley and pell-mell. But in every piece we find, in his own pearly handwriting, ‘this is by Frederic Chopin’; even in his pauses we recognize him by his agitated breathing.” There are twenty-four pieces in op. 28 (1839), each one in one of the keys of the major or minor scale, beginning with C major and A minor, and concluding with F major and D minor. The most popular is that in A major, one of the shortest in the group, a sixteen-bar melody in two short sentences; this is not only one of Chopin’s simplest lyrical thoughts, but also one of his most eloquent. Among the orchestral transcriptions is the one found in the ballet Les Sylphides (see below).
The second of Chopin’s most popular Preludes is the so-called Raindrop, in D-flat major, op. 28, no. 15. Some of the depression experienced by Chopin during a miserable stay in Majorca with George Sand—where he was plagued by illness, bad weather, and the antagonism and suspicions of his neighbors—can here be found. The melody is a somber reflection, through which is interspersed a repetitious figure that seems to suggest the rhythm of falling raindrops, the reason why this piece acquired its familiar nickname. The belief that Chopin was inspired to write this music by listening to the gentle sound of falling rain on the roof of his Majorca house is apocryphal.
Les Sylphides, one of the most popular works in the classic ballet repertory, makes extensive use of some of Chopin’s best-known compositions for the piano, orchestrated by Stravinsky, Alexander Tcherepnine, Glazunov, and Liadov. With choreography by Michel Fokine it was first presented by Diaghilev’s Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo in Paris on June 2, 1909 with Pavlova, Karsavina, and Nijinsky as principal dancers. There is no story line to this ballet. In place of characters there are only dancers dressed in long white dresses, and a danseur in black and white velvet. In place of an actual plot there is only atmosphere and mood. A subdued, introspective overture (Prelude in A major, op. 28, no. 7) leads to the rise of the curtain on an ancient ruin within a secluded wood. Girls in white are transfixed in a tableau; then they begin dancing to the strains of the Nocturne in A-flat, op. 32, no. 2. After that come various dances to the following Chopin compositions: Waltz in G-flat, op. 70, no. 1; Mazurka in C major, op. 67, no. 3; Mazurka in D major, op. 33, no. 2; a repetition of the opening A major Prelude; Waltz in A-flat, op. 69, no. 1, the L’adieu; a repetition of the opening A major Prelude; Waltz in C-sharp minor, op. 64, no. 2; Waltz in E-flat, op. 18, the Grande valse brillante.
Chopin’s fourteen waltzes are the last word in aristocratic elegance and refinement of style; they are abundant with the most beguiling lyrical ideas. Perhaps the best loved of all these waltzes is that in C-sharp minor, op. 64, no. 2 (1847). The waltz opens without preliminaries with music of courtly grace; two other equally appealing subjects follow. The so-called Minute Waltz—in D-flat major, op. 64, no. 1—is one of the shortest of Chopin’s compositions for the piano. The term “minute” does not refer to the sixty seconds supposedly required for its performance (actually that performance takes less than a minute) but to the French term, “minute” meaning “small.”