PHASES OF THE GREATER CHOPIN

To-day the Impromptus of Chopin are well-nigh impossible in the concert-room. Those delights of all true “flappers,” the Fantasie-Impromptu in C sharp minor, and the A flat Impromptu are played too often, that is, played badly. The first part of the Fantasie-Impromptu is taken at too swift a pace, and, in consequence, sounds too much like an etude, when in reality its arabesques do hint at something more emotional. The figuration suggests that of the B minor scherzo, not, however, so pregnant with dramatic meanings. And that second section in D flat, how it is dragged, how it is sprawled and drawled! In company with the second theme of the Funeral March, it is the most sentimental of its composer. The greater Chopin is revealed in the second Impromptu, the one in the key of F sharp major. It is a sheaf of moods organically more bound together than seems at a first hearing. Because of its true impromptu spirit, its vagrant moods, its restless outpouring of fancies, it has been rather disregarded by some Chopinists, who, hidebound as any academic critic, are shocked by the changes in tonality, and, being unimaginative, are shocked also by the capricious shifting of moods; one dream melts into another, and after a repetition of those sweetly attuned chords at the close, a vigorous affirmation awakens the listener as would a sudden clap of thunder during a peaceful evening in June. There are several enigmatic bars of modulation that have puzzled purists and still are disquieting even to excursionists through the tangled harmonic underwoods of Ornstein and Stravinsky. I refer to a transitional passage after the march-like measures and immediately before the return of the principal melody. Elsewhere I have compared them to the creaking of a rusty hinge in the dooryard where Walt Whitman’s lilacs last bloomed. The G flat Impromptu, the third in the published order—the Fantasie-Impromptu, opus 66, is posthumous—was seldom heard in recital till Vladimir de Pachmann, master expositor of the more delicate phases of the Polish composer, revived it in his programme. Since then it is become more familiar. It is charming with its spiral figuration, though less novel than its two predecessors.

The Mazurkas, those impish, morbid, gay, sour, dour, graceful little dances, I need not dwell upon here at length. For the majority of pianists they are a sealed book, and if you have not a savor of Slav in you pray do not disturb them with your literalism. De Pachmann, Godowsky, Paderewski, Gabrilowitsch, and Josef Hofmann play them wonderfully, but how few others. I recall a story told me by Rosenthal, whose colossal performances here are memorable. He wished to hear from De Pachmann’s nimble fingers his own version of the Mazurkas and paid the Russian a visit one evening. Pachmann did not greet Rosenthal too sympathetically. “Ah!” he exclaimed, when Moriz, the octave-thunderbolt, explained the reason for his unexpected appearance. “Ah! but I play the Mazurkas so badly. Now, if I had your technique”—his eyes fairly sparkled with malicious irony—“I might be able to play them!” However, he was persuaded, and once seated at the piano he didn’t leave it till he had almost finished the entire collection; and Chopin wrote many of these dances. (At least fifty-one, if you include several of doubtful authenticity). How did he play them, this perverse magical artist? Rosenthal told me that he had never heard such beautiful, subtle, and treacherous playing; the treachery was the manner in which he interpreted the music. Not an accent was correct, the phrasing was falsified, though the precise notation was adhered to, and all delivered with a variety of touches positively exquisite. “There!” cried De Pachmann, as he finished, “that is the only way to play the Mazurkas.” And he smiled with his eyes. “Not!” thought Rosenthal, who thanked his colleague and hurried into the open air where he could explode. Talk about camouflage! The joke was later when Rosenthal teased De Pachmann about his trickery and the Chopinzee absolutely grinned with joy. Surely, as Sam Johnson remarked, the reciprocal civility of authors is one of the most risible scenes in the farce of life. The splenetic doctor could have joined musicians to authors.

Chopin has composed some marvellous music in the Mazurka form. Consider the three or four of these dances in the key of C sharp minor, the poetic one in B flat minor, the one with the morbidly insistent theme in B minor or that sad, appealing example in F minor, the last which Chopin is said to have put on paper. Its fixed idea, its hectic gaiety and acrid gloom reveal a sick brain, the brain of a dying man. But there are many other Mazurkas filled with daylight cheerfulness. Of the greater Chopin posterity will probably acclaim the Polonaises in F sharp minor, A flat major and the Fantaisie-Polonaise in the same key. There is a wealth of fantasy in this Polonaise, opus 61; its restless tonalities, the beauty of the first theme, the vaporous deliquescence later of this theme, the violent mood changes and harmonic grandeur left this work to the elect of the composer. The F sharp minor Polonaise and the so-called Siberian in E flat minor, as well as the Polonaise in C minor are nothing if not virile. They demand men as well as pianists to interpret them.

Liszt pronounced the F sharp minor Polonaise pathologic. As a matter of fact, it surpasses in sombre grandeur the Heroic Polonaise, opus 53, notwithstanding the thundering cannons and cavalry charges of the more popular of the pair. The triplets in eight notes of the introduction achieve a splendid climax of suspense before the entrance of the chief theme. Soon octaves and chords supplant the single notes of the melody. There is epical breadth which at each reiteration becomes bigger, so big that it almost overflows the frame of the keyboard, in suggestion becomes orchestral. The second subject in the major (D flat) is less drastic, is an excellent contrast figure. The strange intermezzo in A which precedes the Mazurka is not enigmatic if you hear it as a sinister roll of drums. I think of Rembrandt’s Night Watch, and its muffled morning music. Its intent is manifest, it leads to the second theme, now transposed to the despairing key of C sharp minor; the Mazurka which follows tempted Liszt—or his amanuensis, Princess Sayn-Wittgenstein—to the most extravagant panegyric. Its brace of double notes, thirds and sixths are lovely in hue and scent, but pray do not languish your tempo, else the episode soon becomes sugary. Again the Polonaise resumes its elemental chant, a chant which grows huger in rancorous woe until the very bottom of the pit of desolation is reached, and, without a gleam of light, comes the code with mutterings of the main theme, and only in the very last bar we hear with positive relief a smashing F sharp in octaves.

What does it all mean? Some obscure psychological drama of the composer’s soul in which he vents his spleen, indignation and defiance, and rages against the ineluctable canons of destiny. In a sense this Polonaise is pathologic. It appeals to the nerves. It lacerates the pulp of our sensibility, it is morbid, but it is also magnificent. It is not sensational like the two Polonaises of Liszt in E major and C minor, though it is equally brilliant. Arthur Friedheim played the Chopin Polonaise superbly at one time. It suited his saturnine mood. I fancy, however, that Franz Liszt’s performance must have been the supreme exemplar. There is a loftiness of mood coupled with the heroic patterns of this piece which place it in the category of masterpieces. It reminds one of a sullen, rugged landscape in the style of Salvator Rosa, a solitary human in the foreground, distracted, who lifts suicidal hands to the darkling, indifferent skies. It is the tragedy of Man, who is no longer, as in the old-fashioned geocentric conception of the universe, the centre of things, but discovers himself alone, deserted by the familiar signs and stars in his cosey firmament, and despairs. The tragedy of unfaith. The tragedy of love that slays. Unhappy Chopin was baptized a Roman Catholic, so was George Sand. Both were, to put the case mildly, slack in the practices of their church. Chopin was of a pious bent.

He concealed his attachment to the French sphinx of the inkpot from his mother in Warsaw because he feared to pain her. She was profoundly religious. Madame Sand, who didn’t wear trousers and smoke all day, as caricature proclaims, was cruel to her consumptive genius. She appreciated his work, but his humors were antic. She called Frederic “mon cher cadavre,” and this “corpse” must have grated on his nerves. Oh! if he had possessed but a tithe of her saving sense of humor. But Chopin was not given to jesting over his love. He flirted and mildly diverted himself; the Sand affair was deadly serious to him. When the spirit moved her she betrayed him (let us politely call it spirit rather than temperament). Her final desertion didn’t kill him. It was the liaison that slew the man, body and soul. She robbed him of love, faith, and fatherland. His ending, though, was in the proper religious key. According to Turgines, half the countesses in Europe sang him to his death. (Many are still singing their hearers along the same road.) I believe the F sharp Polonaise to be the most subjective from the pen of its composer, even more so than the B minor scherzo, opus 20.

The nocturnes are done to death. Let us pass them by. The C sharp minor nocturne is like the one in C minor; both are still free from persecution at the hands of the young person who has decked the most virile spirit of his age with Parisian millinery. These two nocturnes do not intrigue the fancy of the amateur. In breadth of conception they are Beethovenian. The E major nocturne, a favorite of Josef Hofmann, and the one in B, the Tuberose, in which Paderewski proved so eloquent and whose very title makes H. L. Mencken grit his teeth, are loaded with purest Chopin ore. I admire, but with reservations, the transcription of various nocturnes to instruments of the string family. Wilhelmj transposed the D flat nocturne for violin and Leopold Auer has arranged the posthumous nocturne in E minor, which Heifetz plays beautifully; yet, effective as they may be, they are not truly Chopinesque. They are too saccharine on the strings; we miss the cool, crystalline tones of the pianoforte.

The Berceuse! Of that wonder-child who came to us through the pink gates of the dawn, and was rocked to rhythmic dreams in Chopin’s Cradle Song, I may only say that in the hands of many pianists it has grown to be a brat of banal visage and muscular proportions. An ululation of the D flat tonality, it has now become a mere finger study. When Joseffy played the composition a poem emerged from the ivories. What of the Preludes? Alone the twenty-five Preludes would give their creator a claim on immortality. There are technical range and poetic vision; above all, there is humanity. Shades of feeling are explored, depths and altitudes of passion explored. If all Chopin were to be annulled I should plead for the salvation of the Preludes. The cameo-like stillness of some is like softly spoken words overheard in a cloister. Truly religious. But thunder-riven Preludes in D minor, in B flat minor, in F minor and E flat minor stir our pulse to sharper vibration. Surpassingly sweet is the elegiac Prelude in B flat. It recalls the nocturnes. The second Prelude with its enigmatic questionings is for a rainy day; a day when the soul is racked by doubt or defeat; about it, hovers a grisly something that we dare not define. It may be Chopin’s Horla, this sinister music-making. A ray of sunshine, but from a sun that slants in the west is the Prelude in G. What marvels in miniature, what cunningly wrought jewels! Darker drama may be found as the D minor Prelude with its elemental ground—bass—in angry sea roars somewhere in the background; also in the glittering scales of the B flat minor Prelude and the declamatory passages of the F minor Prelude. In the C sharp minor Prelude, opus 45, there are marked anticipations of the later manner of Brahms, not alone in spirit but in figuration. This Prelude is a foretaste of Brahms, the familiar Chopin note not missing.

The embroideries of the Barcarolle—a fully developed and dramatic Nocturne—and of the Bolero are more Polish than Italian or Spanish. By some critics the Fantaisie, opus 49, has been adjudged the most perfect work of the composer. The grave, march-like introductions, the insistent, climbing figures in triplets, the great song in F minor, followed by the enchanting episodes in double-notes, and the powerful climax reveal another Chopin from the sentimental dreamer, the conventional Thaddeus of Warsaw. There is logical development. There are dramatic scope and intensity. The lento is peaceful, the coda impressive. The entire composition is massive, its phraseology long-breathed. It represents the master at the peak of his powers.