THE TRAGIC CHOPIN

Chopin has bequeathed to us six scherzos. The four that comprise a group are opus 20, in B minor; opus 31, B flat minor; opus 39, C sharp minor, and opus 54, E major. The two remaining scherzos are in the second sonata, opus 35, and in the third sonata, opus 58. They are in the respective keys of E flat minor and E flat major. These six compositions are evidences of the power, originality, variety, and delicacy of Chopin. The scherzo is formally not his invention. Beethoven and Mendelssohn anticipated him. But he remodelled the form and filled it with a surprisingly novel content, though not altering its three-four measure. With the Beethoven scherzo we realize the swing, the robustiousness and, at times, the rude jollity. In the Mendelssohn scherzo we enjoy the velocity and finish. Light without heat, true scherzando moods; indeed, more scherzo-like than Chopin’s, Mendelssohn’s sense of elfin joy stemmed from the early Italian masters of the pianoforte. Rossini voiced this belief after hearing the scherzo a capriccio from the nimble fingers of Felix himself, and said to the composer: “That smells of Scarlatti.” And it does recall Domenico Scarlatti, whose compositions, slight as to structure, are replete with gracious vitality and a surface skimming of sentiment like the curved flight of a thin bird over shallow waters.

A terrible though beautiful domain is the Chopin scherzo. Only two have the lightness of touch, clarity in atmosphere and bustling gaiety of the conventional scherzo: the other four are fierce, grave, ironic, sardonic, fiery, passionate, even hysterical, and most melancholy. In several the moods are pathologic; in all, magical. The scherzo in E, opus 54, may be best described by the thrice commonplace word, delightful. It is sunny music, and its sweep and swiftness are compelling. The five preluding bars of half-notes, unison, strike the keynote of optimism. What follows is like the ruffling of tree-tops by warm southern winds. The little upward flight in E, beginning at the seventeenth bar, in major thirds and fourths, has been cleverly utilized by Saint-Saëns in the scherzo of his G minor piano concerto, opus 22. The fanciful embroidery of the single finger passages is never opaque; a sparkling, bubbling freedom and freshness characterize this Chopin scherzo, a composition not heard too often in public, possibly because there are few pianists, like Joseffy or De Pachmann, to play it. Its emotional content is not deep; it lies well within the category of the elegant, the capricious. Its fourth page contains an episode which at first blush suggests the theme of the A flat valse, opus 42, with its comminglement of duplex and triple rhythms. Although the piu lento is in C sharp minor, it betrays little sadness; it is but the blur of a passing cloud that shadows with its fleecy edges the wind-swept moorland.

This scherzo in E is a mood of joyousness; as joyous as the witty, sensitive, umbrageous composer ever allowed himself to become. Its coda is not so forcible as the usual Chopin coda. There is a dazzling flutter of silvery scale at the close. Altogether a charming work. Closely allied to it in general sentiment is the E flat scherzo from the B minor sonata. It is largely arabesque and its ornamentation is genial though not surprisingly ingenious. It somewhat savors of Weber. It might go on forever. The resolution is not intellectual; it is purely one of tonality. The thought is tenuous. But it is highly embroidered relief after the first movement of the sonata. Nor is the trio in B particularly noteworthy. Truly a salon scherzo, which challenges Mendelssohn on his native heath. It may be considered as an intermezzo, also as a prelude to the lyric measures.

We are on firm and familiar footing when the first page is opened of the B flat minor scherzo, the second in order of composition. Who has not heard with interest those overarching and questioning triplets which Chopin could never make his pupils play sufficiently “tombé”? He told De Lenz: “It must be a charnel-house.” Alas! These same vaulted phrases have since become banal. This scherzo, like the lovely A flat Ballade, is cruelly tortured by the ambitious musical flapper. Yet how great, how vigorous, it all is; how it abounds in sweetness and light when the music falls from the fingers of a master! It is a Byronic poem—“so tender, so bold, as full of love as of scorn,” to quote Schumann. Has Chopin ever penned a more delicious song than this in D flat, with its straying over the tonal borderland? It is the high noon of life. The dark bud of the introduction has come to a perfect flowering, and with what miracles of scent, shape, and color! The second section has the quality of sane wit. It is serious to severity, yet its meanings are noble. The brief excursion that follows is the awakening from a wondering dream; no suggestion there of pallid morbidities. And how supremely welded is the style with the subject; what masterly writing evolved from the genius of the instrument! Then, fearful that he has dwelt too long upon his ideas, Chopin, in a rapturous flight, soars away to clear sky. After the repetition comes the development section, and while it is ingenious and effective in a chaotic way, nevertheless it is here that the composer is at his weakest. The Olympian aloofness of Beethoven, which permitted him to survey his material from every point of view, Chopin could not boast. He is a great composer, but he was also a great pianist. He nurses his themes with constructive frugality, and sometimes the mechanical limitation of the piano checks his imagination. The well-sounding is considered as much as the clearly thought. There is logic in his exposition, though it is often piano, not music, logic. A certain straining after brilliancy, a falling off in the spontaneous urge of the earlier pages, force us to feel easier with the return of the first theme. The coda is brilliant. This scherzo in B flat minor bids fair to remain the favorite among its fellows. It is neither cryptic nor repellent, like the first and third scherzo. It is a perennial joy to pupil and public. Like the soliloquy in Hamlet, the B flat minor scherzo is become a popular quotation.

Its predecessor in B minor, opus 20, is the profounder of the pair, but not so melodious. It is the most shrill and hysterical of the scherzos. Though in the ironic vein, it is Chopin recklessly throwing himself to the winds of remorse—a Manfred mood, a mood of self-torture, a confession from the first chord to the last. Within the dream inclosed by its gates of tonal brass there is the struggle of an imprisoned soul. It is the unhappiest and the most riotous of the Pole’s works, and it is also unduly long. Its emotional keynote is too tense to permit of the repetitions marked by the composer. These repetitions are unsuited to present taste, which, above all, demands brevity. Poignancy and prolixity are mutually exclusive. The piece greatly gains when played without “da capo.” Its first part is so drastically harsh that the succeeding melody in B, with its lilting tenths—“the sweet slumber of the moonlight on the hill”—after the tragic strain comes as benison. This scherzo seems to possess a personal message. Chopin, like Robert Louis Stevenson, was consumptive. Slender of frame, as was the Scotch writer, his spirit was leonine. His was psychic bravery. He could write terrible music, conjure up desperate images. A sense of stifled longing, of the inability to compass his lofty ambitions, fill this first scherzo. It is the tragedy of Chopin’s life compressed within a few pages; the tragedy of one whose spirit was weaker than his flesh.

The arabesques after the eight-bar introduction—some of them muted bars, as is Chopin’s wont—has a spiritual resemblance to the principal figure in the Fantasie-Impromptu, opus 66; but instead of the ductile triplets, as in the bars of the Impromptu, the figure in the scherzo is divided between the hands, while the harshness of the mood is emphasized by the anticipatory chord in the left hand. The vitality of this first page is positively electrifying. The questioning chords at the close of the section are as imaginative as any passage ever written by the composer. The half-notes E and the upleaping appogiaturia are evidences of his originality in minor details. These occur before the modulation into the lyric theme and with some slight dashes before the dash into the coda. The second section, in agitato, contains several knotty harmonic problems; they must be skimmed over at tempestuous speed, else cacophony. Here Chopin is bold to excess, as if his spirit would knock at the very gates of heaven or hell. But the thunder and surge, after waxing, soon wanes and spends itself. The soul has stormed itself into sheer weariness. By critical consent, the molto piu lento is a masterpiece. Written in the luscious key of B, it is like a woven enchantment. Chopin attains most subtle effects with broken accords in tenths. The only other slow movements comparable to this are the B major episode in the B minor octave study, opus 25, and the largo of the B minor sonata. The Garden of Armida or the Vale of Tempe are evoked by all three tone-poems.

Mark how the composer resumes his first savage mood. It is a picture of contrasted violences. Beware of the “da capo.” Too many repetitions provoke satiety. Rather attack at once the coda—that most dramatic of Chopin’s codas. Bold, breathless, startling, is this impetuous ride ’cross country. The heavy accentuation on the first note of every bar should not obscure one’s rhythmic sense to the second beat in the left, which is likewise accented. This produces mixed rhythms, which add to the murkiness, confusion, and despair of the finale. These daring dissonances—so daring, so logical, so dramatic—how they must have rasped the nerves of Chopin’s contemporaries! And they should be rigorously insisted upon. No veiled half-lights. All bridges are burned. Naught remains but catastrophe. To his doom goes this musical Childe Roland! The Dark Tower crumbles as the poet dauntlessly blows his slug-horn. The scherzo ends in overwhelming ruin. The last page is a supreme offering to the god of pessimism.

Even though the sneering fretfulness of an unhappy sick-brained man disturbs its sharp contours, the third scherzo in C sharp minor, opus 39, is the most dramatic and the finest moulded of them all. It is capricious to madness, but the dramatic quality is unmistakable. It seethes with scorn—if such an extravagant expression may be allowed; but it is extravagant, full of fire and fury, yet signifying something. A word as to the tempo: The scherzos, with a few exceptions, are marked presto, but we must remember that it is the presto of Chopin’s time, also of his piano action. His favorite Pleyel piano was light and elastic in action. To-day actions are heavier, the key dip greater, though the elasticity is the same. Therefore the tempi of these scherzos—or should I write scherzi?—ought to be moderated, otherwise the music loses its significant ponderability, not to say dignity, when we adopt the old-fashioned time markings. The first part of the B minor scherzo may be taken at a presto pace—that is, a commodious presto, the scherzo in E major must be played presto; also the one in E flat, as both are of the velocity genre; but when the thought takes on a graver hue, where the mastery of utterance and nobility of phrase are to be considered, then moderate your pulse-beat. The scherzo in C sharp minor is a special sufferer from a too hurried speed. Architectonics are blurred, details jumbled and grandeur of style is absent. And if you start with such a fiery tempo, how shall you secure contrast in the coda, which should be fairly shot from the finger-tips? Or would you emulate Schumann in his G minor sonata, in the finale, which begins prestissimo, and is later ordered by the composer to become still more prestissimo? Achieve a presto, by all means, but consider the heavier tonal mass of the modern piano.

This C sharp minor scherzo is a massive composition, yet replete with fitful starts and rhythmic surprises. The chorale and its trio are Chopinesque as to fioritura and in harmonic basis. Throughout the narrative tone is dramatic; even in the “meno mosso” it never tarries. The coda is built on an effect of persistent iteration. It is excellently adapted to the keyboard. The composition has affinities with the dark and grotesque conceptions of Hoffmann, Poe, or Coleridge. Its acid irony recalls Heine. It is like fantastic architecture seen in a dream; about it hover perpetual gloom and the despairing things that circle in the night. It is like a tale from Poe’s iron-bound, melancholy volume of the Magi and across its portal is written the word, Spleen.

Remains the E flat minor scherzo from the second sonata. It is the most powerful of the set. To interpret, one needs breadth of style, heroic spirit, abetted by wrists of steel. The big Rossinian one-bar crescendo at the beginning taxes the strength. The composition is elemental; the chromatic whistling of the wind in the chord of the sixth makes true storm-music. There is menacing gloom in the initial bars; the blissful song is not quite uninterrupted bliss; there is always a tempest that threatens. The descending octaves, which seem to invite us to the infernal regions, are swept away by the storm-theme, and once more we are madly projected through space. Satanic pride, a challenge to fate, the defiance of the microcosm to the threatening macrocosm; these and other characteristics may be imagined in this profound work. It depends on the listener. With Chopin as with Rome, you carry away what you fetch to either man or city. But your little Peter’s pence of sympathy has suffered a rich change in the return. We are the gainers. Some day, no longer as remote as when the fallacious belief that the music of any particular nation is better than another’s, perhaps Chopin may stand where he should, next to Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven. There is no such thing as map-music; there is only beautiful music. And you can never play Chopin beautifully enough.