Chopin: The Man and His Music by James Huneker (cat reading book txt) 📕

Its novel design, delicate arabesques—as if the guitar had been dowered with a soul—and the richness and originality of its harmonic scheme, gives us pause to ask if Chopin’s invention is not almost boundless. The melody itself is plaintive; a plaintive grace informs the entire piece. The harmonization is far more wonderful, but to us the chord of the tenth and more remote intervals, seem no longer daring; modern composition has devilled the musical alphabet into the very caverns of the grotesque, yet there are harmonies in the last page of this study that still excite wonder. The fifteenth bar from the end is one that Richard Wagner might have made. From that bar to the close, every group is a masterpiece.

Remember, this study is a nocturne, and even the accepted metronomic markings in most editions, 76 to the quarter, are not too slow; they might even be slower. Allegretto and not a shade speedier! The color scheme is celestial and the ending a sigh, not unmixed with happiness.

Chopin, sensitive poet, had his moments of peace, of divine content—lebensruhe. The dizzy appoggiatura leaps in the last two bars set the seal of perfection upon this unique composition.

Touching upon the execution, one may say that it is not for small hands, nor yet for big fists. The former must not believe that any “arrangements” or simplified versions will ever produce the aerial effect, the swaying of the tendrils of tone, intended by Chopin. Very large hands are tempted by their reach to crush the life out of the study in not arpeggiating it. This I have heard, and the impression was indescribably brutal. As for fingering, Mikuli, Von Bulow, Kullak, Riemann and Klindworth all differ, and from them must most pianists differ. Your own grasp, individual sense of fingering and tact will dictate the management of technics. Von Bulow gives a very sensible pattern to work from, and Kullak is still more explicit. He analyzes the melody and, planning the arpeggiating with scrupulous fidelity, he shows why the arpeggiating “must be affected with the utmost rapidity, bordering upon simultaneousness of harmony in the case of many chords.”

Kullak has something to say about the grace notes and this bids me call your attention to Von Bulow’s change in the appoggiatura at the last return of the subject. A bad misprint is in the Von Bulow edition: it is in the seventeenth bar from the end, the lowest note in the first bass group and should read E natural, instead of the E flat that stands.

Von Bulow does not use the arpeggio sign after the first chord. He rightly believes it makes unclear for the student the subtleties of harmonic changes and fingering. He also suggests—quite like the fertile Hans Guido—that “players who have sufficient patience and enthusiasm for the task would find it worth their while to practise the arpeggi the reverse way, from top to bottom; or in contrary motion, beginning with the top note in one hand and the bottom note in the other. A variety of devices like this would certainly help to give greater finish to the task.”

Doubtless, but consider: man’s years are but threescore and ten!

The phrasing of the various editions examined do not vary much. Riemann is excepted, who has his say in this fashion, at the beginning: [Musical score excerpt]

More remarkable still is the diversity of opinion regarding the first three bass chord groups in the fifteenth bar from the close: the bottom notes in the Von Bulow and Klindworth editions are B flat and two A naturals, and in the Riemann, Kullak and Mikuli editions the notes are two B flats and one A natural. The former sounds more varied, but we may suppose the latter to be correct because of Mikuli. Here is the particular bar, as given by Riemann:

[Musical score excerpt]

Yet this exquisite flight into the blue, this nocturne which should be played before sundown, excited the astonishment of Mendelssohn, the perplexed wrath of Moscheles and the contempt of Rellstab, editor of the “Iris,” who wrote in that journal in 1834 of the studies in op.

10:—

“Those who have distorted fingers may put them right by practising these studies; but those who have not, should not play them, at least not without having a surgeon at hand.” What incredible surgery would have been needed to get within the skull of this narrow critic any savor of the beauty of these compositions! In the years to come the Chopin studies will be played for their music, without any thought of their technical problems.

Now the young eagle begins to face the sun, begins to mount on wind-weaving pinions. We have reached the last study of op. 10, the magnificent one in C minor. Four pages suffice for a background upon which the composer has flung with overwhelming fury the darkest, the most demoniac expressions of his nature. Here is no veiled surmise, no smothered rage, but all sweeps along in tornadic passion. Karasowski’s story may be true regarding the genesis of this work, but true or not, it is one of the greatest dramatic outbursts in piano literature. Great in outline, pride, force and velocity, it never relaxes its grim grip from the first shrill dissonance to the overwhelming chordal close.

This end rings out like the crack of creation. It is elemental. Kullak calls it a “bravura study of the very highest order for the left hand.

It was composed in 1831 in Stuttgart, shortly after Chopin had received tidings of the taking of Warsaw by the Russians, September 8, 1831.”

Karasowski wrote: “Grief, anxiety and despair over the fate of his relatives and his dearly-beloved father filled the measure of his sufferings. Under the influence of this mood he wrote the C minor Etude, called by many the Revolutionary Etude. Out of the mad and tempestuous storm of passages for the left hand the melody rises aloft, now passionate and anon proudly majestic, until thrills of awe stream over the listener, and the image is evoked of Zeus hurling thunderbolts at the world.”

Niecks thinks it “superbly grand,” and furthermore writes: “The composer seems fuming with rage; the left hand rushes impetuously along and the right hand strikes in with passionate ejaculations.” Von Bulow said: “This C minor study must be considered a finished work of art in an even higher degree than the study in C sharp minor.” All of which is pretty, but not enough to the point.

Von Bulow fingers the first passage for the left hand in a very rational manner; Klindworth differs by beginning with the third instead of the second finger, while Riemann—dear innovator—takes the group: second, first, third, and then, the fifth finger on D, if you please!

Kullak is more normal, beginning with the third. Here is Riemann’s phrasing and grouping for the first few bars. Notice the half note with peculiar changes of fingering at the end. It gives surety and variety.

Von Bulow makes the changes ring on the second and fifth, instead of third and fifth, fingers. Thus Riemann: [Musical score excerpt]

In the above the accustomed phrasing is altered, for in all other editions the accent falls upon the first note of each group. In Riemann the accentuation seems perverse, but there is no question as to its pedagogic value. It may be ugly, but it is useful though I should not care to hear it in the concert room. Another striking peculiarity of the Riemann phrasing is his heavy accent on the top E flat in the principal passage for the left hand. He also fingers what Von Bulow calls the “chromatic meanderings,” in an unusual manner, both on the first page and the last. His idea of the enunciation of the first theme is peculiar:

[Musical score excerpt]

Mikuli places a legato bow over the first three octaves—so does Kullak—Von Bulow only over the last two, which gives a slightly different effect, while Klindworth does the same as Kullak. The heavy dynamic accents employed by Riemann are unmistakable. They signify the vital importance of the phrase at its initial entrance. He does not use it at the repetition, but throughout both dynamic and agogic accents are unsparingly used, and the study seems to resound with the sullen booming of a park of artillery. The working-out section, with its anticipations of “Tristan and Isolde,” is phrased by all the editors as it is never played. Here the technical figure takes precedence over the law of the phrase, and so most virtuosi place the accent on the fifth finger, regardless of the pattern. This is as it should be. In Klindworth there is a misprint at the beginning of the fifteenth bar from the end in the bass. It should read B natural, not B flat. The metronome is the same in all editions, 160 to the quarter, but speed should give way to breadth at all hazards. Von Bulow is the only editor, to my knowledge, who makes an enharmonic key change in this working-out section. It looks neater, sounds the same, but is it Chopin? He also gives a variant for public performance by transforming the last run in unisono into a veritable hurricane by interlocked octaves. The effect is brazen. Chopin needs no such clangorous padding in this etude, which gains by legitimate strokes the most startling contrasts.

The study is full of tremendous pathos; it compasses the sublime, and in its most torrential moments the composer never quite loses his mental equipoise. He, too, can evoke tragic spirits, and at will send them scurrying back to their dim profound. It has but one rival in the Chopin studies—No. 12, op. 25, in the same key.

Opus 25, twelve studies by Frederic Chopin, are dedicated to Madame la Comtesse d’Agoult. The set opens with the familiar study in A flat, so familiar that I shall not make further ado about it except to say that it is delicious, but played often and badly. All that modern editing can do since Miluki is to hunt out fresh accentuation. Von Bullow is the worst sinner in this respect, for he discovers quaint nooks and dells for his dynamics undreamed of by the composer. His edition should be respectfully studied and, when mastered, discarded for a more poetic interpretation. Above all, poetry, poetry and pedals. Without pedalling of the most varied sort this study will remain as dry as a dog-gnawed bone. Von Bulow says the “figure must be treated as a double triplet—twice three and not three times two—as indicated in the first two bars.” Klindworth makes the group a sextolet. Von Bulow has set forth numerous directions in fingering and phrasing, giving the exact number of notes in the bass trill at the end. Kullak uses the most ingenious fingering. Look at the last group of the last bar, second line, third page. It is the last word in fingering. Better to end with Robert Schumann’s beautiful description of this study, as quoted by Kullak:

In treating of the present book of Etudes, Robert Schumann, after comparing Chopin to a strange star seen at midnight, wrote as follows: “Whither his path lies and leads, or how long, how brilliant its course is yet to be, who can say? As often, however, as it shows itself, there is ever seen the same deep dark glow, the same starry light and the same austerity, so that even a child could not fail to recognize it. But besides this, I have had the advantage of hearing most of these Etudes played by Chopin himself, and quite a la Chopin did he play them!”

Of the first one especially he writes: “Imagine that an