Chopin: Nocturne in E Flat, Op. 9, No. 2
This perhaps is the easiest and certainly the best known of Chopin’s nocturnes. Scarcely a student but has played it at one time or another. In fact, it has been worn well-nigh to shreds; yet still retains its simple, tender charm, if approached in the proper spirit. It is replete with melodic beauty and warm harmonic coloring, and is an excellent study in tone-production and shading, as well as a model of symmetrical form. It was one of his early works, and the glow of first youth still lingers about it, in spite of its over-familiarity and much abuse. As a teaching-piece it sometimes surprises the weary teacher with a waft of unexpected freshness, like the fleeting odor from an old and much-used school-book in which violets have been pressed.
It is a pure lyric, a love-song without words, but to which a dreamily tender poetic text can easily be imagined and supplied; and the very evident suggestion of the harp or guitar in its accompanying chords facilitates the effort and brightens the poetic effect. So far as I can learn, it has no definite local background, either in fact or tradition; no special place or persons to which it refers. It is an abstract idea treated subjectively, the embodied emotional reflex of imaginary conditions. The scene is a garden—any garden, so it be beautiful, rich with the vivid luxuriance of the South, fragrant with the breath of sleeping flowers, with the South summer-night hanging fondly over it, and the summer stars glittering above. The melody is the song of the ideal troubadour, pouring out his heart to the night and his listening lady, while the accompanying chords are lightly swept from vibrant strings by the practised fingers of the minstrel. The cadenza at the close is intended as a mere delicate ripple of liquid brilliancy, as if the moon, suddenly breaking through a veil of evening mist, had flooded the scene with a rain of silvery radiance.