The at first sight very elaborate modulations of Chopin which have provoked so much discussion are but a further application of the same principle. They are really not modulations at all, in the classic sense of transitions from one key to another having a structural value, but rather amplifications of the groups of grace-notes that constantly embroider the tunes. Their function is sensuous rather than structural, and we might describe them by coining the word "grace-chords." Of the twelfth measure of the second nocturne, for example, Mr. Hadow well says that "when we see it on paper it seems to consist of a rapid series of remote and recondite modulations, but when we hear it played ... we feel that there is only one real modulation, and that the rest of the passage is an iridescent play of color." Another striking instance is the following measure in the "Polonaise-Fantaisie," a composition in which effects of this sort abound.
Figure XIX.
The pedantic scholiast would say that the composer here modulated, with startling speed, through the keys of B-flat, C, D, and A-minor; but all that the mind grasps is the two chords at the beginnings of the measures, connected by a gorgeous pageant of inarticulate sound. The sketch is being rubbed with the draughtsman's stump again, this time with even finer temerity and more splendid result than before.
It is a lesson in the meaning of that much-abused word "originality" to observe that Chopin arrived at all these novel effects, which differentiate his style so strikingly from those of the conservatives and the virtuosos of his day, simply by discerning through a superior sensitiveness, and working out with a matchless skill, the peculiar potentialities of the medium at his hand. Realizing as no one else had done that the piano compensates for its inability to bring out the beauties of pure line (due to the non-sustainment of single tones), by the wealth of color made available through the pedal's fusion of many tones, both consonant and dissonant, in one composite impression, he shrewdly arranged his campaign accordingly. He adjusted all his technical resources, both as a composer and as a pianist, in the interests of the greatest possible transfusion and intermixture of impressions. This is the secret of his harmonic scheme, so chromatic and full of dissonance; of his lavish melodic embroidery; of his tempo rubato, by which the outline of meter itself, so arithmetical and inexorable, is gently relaxed; of his curious soft, light touch, which seemed to glide over rather than strike the keys—"so insinuating and gossamer a touch," says an ear-witness, "that the crudest and most chromatic harmonies floated away under his hand, indistinct yet not unpleasing"; and this is the secret of his lavish use of the damper pedal, equalled, among his contemporaries, only by that of Schumann.[24]
The unprecedented individuality of the style he thus developed profoundly impressed all observers. "In the marvellous art of carrying and modulating the tone, in the expressive, melancholy manner of shading it off," says Marmontel in his "Pianistes Célébres," "Chopin was entirely himself. He had quite an individual way of attacking the keyboard, a supple, mellow touch, sonorous effects of a vaporous fluidity of which only he knew the secret." "Imagine," writes Schumann in the New Journal of Music, "an Æolian harp that had all the scales, and that these were jumbled together by the hand of an artist into all sorts of fantastic ornaments, but in such a manner that a deeper fundamental tone and a softly singing higher part were always audible, and you have an approximate idea of his playing." Liszt's testimony is that he "imprinted on all his pieces one knows not what nameless color, what vague appearance, what pulsations akin to vibration," and that "his modulations were velvety and iridescent as the robe of a salamander."
Nor do the scholastic musicians of the time fail to pay this pioneer the eloquent tribute of misunderstanding him. Moscheles, a man of the old régime, writes, after hearing him play, "The harsh modulations which strike me disagreeably when I am playing his compositions no longer shock me, because he glides over them in a fairylike way with his delicate fingers." This comment is most significant. Moscheles found Chopin's modulations harsh because he played them with the punctilious accuracy, the absolute literalness, which is appropriate to the music of line, but not to the music of color. In rendering a Bach fugue we cannot get each tone too distinct, since it is sure to be a part of some melody, a clear perception of which is necessary to our appreciation of the design. But Chopin's polyphony is not Bach's polyphony, as is illustrated by the former's Prelude, opus 28, no. 1. Both the right- and the left-hand parts here are melodic; but if both are played with an equally salient touch, the conflicts between the voices become unpleasant. The proper way is to let the lower part sink into the background, giving merely a certain depth and opacity to the general impression; the two melodies are as it were on different planes, the lower one more remote and heard but dimly as through a slight haze. So it is everywhere in Chopin. To play him too distinctly is as fatal an error as to examine a charcoal sketch with a magnifying glass, or to bend over a canvas of Monet and peer curiously at each spot of paint. One must stand off, and half close one's eyes, until the details are lost in the masses. In a word, here is a new type of art, demanding a new mode of apperception. If a Bach fugue and a Mozart quartet are the steel engravings of music, Chopin's pieces are its impressionistic paintings and pastels.