(b)
Figure XX.
How majestically the phrases rise, tier on tier, in the chief melody of the Polonaise, opus 44! How nobly rhapsodical, how genially spontaneous and flexible, is the phraseology of the second theme in the allegro of the B-minor Sonata (b, in Figure XX)! Well may Mr. Edward Dannreuther call Chopin "the supreme master of elegiac melody."
In his greatest tunes Chopin indeed touches a point which few purely romantic writers ever reach. We have noted, from time to time, in the course of these studies, the tendency of all lyrical composers to build up their music out of a few short phrases many times repeated, like the patterns in a wall-paper; we have seen how Schubert, Schumann, and Mendelssohn fell into this pitfall even in their orchestral works, which therefore, in comparison with Mozart's or Beethoven's, seem patchy, breathless, or monotonous. We have seen that melodies of "long breath" are conceivable only by minds of sufficient synthetic power to entwine many phrases, diverse in length, contour, and rhythm, into a single organism. Now Chopin, like the rest, writes only too often in the "wall-paper" style, as may be seen especially in the waltzes, mazurkas, and nocturnes. But at other times he shows a synthetic faculty rare among lyrists, by which he attains a noble breadth. Look, for example, at the passage marked "sostenuto" in the Grande Valse, opus 42, at the surging bass theme of the Polonaise, opus 40, no. 2, or at the second theme of the allegro of the B-flat minor Sonata, noting the sustained flight of the second eight measures of the tune. Better still, examine with some particularity, studying the diversity of the rhythmic figures employed, the two melodies in Figure XXI, one from the Ballade, opus 23, and one from the finale of the Sonata, opus 58. Mark the deliberation, the suspension of interest, of the sequence in measures 5-8 of the first, the exciting inevitability of the chromatic descending scale near the end of the second.[28] In such tunes as these, which are frequent in his later works, Chopin proves himself capable of the veritable "longue haleine" of the epic melodist.[29]
(a)