Though Chaminade staked her future as composer on her larger, serious works for orchestra and the ballet stage, she is today remembered almost exclusively for her slight morsels of the salon variety. Most of these originated as compositions for the piano; her piano music numbers about two hundred works including arabesques, etudes, impromptus, valse-caprices, and so forth. Automne, a sentimental melody, and Sérénade espagnole, in a pseudo-Spanish style, come from her piano music: Automne from the Concert Etudes, op. 35. It has been transcribed for popular orchestra by Melachrino. Sérénade espagnole has been adapted for violin and piano by Fritz Kreisler. Chaminade’s most popular piece, Scarf Dance, comes from a ballet, Callirhoë, produced in Marseilles in 1888. It is often heard in its original orchestral version and in various transcriptions for solo piano, and solo instrument and piano.
Gustave Charpentier
Gustave Charpentier was born in Dieuze, France, on June 25, 1860. He received his musical training in the Conservatories in Lille and Paris, winning the Prix de Rome in 1881. During his stay in Rome he wrote Impressions of Italy for orchestra, with which he realized his first success upon its première performance in Paris in 1892. Charpentier’s fame, however, rests securely on a single opera, Louise, a triumph when introduced in Paris on February 2, 1900, and since become recognized as one of the major achievements of the French lyric theater. A sequel, Julien (1913), was a failure. From 1913 on, Charpentier wrote almost nothing more, living a Bohemian existence in the Montmartre section of Paris where he died on February 18, 1956.
Impressions of Italy, a suite for orchestra (1890) is a nostalgic picture of five Italian scenes. The first movement is “Serenade,” in which is described a picture of young men emerging from a bistro at midnight, singing love songs under the windows of their girl friends. “At the Fountain” depicts girls parading with dignified steps near a waterfall by a ravine; from the distance come the sounds of a shepherd’s tune. “On Muleback” tells of evening as it descends on the Sabine Mountains. The mules trot along, and there rises the song of the muleteer followed by the sweet love song of girls riding in their carts to the village. “On the Heights” presents noontime on the heights overlooking Sorrento. All is peace, though the toll of bells can be heard from a distance. The finale is a musical tribute to a great city, “Naples.” In this music we see the crowds of the city, the parading bands. A tarantella is being danced in the streets. The strains of a sentimental folk song drift in from the quay. Evening falls, and fireworks electrify the sky.
Frédéric Chopin
François Frédéric Chopin, genius of music for the piano, was born in Zelazowa Wola, Poland, on February 22, 1810. He began to study the piano at six. One year later he made his first public appearance and wrote his first piece of music. His later music study took place privately with Joseph Elsner and at the Warsaw Conservatory from which he was graduated with honors in 1829. In that year he visited Vienna where he gave two successful concerts of his works. He left Poland for good in 1830, settling permanently in Paris a year after that. He soon became one of the most highly regarded musicians in France, even though he gave only a few public concerts. In 1837 he first met the writer, George Sand, with whom he was involved emotionally for about a decade, and under whose influence he composed some of his greatest music. Always sensitive in physique and of poor health, Chopin suffered physically most of his adult life. He died in Paris on October 17, 1849 and was buried in Père Lachaise.
Chopin produced 169 compositions in all. Practically all of them are for the piano, and most within the smaller forms. In writing for the piano he was an innovator who helped change the destiny of piano style and technique. He is often described as the poet of the keyboard, by virtue of his sensitive and deeply affecting lyricism (usually beautifully ornamented), his always exquisite workmanship, and his profound emotion. Many of his works are nationally Polish in expression.
The Etude in E major, op. 10, no. 3 (1833) is one of two of Chopin’s most famous works in the etude form. While an etude is essentially a technical exercise, Chopin produced twenty-seven pieces for piano which, though they still probe various technical problems, are nevertheless so filled with poetic thought and musical imagination that they belong in the realm of great art and must be numbered with his most significant compositions. That in E major is one of his most beautiful melodies, a soulful song rather than a technical exercise; Chopin himself regarded this as one of his most inspired pages. One of the many transcriptions of this composition existing is for the voice.
The so-called Revolutionary Etude—C minor, op. 10, no. 12 (1833)—was inspired by the tidings received by Chopin while he was traveling from Vienna to Paris that Warsaw had fallen to the Russians. His first impulse was to rush back home and join in the battle. He was dissuaded from doing this by his family, and instead he sublimated his intense patriotic feelings by writing a fiery piece of national music, full of the spirit of defiance. Since then this etude has become as inextricably associated with Poland and its national aspirations and ideals as, for example, is Sibelius’ Finlandia with Finland. This etude was repeatedly played over the Polish radio when Nazi Germany first attacked Poland in 1939, a continual inspiration to the defenders of Warsaw; it was the last piece of music played over the Polish radio before the Germans took over.
In the Fantaisie-Impromptu in C-sharp minor, op. 66 (1834), Chopin makes a structural compromise between the forms of the fantasy and the impromptu. In doing so, he produced one of his best known melodies, a melody that appears after a fast bravura opening. This is a flowing sentimental song that was used for the popular American tune, “I’m Always Chasing Rainbows.”