“So our city fell. My maidens, all transformed to water-lilies, blossom here in happy purity through long summers, and palsy-withered is the impious hand that strives to drag them from the friendly shelter of the waves; while I, their lily queen, within my crystal realm hold quiet sway, safe from the rude approach of man’s destructive passions. Now thou knowest the story, all save this. My father fell by Russian spears. My princely brother, on returning from the wars, found all his realm a waste, his capital destroyed, found home and sister vanished in the flood; and wandering in other lands, when years had passed, he wedded a stranger bride. From this their union, through a long, illustrious line of heroes, thou art sprung. Hence thou art safe upon these shores, despite this day’s temerity, so long as with a pure heart and noble mind, thou dost guard our name and honor in the world. Remember this. But seek no more to pierce the kindly veil of mysteries, not meant for mortal eyes; and never hope or strive to see again the lily queen of Switez.”
So speaking, with a smile of saddest sweetness, she turned slowly to the lake, and vanished in its whelming waters, which closed with laughing ripples round her.
No one familiar with Chopin’s ballade in F can fail to perceive the close and accurate application of the music to this romantic tale. It begins at and deals with the appearance and story of the lily queen, and her gentle, pure, and winning personality, and soft-voiced narration, figure symbolically in the opening melody. The sudden burst of the terrific war cloud, the maiden’s trust in and confident appeal to a higher power, the final whelming of the city in the friendly flood, follow successively in almost literal portrayal, the work closing in the mood of the maiden’s final farewell and warning to the adventurous knight who had disturbed her repose.
Viewed from the standpoint of the subject-matter, the startling, almost drastic, contrasts of the work seem not only intelligible, but legitimate and artistic.
Ballade No. 3, in A Flat, Op. 47
This is the best known, the most played, and most popular of all the Chopin ballades. Its warm, lyric opening theme, its strikingly original rhythmic effects, its piquant, bewitching second subject, full of playful grace, as well as its magnificently developed climax, one of the finest in the piano literature, have all endeared it to the hearts of Chopin lovers and rendered it one of the most effective of concert solos.
Like the second ballade in F major, this composition is founded upon an ancient legend of Lake Switez, which seems to be a center about which cluster many of the Lithuanian myths. The one in question had been previously treated by Chopin’s friend and compatriot, Adam Mickiewicz, in the form of a ballad in Polish verse, and the substance of the story, briefly and simply told, is as follows:
A young and fearless knight, whose ancestral castle crowned a forest-covered eminence above the beautiful blue lake, was wont to wander on its lone and wooded shores at evening and to meet there clandestinely his radiant, beautiful, mysterious lady-love, whose name, home, and origin he was unable to discover, and which she persistently refused to disclose. She always appeared to him suddenly, without warning or visible approach, as if born anew each night of the filtering moonlight and shifting forest shadows, or as if drawing her ethereal substance at will from the floating mist wreaths above the lake. And she vanished as miraculously, when she chose to end their interview, dissolving from his very arms into mist once more. Perhaps the very mystery which enveloped her enhanced her charms. In any case, her power grew upon the knight till he became most desperately enamoured, pressing his suit with growing ardor. At first she coquetted with his passion, laughing at his fervor and meeting his fiery protestations with playful, incredulous mockery; but, finally touched by his fiery eloquence, she made him a conditional promise. If he would prove his fidelity, would remain true to her and her memory during her absence, no matter what temptations might arise, for the space of just one little passing moon, she would then return, reveal her identity, and become his bride, if he still desired it.
Of course, he swore eternal fidelity, and she, with a little half-sad, half-incredulous smile, vanished into the night mist. For several evenings he wandered, lonely and disconsolate, on the shores of the lake, longing and vainly seeking for his absent love and cursing the tardy hours of his probation. Then, when his patience was about exhausted, he was met there, on the selfsame spot, in the same mystic moonlight and with the same suddenness and mystery, by another maiden, even more beautiful than the first, and not inclined to be so distant. She jeered at him for his depression, for his useless and stupid fidelity to an absent prude, while with many lures and graces she beckoned him on to join her in the moonlit mazes of the dance.
At first, remembering his promise, he made some show of resistance, but very soon he yielded completely to her seductions, declaring his admiration for this new beauty in ardent terms, and followed her with extended arms, as she flitted on before him, keeping always just a little out of reach; followed, heedless where his steps might lead, reckless of consequences, conscious only of her tender glances and her beckoning hand, till, borne up and on by the spell of her enchantment, she had led him far out upon the treacherous surface of the lake, whose placid ripples seemed magically to sustain both pursuer and pursued. Then, when midway across the lake, she turned upon him, indignation blazing in her eyes. With a single impatient gesture she flung off her disguise and faced him, poised upon a curling wave, in all the airy grace and winsomeness of his first abandoned love. “False lover!” she cried, “where is now thy true love, thy sworn love? Forgotten, forsaken, ere the moon that witnessed thy plighted vows hath run one-quarter of its little circle. Behold thy doom! So perish the faithless!” Her white arms waved in mystic incantation, a sudden storm-wind swept the lake, the billows heaved and swirled beneath him, and a yawning chasm opened at his feet. With a last passionate appeal he sank to its chilly depths, while she, laughing in mocking derision, vanished in a shower of silver spray.