In the present day the polonaise is a universally accepted musical form, common property with the composers of all nations. But Chopin, Polish by birth, education, and sympathies, found it strictly within his scope, and has easily surpassed all other writers in number, quality, and characteristic force as a polonaise writer.
Of his many works in this vein, the Op. 53, in A flat, is in my opinion decidedly the best, both as regards virile power and direct, forceful expression of the original polonaise idea. It begins with a wild, impetuous introduction, brief but stirring, a sort of fanfare of drums and trumpets, intended to call the people to order and to establish at the outset the tonality of the mood, so to speak. Then follows the swinging, pompous measure of the polonaise proper, readily suggesting by its splendid martial harmonies the proud military bearing, the gorgeous armor, and the stately tread of those steel-clad feudal heroes, as they defiled before the throne.
In place of the trio, usually of a more quiet nature in works of this kind, Chopin has introduced a very singular passage, the most strikingly original portion of the whole composition—a long-sustained, stupendous octave climax of the left hand, consisting of a little rhythmic figure of four notes, constantly reiterated with growing power, against a sort of trumpet obligato in brilliant measured chords for the right. The movement vividly suggests the tramp of cavalry. The composer had in mind the Polish light-horse of medieval fame, a very aristocratic body of picked horsemen, composed of the flower of Polish chivalry and disciplined in constant warfare with the Turks. A number of the brilliant officers of this division were necessarily present at the coronation ceremony when the polonaise form originated, and these with their exploits Chopin endeavors to introduce by means of this singular passage.
There is a curious anecdote afloat concerning the effect of this movement on the composer himself. On one occasion, when playing the nearly completed work, his nervous organism enfeebled by illness and his imagination intensely excited by the fever-glow of composition, he was seized by a peculiar hallucination. He fancied that a band of the knights he had been attempting to portray, came riding in from the gloom of the outer night, in through the opening walls of his apartment, arrayed in their antique war panoply, horse and rider just as they might have arisen from their century-old graves in Poland. He was so overcome by this self-invoked apparition that he actually fled from the room, and it was some days before he could be induced to re-enter it or resume work on the mighty polonaise.
Immediately following the great octave climax referred to is a subdued, vague, fearsome little passage in light running figures, totally foreign in movement, mood, and even key to the remainder of the work, for which we would be at a loss to account if unacquainted with the circumstances narrated, but which, with the light just thrown upon it, is readily understood. The author seems to have lost for the time the thread of the composition, to have drifted far from its martial mood and swinging rhythm, but after a period of groping indecision, through which we hear the trepidation and reluctant fascination with which he again approaches this monster of his own creation, with a sudden boldness of attack he regains the clew, resumes with energy the march movement, and the work sweeps to its close with even more than its original power and splendor.
Chopin: Impromptu in A Flat, Op. 29
Light, graceful, dainty, capricious, full of playful tenderness and delicate fancy is this little work, written for and presented as a wedding gift to one of his favorite pupils, La Comtesse de Lobau, to whom it is dedicated. The first movement embodies the joyous, hopeful, congratulatory spirit of the occasion, expressed with all that refined elegance and polished perfection of style of which Chopin was so preëminently the master, both in music and language. It is the most unqualifiedly optimistic strain from his pen with which I am acquainted.
The trio, in F minor, brings a touch of half-veiled sadness and irrepressible regret, as if called forth by the thought that their art work together is now to end. She has been for years one of his most talented, diligent, and interesting students. She is, like himself, a Polish exile in a foreign land, and their community of sympathies and sorrows, combined with her charming personality and congenial temperament, have tended to merge the relations of teacher and pupil into the closer bonds of a life-long friendship. He is naturally reluctant to lose her, but this mood of depression is soon subordinated to the thought that she has found the philosopher’s stone, the fabled blue flower of the German poets, the subtile, yet supreme panacea for all human ills—love. This idea is expressed in the last half of the trio as only Chopin could express it; and the work ends with a repetition of the first strain, brightly, happily, with a certain restful completeness of fulfilled desire in the reiterated closing chords.