Chopin: Berceuse, Op. 57
The Chopin Berceuse (which is the French word for cradle-song) is a most unique as well as most ideally beautiful composition, standing alone in all piano literature, as regards its form and harmonic structure, the only one of its species. It is beyond all question or comparison, the finest cradle-song ever written for the piano, an exceptionally perfect example of that rare blending of spontaneous genius and mechanical ingenuity, for which Chopin was so preëminent, resulting in a work matchless in its originality, its suggestive realism, its delicacy of finish, and its poetic content. An organ point on D flat, which is its only bass note, sustained throughout the entire composition, and a couplet of the simplest chords, the tonic and dominant seventh, alternating back and forth in a swinging, rocking motion, form the accompaniment, continued practically without change, from first measure to last, portraying naturally, easily, yet unmistakably, the soothing monotony of the rockaby movement. The left hand may be said to rock the cradle throughout the whole composition, while in the soft, continually intertwining melody in the right hand, like an endless, infolding circle of maternal love, we find the lullaby song of the mother, sung as she sits there in the hush of the twilight, rocking her little one to sleep.
Around and over this melody Chopin has flung, with his own inimitable delicacy, a silver lace-work of embellishment, falling soft and light as the moonlight spray from fountains in fairyland, as through the idealizing summer haze, half veiling a distant landscape, we seem to catch dim glimpses of the dream-pictures, the fleeting fancies, the changing phantasmagoria of prophetic visions, that drift through the brain of the mother as she sits there in the gathering dusk, waiting for the little eyes to be tightly closed, and wondering vaguely to herself on what scenes they will open in the far future years.
Slower and gentler grows the motion of the cradle, softer and lower the lullaby song, further and further the dream pictures drift into the shadows, until at last the wings of slumber are folded about the little one. Silence reigns. The mother’s daily task of loving ministry is ended and she, too, may rest. The two lingering closing chords, soft and slow, suggest the moment when she rises from the cradle and spreads her hands in silent benediction over the sleeping child.
Infinite tenderness and delicacy are needed for the interpretation of this composition; a tone like violet velvet, and a light, fluent finger technic, to which its really extreme difficulties seem like dainty play.
Chopin: Scherzo in B Flat Minor, Op. 31
A very familiar, yet always fresh and intensely interesting composition is this scherzo. The name is an Italian word signifying a jest, and we find in musical nomenclature a number of derivatives from it, as scherzino (little jest) and scherzando (jestingly, playfully). The term is used by most composers to designate compositions that are bright, playful, humorous in character. Nearly all the leading composers have written more or less in this vein. Mendelssohn particularly excelled in it, and even serious old Beethoven became quite jocose at times in the scherzo movements of his symphonies; though it always reminds one of the sportive dancing of an elephant.
Chopin applied the name to four of his greatest, most intense and impassioned works, seemingly without the smallest reason or relevancy. Why, no one can even surmise, unless it may have been in a mood of sardonic perversity, of sarcastic bitterness, purposely to mislead the public as to the real artistic intention and significance of the music, and see if they would have sufficient perception to discover it for themselves. It is a sad commentary on the insight of many of our so-called musicians, that they have not done so even to this day, and persist in playing the Chopin scherzi jestingly and as trivially as possible, which may be the subtle, covert jest which Chopin intended. Who knows? In reality these four works, especially the first three of them, are among his greatest and grandest. They are broad, heroic, seriously and profoundly emotional productions, marking the high-water line of his creative power; full of the strength and virile energy which those acquainted only with his nocturnes and waltzes are inclined to deny him altogether, but in which he far exceeds all other composers, past or present, with the possible exception of Beethoven and Wagner. Jests only in name, or, if in fact, then in the sense of bitterest satire, aimed at the world and at life, jests written in the heart’s blood of the composer; written when Poland, his beloved native land, lay in her death agony, when three great European powers had combined to write the word finis in Polish blood and tears, across the last page of her history. What wonder that the music throbs with intense but conflicting emotions—fiery indignation, fierce defiance, bitter scorn, and, in the next breath, pitiful tenderness for the wronged and the suffering, heart-breaking sorrow for the unavailing heroism and wasted lives of his countrymen!