All these moods will be found in swift and sharply contrasting succession in all the four scherzi, but notably in the one in B flat minor, which I regard as the best of the four. The seeming incongruity between its name and its musical content, its ostensible and its real significance, always recalls to me famous lines:
“The lip that’s first to wing the jest
Is first to breathe the secret sigh;
The laugh that rings with keenest zest
But chokes the flood-gates of the eye.”
Chopin: Prelude (D Flat Major), Op. 28, No. 15
A unique position in pianoforte literature is occupied by these Preludes, Op. 28. They derive their name rather from their form than from their musical import. Like the usual preludes to songs, or more extended musical works, they are short, fragmentary tone sketches rather than complete pictures; each consisting, as a rule, of a single, simple movement, and embodying but a single concrete idea, and seeming to imply by its brevity and its suggestive rather than fully descriptive character, that a more elaborately developed composition is to follow, to which this has been but an introduction and in which the idea, here merely outlined, will receive more exhaustive treatment. In reality, however, each of these preludes is complete in itself; an exquisite musical vignette containing, like some dainty vial of hand-cut Venetian glass, the distilled essence of dead flowers of memory and experience from Chopin’s past; particularly of scenes, episodes, and emotional impressions of his romantic life on the island of Majorca. Just as a painter might have sketched, with hasty but truthfully graphic pencil, on the pages of his portfolio, the fleeting impressions produced upon his senses and imagination by this novel, picturesque environment, so the composer has preserved in these bits of offhand but vivid tone painting, glimpses into his daily life, his moods and experiences during that winter of 1838-39.
Banished by his physicians to this Mediterranean isle, in the hope of benefit to his fast failing health, and refused shelter in any hotel or private residence, on account of the there prevalent belief that consumption was contagious, Chopin and the little party of devoted friends who accompanied him (most notable among whom was the famous French novelist, George Sand) were forced to improvise a temporary abode in the semi-habitable wing of an old ruined convent, which had been abandoned by the monks. It was picturesquely situated on a rocky promontory, commanding a view, on the one side, of the open sea, dotted with the countless white sails of Mediterranean commerce; on the other, of the sheltered bay, the village beyond, and the lofty volcanic mountains in the background. Here they spent the winter, and here nearly all of the preludes, with many others of Chopin’s most poetic smaller works, originated—artistic crystallizations of passing impressions and experiences, concerning which and the life in which they originated, George Sand writes: “While staying here he composed some short but very beautiful pieces which he modestly entitled preludes. They were real masterpieces. Some of them create such vivid impressions that the shades of the dead monks seem to rise and pass before the hearer in solemn and gloomy funeral pomp. Others are full of charm and melancholy, glowing with the sparkling fire of enthusiasm, breathing with the hope of restored health. The laughter of the children at play, the distant strains of the guitar, the twitter of birds on the damp branches, would call forth from his soul melodies of indescribable sweetness and grace. But many also are so full of gloom and sadness that, in spite of the pleasure they afford, the listener is filled with pain. Some of his later tone-poems bring before us a sparkling crystal stream reflecting the sunbeams. Chopin’s quieter compositions remind us of the song of the lark as it lightly soars into the ether, or the gentle gliding of the swan over the smooth mirror of the waters; they seem filled with the holy calm of nature. When Chopin was in a despondent mood, the piercing cry of the hungry eagle among the crags of Majorca, the mournful wailing of the storm, and the stern immovability of the snow-clad heights, would awaken gloomy fancies in his soul. Then again, the perfume of the orange blossoms, the vine bending to the earth beneath its rich burden, the peasant singing his Moorish songs in the fields, would fill him with delight.”
The Prelude in D flat, No. 15, which I select as one of the most beautiful and characteristic of these sketches, embodies a strange day dream of the composer in which, as he says, “vision and reality were indistinguishably blended.”