CHAPTER XIII
CHOPIN'S PRODUCTIONS FROM THE SPRING OF 1829 TO THEEND OF 1831.— THE CHIEF INFLUENCES THAT HELPED TO FORM HIS STYLE OF COMPOSITION.
Let us pause for a little in our biographical inquiries and critically examine what Chopin had achieved as a composer since the spring of 1829. At the very first glance it becomes evident that the works of the last two years (1829-1831) are decidedly superior to those he wrote before that time. And this advance was not due merely to the increased power derived from practice; it was real growth, which a Greek philosopher describes as penetration of nourishment into empty places, the nourishment being in Chopin's case experience of life's joys and sorrows. In most of the works of what I call his first period, the composer luxuriates, as it were, in language. He does not regard it solely or chiefly as the interpreter of thoughts and feelings, he loves it for its own sake, just as children, small and tall, prattle for no other reason than the pleasure of prattling. I closed the first period when a new element entered Chopin's life and influenced his artistic work. This element was his first love, his passion for Constantia Gtadkowska. Thenceforth Chopin's compositions had in them more of humanity and poetry, and the improved subject-matter naturally, indeed necessarily, chastened, ennobled, and enriched the means and ways of expression. Of course no hard line can be drawn between the two periods—the distinctive quality of the one period appears sometimes in the work of the other: a work of the earlier period foreshadows the character of the later; one of the later re-echoes that of the earlier.
The compositions which we know to have been written by Chopin between 1829 and 1831 are few in number. This may be partly because Chopin was rather idle from the autumn of 1830 to the end of 1831, partly because no account of the production of other works has come down to us. In fact, I have no doubt that other short pieces besides those mentioned by Chopin in his letters were composed during those years, and subsequently published by him. The compositions oftenest and most explicitly mentioned in the letters are also the most important ones—namely, the concertos. As I wish to discuss them at some length, we will keep them to the last, and see first what allusions to other compositions we can find, and what observations these latter give rise to.
On October 3, 1829, Chopin sends his friend Titus Woyciechowski a waltz which, he says, was, like the Adagio of the F minor Concerto, inspired by his ideal, Constantia Gladkowska:—
Pay attention to the passage marked with a +; nobody, except you, knows of this. How happy would I be if I could play my newest compositions to you! In the fifth bar of the trio the bass melody up to E flat dominates, which, however, I need not tell you, as you are sure to feel it without being told.
The remark about the bass melody up to E flat in the trio gives us a clue to which of Chopin's waltzes this is. It can be no other than the one in D flat which Fontana published among his friend's posthumous works as Op. 70, No. 3. Although by no means equal to any of the waltzes published by Chopin himself, one may admit that it is pretty; but its chief claim to our attention lies in the fact that it contains germs which reappear as fully- developed flowers in other examples of this class of the master's works—the first half of the first part reappears in the opening (from the ninth bar onward) of Op. 42 (Waltz in A flat major); and the third part, in the third part (without counting the introductory bars) of Op. 34, No. 1 (Waltz in A flat major).
On October 20, 1829, Chopin writes:—"During my visit at Prince Radziwill's [at Antonin] I wrote an Alla Polacca. It is nothing more than a brilliant salon piece, such as pleases ladies"; and on April 10, 1830:—
I shall play [at a soiree at the house of Lewicki] Hummel's "La Sentinelle," and at the close my Polonaise with violoncello, for which I have composed an Adagio as an introduction. I have already rehearsed it, and it does not sound badly.
Prince Radziwill, the reader will remember, played the violoncello. It was, however, not to him but to Merk that Chopin dedicated this composition, which, before departing from Vienna to Paris, he left with Mechetti, who eventually published it under the title of "Introduction et Polonaise brillante pour piano et violoncelle," dediees a Mr. Joseph Merk. On the whole we may accept Chopin's criticism of his Op. 3 as correct. The Polonaise is nothing but a brilliant salon piece. Indeed, there is very little in this composition—one or two pianoforte passages, and a finesse here and there excepted—that distinguishes it as Chopin's. The opening theme verges even dangerously to the commonplace. More of the Chopinesque than in the Polonaise may be discovered in the Introduction, which was less of a piece d'occasion. What subdued the composer's individuality was no doubt the violoncello, which, however, is well provided with grateful cantilene.