Chopin : the Man and His Music

by James Huneker

"The third voice is the chief one, and after it the first, because they determine the melodic and harmonic contents":

[Musical score excerpt of 'four different voices']

Kullak and Mikuli dot the C of the first bar. Klindworth and Von Bulow do not. As to phrasing and fingering I pin my faith to Riemann. His version is the most satisfactory. Here are the first bars. The idea is clearly expressed:

[Musical score excerpt]

Best of all is the careful accentuation, and at a place indicated in no other edition that I have examined. With the arrival of the thirty-second notes, Riemann punctuates the theme this way:

[Musical score excerpt]

The melody, of course in profile, is in the eighth notes. This gives meaning to the decorative pattern of the passage. And what charm, buoyancy, and sweetness there is in this caprice! It has the tantalizing, elusive charm of a humming bird in full flight. The human element is almost eliminated. We are in the open, the sun blazes in the blue, and all is gay, atmospheric, and illuding. Even where the tone deepens, where the shadows grow cooler and darker in the B major section, there is little hint of preoccupation with sadness. Subtle are the harmonic shifts, admirable the ever changing devices of the figuration. Riemann accents the B, the E, A, B flat, C and F, at the close—perilous leaps for the left hand, but they bring into fine relief the exquisite harmonic web. An easy way of avoiding the tricky position in the left hand at this spot—thirteen bars from the close—is to take the upper C in bass with the right hand thumb and in the next bar the upper B in bass the same way. This minimizes the risk of the skip, and it is perfectly legitimate to do this—in public at least. The ending, to be "breathed" away, according to Kullak, is variously fingered. He also prescribes a most trying fingering for the first group, fourth finger on both hands. This is useful for study, but for performance the third finger is surer. Von Bulow advises the player to keep the "upper part of the body as still as possible, as any haste of movement would destroy the object in view, which is the acquisition of a loose wrist." He also suggests certain phrasing in bar seventeen, and forbids a sharp, cutting manner in playing the sforzati at the last return of the subject. Kullak is copious in his directions, and thinks the touch should be light and the hand gliding, and in the B major part "fiery, wilful accentuation of the inferior beats." Capricious, fantastic, and graceful, this study is Chopin in rare spirits. Schumann has the phrase—the study should be executed with "amiable bravura." There is a misprint in the Kullak edition: at the beginning of the thirty-second notes an A instead of an F upsets the tonality, besides being absurd.

Of the fourth study in A minor there is little to add to Theodor Kullak, who writes:

"In the broadest sense of the word, every piece of music is an etude. In a narrower sense, however, we demand of an etude that it shall have a special end in view, promote facility in something, and lead to the conquest of some particular difficulty, whether of technics, of rhythm, expression or delivery." (Robert Schumann, Collected Writings, i., 201.) The present study is less interesting from a technical than a rhythmical point of view. While the chief beats of the measure (1st, 3d, 5th and 7th eighths) are represented only by single tones (in the bass part), which are to a certain extent "free and unconcerned, and void of all encumbrance," the inferior parts of the measure (2d, 4th, 6th and 8th eighths) are burdened with chords, the most of which, moreover, are provided with accents in opposition to the regular beats of the measure. Further, there is associated with these chords, or there may be said to grow out of them, a cantilene in the upper voice, which appears in syncopated form opposite to the strong beats of the bass. This cantilene begins on a weak beat, and produces numerous suspensions, which, in view of the time of their entrance, appear as so many retardations and delayals of melodic tones.

All these things combine to give the composition a wholly peculiar coloring, to render its flow somewhat restless and to stamp the etude as a little characteristic piece, a capriccio, which might well be named "Inquietude."