INFLUENCE OF THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL ON CHOPIN. HIS FIRST COMPOSITIONS.
O the lover and especially to the connoisseur of music it will be interesting to make a more thorough examination of Chopinʼs compositions, in order to appreciate them rightly, and to learn with what intellectual equipment he set out on his long years of travel. His first works were written in a period of apparent quietness and calm. After the battle of Waterloo, which had happened during the peaceful labours of the Vienna Congress, the nations once more breathed freely; the great conqueror was in captivity, and the political relations of the European States seemed for the time settled. Peace, so much desired, had succeeded at length to the long and sanguinary wars, and brought with it the hope of quickened life and renewed effort.
Poland, like every other country, grew conscious of its own powers, its pride revived, and patriotic reformers were energetic in diffusing plans for the amelioration of its internal affairs. By degrees chaos resolved itself into order, foreign influences were shaken off, and foreign customs discarded. Despite the miseries the country had suffered, some enthusiasts dreamed that the golden age of the Jagellons was about to return. Men of science were astir in the field of discovery, and eagerly seeking to throw fresh light on established truths. For years the garlands of fame had been won by bold warriors, and subtle politicians; now, poet, artist, and savant were to gather their laurels on the peaceful fields of science and art. A new intellectual life, full of aspiring fancy and creative impulse, universally prevailed.
At the Vienna Congress the right of being called a “kingdom” had been granted only to the smaller portion of Poland. Although exhausted by the Napoleonic wars, and earnestly engaged in healing its own wounds, the nation was anxiously desirous of restoring culture, and encouraging literature and art. There was a general feeling that on the establishment of a new social and political order, literature—as in Germany and other countries—would find its subjects in the life and manners of the people. The outbursts of feeling, the power of conception, and the universal impulse towards expression would, it was thought, lay the foundations of a national poetry, the classic forms not being considered in harmony with the character of the Polish nation.
Following the example of some industrious collectors of Polish songs and proverbs, a brisk investigation was instituted into the literary treasures of other countries. We had at that time but one representative of the new æsthetical and philosophical ideas and poetic tendencies—Casimir Brodzinski. As professor of Polish Literature at the Warsaw University, and member of the Scientific Society, he could not directly oppose the fundamental principles of his colleagues, who belonged to the classical school; but these circumstances facilitated rather than retarded the spread of his opinions, which he propagated by his lectures at the University and by essays in the journals. These opinions were based on the principles of Kant and Schiller, on the historical study of Polish literature, and on the RISE OF THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL. poetical theories of the Romantic School. Casimir Brodzinski gathered around him a band of talented young men, and a contest began, which daily became more violent and bitter, between the Classists and Romanticists. On one side were the advocates of the old classic principles; on the other youth, with its ready enthusiasm for everything new, with such men as Bohdan Zaleski, Sewerin Goszczynski, Anton Malczewski, Stephan Witwicki, Moritz Goslowski, and later on Slowacki and Sigismund Krasinski. Mickiewicz,[63] the gifted author of “Grazyna” and “Dziady;” and the greatest of Polish poets, supported by the historians Lelewel and Brodzinski, placed himself at the head of the Romantic School, and his genius soon triumphed over its opponents.
At the time when the battle between the champions of the two schools was raging hottest, Chopin felt the first stirrings of creative genius. Living in the midst of a youthful circle, enthusiastic for national poetry, which it not unjustly regarded as the basis of all poetry, he made research for national melodies, and sought by careful artistic treatment to enhance their value and give them an assured place in musical literature. In this he succeeded more completely than any other composer. No one could reproduce with such beauty and truth the peculiar melancholy feeling pervading all Sarmatian melodies.
NATIONAL AND SOCIAL INFLUENCES. The noblest enthusiasm glows in Chopinʼs music: it may be called the complement, or rather the illustration of the new national poetry. An eminent Polish historian says of it: “A peculiar importance belongs to Chopinʼs music, because in it more than in any other our nation is represented in the noblest light, in the possession of an independence, hitherto unknown. Such music springs from the same source as our national poetry.”
With respect to Chopin, the same author also quotes the following passage from Alfred de Mussetʼs “Confessions dʼun enfant du siecle,” which characterizes, with such wonderful poetic feeling and psychological keenness, the prevailing malady of the age: “When the war was over, the Emperor an exile, and portraits of Wellington and Blücher, with the inscription ‘Salvatoribus mundi,’ adorned every wall, a new generation was beholding, with gloomy thought, the ruins of the past. In the veins of these youths flowed the same warm blood which had flooded the whole world. Everyone raved about the snows of Moscow, and the sands of Egypt, every soul was full of dreams, swelling with lofty thoughts and panting with desires which were impossible, for wherever men turned their eyes all was emptiness and desolation. The more mature believed in nothing, the learned lived in an eternal contradiction, poets preached despair. An awful hopelessness raged like a pest in the civilised world.” If, according to Alfred de Musset, political and literary circumstances had exercised so baneful an effect on the younger generation in France, how much more excuse was there for such a state of things in Poland, where hope had turned into scepticism, and melancholy become a chronic evil.