III
Chopin is second to no composer as a harmonist. In this respect, it now seems he stands directly in line with Bach and Mozart. The fabric of the music of all three is chromatic; but it is usually so delicately woven that its richness is accepted almost unconsciously by the listener. Like Bach, Chopin wanders where he will in the harmonic field. Like Mozart, he is ineffably graceful and subtle. The foundation of his music is a series of widely varied, yet blending chords. He is rarely startling. His modulations are swift and flashing; but they seldom if ever seem abrupt.
On the whole his music has few conspicuously unusual chords. The crashing dissonances just before the end of the Scherzo in B minor are exceptional. So are the wild bursts in the prelude in D minor. But there are sequences of chords which, when analyzed, show an amazing boldness. For example, the opening measures of the scherzo in the B-flat minor sonata; the middle section of the study in C minor; the swirl of chords before the coda in the F minor Ballade; the long modulating passage between the A major and E-flat major portions of the G minor Ballade; the whole of the study in broken chords; and countless others.
He is fond of shifting the harmony down through chromatic steps, as in the prelude in E minor and the mazurka, opus 17, No. 4. Rushes of chromatic sixths and fourths, such as are in the E minor concerto, at the beginning of the great polonaise in A-flat major, and the scherzo of the B-flat minor sonata, are effects of color more than of harmony. But he gets magnificent harmonic effects by sending wide, whirring chords through half-steps down or up the scale, as in the first meno mosso section of the scherzo in C-sharp minor, or in the cadenza-style passage of the study, opus 10, No. 3. Yet again, before the return of the first motives in the study, opus 25, No. 6, there is a long cascade of diminished seventh chords. Sometimes he leads his music through broader progressions, which are in effect diatonic. The dropping of the music from its dramatic height in the C-sharp minor portion of the ballade in A-flat major, the long descending play with the triplet motive in the middle section of the second scherzo, and all the second part of the scherzo in the B-flat minor sonata offer examples of this bold harmonic stride.
One may take up a handful of Chopin’s music almost at random and find signs of his harmonic boldness, and there is hardly a line of it which does not reveal his ever subtle power over chromatic alterations. This is so fine and really so ever present as almost to defy analysis. Yet one or two pages in which it is unusually suggestive may be cited. All the first part of the scherzo in B minor, particularly the second section of it, is but a play with chords which, but for the unpleasant connotation of the word, might almost be said to writhe, so are they twisted and interwoven by a ceaseless alteration of their fundamental notes. By reason of this same chromatic litheness, both the study in C major, opus 10, No. 7, and the coda of the second ballade take on a shimmer of harmonic light.
The chromatic scale has often been used for a sort of windy or surging effectiveness in pianoforte music. Witness the first movement of Beethoven’s concerto in G major, Weber’s Rondo in C major. But rarely in any music has it been used so melodiously as in Chopin’s. Sometimes it is but a strand over which other strands are woven, as in the colossal Étude in A minor; but even more remarkable are those cases in which he contented himself with the unadorned scale. The studies in A minor, opus 10, No. 2, and G-sharp minor, opus 25, No. 6, rest upon the ordinary familiar chromatic scale, perhaps the gaudiest of the virtuoso trappings; yet even the first of these, in its frankly étude manner, has an uncommon beauty, and the second has more than an earthly charm. Neither study depends upon a vague, windy effect. Both demand rather a distinct touch. We have then a chromatic scale in which the separate notes are constantly audible throughout the entire piece, a chromatic scale, turned by some alchemy of which Chopin alone possessed the secret, into graceful melody.
It is in a sense this power in Chopin to turn every note to melody that is the secret of the perfection of his style. We may pass over his characteristics in the broader melody. These, like the qualities of Bach’s, Mozart’s and Schubert’s melodies, are of an essence that escapes words. The metaphor is perhaps sickly—but one may as well attempt to catch firmly in words the fragrance of flowers. But the power over a more subtle melody, what one might call an inner melodiousness, is so striking in Chopin that it may not be passed at least without special comment. Bach and Couperin possessed the same kind of skill; and this, though manifested in almost radically different forms, and applied upon a wholly different instrument, makes their music unqualifiedly welcome upon the modern pianoforte. In the case of Chopin, it was brought to bear upon our own instrument, and wrought the perfect style for pianoforte music, a style which conforms to the special qualities in the instrument of which we have elsewhere spoken at length. (See Introduction.)
In Chopin accompaniment figures for the piano are brought to their highest perfection. It may be fundamentally his choice of harmonies that gives them a richness not to be found so generally in any other music for the instrument. Here must lie the secret of the beauty of certain passages, like that of the melodious second theme in the scherzo in B-flat minor, where the accompaniment is only a series of chords, the movement or rolling of which is not at all unusual. But in the formation of figures there is often a distinction peculiar to Chopin alone.
First one notices the wide spacing of the notes, the avoidance of all thickness such as often makes the pianoforte music of Brahms unsatisfactory from the point of view of the pianist. By means of these widely spaced figures he obtains a sonority of after-sounds from the piano in which the overtones and sympathetic vibrations play a great part. It is never muddy or thick. There are many pages of his music which show group after group of these figures employed to give only a shimmering, not a distinct harmonic background to the melody which he wishes to set forth. One remembers the nocturnes in C-sharp minor and D-flat major, the study in A-flat major, opus 25, No. 1, and countless passages in other works.
