It was Chopin who entirely appreciated the true value of movement on the keyboard; who where it was necessary made it beautiful, and never made it an end in itself. Hence it may be questioned if there is figure work, mere display, in Chopin’s music. There is hardly a passage of rapid notes in his music which has not a pure melodic significance and which does not weave itself about harmonies that are constantly varied. He delighted in rapid notes. The coda of the waltz in A-flat major, op. 34, No. 2, the study in F minor, op. 25, No. 2, the scherzo of the sonata in B minor, the variation of the chief subject in the third part of the fourth ballade, these come to mind among a host of other examples of his inimitable grace and musical worth in such music. And when he combined such a fleet melodiousness with broader themes and harmonies did he not prove himself a master of the science of music in a new light? Not without a reason are the preludes and fugues of the ‘Well-Tempered Clavichord’ a masterpiece of everlasting and inimitable worth. We may call it concentration, intensity, economy of musical means which gives them their enduring firmness. And much of this firmness is in the music of Chopin, because there are no empty notes, none without two and even threefold significance. This complication of movement with melody, this ever-whispering inner melodiousness, these spring from Bach, the greatest of masters.
Other essentials of the pianoforte style may be found in the work of other masters as well as in that of Chopin. Such are the contrast of registers and the variety of rhythm. One more feature of his style, however, is pronounced enough to demand attention. This will be observed in his treatment of many melodies. Here any composer will find himself face to face with one of the most difficult problems the piano presents; for, as we have said, he must if possible arrange his melody in such a way that one will not feel it would have been more suitable to the voice or the violin. Movement is again necessary. Without belittling the value of an accepted masterpiece one may call attention to the long pause of the melody at the end of the first phrase of Schumann’s Warum?, which barely escapes destroying the piece as a work for the piano. There must be not only a pronounced but a secondary melodic movement in such pauses in pianoforte music, as Schumann himself introduced subsequently in Warum? In many cases the composer contents himself with giving a touch of melodic life to the accompaniment, as Chopin does, for example, in the pauses of the second theme in the first movement of the B-flat minor sonata. But most remarkable in Chopin’s treatment of melodies, noticeably in his later and broader style, is his fondness for secondary melodies that have almost the consecutive movement of an obbligato part. This is one step in organization beyond the inner melodiousness of his accompaniments. Without selecting examples from a number of his works, one may call attention to the study in C-sharp minor, opus 25, No. 7, to the various treatments of the melodic material in the fourth ballade, to the whole Barcarolle, especially to the imitations in the middle section and in the coda. By means of this the piano speaks with a voice made sonorous by its own peculiar abilities, and Chopin’s melodies stand apart from melodies for violin or voice.
What has been said of his ability to give to rapid notes a genuinely musical significance applies in general to the ornaments which now and again are brought into his music. Of the older standardized ornaments which were thickly sprinkled through the music of Couperin and Emanuel Bach, only a few survived the harpsichord, to which they were appropriate. The turn, the trill and the grace-note are the chief of these, all of which, it will be noted, are used as frequently in music for other instruments as in music for the pianoforte. The others were expanded into much greater form or gave way entirely to a new sort of ornament which covered wide intervals and a wide range, and was intended less to add grace to the melodic line than to introduce a variety of sonority into the music.
These more pretentious frills were added ex tempore by men like Hummel, Field, and even Liszt, not only to their own music but to that of other composers. Liszt, in his remarks prefatory to an edition of Field’s ‘Nocturnes,’ said that the little pieces as they appeared on the engraved page hardly gave more than a suggestion of the richness which their composer gave to them by means of his improvised adornments. Whatever may have been the practice of Chopin in playing, he angrily resented the addition of extemporized ornaments to his own music by any player whatsoever, even one so brilliant as Liszt. It seems likely that such ornaments d’occasion were pretty conventional stuff. Liszt has filled up his music with a great deal of them, laboriously written out. Chopin’s ornaments rarely lack the distinction which is characteristic of his style in general; that is to say they are rarely a series of figures, oftenest a tracery of melody. Those such as we find in the nocturne in F-sharp major, the impromptu in the same key, and even in the first polonaise, are finely and carefully drawn, and their effect in the piece, like the effect of the piece as a whole, calculated down to the smallest note. Even in this regard Chopin’s music is perfected, and the addition of extra notes, especially of the breathless, virtuoso kind, cannot, as Chopin himself well knew, but distort its proportions. There is practically none of these passages which is massive, which has not a value in detail that the pianist must reveal.
Excepting always the music of Bach, there is almost no keyboard music save Chopin’s in which every note is thus fraught with meaning and delight. Therein lies the secret of his style, its clearness, flexibility and charm. As a work of art it is flawless, and in that may well rest its best assurance of an immortal life.
IV
There is little to be said of the quality of Chopin’s music in general, and that little has often been fervidly spoken, now in praise, now in blame. His music may be variously classified. There are works of his young manhood, works of more mature stamp, finally works written in the last years of his relatively short life which are very noticeably more profound and more involved than earlier ones. To study his music in the order of its creation is to trace the deepening and the sobering of his emotional life. An intensity is common to it all, a fervor which a long and painful illness had not the power to assuage. Neither the Ballade in F minor nor the Polonaise-Fantaisie is less impassioned than the study in C minor, opus 10, No. 12. Outwardly they all show the same restlessness and tumultuousness. But the passion of the later works is deeper if not more calm than that of the earlier, and the expression of it is more varied and full of contrasts. Works like the fourth Scherzo, the fourth Ballade, and the Barcarolle have an under meaning so hard to grasp that perhaps the majority of those who study them or hear them find fault with the structure and say they are rambling. There is in all his music a reserve which puts it beyond the touch of most who would play it. In these last great pieces one discerns vaguely something of the holiness of that inner life of his which no one ever heard him speak of, of the intense, yearning idealism that tortured him. His was a spirit that underwent the chastening brought upon us by suffering in body and mind in silence, this fastidious, dainty, malicious, little man, for ever suffering, for ever unconquerable in pride.
But the compositions may be more definitely classified than by the signs they show of Chopin’s general development. There are, for example, three distinct groups: salon pieces, such as the Waltzes and Nocturnes; pieces in which he speaks as it were his native Polish language, such as the Mazurkas and the Polonaises, and finally works which seem the unrestricted expression of his emotions: the Ballades, Scherzos, Sonatas, Preludes, and Études.
All the salon pieces are characterized by elegance. In addition, the Waltzes have in most cases a sparkle, the Nocturnes a discrete melancholy. Yet Chopin is full of surprises, and there are waltzes like that in A minor and that in C-sharp minor which pass out of the category of elegant salon music based on dance rhythms, and may be treated as among the most thoughtful and the sad expressions of his experience. The first two waltzes, and the great waltz in A-flat major, opus 42, reveal him delighting in poignant and lively rhythms, in a grace from which a certain chivalric gallantry is not lacking, and above all in the captivating qualities of his instrument.
Perhaps the majority of the Nocturnes show a sentiment a little too much perfumed for the salon. They are commonly considered the weakest of his compositions; and it can hardly be denied that some of them lack virility and health. On the other hand, one like that in C minor is fit to stand among the most impassioned and noble of his compositions; and those in G major and in D-flat major must long be redeemed from commonplaceness by the perfection of their style as pianoforte music.