In the Mazurkas, harmonies, rhythm, and melodies have a distinctly Polish character. In the Polonaises only the rhythm is national; and this has been so long in the favor of the international world of music that it carries with it little of Polish spirit. Most of the Mazurkas and the Polonaises never shake off an under mood of deep sadness, and there is none of them, however gracious, which does not sing of a national pride. Pride and sorrow are the keynote to them, sorrow that is often hopeless, pride that rises to anger and defiance. There are among the Mazurkas many which have an elegiac sadness, which are poems of meditation and lamentation, as if by the ruins of his beloved country he, like the great prophet, sat down and wept. They are often as short as the short preludes, but share with them a vividness and intenseness that place them among the most remarkable of compositions for the instrument.
The Polonaises are in broad form. Those in A major, A-flat major, and F-sharp minor are truly colossal works, ringing, clashing, marching music, without a touch of bombast. It is astonishing how all polonaises, polaccas, and even marches by other composers lose their light beside them. Those in C minor and in E-flat minor are sombre and gloomy, the former full of heaviness, the latter of mysterious agitation as of a band of conspirators, in the apt phrase of Professor Niecks. That in C-sharp minor lacks the dignity of its companion pieces. The first part is fretful and nervous. The Trio section in D-flat has, however, a more measured, though an effeminate speech.
Of his other great works one would be glad to say nothing. We have already attempted to analyze the perfection of their style, the richness of their harmonies, the firm proportions of their form. To the discovery of their particular beauties each lover must be led by his own enthusiasm. The rapture they may charm him to is his own joy. Chopin the artist may be held up to the critical inspection of the whole world, and in such an inspection few will pass with higher praise than his.
But Chopin the musician speaks to each ear apart. His music is a fervid, aristocratic, essentially noble soul made audible, if so we may translate Balzac’s remark that he was une âme qui se rendait sensible. Illness held him in an inexorable grip during those years of his life when he wrote many of his greatest works. His pride, which no one may measure, made his life one agony with that of his broken country. Yet there was the saving streak of iron in him, and that is in his music behind all the vehemence, the fever, and the passion.
And what may not be overlooked is his love of gaiety. His wit was malicious and keen, but he had a pleasing humor as well, one that overflowed in mimicry and an almost childish love of fun. This too is constantly coming to the surface in his music. It would be wholly mistaken to think of Chopin as a composer of only sad or turbulent music. A whole list of masterpieces could be chosen from those of his compositions which are gay without arrière-pensée, which are witty and vivacious, and clear as happy laughter. It is perhaps this very spirit which saves his music always from heaviness, which makes it in the last analysis more healthy and more sane than much of that of Schumann or Brahms. Never are his moods heavy, stagnant, or inert. Intense as they may be they are swift-changing and vivid.
Are they not thus in their nature suited to the piano more than to all other instruments? To the piano, the sounds of which are no sooner struck than they float away, the very breath of whose being is in constant movement?
The mass of Chopin’s compositions remains unique in the literature of pianoforte music as an expression of emotion that is without alloy. There is no trace in it of experiment, of theory, or of symbolism. Its idealism is the idealism of beauty of sound, both in form and detail. If we call it poetical it is because it seems a fire of the imagination. Yet here is a faculty in Chopin which deals only with sound. His music is most decidedly abstract and absolute. Poetical as it may be, there is no meaning in it but the meaning of sound. Not only does it not call for supplementary explanations in terms of another art or of definite, emotional activities in life; it defies the effort that would so relate it to a world of perceptions. Like fire it burns the thought that would frame it.
FOOTNOTES:
[35] ‘Chopin the Composer.’ New York, 1914.
[36] Professor Frederick Niecks in his ‘Frederic Chopin’ (1888) has presented practically all that is known of Chopin to the public, in a manner that is no less accurate than it is wholly just and impartial. Needless to say that we are greatly indebted for this chapter to that excellent and wise book, especially in the matter of biographical and personal details.