Tracks:
1. Impromptu in C-sharp Minor, Opus 66
2. Nocturne in E-flat Major, Opus 9, No. 2
3. Prelude No. 15, Opus 28
4. Prelude in C Sharp Minor, Opus 45
5. Prelude
No. 4 in E Minor, Opus 28/4
6.
Prelude No. 3 in G Major, Opus 28
7. Prelude No. 15 in D Flat Major, Opus 28 “Raindrop”
8. Prelude No. 24 in D Minor, Opus 28
9. Waltz No. 7 in C Sharp Minor, Opus 64, No. 2
10.
Barcarolle, Opus 60
11.
Fantaisie in F Minor, Opus 49
12.
Life and Career of Chopin
13.
Chopin and the Modern Piano
14.
Listener’s Guide: Texture--Accompaniment
15.
Listener’s Guide: Texture--Melody
16.
Listener’s Guide: Rhythm
17.
Listener’s Guide: Rubato
18.
Listener’s Guide: Harmony
19.
Chopin's Romanticism
20.
The Chopin Legacy
CHOPIN AND THE
ROMANTIC MOVEMENT
The 1830's
and 1840's saw the high tide of the Romantic movement in music and the other arts, a movement that would define the sensibility
of nearly the entire nineteenth century. Several great composers of this period gave expression to the spirit of Romanticism
, none more so than Frédéric Chopin. Chopin’s Romanticism is apparent in his rich harmonic shadings, intense
poetic expression and his attention to the sensual qualities of music. It reveals itself also in his preference for short
piano solos of the type often called “character pieces,” which convey a sense of spontaneity and immediacy
so prized by the nineteenth-century Romantics.But Chopin did more than just write music imbued with the spirit of Romanticism.
In many ways he embodied an archetypal Romantic character: a lonely genius doomed by that most Romantic disease, tuberculosis,
a visionary musician too refined for the public acclaim sought and won by such contemporaries as Liszt and Paganini. Chopin’s
exquisite sensitivity, which led him to abandon the concert stage and retreat to the salons of Parisian high society, seemed
to set him above of commerce and showmanship that attended concert life during the second third of the nineteenth century,
and this, together with his reticence about appearing in public, only added to the Romantic aura about him, even during his
lifetime.
CHOPIN’S LIFE AND CAREER
Child Prodigy
Chopin was born on March 1, 1810, on an estate outside of Warsaw. He was baptized with the Polish name Fryderyk, but he later used its French form,
Frédéric. Young Chopin soon demonstrated an exceptional aptitude for music. For six years he studied with a
local piano teacher named Wojchiech Zwyny, who soon found himself struggling to keep up with his prodigiously gifted student.
By the time Chopin was twelve, Zwyny admitted “there is nothing more I can teach him.” By this time Chopin had
already begun performing in public. During his adolescence he played before the cream of Warsaw’s society, impressing even Poland’s ruler, Grand
Duke Constantine of Russia, who sometimes sent his own carriage to fetch Chopin to his palace. Chopin had also begun composing, having written
some short piano pieces as early as age seven, and in this, too, he made steady progress. As with his piano playing, he owed
his achievements in composition more to native ability and self-instruction than to the tutoring he received. Chopin received
only three years of instruction in composition at the Warsaw Conservatory. By the time he received his diploma, he was already
the author of an ambitious sonata, two piano concertos and a number of shorter piano solos.
Travel and Exile
As Chopin matured, he sought to broaden his horizons beyond Warsaw. A trip to Berlin shortly after he turned eighteen was followed by another to Vienna the following year. In November 1830, at age twenty, he set off
once more for the Austrian capital. For eight months he tried to establish a career in that musically important city. His
efforts met with little success, the concerts he gave there winning little more than polite approbation. Meanwhile, trouble
beset his homeland. A revolt against Russian domination was brutally supressed as France, Austria and other European governments failed to aid the Polish rebels.
In Vienna, Chopin followed the news from
home and poured out his despair in a diary he kept at this time. “Father, mother, sisters, everything that is most dear
to me,” laments one entry, “where are you now? Dead, perhaps?” ... Ah, there are no words to describe my
misery.”The crushed revolt in Poland created a stream of refugees, as many
members of the Polish aristocracy made their way to Paris. From Vienna, Chopin decided to join them and arrived in the French capital in September 1831.
At first he wavered between pursuing a career as a concert artist or concentrating on composition. His first Parisian recital
received praise from no less a judge than Felix Mendelssohn, who was visiting France at the time. But Chopin soon decided that the life
of a virtuoso performer was not congenial to him. He therefore curtailed his public performances to approximately one appearance
annually. But he quickly established a flourishing career in a more intimate setting, the homes of Paris’ French and Polish nobility.
The Salons of Paris
Paris in the 1830's
was the intellectual capital of Europe and now rivaled Vienna as the most important center of music on the continent. The Opéra staged lavish productions
of works by Rossini, Meyerbeer and a host of French composers. The Conservatoire was not only the most respected music school
in the world but the site of important orchestral concerts. Theaters, smaller recital halls and churches also supported an
active musical life. But the best music often was to be found not at any of these venues but in the salons of the city’s
wealthy élite. There writers, painters, musicians and intellectuals mixed with leaders and aristocrats. There the conversation
was always informed and lively. There one could see the most important men and women of the day, and to be seen by them.At
Parisian salons Chopin met ambassadors, princes and made the acquaintance of musicians like Franz Liszt and Rossini, the painter
EugPne Delacroix, Alexandre Dumas, Balzac and other French writers, as well as the exiled Polish poet Adam
Mickiewicz. But Chopin did more than mingle. He became the reigning musician of Parisian high society. His performances and
improvisations at the salon gatherings had a spellbinding effect on those listeners who were privileged to hear him play.
In addition, he acquired a number of pupils among the wealthy French and exiled Polish aristocrats. Proficiency at playing
the piano was a highly prized accomplishment at this time, particularly for women of the upper classes, and in Paris the most
ambitious and well-to-do keyboard students now sought out Chopin for lessons. Chopin’s pupils included aspiring professionals
and accomplished amateurs. Among the latter were countesses, princesses and other members of Parisian high society. Many of
them attained considerable proficiency, for the pieces Chopin wrote for his students to play are by no means easily negotiated.
They also must have paid handsomely for Chopin’s services, since the expatriate Polish musician was able to afford a
comfortable apartment, a fine wardrobe and an elegant carriage.Chopin’s schedule left ample time for composition, and
since he had abandoned thoughts of a concert career, writing music became his chief ambition. In this, too, he quickly gained
recognition. As early as December 1831 Robert Schumann published a glowing review of one of Chopin’s early work’s
that closed with the famous encomium: “Hats off, gentlemen. A genius!” Having composed two concertos, a set of
variations and several smaller pieces for piano and orchestra before he arrived in Paris, Chopin now turned away from orchestral
music and devoted himself almost entirely to keyboard solos.
With George Sand
It is not certain that
Chopin enjoyed any romantic liaisons during his first half decade in Paris, though evidence indicates that he had
many female admirers. But in the autumn of 1836 the composer met a woman of far stronger character than the aristocratic ladies
who habituated the salons of Paris. Aurore Dudevant, who went by her pen name George Sand, was one of the most unusual personages of
her day. Having ended her dismal marriage to a French baron, she set about supporting herself and two children through literature,
her prolific output of novels, essays and other writings being her sole source of income. Such independence was unusual for
a woman at this time, but Sand reveled in her freedom. She dressed and behaved unconventionally, wearing trousers, smoking
cigars and taking a succession of lovers.Sand evidently was not
a particularly attractive woman, and she seems not to have made a very favorable impression on Chopin at their initial meeting.
But the two kept encountering each other at social gatherings, and eventually a fondness arose between them. By the summer
of 1838 the composer and writer were engaged in a serious romance.Chopin and Sand remained devoted to each other for most
of the next decade, although their ardor seems to have faded fairly quickly into friendship. In the autumn of 1838 they traveled
together to Majorca,
the Mediterranean island off the coast of Spain. There Chopin composed some inspired music but also fell seriously ill. Sand, who possessed strong
maternal instincts, nursed him through the crisis. Subsequently the pair shared adjacent apartments in Paris and also lived together at Sand’s
rural home. The relationship between Chopin and Sand ended unhappily in 1847. Chopin
had taken sides with one of Sand’s daughters in a quarrel over her marital prospects. Although feelings between the
composer and writer had cooled considerably during the previous year, this dispute led to a permanent breach. Sand cut off
contact with a short letter that ended by remarking on “this bizarre conclusion to nine years of close friendship.”
Final Years
Chopin’s career was by this time nearly over. Increasingly he suffered from
tuberculosis, symptoms of which had been plaguing him for years and now depleted his energy for composing. In February 1848
revolution shook Paris and sent many of his students fleeing the capital. Chopin therefore accepted an invitation to visit
England and
Scotland.
In London
he gave several public concerts and played privately for an audience that included Queen Victoria. Returning to Paris, he found
himself too weak for either teaching or composition and would have fallen into dire financial straits but for the generosity
of a wealthy Scottish lady who had been one of his students. Chopin died on October
17, 1849, six months short of his fortieth birthday. Three thousand people attended
his funeral, where portions of Mozart’s Requiem and an orchestral transcription of the “funeral march” movement
of his own Piano Sonata in B-Flat Minor were played.
CHOPIN’S
CHARACTER AND PERSONALITY
Despite extensive documentation of his life and the enormous
popularity his works enjoy, Chopin remains a somewhat enigmatic figure. Apart from such questions as his nationality —
he was, in various ways, both French and Polish — and his sexual orientation, there is the issue of his artistic temperament. As
mentioned above, his highly original music placed him in the ranks of the “radical” Romantics who congregated
in Paris — Berlioz, Liszt and, briefly, Wagner — during the 1830's and 1840's. Yet Chopin was no musical
iconoclast. For all the originality of his own compositions, he retained a deep love for music by certain older masters, especially
Bach and Mozart. Nor was Chopin a revolutionary in other aspects of his life. On the contrary, his refined manners and impeccable
dress were perfectly suited to the mores of Parisian high society during the reign of the conservative King Louis-Philippe.
Chopin’s delicate features seem to have won him flattering attention from a number of women, but his romantic
life remains obscure. Although his correspondence mentions love for a young Polish conservatory student, and although his
name was linked with several ladies in Paris, his liaison with George Sand stands as his only certain love affair. Some passionately
worded letters to a boyhood friend have prompted speculation about homosexual inclinations, but Chopin’s biographers
remain divided about the significance of those expressions of affection.It seems likely that Chopin had little interest in
close relationships. All accounts portray him as exceptionally reserved and reticent, a quality that even George Sand, who
was as close to him as well as anyone, found cause for complaint. Moreover, Chopin probably had little energy for sexual passion.
Frail and underweight as a child, he suffered from poor health most of his life. Chopin’s delicate constitution
has led some listeners to think of his music as equally delicate. While it is true that the nocturnes and certain other pieces
convey a gossamer dreaminess, other compositions reveal Chopin’s capacity for impassioned and quite robust expression.
THE MUSIC
Impromptu in C-Sharp Minor, Opus 66
The last of Chopin’s four compositions bearing the
title Impromptu is one of his most characteristic pieces. In it we find the juxtaposition of virtuoso keyboard writing and
song-like melody, the rhythmic fluidity and broad A-B-A design that are hallmarks of the composer’s style. The impassioned
opening theme gives way to a melody of such irresistible lyricism that it was appropriated for the popular song “I’m
Always Chasing Rainbows.” Following the reprise of the initial subject, Chopin alludes once more to this tune in the
brief coda passage that concludes the piece.
The Nocturnes
Chopin’s nocturnes are perhaps his most popular group of compositions. Certainly this genre, whose
very title implies a mandate for poetic reverie, suited his Romantic tendencies. The two nocturnes we hear, both in the key
of E-flat major, date respectively from the early and late phases of Chopin’s career. The composer wrote Opus 9, No.
2 in the winter of 1830-31, shortly before his move to Paris. It features a song-like melody over a steady and
widely spaced accompaniment pattern. Florid ornamentation of the melodic line creates a rhythmic fluidity quite characteristic
of Chopin’s style. Published in 1844, Opus 55, No. 2, is a more mature and sophisticated composition. From its
initial gesture, a single clarion note that falls into a shimmering trill, the music captivates with its supple melodic lines,
the eloquent asides of its inner voices and its subtle, expressive dissonances.
Ballade No. 3 in A-flat Major, Opus 47
Chopin’s four ballades
are among his most complex compositions. Their titles imply a verse narrative, and it was reported during the composer’s
lifetime that the composer created these works after poems by Adam Mickiewicz, the Polish writer who, like Chopin, lived in
exile in Paris. No concrete connection has been demonstrated between these works and Mickiewicz’s verses, however,
and the music seems not to have any firm programmatic basis.Chopin composed his
Ballade No. 3 in A-Flat Major, Opus 47 in the winter of 1840-41 and introduced it in one of his rare concert appearances in
February 1842 in Paris. This music conveys what is for Chopin an unusually genial and relaxed character, its rhythmic lilt
serving to moderate even those passages where minor-key harmonies and restless keyboard textures impart a sense of disquiet.
The composer presents a succession of thematic ideas during the course of the piece, yet each of them grows out of the work’s
first phrase, where a rising scale fragment and a falling two-note pendant provide a melodic kernel from which the entire
composition grows.
The Preludes
When
Chopin arrived on Majorca in November 1838, he carried with him some volumes of Bach and sketches for his own set of Preludes,
Opus 28, which he completed on the island. The latter work was evidently inspired by Bach’s keyboard preludes of The Well-tempered Clavier. Like those pieces, Chopin’s Preludes
make a systematic traversal of all 24 major and minor keys. Also like them, each focuses on a particular musical concern:
a type of keyboard figuration, a specific mood or a singular melody. Here, however, the comparison with Bach’s music
ends, for Chopin’s Preludes typify the Romantic character piece. Each of these brief compositions evokes a unique mood
and conveys this through compressed and seemingly spontaneous musical expression. Of the Preludes recorded here, No.
15 in D-flat Major is especially famous. Its designation “the Raindrop Prelude” derives from the single tone reiterated
over nearly the whole course of the piece, and from George Sand’s story that Chopin composed it during a downpour as
raindrops fell heavily on the roof of their shelter on Majorca. The Preludes as a whole cover a wide range of moods as well as keyboard textures
and sonorities. Claudio Arrau, the pianist who plays them on our recording, once described them as “a survey of Chopin’s
cosmos.”
Mazurkas and Waltzes
Originally a central-European peasants’ dance, the mazurka
had made its way into the salons and ballrooms of Warsaw by the time Chopin came upon it. Retaining the rhythms and general character of
the dance, Chopin appropriated it as a vehicle for his own distinctive style of melodic and harmonic invention. As Robert
Schumann observed, “Chopin has elevated the mazurka to a small art form; he has written many, yet few among them resemble
each other. Almost every one contains some poetic trait, something new in form and expression.”The waltz proved no less
congenial a vessel for Chopin’s musical imagination. He regarded his works in this form as concert music rather than
ballroom fare. Robert Schumann concurred. “These are waltzes for the soul, not the body,” he wrote of some of
Chopin’s early works of this kind. That certainly seems true of the Waltz in C-Sharp Minor, Opus 64, No. 2. Chopin wrote
it in 1847, toward the end of his life and in the wake of his break with George Sand. Here the aristocratic elegance of the
music mingles with a feeling of soulful melancholy. By contrast, the earlier Waltz in A-flat Major, Opus 34, No. 1, fully
deserves the sobriquet valse brillante.
Barcarolle in F-Sharp Major, Opus 60
One of the most distinctive species of character piece in Romantic piano music
was the barcarolle. This is a stylized version of the kind of song traditionally sung by Venetian gondoliers. Such songs
traditionally featured lilting rhythms in either 6/8 or 12/8 meter, and these became principal traits of the piano barcarolles
written by a number of nineteenth-century composers. The most famous of all such works is Chopin’s Barcarolle in F-Sharp
Major, Opus 60, composed in 1845-46. Like so many of the composer’s works, it unfolds in a broad A-B-A form, here
framed by a brief introduction and a fairly substantial coda. This relatively simple design, however, contains a wealth
of invention. The rocking accompaniment figures support florid melodies ornamented in Chopin’s inimitable fashion,
and much of the piece produces an exquisite harmonic “haze” that foreshadows an Impressionist style half a century
into the future.
