Frédéric Chopin composed almost two dozen nocturnes, starting in 1829 as a young man and continuing until his death. By that time, the genre already had a long history. Initially, evening services in the Catholic Church were called nocturnes, and in the 18th century they also began to be known as orchestral suites that were performed at night time – a kind of serenade. This is what Mozart’s orchestral nocturnes are like.
The genre was rediscovered in 1812 by the Irish musician John Field. He succeeded in transforming the nocturne into drawing room music for the piano – it was at this time that “night scenes” began to gain in popularity in theatres, lit by moonlight, sometimes idyllic, sometimes gloomy or “gothic”. In turn, Chopin transformed the nocturne into something akin to “songs without words”. In his nocturnes, starting with his very first opuses, he imitates various vocal genres – arias, romances and even chorales. The performer has to be able to make the piano sing. And as the bel canto style was at its height and Chopin was a fanatical admirer of opera, the melodies of the nocturnes are typically “lit up” with extremely virtuoso ornamental passages.
Chopin wrote his Polonaises Op. 26 in 1835.
When Chopin was unhurriedly working on his polonaises, Verdi and his countrymen were placing virtuoso cabalettas in the rhythm of a polonaise into the mouths of their protagonists without fear or reproof. Unfortunately, Chopin never wrote a national Polish opera as had been expected of him in his homeland... If he had done so the protagonist would undoubtedly have had an aria in the style of a polonaise. But the composer’s piano polonaises are no less virtuoso and are equally vast in form, demanding the same level of brilliance from the performer and a truly orchestral sound from the piano.
If one had to choose from all of Frédéric Chopin’s works for the piano – polonaises, mazurkas, études, ballades, scherzos and waltzes – then the choice would probably fall on the Second Sonata in B flat Minor. All of the styles of which the composer had a great command, be they for the drawing room, concert hall or dances, are reflected in this work – a monumental sonata cycle, where the stormy romantic fantasy is restrained by the strict classical form.
The Sonata appeared in 1837, a difficult year for Chopin (difficult for personal reasons). All three of the composer’s piano sonatas are in minor key, although the tonality of the Second B Flat Minor – is the gloomiest of the three. The most famous section of the Sonata is the funeral march. Chopin had composed this somewhat earlier and later included it in the sonata. It had operatic origins, in all probability being based on the march from Rossini’s La gazza ladra. The finale with its ascetic structure (without any division of melody and accompaniment), unique for romantic music, was probably influenced by Bach.
The young Schumann deliberated for some time as to which profession he should choose, and he was leaning towards literature. One of his ideas was the poetic cycle Die Schmetterlinge; this failed to come to fruition. In the summer of 1831, however, Schumann completed and in November the same year published as his second opus an eponymous series of twelve pieces for piano.
Papillons emerged somewhat unexpectedly from three waltzes composed in 1829 in Heidelberg (where Schumann was attempting a career in law), two polonaises written earlier still – in 1928 – and several other pieces connected by the programme concept.
In his letters, Schumann indicated that Papillons was linked with the scene at the masked ball from Flegeljahre by the Romantic writer Johann Paul Friedrich Richter, who preferred the lighter-sounding French pseudonym of Jean Paul to his ponderous German name. Jean Paul wrote fragmentary and disconnected prose in which the poet’s dreams take on the status of the only reality worthy of depiction. Schumann created something similar to this in his music. Papillons opens with a brief introduction and a soaring waltz. Contemporaries expected this to be followed by a series of similar waltzes... But no, the third piece is a quadrille, and this is followed, as if viewing through a kaleidoscope, by the most diverse dances possible – a highly colourful, witty and fantastical mixture.
The brief Papillons formed, in miniature, the prototype for many of Schumann’s then as yet unwritten works: the concise outline was subsequently to take on flesh. He recalled them often. The ninth piece in the series Le Carnaval is called Papillons, while the German Groÿvater Tanz that can be heard in the cycle’s finale was later to return in Faschingsschwank aus Wien.
Schumann wrote his Symphonic Études in 1835 and they were published in Vienna in 1837. They were subsequently published in Leipzig under the title Études in the Form of Variations. The theme of the variations belongs to a certain dilettante: in all probability it was created by the amateur flautist, the father of Ernestine von Fricken who inspired Carnaval. And soon the Études were being performed by Clara Wieck – later to be Clara Schumann...
The theme is an exceptionally fine one, and the section with which it begins can be easily recognised in any of the variations. According to the “dictionary of intonation” of the time, this is a typical theme of Fate, though its fatalistic character is overcome as it develops – the Symphonic Études are in now way pessimistic!
In the 1830s, variations were normally either drawing-room pieces or dazzling concert works in which travelling virtuoso musicians would demonstrate their stunning technique. At the time, Schumann was literally possessed by the idea of piano technique and he wrote another whole series of études and a Toccata, though he did forever abandon the “dazzling style” of the age. As he did drawing-room music. His Symphonic Études are demonstratively serious and make reference to Beethoven and Bach: the scale of the whole work and the originality of each individual piece brings to mind Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations, while the polyphonic technique goes back to the Baroque age.
Anna Bulycheva |
