In Search of Chopin

Hudson Review, The, Winter 2004 by Mullen, Alexandra

In having so much go on at any one time, Chopin has obviously raised the difficulty level of his pieces. Some of the easiest looking ones are so exposed that they can be the hardest to play with the confidence to let the music get on with itself. Quite a few of the Preludes in "easy keys" also have very manageable tempos-moderate (andante) to slow (lento) to very slow (largo)-and appeal to intermediate piano students for that reason alone. But they appeal to intermediate teenaged pianists for the additional reason that their deep engagement superficially mirrors back adolescent angst. The surprising harmonic progressions of the block chords in Prelude #20 in C Minor (originally only 9 measures long, now 13) tempted Barry Manilow to pen "Could It be Magic" and a whole new generation of schoolgirl pianists to swoon. I hope we've all outgrown Manilow and grown into Chopin-I myself now prefer the mobile polyphonic chords of #9-but no matter how silly we were, we were at the same time definitely responding to something real in the piece, even if it's hard to say what exactly that is. This is the Prelude about which Alfred Cortot wrote: "La tragique solennite du rythme de ce prelude est rendue plus impressionnante encore par une saisissante degradation sonore evoquant le lent eloignement d'un cortege funebre, vers l'angoissant mystere de l'inconnu." (The tragic solemnity of this prelude's rhythm is made even more moving by a piercing resonant shading off evoking the slow moving away of a funeral cortege toward the agonizing mysteries of the unknown.) Cortot's piling on of adjectives is balanced by his knowledge that the Prelude must be played with an almost severe attention to rhythm-no messing about with arpeggiation or rubato "in the name of which we often commit so many crimes against the noble and supreme thought of Chopin."

Chopin was a young man when he began to write the Preludes, but there was no self-indulgence in his music-making. These pieces are rigorous, severe, and disciplined. They are also-and here we are back to Bach again-purely pianistic, narratively abstract, as were almost all of his pieces. Liszt, by contrast, usually named his pieces, if not to fit an exact sequence of episodes, then at least to evoke some external associations in his audience. His transcendentally difficult etudes almost all have names: Mazeppa, Vision, Harmonies du soir, Wilde Jagd (Wild Hunt). Chopin's pieces tend to have accrued names through the imaginings of others. Thus what Chopin wrote as Op. 25 #1, an Etude in A-flat Major, is now, thanks to Schumann's description of Chopin's playing, dubbed "The Aeolian Harp," after the wind harp that so romantically seems to reflect the fugitive improvisations of Nature herself.

In Chopin's atmospheric abstractions might lie another reason for our feelings of intimacy with him. For without his explicit suggestion that we think a particular thing, we can think anything. Take, for example, the case of Alfred Cortot. Cortot was a remarkable Chopin interpreter and, if possible, an even more remarkable teacher of Chopin's music. His editions of Chopin's works provide technical exercises and advice, offer interpretive suggestions, and even contain wisdom applicable to life off the piano bench. In a genuinely humble spirit, Cortot left a list of his private names for the Preludes. They are a hoot. Tiny #7 records, apparently, "Des souvenirs delicieux flottent comme un parfum a travers la memoire . . ." (Delicious recollections drift like a perfume across the memory . . .) The next prelude, which Chopin marked molto agitato, becomes: "La neige tombe, le vent hurle, la tempete fait rage; mais en mon triste coeur, l'orage est plus terrible encore." (The snow falls, the wind howls, the tempest is wild; but in my sad heart the storm is even more terrible.) In #19 he asks for "Des ailes, des ailes, pour m'enfuir vers vous, o ma bien-aimee!" (Wings, wings, to fly to you, 0 my beloved!) He can be blunt, too. Prelude #4: "Sur une tombe."