Lately, perhaps because it's the bicentenary of his birth, I've been listening to a lot of Chopin and trying to figure out what it is about his music that I and so many other people respond to so powerfully.
I should say, before continuing that I am not a professional musician nor yet a music critic so my interpretations are purely personal and not based on any particular expertise. Also, I'm conscious of the dangers of trying to translate the emotions evoked by music into words. The two operate in different spheres.
As W.H. Auden wrote in a poem entitled "The Composer":
Rummaging into his living, the poet fetches
The images out that hurt and connect.
From Life to Art by painstaking adaption
Relying on us to cover the rift;
Only your notes are pure contraption,
Only your song is an absolute gift.
Chopin's music is not programmatic, in the sense that it tries to tell a particular story in the way a Richard Strauss tone poem does. But one often feels there is a story there somewhere - if one could only figure out what it is. Chopin's music is elegant and tempestuous by turns and almost always melancholy. There's something elusive about it, something you can't quite pin down.
Take for example the Mazurka Op. 56 No. 1. The Mazurka was a Polish peasant dance which Chopin reinvented - he composed around 60 of them. This one begins with a sad little theme in B major that after a stuttering start, eventually lurches into a few reluctant dance steps - as if an old man and/or woman were recalling the dances of their youth. Then, Chopin suddenly switches into E flat and bursts into a weird little waltz that seems to be whirling round and round in circles, going nowhere. The main theme returns and the old couple go through their paces once more - and then we swing into the distant key of G and the waltz returns, lighter, more insubstantial, even more unanchored to reality. The main theme returns yet again but now Chopin takes us on a chromatic journey through a succession of keys - and we hear simultaneously a murmured commentary on the theme in the left hand. The dancers gather their strength and the piece finishes on a note of defiance. It seems like an entire drama has taken place - but we're not sure what it was about.
That murmured left-hand commentary - it often shows up in Chopin like a "ghostly echo" swirling above or below the theme. Sometimes, the echo is explicit. In the wonderful little mazurka Op 63. No 3, the final bars offer a sad echo of the main theme sounded between the notes. Where does the echo come from? We don't know.
In the Scherzo No. 3, crashing chords and thundering scales seem to pose some kind of mysterious question. They give way to a haunting middle section where the bass plays a hymn-like chorale while the treble accompanies it with shimmering waves of falling notes. It's as if the themes are being heard simultaneously on earth and in the heavens.
That heavenly, otherworldly voice often shows up in Chopin.
An example is one of the composer's most popular pieces, the Waltz No. 7 in C sharp minor. It begins with an elegant, somewhat languid, somewhat melancholy tune full of falling figures that sound like little sighs. One could imagine a couple dancing in a Viennese or Parisian ballroom. It's four o'clock in the morning and everyone else has long gone home - even the orchestra -- as they drift slowly around the floor, eyes closed, perhaps humming the theme. And then suddenly, we switch to another sphere where we hear a faster, lighter dance. I imagine ghostly spirits hovering over the ballroom, doing their own steps, while the couple below dances. The main theme returns, even more poignantly. There will never be another dance like this, another moment like this. And then we hear the ghostly dance again, as insubstantial as gossamer, barely audible. As the piece ends, it dissolves into the air and disappears.
Those fairies keep coming back in Chopin. The Nocturne Op. 55 No. 1 in F minor is not one of his greatest works and seems rather unadventurous. We hear a kind of melancholy little march with a stutter, a stormier middle section and then the march returns. The piece seems headed to a conventional end - and then the right hand suddenly takes off in swirling arpeggios that float higher and higher, faster and faster, until they too disappear into the heavens. It's as if the marchers, whoever they were, grew wings and escaped from earth.
The Ballade No. 4 in F minor is one of my favorite Chopin compositions. It plays a central role in my novel, "Romance Language." It starts in a major key but soon resolves into a sad, Slavic dance in three-time. Again, there's a sense of the music asking a question - without providing an answer. As the piece proceeds, we hear many different variations of the theme, sometimes calmer, sometimes more agitated, always coming back to the same unanswered question. The music becomes more and more tempestuous until it breaks into a virtuoso coda which ends abruptly with four crashing notes, bringing the argument to an end - but still leaving the ultimate question unresolved,
Often in Chopin, there's a sense of being unanchored to solid ground. The left hand will play a bar with three measures while the right hand is playing four - or vice versa. Four into three comes out 1.3333 recurring. No matter how precisely the notes played, their values cannot be exactly equal. Mathematically, the way they are divided is always elusive. Or the left hand will play 16 notes and the right 23. That comes out as one left-hand note for every 0.695652174 right hand notes.
Nocturne Op 48. No 1 begins with a stately march in C minor. The left hand keeps a steady beat, the right wanders around it. We merge into a middle section with another of Chopin's hymn-like themes, which becomes increasingly agitated, accompanied by crashing chords and thunderous octaves in both hands. Then the march returns, but this time the left-hand accompaniment is playing five note-measures while the right is playing four. That sense of incompleteness makes the theme unbearably poignant.
Another of my favorite Chopin pieces is the Barcarolle in F sharp major - a love duet that is supposed to take place in a boat drifting on a river. You hear the rocking motion in the left-hand that accompanies a wonderful ethereal theme. As the piece proceeds, the movement becomes increasingly agitated. Perhaps the lovers ran into an unexpected squall. But then all is calm again. The boat resumes its drifting, the lovers' eyes close and the music takes them higher and higher until they too seem to be floating somewhere in a cloud. Four chords in octaves awakens them and the piece ends.
In Chopin, we're always suspended somewhere between earth and the heavens - as the composer was himself.