Chapter V: Old Fogy Discusses Chopin

Since my return from the outskirts of Camden, N. J., where I go fishing for planked shad in September, I have been busying myself with the rearrangement of my musical library, truly a delectable occupation for an old man. As I passed through my hands the various and beloved volumes, worn by usage and the passage of the years, I pondered after the fashion of one who has more sentiment than judgment; I said to myself:

"Come, old fellow, here they are, these friends of the past forty years. Here are the yellow and bepenciled Bach _Preludes and Fugues_, the precious 'forty-eight'; here are the Beethoven Sonatas, every bar of which is familiar; here are--yes, the Mozart, Schubert, and Schumann Sonatas [you notice that I am beginning to bracket the batches]; here are Mendelssohn's works, highly glazed as to technical surface, pretty as to sentiment, Bach seen through the lorgnette of a refined, thin, narrow nature. And here are the Chopin compositions." The murder is out--I have jumped from Bach and Beethoven to Chopin without a twinge of my critical conscience. Why? I hardly know why, except that I was thinking of that mythical desert island and the usual idiotic question: What composers would you select if you were to be marooned on a South Sea Island?--you know the style of question and, alas! the style of answer. You may also guess the composers of my selection. And the least of the three in the last group above named is not Chopin--Chopin, who, as a piano composer pure and simple, still ranks his predecessors, his contemporaries, his successors.

I am sure that the brilliant Mr. Finck, the erudite Mr. Krehbiel, the witty Mr. Henderson, the judicial Mr. Aldrich, the phenomenal Philip Hale, have told us and will tell us all about Chopin's life, his poetry, his technical prowess, his capacity as a pedagogue, his reforms, his striking use of dance forms. Let me contribute my humble and dusty mite; let me speak of a Chopin, of the Chopin, of a Chopin--pardon my tedious manner of address--who has most appealed to me since my taste has been clarified by long experience. I know that it is customary to swoon over Chopin's languorous muse, to counterfeit critical raptures when his name is mentioned. For this reason I dislike exegetical comments on his music. Lives of Chopin from Liszt to Niecks, Huneker, Hadow, and the rest are either too much given over to dry-as-dust or to rhapsody. I am a teacher of the pianoforte, that good old keyboard which I know will outlive all its mechanical imitators. I have assured you of this fact about fifteen years ago, and I expect to hammer away at it for the next fifteen years if my health and your amiability endure. The Chopin music is written for the piano--a truism!--so why in writing of it are not critics practical? It is the practical Chopin I am interested in nowadays, not the poetic--for the latter quality will always take care of itself.

Primarily among the practical considerations of the Chopin music is the patent fact that only a certain section of his music is studied in private and played in public. And a very limited section it is, as those who teach or frequent piano recitals are able to testify. Why should the _D-flat Valse_, _E-flat_ and _G minor Nocturnes_, the _A-flat Ballade_, the _G minor Ballade_, the _B-flat minor Scherzo_, the _Funeral March_, the two _G-flat Etudes_, or, let us add, the _C minor_, the _F minor_ and _C-sharp minor studies_, the _G major_ and _D-flat preludes_, the _A-flat Polonaise_--or, worse still, the _A major_ and _C-sharp minor Polonaises_--the _B minor_, _B-flat major Mazurkas_, the _A-flat_ and _C-sharp minor Impromptus_, and last, though not least, the _Berceuse_--why, I insist, should this group be selected to the exclusion of the rest? for, all told, there is still as good Chopin in the list as ever came out of it.

I know we hear and read much about the "Heroic Chopin", and the "New Chopin"--forsooth!--and "Chopin the Conqueror"; also how to make up a Chopin program--which latter inevitably recalls to my mind the old _crux_: how to be happy though hungry. [Some forms of this conundrum lug in matrimony, a useless intrusion.] How to present a program of Chopin's _neglected_ masterpieces might furnish matter for afternoon lectures now devoted to such negligible musical _débris_ as Parsifal's neckties and the chewing gum of the flower maidens.

As a matter of fact, the critics are not to blame. I have read the expostulations of Mr. Finck about the untilled fields of Chopin. Yet his favorite Paderewski plays season in and season out a selection from the scheme I have just given, with possibly a few additions. The most versatile--and--also delightful--Chopinist is Pachmann. From his very first afternoon recital at old Chickering Hall, New York, in 1890, he gave a taste of the unfamiliar Chopin. Joseffy, thrice wonderful wizard, who has attained to the height of a true philosophic Parnassus--he only plays for himself, O wise Son of Light!--also gives at long intervals fleeting visions of the unknown Chopin. To Pachmann belongs the honor of persistently bringing forward to our notice such gems as the _Allegro de Concert_, many new mazurkas, the _F minor_, _F major_--_A minor Ballades_, the _F-sharp_ and _G-flat Impromptus_, the _B minor Sonata_, certain of the _Valses_, _Fantasies_, _Krakowiaks_, _Preludes_, _Studies_ and _Polonaises_--to mention a few. And his pioneer work may be easily followed by a dozen other lists, all new to concert-goers, all equally interesting. Chopin still remains a sealed book to the world, notwithstanding the ink spilled over his name every other minute of the clock's busy traffic with Eternity.

A fair moiety of this present chapter could be usurped by a detailed account of the beauties of the Unheard Chopin--you see I am emulating the critics with my phrase-making. But I am not the man to accomplish such a formidable task. I am too old, too disillusioned. The sap of a generous enthusiasm no longer stirs in my veins. Let the young fellows look to the matter--it is their affair. However, as I am an inveterate busybody I cannot refrain from an attempt to enlist your sympathies for some of my favorite Chopin.

Do you know the _E major Scherzo, Op. 54_, with its skimming, swallowlike flight, its delicate figuration, its evanescent hintings at a serious something in the major trio? Have you ever heard Pachmann _purl_ through this exquisitely conceived, contrived and balanced composition, truly a classic? _Whaur_ is your Willy Mendelssohn the _noo_? Or are you acquainted with the _G-sharp minor Prelude_? Do you play the _E-flat Scherzo_ from the _B minor Sonata_? Have you never shed a furtive tear--excuse my old-fashioned romanticism--over the bars of the _B major Larghetto_ in the same work? [The last movement is pure passage writing, yet clever as only Chopin knew how to be clever without being offensively gaudy.]

How about the first _Scherzo in B minor_? You play it, but do you understand its ferocious irony? [Oh, author of _Chopin: the Man and his Music_, what sins of rhetoric must be placed at your door!] And what of the _E-flat minor Scherzo_? Is it merely an excuse for blacksmith art and is the following _finale_ only a study in unisons? There is the _C-sharp minor Prelude_. In it Brahms is anticipated by a quarter of a century. The _Polonaise in F-sharp minor_ was damned years ago by Liszt, who found that it contained pathologic states. What of it? It is Chopin's masterpiece in this form and for that reason is seldom played in public. Why? My children, do you not know by this time that the garden variety of pianoforte virtuoso will play difficult music if the difficulties be technical not emotional, or emotional and not spiritual?

_The F-sharp minor Polonaise_ is always _drummed_ on the keyboard because some silly story got into print about Chopin's aunt asking the composer for a picture of his soul battling with the soul of his pet foe, the Russians. Militant the work is not, as swinging as are its resilient rhythms: granted that the gloomy repetitions betray a morbid dwelling upon some secret, exasperating sorrow; but as the human soul never experiences the same mood _twice_ in a lifetime, so Chopin never means his passages, identical as they may be, to be repeated in the same mood-key. Liszt, Tausig, and Rubinstein taught us the supreme art of color variation in the repetition of a theme. Paderewski knows the trick; so do Joseffy and Pachmann--the latter's _pianissimi_ begin where other men's cease. So the accusation of tonal or thematic monotony should not be brought against this _Polonaise_. Rather let us blame our imperfect sympathies and slender stock of the art of _nuance_.

But here I am pinning myself down to one composition, when I wish to touch lightly on so many! The _F minor Polonaise_, the _E-flat minor Polonaise_, called the _Siberian_--why I don't know; _I_ could never detect in its mobile measures the clanking of convict chains or the dreary landscape of Siberia--might be played by way of variety; and then there is the _C minor Polonaise_, which begins in tones of epic grandeur [go it, old man, you will be applying for a position on the Manayunk _Herbalist_ soon as a critic!] The _Nocturnes_--are they all familiar to you? The _F-sharp minor_ was a positive novelty a few years ago when Joseffy exhumed it, while the _C-sharp minor_, with its strong climaxes, its middle sections so evocative of Beethoven's _Sonata_ in the same key--have you mastered its content? _The Preludes_ are a perfect field for the "prospector"; though Essipoff and Arthur Friedheim played them in a single program. Nor must we overlook the so-called hackneyed valses, the tinkling charm of the one in _G-flat_, the elegiac quality of the one in _B minor_. The _Barcarolle_ is only for heroes. So I do not set it down in malice against the student or the everyday virtuosos that he--or she--does not attempt it. The _F minor Fantaisie_, I am sorry to say, is beginning to be tarnished like the _A-flat Ballade_, by impious hands. It is not for weaklings; nor are the other Fantaisies. Why not let us hear the _Bolero_ and _Tarantella_, not Chopin at his happiest, withal Chopin. Emil Sauer made a success of other brilliant birdlike music before an America public. As for the _Ballades_, I can no longer endure any but _Op. 38_ and _Op. 52_. Rosenthal played the beautiful _D-flat Study_ in _Les Trois nouvelles Etudes_ with signal results. It is a valse in disguise. And its neighbors in _A-flat_ and _F minor_ are Chopin in his most winning moods. Who, except Pachmann, essays the _G-flat major Impromptu_--wrongfully catalogued as _Des Dur_ in the Klindworth edition? To be sure, it resumes many traits of the two preceding _Impromptus_, yet is it none the less fascinating music. And the _Mazurkas_--I refuse positively to discuss at the present writing such a fertile theme. I am fatigued already, and I feel that my antique vaporings have fatigued you. Next month I shall stick to my leathery last, like the musical shoemaker that I am--I shall consider to some length the use of left-hand passage work in the Hummel sonatas. Or shall I speak of Chopin again, of the Chopin mazurkas! My sour bones become sweeter when I think of Chopin--ah, there I go again! Am I, too, among the rhapsodists?