I
WARSAW
We are more accustomed in literature than in music to find immortality conferred on artists whose total quantity of production is slight or incomplete. Sappho lives in a few lyrics, Villon in a few ballades, Persius is a great satirist with some six hundred lines of verse, MerimÉe a great novelist with a slender handful of short stories. In all such cases we accept perfection of finish, individuality of note, concentration of effort, as more than compensating for the narrow limits within which the writer has thought fit to be confined: and we even impute it as a virtue that he has not changed the gold of his thought into the more diffuse silver of a meaner standard. But in music, as a rule, our judgment is affected by other considerations. For some reason the composer has generally been more lavish than his brother artists: he has worked more rapidly, perhaps more continuously, and has gained, in proportion, a larger abundance to bestow. Six weeks sufficed Mozart for his three greatest symphonies: Handel wrote the Messiah in less than a month: Schubert created nine of his songs in a single day: and it is therefore little wonder if we have learned to expect some opulence of achievement in our musicians, or even to estimate them, as an innkeeper discriminates his guests, by the amount of their baggage and the number of their retinue.
We shall find an interesting commentary on this view if we turn to the programme of a famous concert, given at Warsaw on February 24, 1818. The principal work performed was a pianoforte concerto which served to bring two names, those of its composer and its interpreter, into a forcible and prominent contrast. The one was a master of established reputation and acknowledged authority, the Hofkapellmeister at Vienna, the friend of Beethoven, the musician whose operas were applauded in every capital, whose symphonies were set in the balance against Haydn's, whose quartetts were declared by dispassionate judges to be the equal of Mozart's. The other was planting his first footsteps in a byway of the art which he was to tread for thirty years with little deviation, satisfied to pluck a posy of flowers from the hedgerow, and lay it down as his offering at the journey's end. The one covered the whole field of composition, and, at the end of his career, could number a list of works which outmatches the industry of almost all his contemporaries. The other, cut short by an early death, has left us a few thin volumes, curiously uniform in style, and restricted, with scarcely an exception, to the limits of a single instrument. Yet the one is as completely forgotten as though he had never lived, while the other has passed into the company of the immortals. To our ears the name of Adalbert Gyrowetz is of the most forlorn unfamiliarity, it has become 'fantastic, unsubstantial—like Henry Pimpernel and old John Naps of Greece'; but no vicissitude of fortune, no changing fashion of art, can ever obliterate from our memory the image of Frederick Chopin.
It must, however, be added, that Chopin's slenderness of accomplishment in no way indicated any poverty of invention. His work was not, as is sometimes said of Gray's, the laborious tillage of a light soil; rather it was like that Japanese gardening, which intensifies the beauty of a single blossom by cutting off all the rest. The true reason, indeed, is to be found in a point of character, 'Il avait l'esprit ÉcorchÉ vif,' said the comrade who knew him best, and in these words may be found the whole explanation, both of his life and of his artistic career. Delicate, sensitive, fastidious, he would shrink from committing himself to a decision, lest it should fall short of the highest that he knew. Rapid and brilliant in improvisation, he would spend weeks in writing and rewriting a single page. A pianist of rare and exquisite gifts, he would often feel paralysed by the mere sight of a public audience. Generous, affectionate, and enthusiastic, he was yet too earnest to be forbearing, too susceptible to be tolerant, too exacting to show indulgence, and the same acute criticism with which he visited the actions of others, he applied in an equal measure to his own.
Hence there is a special danger in estimating him from a British standpoint. Our bluff, sturdy manhood has little in common with the keenness and mobility which mark one side of the artistic temperament, and we have never been very successful at comprehending alien characters or alien nationalities. True, we have advanced beyond the stage of unreasoning hostility towards the stranger who presumes to be more impressionable than ourselves, but for the most part we have only substituted a half-contemptuous compassion which is equally galling, and almost equally unintelligent. A past generation looked on Shelley and wondered that the fires of Heaven delayed their falling; the present age insults Heine with forgiveness, in consideration of the purgatory of his later years; and in like manner, when we hear of Chopin, we think, 'Poor fellow! he was consumptive,' and prepare ourselves to condone the irregularities of his life by some rough and ready diagnosis of physical disease. It seldom occurs to us to reflect that the problem may be too complex for so easy a solution, and that, before it can be solved at all, it must at least be stated correctly. As a matter of fact, Chopin's life was singularly blameless, and, until its close, singularly free from the material conditions of trouble. No doubt there is a deep pathos in the record of a death which seems to us premature: no doubt the pathos is intensified by the spectacle of failing strength and encroaching sickness; but it is an entirely false application of perspective to let our view of the end obliterate our view of the whole. And there is otherwise little hardship in the case. The feeble health was compensated, at least in part, by friendship, by affection, and by fame such as few musicians have enjoyed in their lifetime. It is not history to draw fancy pictures of a querulous invalid, a continuous burden to himself and to all who cared for him; still less to fill page after page with unsubstantiated rumours of ill-usage and neglect. Chopin's relation to his friends was neither that of tyrant nor that of victim, and his career, if, like every other, it was traversed by heavy clouds, at least had its bursts of sunshine and its long days of genial warmth.
He was born on 1st March 1809,[16] at the little village of Zelazowa Wola, near Warsaw. His father, Nicholas Chopin, was a French ÉmigrÉ, possibly with Polish blood in his veins, who, after sundry vicissitudes, had settled down as tutor in the family of Countess Skarbek, and had there met and married a Polish lady called Justina Krzyzanowska. Frederick, the only son, was the third of four children, and so was privileged to pass his earliest years in the Oriental despotism of a nursery peopled by admiring sisters.
In 1810 Nicholas Chopin carried off his household to the Capital, where he had been appointed Professor of French at the new Lyceum. At first there seems to have been some stress of poverty: salaries were low, life was unsettled; no one knew what quarter of Europe would next be set ablaze by the indomitable activity of Napoleon. However, in 1814, the Congress of Vienna established a kingdom of Poland, shorn, no doubt, of its border territories, and held in check by the suzerainty of Russia, but still governed by a Pole as viceroy, and recognising Polish as its official language. This was far from meeting the wishes of the 'patriotic party,' which looked to France as its ally and to the Emperor as its protector, but at least it ensured some measure of independence, and, after the next year, a certain prospect of peace and tranquillity.
As might be expected, the change of political condition produced an immediate effect on the national temper. Warsaw, which, in 1812, was one of the most miserable of cities, began in 1815 to recover the signs of material prosperity. Trade was developed, schools were opened, the great houses welcomed back their exiles, and the country at large shook off its dream of disquietude and set its face hopefully to the future. Only in secret rose an occasional murmur that Russia was an alien power, that the days of Suvorov had not passed out of memory, that the Viceroy was a mere puppet in the hands of the Emperor Alexander, and that the new Commander-in-Chief was a truculent savage who needed all the eloquence of his Polish wife to keep him from open oppression. Apart from these scattered voices of discontent, there can be no doubt that the nation rejoiced at its deliverance from German officialism, and, with characteristic buoyancy, resumed the business of life, and not a little of its brilliance.
Naturally, the Chopins bore their part in the general advance. Even while the fate of Poland was still in the balance, two fresh appointments had been added to the Professorship at the Lyceum, and the gradual restoration of the great families opened the way for a private school, over which no one was so capable of presiding as Count Skarbek's old tutor. This enlargement of means was the only thing wanted to make Chopin's childhood a period of almost ideal happiness. His parents seem to have been altogether worthy of the affection which he lavished on them: the father kindly, honourable, upright, firm in the government of his family, and unwearied in the administration of its resources; the mother bright, active and tender-hearted, full of folklore and household recipes, sincere in religion, charitable in conduct, gentle and courteous in speech. Then the house was visited by all manner of interesting people—poets, professors, politicians,—who would talk to Nicholas Chopin about his old home in half-Polish Lorraine, where men still spoke of the good Duke Stanislaus, or would exchange memories of the war and hopes for the new rÉgime. And for the more important aspects of life there could be no better companions than the three sisters—Louisa, who knew everything in the lesson-books; Isabella, who was practical, and could always find things when they were lost; and Emily, the best of playfellows, who told the most delightful stories, and had a special talent for making believe. Almost every birthday there were theatricals, almost every evening there was music for who would listen—all around was a world of flowers and sunshine, of pleasant looks and pleasant voices, of 'short task and merry holiday.' It is a poignant contrast to turn to the four children, less fortunate but not less gifted, who during these same years were writing their journals and acting their solitary plays in the bleak parsonage at Haworth.
Very little can be ascertained about Chopin's musical education. We know that his pianoforte teacher was a Bohemian called Adalbert Zywny, and that he learned harmony and counterpoint from Elsner, but we have scarcely any information as to the extent and value of the lessons. It is certain that in after life his system of fingering was entirely original and unorthodox, from which we may conjecture that Zywny never really taught him to play a scale—and indeed there is some tradition that the Professor was a violinist who only took to the piano as a second string, and who allowed the boy to spend most of his time in improvisation. Elsner was a good-tempered, easy-going old kapellmeister, who did his pupil the greatest service by teaching him to love Bach, and then allowed him to go his own way without further supervision. The works which Chopin published during his student period have little or no scope for counterpoint, but they show beyond controversy that he and his master were equally indifferent to what is known as classical structure. On the other hand, his sense of harmony was always admirable, and there can be no doubt that he owed much of its development to the wise care, and still wiser reticence, with which the laws and prohibitions were explained to him. Again, Liszt is probably right in drawing special attention to the moral value of Elsner's teaching. With a conscientious pupil the method of encouragement is the easiest possible way to inculcate a feeling of responsibility, and the most successful teacher is he who knows how to train mediocrity and to leave genius a free hand. It should be added that Chopin's relation to his two masters was always cordial and affectionate. As late as 1835, we find him docketing a letter from Zywny, a curious, formal, kindly note, full of good wishes and fine language, while to Elsner he always looked with a boy's hero-worship, as to a mentor whose advice was never to be neglected, and whose praise was the highest of commendations.
We may well understand that, as a pupil, he was best left alone. His precocity was something phenomenal, even in the decade which saw Mendelssohn at Weimar and Liszt at Paris: before he was eight years old he was a pianist of established reputation; before he was nine he played one of Gyrowetz' pianoforte concertos at a charity concert; at ten he ventured into the presence of the Grand Duke Constantine, and offered that awful potentate a military march for use among the troops. Of course, every one petted and caressed him, and called him the young Mozart. Countesses and princesses danced to his mazurkas, or sat by the piano while he improvised: Royalty itself sent down a great glittering clattering chariot, and galloped him off to play at the Belvidere: from end to end of the brilliant, light-hearted, pleasure-loving city he moved at his ease, like the young Prince Charming in a fairy tale, sure of a welcome, sure of applause, and accepting all that society offered with a child's careless enjoyment.
An atmosphere so heavy with adulation might well have poisoned a nature less lovable or less simple-hearted. But its only effect on Chopin was to increase still further his natural refinement of manner and to accentuate his intolerance of anything like rudeness or vulgarity. There does not seem to have been a trace of vanity in his constitution. He played 'as the linnets sing,' without effort, without premeditation, and without any apparent idea that his performance was out of the common. At his dÉbut, in the charity concert of 1818, the only feature which struck him as exciting any admiration was his lace collar; the watch given him two years later by Catalani only appealed to him as a new toy of unusual splendour: in all the record of his childhood there is not a single indication of petulance or conceit. We can easily reconstruct his portrait:—a little, frail, delicate elf of a boy, with fair hair and a prominent nose, the face redeemed from ugliness by the wonderful brown eyes and the quick intelligence of expression; a temperament which was keen, nervous and changeable, a character rapid and alert, bubbling over with effervescent spirits, playful, affectionate, and sensitive. He was already an accomplished actor and a born mimic, full of odd sayings and harmless mischief, clever and imaginative, utterly devoid of self-consciousness or affectation. His one defect was his want of a boy's adventurousness, and his disinclination to out-door sports and exercises. We can hardly imagine his tearing his clothes or getting his feet wet. But we must remember that this disability is not always to be regarded as an unpardonable sin, and that, ever since the days of Euripides, there has been a feud between the poet and the athlete. Had Chopin been more robust, he would doubtless have taken life with the greater equanimity—and we should have lost one of the most characteristic figures in the history of Music.
Unfortunately many of the anecdotes which are current about his boyhood bear the clear impress of mythology. The utmost we can say of them is, that they appear to contain some elements of truth which have been overlaid by enthusiastic biographers until they are almost unrecognisable. We can well believe for instance, that he once made an April fool of an irascible landowner by sending him a sham business-letter in Yiddish; but M. Karasowski, who tells the story, ruins it by gravely adding that the child played his trick with the deliberate moral purpose of curing his neighbour's temper; and, worse still, that the sermon was successful. Again, it is quite possible that on one insubordinate afternoon, when the pupils had proved too many for the usher, Chopin appeared on the scene and kept them quiet by improvising romances; but then we are further told that his representation of night, on the pianoforte, was so realistic that it sent all the boys to sleep. No doubt these embellishments are innocuous enough, though they add nothing which it is of any moment to preserve, but the uncritical fancy which accepts them as historical, offers but an ominous prospect for the discussion of the later life. That the record of Chopin's manhood is still a fruitful theme for controversy is mainly owing to the fact that it has been treated by writers who, for the most part, show a lamentable disregard of the value of evidence.
In 1824, Chopin was promoted from his father's preparatory school to the fourth class of the Warsaw Lyceum. There he worked hard, rose rapidly, won two or three prizes, and gained the esteem and respect of his school-fellows by developing a remarkable talent for caricature. It must have been an agonising moment when the director confiscated a sheet of paper containing an unflattering portrait of himself, and it says something for the young scapegrace, that the sketch was returned with no heavier rebuke than a sardonic comment on the excellence of the likeness. The first holidays were spent on a friend's estate in Szafarnia, from which the boy issued to his parents a periodical journal, after the model of the Warsaw Courier, and even got one of the daughters of the house to give it an amateur imprimatur, in imitation of the official censorship. The same year witnessed, at some family festival, the production of a new comedy, written in collaboration by Frederick Chopin, aged fifteen, and Emily Chopin, aged eleven. And all this time the dramatist, artist, journalist, and student of Polish history is writing his harmony exercises, playing his Kalkbrenner concertos, composing songs, devising variations, and generally progressing in music as though he had no other occupation to distract him. Grant that the comedy has no great literary value, and that the Ranz des Vaches variations are slight and childish, it still remains a marvel that one small head should have exhibited such restless and versatile ability. To find a parallel, we must go back to the golden age of Leonardo and the two Cellini, when all arts lay open and the common lands of knowledge had not yet been enclosed.
Up to 1825 Nicholas Chopin does not seem to have had any idea of making his son a professional musician. The first essays had been so many in number, and so various in impulse, that they might well account for some feeling of uncertainty, but by the end of 1824 the boy's activity had begun to take a more settled direction, and the events of the next year are mainly musical. First, there were two concerts, on March 27 and June 10, at the former of which Chopin was set to improvise on an instrument with the amazing name of Æolopantaleon, then the Emperor Alexander, who had come down to Warsaw to open the Parliamentary Session, sent for the young genius, heard him play, and dismissed him with some august compliments and a diamond ring; while, finally, this approbation of men and gods was succeeded by the Horatian climax of publication. The Rondo in C minor, which was printed this year as Op. 1, is a singular example of Chopin's strength and weakness in composition. The themes are clear, pleasant and melodious, contrasted with great skill, and admirably suited to the pianoforte; but the form is redundant and ill-balanced, the exposition unduly prolonged, and the subsequent treatment hurried and inadequate. No doubt, a concert rondo should not be criticised with the same severity as the rondo movement of a sonata; yet even with all laxity of concession, we can find passages and even pages, through which Elsner ought to have drawn his pencil. That Chopin should have written them is no crime; youth is expected to be extravagant; but his master might have remembered that an artist who, in the phrase of Cherubini, 'puts too much cloth into his coat,' spoils the result, in addition to wasting the material.
The only other compositions which can be assigned to this year with any certainty are the two Mazurkas in G and B flat, which appear among the posthumous work in Breitkopf and HÄrtel's Edition. Indeed, it is pretty certain that Chopin was still attempting to do too many things at once. By the beginning of 1826 he had shown unmistakable signs of overwork, and in the next holidays he was ordered off to try the whey cure at Bad Reinerz in Prussian Silesia. His experiences of the place are recorded in a letter to his school-fellow Wilhelm Kolberg, and consist mainly of approval of the scenery, criticisms of the visitors, and caricatures of the local band. The only incident, was a concert which he organised for the benefit of two orphans, the death of whose mother had left them without money enough to return home. For the rest he drank his whey, took sedate walks with his mother and sisters, and even succeeded in persuading himself that he was growing 'stout and lazy.'
The journey home was broken by two or three visits, of which the most important was a short stay at Antonin, the country residence of Prince Radziwill. The Prince was an enthusiastic patron of music, an able and meritorious composer, a good singer and violoncellist, and a pleasant cultivated man, who seemed to have been cast by Fate for the part of MÆcenas. Apparently he had met Chopin in Warsaw, and shared the interest which all Polish society felt in its new genius. Liszt asserts that he paid for the boy's education, but the statement, which is intrinsically improbable, is categorically denied by Fontana, while the still wilder report that he defrayed the expenses of Chopin's Italian tour, is best answered by the fact that Chopin never set foot inside Italy in his life. However, the tie of hospitality is not likely to have been weakened by the absence of a monetary basis, and the friendship between host and guest was quite as cordial as though they had been debtor and creditor.
Once back in Warsaw, Chopin set himself to prepare for his final examination at the Lyceum, which he passed with something less than his usual distinction, in 1827. The cause of this comparative failure is not hard to divine, for although the compositions of the winter are few and unimportant, there can be no doubt that Chopin was devoting himself more and more to music, and allowing other interests to sink into the background. And there was another reason. On April 10, his sister Emily, the closest and dearest of all his companions, died of pulmonary disease. She had accompanied her brother to Reinerz, in the hope of checking a malady which medical skill is almost powerless to cure, she had returned with some alleviation of suffering and some hopes of reprieve—and then came the end. We may readily imagine the effect which her death must have produced on the sensitive, affectionate boy from whom, through all her short life, she had been inseparable. It was his first great sorrow, and he was never of a nature to take his sorrows lightly.
As soon as his work set him free, he tried to find solace in some short, fitful periods of travel, and paid a visit to his godmother's house in Posen, and a second to the brother of his old head-master, who was occupying some official post at Danzic. All the winter was spent at home, sketching, revising, polishing, and preparing his compositions for the publisher. By the autumn of the next year he had completed two or three Polonaises,[17] a Nocturne, a Piano Sonata, a brilliant Rondo for two pianos, the first movement of the G minor Trio, and, more important than all, the variations on La ci darem, which were published in 1830 as Op. 2. It was this last-named work which evoked Schumann's first critical essay, and introduced the world at large to Florestan and Eusebius. Sixty years have passed since the essay was printed, and we are in no mind to question its decision. 'Hats off, gentlemen, a genius,' is the only judgment which sums up that wonderful combination of grace and audacity, of delicacy and vigour, of technical display and poetic invention.
The course of the year's work was interrupted by a notable episode. One day at the beginning of September, Dr Jarocki, the zoology professor, came up to call; announced that he had been invited to attend a scientific congress at Berlin, and offered to take Chopin with him as travelling companion. The proposal was readily accepted. Nicholas Chopin, who had by this time entirely acquiesced in his son's choice of a career, was beginning to doubt whether a sufficiently wide field of action and opportunity could be obtained at Warsaw: and, in any case, it was advisable that the young man should see something of the world before he settled down to the duties of his profession. Frederick, too, was overjoyed at the prospect. He cared little for congresses and nothing at all for science, he refused his ticket of admission to the meetings, on the ground that he did not want to pose as 'Saul among the prophets,' but the chances of increasing his musical experience were far too precious to be lost. By the middle of the month he was established at the Hotel Kronprinz, hearing Fernando Cortez at the Opera, revelling in Handel's St CÆcilia at the Singakademie, spending his days in the music library at Schlesinger's, and only idle when some enthusiastic scientist carried him off to spend a reluctant hour in the Zoological Museum.
Three of his letters, preserved by M. Karasowski, give us an amusing picture of his impressions. We can see him, shrinking with suppressed impatience, while the interminable dinner goes on, and Professor Lehmann rests an academic hand on his plate in order to converse across him with Professor Jarocki: we can see him at the Singakademie looking with awe-stricken eyes at Mendelssohn and Spontini, or burning with shame to discover that he has mistaken Alexander von Humboldt for a footman: we can see him making stealthy caricatures and carefully adding the names of the originals, 'in case they should prove to be celebrities.' Everything is noted with a good-natured criticism, the humours of the journey, the cleanliness and order of the streets, the bad taste of the ladies' dresses, and the great final banquet, at which all the sciences sat round the table singing convivial songs, while counterpoint, in the person of Zelter, stood behind a golden goblet and beat time.
It is unlikely that Chopin completed any musical work at Berlin. The first we hear of his Fantasia on Polish airs is that he played it at a little post town on the way home, while the diligence was changing horses, but it is more probable that he composed it earlier in the year than that he found time for it amid all the rush of new interests and new distractions. The real value of his visit was that it supplied the need, which every composer feels, of an occasional period of pure receptiveness. Not that the music heard presents itself in any way as a model for imitation: a man may be stimulated to write a string quartett by a course of opera, or be moved to song by a series of symphonies: but the very fact of production involves a certain wear and tear which is often most easily repaired from outside. And so it is not surprising that, when Chopin returned home, after stopping a couple of days at Posen, and paying his respects to Prince Radziwill, he at once finished his Pianoforte Trio and wrote the Krakowiak, which is the most carefully scored of all his orchestral compositions. His parents gave him a little back room, furnished with a piano and an old writing-desk, and there he sat and elaborated his phrases, complaining piteously when his solitude was invaded by inopportune visitors or unwelcome invitations. Society is the most delightful of patrons, until a man realises that he has his work to do. After that it tends to become something of a tyrant.
In the early part of 1829 Warsaw was visited successively by Hummel and Paganini. For the latter Chopin felt little more than the common admiration, the former he had long regarded as a special tutelary genius, whose exquisite precision of style was at once his ambition and his despair. He was far too modest to recognise the limitations of his hero, and the deeper and truer note which his own temperament was capable of sounding: as yet, if we except the great variations of the preceding year, he had attempted little more than the mastery of exact expression, and in this he regarded Hummel as the best of types with the same loyalty with which he had accepted Elsner as the best of teachers. We have no record of the interview between the two artists. We only know that they met, that they made a good impression on each other, and that their subsequent intercourse bears witness to much cordiality on the elder side, and to an unquestioning and unbroken hero-worship on the younger.
It is possible that this glimpse of the ideal served to bring into sharper relief the narrowness of the Warsaw horizon. In any case, as the summer approached, Chopin grew restless and began to pine for a larger atmosphere and more congenial surroundings. Naturally, his first thought was of Vienna. He had already sent three or four of his manuscripts to try their fortune with Haslinger: and as no answer had come, he found a reasonable excuse for going to attack the publisher in person. He therefore started from home about the middle of July, spent a few days in Cracow, and a few more in Polish Switzerland and Galicia, and finally arrived at his destination on the 31st. Haslinger received him courteously enough, promised to print the La ci darem Variations, and strongly urged him to give a concert in order to familiarise the Viennese public with his manner of composition. It is characteristic that this obvious suggestion appeared to Chopin to be wholly impracticable. That he should venture to play in a city which had heard Mozart and Beethoven; that he, a mere provincial, should expect an audience in the metropolis of the musical world; the bare idea seemed an act of presumption beside which the challenge of Marsyas faded into insignificance: and it was only after continued pressure and reiterated encouragement that he finally nerved himself to the attempt. Acquiescence once extorted the arrangements went on smoothly; WÜrfel got out the bills, Count Gallenberg lent the KÄrnthnerthor Theatre, and on August 11—a memorable date in musical history—Chopin made his dÉbut before a foreign public.
Of course there was the usual disaster at rehearsal. Like all young composers, Chopin insisted on copying his own band parts, and the result was that the Krakowiak had to be cut out of the programme, and the concert marred by an apology. However, the evening made amends. The audience was not numerous, but it was cordial and appreciative; applauded the variations so lustily, that the tuttis were inaudible, and finally 'began a regular dance in the back benches,' when Chopin replaced his rondo with an improvisation. The only adverse criticism, from stalls to gallery, was an expression of disappointment, on the part of some unknown lady, that 'the lad had so little presence.' No doubt, like the wife of Charles Lamb's friend, she 'had expected to see a tall, fine, officer-looking man,' who would look well in uniform.
Fortified by his success, Chopin gave a second concert on August 18, at which the Krakowiak was produced, and the variations were repeated. This time the audience was larger, and the reception still more encouraging. Several of the musical notabilities of Vienna came to offer their applause—Gyrowetz, with the queer, wrinkled face and the kindly eyes, that belied the querulous mouth; Lachner, young, ardent and restless; Schuppanzigh, still chuckling at Beethoven's jests on his corpulence; Czerny, all high forehead, big spectacles and bland expression. Everybody was warm and friendly, full of congratulations on the triumph which, as the manager was careful to explain, 'could not be due to the ballet, because that had been given before,' and Chopin soon found himself arguing with a press of people who wanted him to fix the date for his third appearance. But on this point he was obdurate. He had only given his second concert lest the Warsaw public should think that he was dissatisfied with the first. The Viennese had been very kind, but he was quite sure that they had seen enough of him for one visit. He was full of gratitude, he had enjoyed himself immensely, but the fact was that he had made up his mind to start for Prague the next day, and he could not alter his arrangements. And so, in spite of all entreaties, he left Vienna on the evening of August 19, without even waiting for the newspaper reports of his two recitals.
It is interesting to compare his letters with the various notices and critiques that appeared after his departure. 'I was not hissed,' he writes on August 12, 'so don't be anxious about my artistic reputation.... My friends swear that they heard nothing but praise, and that, until the spontaneous outburst of applause, not one of them clapped or uttered a bravo.... I am curious to hear what Herr Elsner will say to all this. Perhaps he disapproves of my playing at all. But I was so besieged on all sides that I had no escape, and I don't seem to have committed a blunder by my performance.' And again, on August 19, 'My reception yesterday was still more hearty. I know I have pleased the ladies and the musicians. Only the thorough Germans seem to have been dissatisfied.... When I told the manager that I hoped to come back to Vienna for the purpose of improving myself, he answered that for such a reason I should never need to come, since I had nothing more to learn. Of course these are mere compliments; still, one does not listen to them unwillingly. At any rate, for the future, I shall not be regarded as a student. Blahetka tells me that he wonders at my learning it all in Warsaw. I answered that from Zywny and Elsner even the greatest donkey must gain something.' In all this there is a tone of simple, unconscious modesty which is very pleasant to notice. There are not many men in Chopin's position who would have taken their first triumph so easily, and still fewer who would have been at the pains to disclaim the assistance of a claque.
On the other hand, the newspapers speak with a much firmer tone. The Wiener Theaterzeitung noted a touch of genius in the compositions, and gave special praise to the clearness and delicacy of their interpretation. 'He plays very quietly,' it said, 'with little emphasis, and with none of that rhetorical aplomb which is considered by virtuosos as indispensable.... He was recognised as an artist of whom the best may be expected as soon as he has heard more.... He knows how to please, although, in his case, the desire to make good music predominates noticeably over the desire to give pleasure.' Such commendation from the acknowledged leader of Viennese criticism at once set the tone to the minor journals; and the whole city swelled its voice into a full chorus of approval. Even the distant Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung caught an echo of the enthusiasm, and hailed Chopin as a 'brilliant meteor,' who had 'appeared on the horizon without any previous blast of trumpets.'
From Vienna he went on to Prague, where he met Pixis, Klengel and some other celebrities; and from Prague to Teplitz, where he spent an evening at Prince Clary's, and electrified the company by his improvisations. The westernmost point of his travel was Dresden. As a devoted admirer of Der FreischÜtz, he naturally felt an interest in the city where Weber had been kapellmeister, and he bore with him letters of introduction which would ensure his admission into the centre of its artistic society. It is probably in consequence of his admiration for Weber that he writes rather cavalierly about his interview with Morlacchi. Musical enmities have a way of lasting, and Chopin was always more vehement in the quarrels of his heroes than he was in his own. For the rest, he paid his tribute of homage to the Gallery, stayed to see a performance of Faust at the theatre, and then hurried homeward to supplement his letter with the thousand details that are always lost between pen and paper. Indeed, there was plenty to relate. He had left Warsaw with a reputation little wider than the limits of his native province: now, after two eventful months, he was returning to match the wreath of welcome with the laurels of a victorious campaign.
A few short weeks and the conqueror is in the dust. Nothing in all Chopin's life is more striking than the sudden and entire change which followed as a reaction from the excitements of the summer. His letters grew morbid, anxious, irritable; the clear-cut sentences wander off into vagueness and incoherence; the rapid judgment becomes hesitating and irresolute. Through all this dark time there runs the golden thread of an ideal friendship; but it is knotted and entwined with a love-story that can only seem to us singularly unreal and purposeless. Many of its details are absolutely unknown, but there is little need that we should know them. We are only concerned with its effect on Chopin's character; with the presage through which it may lead us to a better and fuller comprehension of his subsequent life. And herein the story, imperfect though it be, may serve us as a true guide. The two tragic episodes of Chopin's career, for all their unlikeness, have their explanation in a single point of temperament: the weakness which, in later years, lost the comradeship of George Sand, was but another form of that nervous sensibility which now called up, for its torment, the shadowy and fugitive vision of Constance Gladkowska.
Even at the outset there is no tone of hopefulness. 'I have, perhaps to my misfortune, already found my ideal,' he writes to his friend Woyciechowski; and a little later, 'It is bitter to have no one with whom one can share joy or sorrow, to feel one's heart oppressed, and to be unable to express one's complaints to any human soul.' All this time—it is a grotesque touch which somehow adds to the pathos—he had never spoken to her, and had only seen her occasionally as she was taking her lessons at the Conservatorium. At least six months had elapsed before he made her acquaintance, and even then we have no record of intimacy, no interchange of letters, no word of lover's vows; nothing but idle conjecture and a few wild confessions of doubt and despair. Warsaw had become intolerable to him. Come what may, he will not spend another winter at home. He will go to Berlin, to Vienna, to Paris, to Italy; anywhere to escape. And then comes a revulsion, and he fancies himself dying in a foreign land, with the unconcerned physician and the paid servants waiting beside his deathbed. Plans are made only to be reversed; projects are formed only to be abandoned; and every change is made the occasion for some fresh complaint, or some new exhibition of a self-inflicted wound.
This is not the manner of true passion. It is not love which degrades a chivalrous nature, which torments generosity with suspicion, and turns activity into a feverish impatience. Grant that the noblest character has its ignoble aspect; its concealed depths which an unforeseen storm may sometimes lash to the surface; yet we cannot look upon a current which is wholly turbid, and characterise it by the highest name in all man's vocabulary. Grant that every lover has his moments of unreason, fits of groundless ill-temper, of disproportionate remorse, of jealousy that is roused by a look and quieted by a word, yet we are here bidden to mistake the accidents for the substance, and to describe as love a shadow which is cast from no sun. The truth is that Chopin's passion was not a cause, but a symptom; not a power which influenced his life, but a direction of hectic energy that must itself be traced back to a remoter source. He was standing at the verge of manhood: always nervous and impressionable, he was come to the time when strength is weakest and courage the most insecure: he had just passed through the bewilderment of his first great enterprise, and had emerged to breathe an atmosphere electric with change and heavy with disquietude. It is little wonder that he lost his true self, and strayed from his appointed course. He would have been more than human if he had not felt some stress of uncertainty, or followed his restless impulses in the absence of a surer guide.
Yet the affection which is lacking to his romance is poured, in full and continuous profusion, upon his friend. 'You do not require my portrait,' he writes to Woyciecowski in November; 'I am always with you, and shall never forget you to the end of my life.' And later, 'You have no idea how much I love you. What would I not give to embrace you once again.' He suggests that they should travel abroad together, and then, by a refinement of sensibility, adds that it would be more delightful if they started separately, 'and met somewhere by chance.' All the compositions are discussed with entire frankness, all the plans submitted for advice and counsel; even omens and presentiments are called in and made to bear their witness to community of purpose. The very complaints take a brighter tone when we realise their absolute trust, and their certain expectation of sympathy. It is as though Chopin shrank from the thought of his passion as a child shrinks from the darkness, and turned to take refuge in the strong arms that he knew were waiting to protect him. He was never self-reliant, never strong enough to face the world alone. Now, in the time of his trouble, he looked to his friend for comfort, just as, ten years before, he would have taken some boyish sorrow to his mother.
It must not be supposed that this period of mental depression is entirely occupied with lamentations. Troilus may be 'weaker than a woman's tear' when he thinks of Cressida, yet he still has hours in which he can shake off his lethargy and take his place in the field or the council chamber; and even we must add, hours when he can find solace in the company of the white-armed Helen. Indeed, in spite of his troubles, Chopin seems to have been fairly busy during the autumn of 1829. By October 3, the 'Adagio' of his F minor Concerto was completed;[18] by October 20, the Finale had been sketched, and at least one of the Études written: then came a week's visit to Prince Radziwill, from whose house we hear something of a new Polonaise for Violoncello, and something, also, about the beauty and intelligence of Princess Wanda. 'I should like her to practise my work,' writes this distracted lover; 'it would be delightful to have the privilege of placing her pretty fingers upon the keys.'
The winter was spent quietly at home. Chopin finished his Concerto, showed it to Elsner for approval, and then set about looking for some opportunity of performance. It was a long time since he had played in public at Warsaw, and the newspaper notices from Vienna had aroused fresh interest which he thought it advisable to satisfy. So in March 1830 he gave two concerts, both of which were conspicuously successful. At the first, indeed, there was some complaint that he did not play loud enough; but, on hearing it, he sent to Vienna for one of Graff's pianos, and disarmed even this effort of criticism at the second. It is noticeable, as an indication of musical taste in 1830, that at both concerts the F minor Concerto was divided, the Allegro given by itself as a separate piece, and the Adagio and Rondo following later in the programme. We may remember that even in Paris it was the fashion of the time to give Beethoven's symphonies piecemeal, and to intersperse the movements with bravura songs and divertimenti for the French horn. It seems unlikely that a stage manager would ever present one of Shakespear's plays with portions of the School for Scandal between the acts; but music has always lagged behind the other arts in its appreciation of structure, and if Berlioz could mishandle Beethoven, we need not be surprised at Chopin's tearing his own work in pieces for fear that the audience should suspect it of continuity. In any case, he seems to have lost nothing by the sacrifice, for the house was crowded, the applause vehement, and the receipts, after all expenses had been paid, amounted to the respectable figure of 5000 florins.
Summer came, with its presage of revolution. The great wave rolling eastward from Paris did not break on Warsaw until November; but as early as May there were signs on the horizon, and a murmur of expectation in the air. The Diet, which had not met for five years, was suddenly convened; the irregularities of the Russian administration were more freely criticised: and although the Czar had prohibited the publication of debates, there still remained sufficient means to show the people at large that its discontent was finding official utterance. Naturally this assemblage of senators gathered after it all the pomp and circumstance of Polish society. As the months wore on, the city filled with a crowd of nobles, and, while the halls of audience were busy with political intrigue, the ballrooms opened their doors to a music that seemed to have caught some echo from the night before Waterloo. War was almost certainly imminent; but until it came the hours uplifted their burden of song and dance, lest the silence should crave too ominously for the sound of cannon.
To Chopin, patriot as he was, the musical aspect of the season seems to have been the most important. Possibly in his seclusion rumours of wars found no space to enter: at any rate, there is no hint in his letters that he foresaw the storm, or that he was seriously occupied with anything more public than his soirÉes and his concerts. There was, indeed, plenty to hear and plenty to enjoy. Some of the greatest artists in Europe presented themselves at Warsaw:—Mdlle. de Belleville, immortalised by the praise of Schumann; Lipinski, the famous violinist; Henrietta Sontag, the acknowledged rival of Catalani and Pasta. Of all these Chopin writes with his usual generous appreciation, unaffectedly delighted with their successes, and 'not at all surprised' that he is not asked to play at a Court party when they are present. Then followed Constance Gladkowska's dÉbut as an operatic singer, and the lover is divided between his pleasure in her triumph and his reawakened consciousness of a hopeless passion. Once more the old irresolution returns; he decides to go, but cannot tear himself away; he waits on aimlessly, wondering from day to day whether the morrow will bring counsel, despising himself for his chain, yet not strong enough to break it. The suspense was beginning to tell upon his health. Heller, who passed through Warsaw in 1830, speaks of him as pale and hollow-eyed, little more than a shadow of his former, brighter self. And yet it is uncertain whether he had spent an hour with 'his Constantia' since his return from Antonin, nearly a year before; while it is quite clear, from his own letters, that during all that time he had never visited her.[19]
Surely it is one of the most inexplicable of dramas. The whole period which it occupies is of less than two years: eighteen months have elapsed, and we have not yet seen the heroine. We only guess at her darkly from the hero's soliloquies, or the rare secrets which he commends to the bosom of his confidant. We are in the fourth act, and have advanced to no further situation than was disclosed in the opening scene. It is true that for a few weeks in the autumn of 1830 the two actors are brought into a closer relationship: that she sang for him at his concert in October, and that she gave him a ring on his departure from Warsaw: but then, just as we are beginning to attain to some comprehension of the plot, the curtain falls, and there has been neither recognition nor catastrophe. Nor is the epilogue any less inconclusive. The farewell gift, which should have been the beginning of a more intimate romance, is virtually the end of the whole story. After Chopin had left his home, he seems to have held no further communication, other than indirect, with the woman whom he believed himself to love; in a few months her name has dropped out of his letters: and when she married, about a year later, he is said to have heard the news with a momentary outburst of brief anger, and then to have dismissed it from his recollection. And even during the days of his thraldom, he can forget his troubles whenever he is interested in his work. It is only when he is wearied or overwrought that the image of his love recurs, with its invariable train of forebodings and regrets: forebodings that he will find inaccessible a height which he never tries to climb: regrets for lost opportunities which he has never attempted to seize. As to her own attitude in the matter, we are even more at fault. We have no means of determining to what extent she looked with favour upon his suit, or to what extent she even trusted in its sincerity. We have no right to impute blame to her: we have no standpoint for imputation. All we can say is, that if Chopin's passion had been wholly visionary, this is the way in which it would have expressed itself. Of the joy, the hope, the impetus of true love there is not one recorded word: his highest point of stimulation is the desire to 'tell his piano' of the sorrow that she has brought him: his brightest hope of communion with her is that when he dies his ashes may be spread out under her feet.
It is pleasanter to look upon the more active side of Chopin's last summer in Warsaw. In spite of the social distractions which the season inevitably brought in its retinue, he worked away steadily at his E minor Concerto, finished it by the middle of August, and produced it, with his usual good fortune, at his third and last concert, on October 11. In addition, he composed what he modestly calls 'a few insignificant pieces,' and sketched or projected some works of larger scale—a concerto for two pianos, a polonaise with orchestra, and the like. Whether these ever came into complete existence is a matter of dispute: here, as elsewhere, the record of Chopin's life is too broken and imperfect to admit any tone of certainty: but, in either event, they testify to some acceptance of the 'beatitude of labour.' The results of a man's effort are a free gift to succeeding generations; it is in the effort itself that he finds his own reward.
As the winter approached, plans for departure grew more definite and more concrete. Chopin had cried 'Wolf' so often that his friends might well be excused for doubting the reality of his intentions, but this time it appeared that he was actually in earnest, and at the beginning of November he started. Even now he had no very clear idea of his destination. It was to be Vienna first, so much was certain, but after Vienna it might be Berlin, where Prince Radziwill could ensure him introductions, or it might be Italy, where he could bear his credentials to royalty at Milan, or it might be Paris, which was then the goal of almost every artist in Europe. 'I am going out into the wide world,' he writes, with a touch of knight-errantry foreign to his usual nature. Curiously enough, he seems to have had from the beginning a presentiment that he would never return to Poland; and when, at the first stage from Warsaw, Elsner met him with the pupils of the Conservatorium, and presented him with a silver cup full of Polish earth, the strange little ceremonial must have added force and ratification to his thought. Moreover, the presentiment came true. The nineteen years of life which remained to him only widened his separation from his native country; his exile, though voluntary, proved to be none the less irrevocable; and as the towers of Warsaw sank behind him on the horizon, there faded with them all but the memory of a home which he was never to see again.
II
PARIS—AND AN EPISODE
After the good leisurely fashion of the time, Chopin took nearly four weeks over his journey to Vienna. His first halting-place was Kalisz, where he was joined by his friend Woyciecowski, and thence the two travelled together through Breslau, Dresden and Prague, enjoying to the full that highest of human pleasures which is constituted by a clear road, brisk horses, and a single companion. The incidents, as recorded in his letters, are not of any great importance—impressions of the theatre at Breslau, renewal of old acquaintanceships at Dresden, and so forth—but the letters themselves are interesting, as showing how entirely he had recovered his spirits under the change of scene and circumstance. Everything is delightful, everybody is cordial, all prospects of the future career are painted in rose-colour, and the darkest moments of uncertainty are caused by his terror at the sight of the Saxon ladies, in their panoply of knitting-needles, or by the temptation, which he is at some pains to resist, of 'kicking out the bottom' from his first sedan chair. In a character so transparent, even these evanescent bubbles of humour acquire a certain significance. For the moment, Chopin's tone is equally free from regret or apprehension; for the moment, this exile from his country has succeeded in escaping from his recent self.
And yet, it was a bold challenge to fortune. On the one side, a world which is usually too busy to occupy itself with new aspirants, which grants no favour that cannot be claimed as a right, and is even less ready to show mercy to the conquered than to offer its applause to the conqueror: on the other, a boy of twenty-one, with delicate and fastidious appetites, with no experience of privation, no conception of the value of money, no settled habits of prudence or circumspection, equipped, it is true, with a flashing weapon of genius, but singularly ill provided with the ordinary armour of defence. It would have been no wonder if he had thought the bastions impregnable and the towers impossible to scale: if he had looked upon the camp life as coarse and uncouth, if he had found its discipline intolerable, its hardships degrading, and its pleasures typified by the rude laughter and boisterous jests of the canteen. Small wonder, either, if his comrades had set him down as a carpet-knight; an exquisite, better skilled to pay compliments to the women than to bear his part among the men; a dandy, whose chief care was the set of his clothes and the fragrance of his violets; a precisian, who was altogether devoid of redeeming vices; an idealist, who spent his days in pursuit of the unattainable, instead of taking life as it came, and letting ready action compensate for defective strategy. And in such an estimate there would have been a certain measure of truth. If, in order to be a good man, it is first necessary to be a good animal, we may admit at once that Chopin's virility was imperfect. There is no doubt that, to the end of his life, he was characterised by a super-sensitive refinement, which, fifty years ago, would have been described as feminine. But now, at the outset of his career, it is well to notice that he was by no means unprovided with the means of success. He was already one of the best pianists in Europe. He had discovered a secret of musical expression more readily understood and appreciated than that of any contemporary composer, with the exception of Mendelssohn. He was gifted with a great charm of manner, and an unusual power of making friends. And when it is added that he was only once in any great stress of poverty, it will be seen that his equipment was less incomplete than is generally imagined. After all, the dandies have played their part in history. Claverhouse was a dandy; Lovelace was a dandy; Sir Philip Sydney himself was censured by Milton for being 'vain and amatorious': and if a man can be something of a fop, and yet bear himself gallantly in the battle of arms, how much more shall he do so in the battle of life.
At the same time, we must confess that, in his first encounter with destiny, the hero was visited with a signal defeat. Before he had been a week in Vienna, news came that Warsaw had risen in revolt against the Russians; there was word of riot in the streets, of danger to the house; and Chopin, after a few hours of irresolution, started off to follow his friend Woyciecowski, who had gone at once to join the insurgents. On the way his determination broke down: his presence could avail nothing; it would only add to the disquietude of his parents; he had better wait for further tidings, for some message or injunction which would relieve him from taking the initiative. Without further thought he changed his plans, and returned to Vienna, waiting there in a transport of grief and anxiety for the letters which a man of prompter courage would have forestalled. As the days wore on, the bulletins grew more reassuring; for a time, at any rate, the cloud of peril rolled away from the city: the Poles had an army of 60,000 men in the field, and, in spite of the enormous forces of the Emperor Nicholas, were confident of success. Still Chopin lingered on, ready to start at the lightest summons, but not strong enough to take the first step of his own motion, until the noise of battle had passed to the Russian frontier, and he could write once more about his life and his surroundings.
Apparently the outlook was less encouraging than it had been in 1828. Vienna, since the death of Schubert, was passing through a period of musical inactivity, and the prospects of concert-giving were not very bright. Managers who had been ready enough to welcome Chopin when he played gratuitously, began to hang back now that he demanded payment; and the public, after its golden age of the classics, professed itself satisfied with the kapellmeistermusik of Seyfried, and the dance-tunes of Strauss and Lanner. During the whole six months of Chopin's stay in the Austrian capital, he only gave one concert, and that, as we learn from M. Karasowski, was thinly attended and poorly paid. For the rest, his letters contain little more than the diary of a casual visitor:—operas at the KÄrnthnerthor Theatre, dinners with his friend Dr Malfatti, a few criticisms of Thalberg, a few words of enthusiasm for Slavik; the whole lightened, every now and again, by some amusing story or some half-dozen lines of quaint description. His tone changes with every varying mood: at one moment he breaks into passionate regret that he is still absent from his home: at another he speaks of himself as enjoying his enforced idleness, as wonderfully restored in health, and as finding many acquaintances and much pleasant companionship. But it is clear that, whatever his temper, he was in no way to replenish his resources or advance his existing reputation.
By the middle of 1831 he had made up his mind to proceed to Paris. To return home would be merely to confess himself beaten: Italy was put out of the question by its political troubles; Berlin, with all its opportunities, was hardly the ideal residence for a Polish artist. All reasons pointed to the land with which he was in the closest sympathy: the land which had given birth to his father, which had been the ally of his nation, which had always shown its warmest hospitality to his countrymen. Accordingly he started on July 20, travelled slowly through Munich and Stuttgart, and finally arrived at his destination about the end of the autumn. His two halting-places are both of some moment in the history of his life. At Munich he gave his last public concert to a German-speaking audience, playing his E minor Concerto and his Fantasia on Polish Airs: at Stuttgart he heard the news that Warsaw had been captured by the Russians, and that the hopes of the revolution were lying under the ruin of its walls. Fortunately his parents were safe. There was no personal anxiety to embitter his grief at the national disaster. But, none the less, the blow sank deep, and left a scar which lasted indelibly. With all his weakness, Chopin had an intense love for his country, and the dirge[20] in which he mourned her downfall remains as one of the truest and saddest utterances of despairing patriotism.
So ends a year which, on its artistic side, is little more than a line of cleavage between the two main divisions of the story. Before it, Chopin is a boy, studying with his masters, secure under the protection of his home, and looking with expectant eyes upon a great world of which he hardly knows the outskirts: after it, he is a man, holding his fate in his own hands, living in a foreign city, surrounded with new hopes, new occupations, and new friendships. As Warsaw in the first period, so Paris in the second is the centre on which every aspect of the life is focussed. Poland has played her part—she has ceased to be counted among the nations: for the future, it is French blood that claims its kindred, and French loyalty that offers its allegiance.
And, indeed, Chopin could have chosen no city which would give him less feeling of transference. He found Paris full of a cordial sympathy with everything Polish: dramas, founded on the insurrection, drawing crowds to the theatres; cries of 'Vive les Polonais' echoing in the streets; ovations to General Ramorino, who had taken arms against Russia, and had not despaired of the Republic. A few letters of introduction served to open the doors of artistic society: PaËr, Baillot, even Cherubini offered a kindly welcome to the newcomer: Hiller and Franchomme were soon among his fast friends: and the early days were passed in a rush of concert and opera, in admiration of the fine Conservatoire Orchestra, or in open-eyed wonder at the roulades of Pasta and Malibran.
A short time after his arrival, he went to call upon Kalkbrenner, in hopes that the great teacher would consent to give him lessons. Kalkbrenner heard him play, approved, noted some deviations from the established method, and offered to take him as a pupil if he would promise to serve a full apprenticeship of three years. The condition was somewhat prohibitive, for Chopin had his own way to make, and his own living to earn; but with characteristic docility he undertook to consider the proposal, and wrote off at once to Elsner for advice. The old master's answer was, on the whole, dissuasive. It was unadvisable, he said, that Chopin should restrict himself too closely to the piano: there were other forms of the art—quartetts, symphonies, and, above all, operas—which might establish his name on a more lasting foundation. Besides, a too continuous adherence to one method, however perfect, would tend to destroy individuality of touch and substitute a mere mechanical proficiency for the freedom of original thought. A genius 'should be allowed to follow his own path and make his own discoveries.' So, fortunately for Music, Chopin decided to decline the offer; though the cordiality of his relation with Kalkbrenner is testified by many passages of intimacy, and by the dedication of the E minor Concerto. There can be no doubt that the proposal was made in good faith, and that it was rejected with some hesitation. The only matters of comment are the modesty with which Chopin suggested a new period of studentship, and the grounds on which Elsner recommended him to dismiss the idea.
Early in 1832 Chopin made his first appearance before a Parisian public. The concert, organised for the benefit of the Polish refugees, was no great financial success, but it served to bring into notice the second concerto and some of the early mazurkas and nocturnes. One of the most interesting features in the programme was an enormous work of Kalkbrenner's for six pianofortes, played by the composer and Chopin in concertino, together with Hiller, Osborne, Stamaty and Sowinski as accompanists: a disposition of forces which plainly indicates that the newcomer was already recognised as a leader by some of the best executants in Paris. We may add that, artistically speaking, the dÉbut was a veritable triumph. The audience applauded heartily, Mendelssohn offered his warmest congratulations, even FÉtis grew genial and appreciative; and when, at a charity concert in March, Chopin succeeded in scoring a second victory, it is little wonder that he found his position established beyond dispute. He might well write to his friends at home,—'Me voilÀ lancÉ.' The society of Paris lionised him with the same fervour as the society of Warsaw: evening after evening was occupied with visitors or filled with invitations: pupils began to present themselves; concert managers solicited his services; and before long he shared with Liszt the honour of being the most fashionable musician of the day. 'I move in the highest circles,' he writes, 'and I don't know how I got there. But you are credited with more talent if you have been heard at a soirÉe of the English or Austrian Ambassador. Among the Paris artists I enjoy general esteem and friendship; men of reputation dedicate their compositions to me even before I have paid them the same compliment. Pupils from the Conservatoire—even private pupils of Moscheles, Herz and Kalkbrenner—come to me to take lessons. Really, if I were more silly than I am, I might imagine myself a finished artist; but I feel daily how much I have still to learn. Don't imagine that I am making a fortune: my carriage and my white gloves eat up most of the earnings. However, I am a revolutionary, and so don't care for money.'[21] Clearly, we are some way from the timid, apprehensive stranger, doubtful of his direction, uncertain of his future, who entered Paris a year before, with his country's sorrow still heavy upon his heart.
This fresh impulse of activity bore ample fruit, also, in composition. During the winter of 1832 were published the first two sets of Mazurkas; next year followed the first three Nocturnes, the first set of Études,[22] and the Variations on Herold's Je vends des Scapulaires, graceful embroideries of an exceedingly poor texture: while in 1834 came three more Nocturnes, another set of Mazurkas, a Grande Valse Brilliante (Op. 18), and a Bolero. Besides these, Chopin arranged with Schlesinger for the publication of some of his existing manuscripts: the Pianoforte Trio, the Concerto in E minor, the Fantasia on Polish Airs, and the Krakowiak. Their success was almost instantaneous. No doubt there were a few dissentient voices: Field, the great burly Englishman, laid aside his pipe to growl out that his new rival had 'un talent de chambre de malade:' Rellstab, the editor of the Berlin Iris, practised a few of the vitriolic epigrams which he was afterwards going to launch at Schumann: but beyond these there was very little doubt expressed by any musician who read the works, and none at all by any who heard their composer play them.
In the spring of 1834, Chopin took a holiday and went off with Hiller to attend the Niederrheinische Musikfest at Aix-la-Chapelle. We have a very pleasant account of this expedition: the two friends met Mendelssohn, shared a box with him, and returned, after the Festival, to his new home in Dusseldorf, where they drank coffee and played skittles, and banqueted on music to their hearts' content. There is a characteristic picture, too, of an evening at Schadow's: the room full of eager, talkative art students, Hiller and Mendelssohn occasionally quieting the hubbub with a Fantasia or a Capriccio, Chopin sitting silent and unknown in a remote corner until he was forced to 'drop his disguise' and take his place at the piano. 'After that,' says Hiller, 'they looked at him with altogether different eyes.'
Back in Paris, he resumed his teaching, and completed his second set of Études, published later as Op. 25. During the winter season he appeared four times in public, once for Berlioz at the Conservatoire, twice in Pleyel's rooms, and once at a great charity concert in the Italian Opera-house. But it is clear that he was growing disinclined to face what he calls the 'intimidation' of the crowd. He rarely did himself full justice on the platform: he was at his happiest in some friend's room, where he could pour out his fancies to the dim twilight, and forget the few motionless figures that were listening at his side. 'More than three,' said Charles Lamb, 'and it degenerates into an audience.' Chopin was more liberal in fixing his limit, but he understood the degeneration. All the best accounts which we have received of his playing come from those who heard him en petit comitÉ—Heine, George Sand, Delacroix—and it is significant that, after his appearance at the ThÉÂtre Italien, he allowed nearly four years to pass before emerging again from his seclusion. It does not appear that this distaste for the multitude in any way embittered him. It is an excess of eloquence to describe his preference for the drawing-room as 'a malignant cancer,' which 'cruelly tortured and slowly consumed his life.'[23] He was in no lack of money, or of friends, or of reputation, and he was the last man in the world to—
or trouble himself because some upstart tribune could surpass him in popularity.
In the summer and autumn of 1835, Chopin left Paris for a more extended tour. He began with Carlsbad, where his father was staying under doctor's orders, and after a short stay there proceeded to Dresden, where he met his old schoolfellows the Wodzinskis, and took the opportunity to fall in love with their sister Marie. We have very little certain knowledge about this new romance. There were a few pleasant days together, a Valse,[24] improvised at the moment of parting, and sent afterwards from Paris, 'pour Mademoiselle Marie,' and a later interview at Marienbad in 1836, where, we are told, Chopin offered marriage and was refused. But it seems clear that he only saw her upon these two occasions, and that his rejection, if it ever occurred, produced no very serious effect on his spirits. There were a great many harmless flirtations during his Paris life: flowers that sprang up in a light soil and withered under the next day's sun, and it is possible that this was only a growth of the same garden, somewhat deeper in root, and somewhat more ample in blossom. After all, Chopin was little more than a boy,—Polish, artistic, impressionable, fond by preference of the society of women: it is no matter for surprise if, in the intervals of being the Shelley of music, he found some pleasure in posing as its Tom Moore.
From Dresden he went on to Leipsic, and there made the acquaintance of Schumann and the Wiecks. It was nothing less than a meeting of the Davidsbund: Florestan, Chiarina and FÉlix Meritis gathered round him at the piano, while old Master Raro, who was in a bad temper that afternoon, stood in the next room, with the door ajar, and listened to the party which he would not compromise his dignity by joining. Mendelssohn proved the most congenial of companions, Schumann the kindest and most appreciative of critics, and Clara Wieck, then a girl of sixteen, convinced her sceptical visitor that there was at least 'one lady in Germany who could play his compositions.' The visit was all too short, but pupils were clamouring at home, publishers had received nothing all the year except the Scherzo in B minor, and the rent of rooms in the ChaussÉe d'Antin was a good deal higher than that in the Boulevard PoissonniÈre. So Chopin had to bring his holiday to a close, and to return to Paris with a store of new memories and a consciousness of new triumphs.
The chief incidents of 1836 were a couple of flying visits: one to London in July, one to Marienbad and Leipsic in September. The import of the latter has already been noted; at the former, Chopin was introduced to the Broadwoods as M. Fritz, and, as usual, threw off his incognito at the first touch of the pianoforte. During this year his health, which had hitherto been good, gave way under an attack of influenza, which was followed by a second early in 1837. But, in spite of illness, he contrived to get through plenty of work, and his list of publications for the year is unusually large: the F minor Concerto in April, the G minor Ballade in June, the Andante Spianato and Polonaise in July, followed in the same month by the two Polonaises, Op. 26, and the two Nocturnes, Op. 37. No doubt many of these were of earlier composition, but it must be remembered that to Chopin it was not the inception of a work which was laborious. Melodies came to him as easily as to Mozart; it was after they had been brought to birth that the toil began; anxious elaboration of phrase, hesitating selection of alternatives: here a cadence to be re-written, there a harmony to be rearranged; often a whole round of changes rung, only that the passage might return, after all, to its original form. In the whole process of production, the part which seems to have given him most trouble was the clerk's work of correcting the proof-sheets. No composer, except Schumann, has left us so many conjectural readings; no composer, without exception, has allowed so many misprints to pass unnoticed. It is a curious, though not an inexplicable paradox that the conscientiousness with which he revised his manuscripts should have brought a reaction of indifference to the printed page. He took so long making up his mind that when he had once arrived at a decision he accepted it as the end of his responsibilities.
It was in 1837 that he met the woman whose influence over his life has been so fiercely attacked and so deplorably misunderstood. His biographers, indeed, in their treatment of George Sand, cannot easily be acquitted of some recklessness of statement and some unjustifiable licence of language. It is no light matter to bring grave charges on evidence avowedly imperfect, to give currency to idle rumour and malicious innuendo, to aid in casting unjust aspersions on the memory of a noble name. It is no light matter that these calumnies, many of which are as far below the level of quotation as they are beyond the possibility of belief, should be employed to barb some flippant epigram or envenom some sneering comment. Words which had their origin in the unscrupulous heat of political controversy[25] have been accepted as the cool and deliberate utterances of reason and judgment. The distortions of a false and cruel romance have been reproduced as if they contained testimony, not, indeed, final, but worthy of serious regard. In the imperfection of the record opportunity has been found for discreditable conjectures, for baseless imputations of motive, and for an ultimate decision which betrays itself by its eagerness to condemn.
It must be said at the outset that the record is manifestly imperfect. All the letters which Chopin wrote from Paris to his parents have disappeared, burned during a popular outburst at Warsaw in 1863. The loss of these documents is, of course, beyond calculation. It is true that M. Karasowski, the only one of Chopin's biographers who ever saw them, declares that they threw little or no light upon the matter;[26] it is also true that Chopin was a bad correspondent, with odd fits of intermission and reticence; but, at the same time, it is impossible to help feeling that we have to hear the cause after the principal plea has been withdrawn. We are therefore dependent partly on the accounts which have been left us by George Sand herself, partly on the testimony of third persons; and it is needless to add that, before accepting any statement, we must satisfy ourselves as to the credibility of the witness. Ex parte assertions, on whatever side they are adduced, can only be regarded as valuable in so far as they conform to the ordinary laws of evidence.
First, then, as to George Sand's character. Here we have, fortunately, a complete consensus on the part of those writers to whose name and authority the greatest weight can be attached. Matthew Arnold describes her as 'that great soul, simple, affectionate, without vanity, without pedantry, human, equitable, patient, kind,' and pours a full measure of scorn on those 'who have degraded her cry for love into the cravings of a sensual passion.'[27] Sainte-Beuve knew her intimately for thirty years, and this is the way in which he writes about her:—'Elle est femme, et trÈs femme, mais elle n'a rien des petitesses du sexe, ni des ruses, ni des arriÈre-pensÉes: elle aime les horizons larges et vastes, et c'est lÀ qu'elle va d'abord: elle s'inquiÈte du bien de tous, de l'amÉlioration du monde, ce qui est au moins le plus noble mal des Âmes et la plus gÉnÉreuse manie.'[28] Delacroix bears eloquent witness to her devotion and unselfishness:[29] Heine almost forgets to mock as he bows before the woman 'whose every thought is fragrant':[30] Mrs Browning, the purest and most spiritual of idealists, bent to kiss her hand at the first interview, and speaks of her throughout with sisterly affection and sympathy.[31] And all this testimony is as nothing when compared with that of her own writings. Grant that her earlier novels contain a note of revolt, that her generous and enthusiastic temper led her for a time into the error of Saint-Simonism: it is yet certain that she believed herself to be writing in defence of Religion and humanity against a decadent Church and a maladministered government. And it is impossible to read her autobiography, and still more her letters, without the conviction that she was a good as well as a great woman, lacking, perhaps, in reticence and self-restraint, too frank of speech in face of oppression and wrong, but wholly devoid of any taint of luxury, wholly free from the meaner passions, wholly intent on helping all who needed her counsel or assistance. The truthfulness of the Histoire de ma Vie is attested in plain words by no less an authority than M. Edmond de Goncourt,[32] whose verdict in the matter will probably be accepted as conclusive. The truthfulness of the letters will be evident to anyone who takes the trouble to compare them with one another, and with the independent record of the period which they embrace. In one word, the intrinsic probability of George Sand's account is at least sufficient to throw the onus probandi upon her adversaries.
And when we turn to the other side, we are at once struck with a want of definite aim in the attack. Animated with the belief that Chopin was ill-used, impelled by a not unnatural desire to protect him at all hazards, his biographers have accredited George Sand with the incongruous vices of antagonistic temperaments, and have given us a picture, not of a bad woman, but of an impossible monster. Again, there are some charges which, in themselves, it is of no moment to prefer. It would be merely idle to accuse St Louis of atheism, or Bayard of treachery. It would be a waste of effort to call Nelson a coward, or Latimer an apostate. And equally, when one of our authors affirms that George Sand 'was never at a loss to justify any act, be it ever so cruel and abject,'[33] we can only condole with him on having selected, out of all existing adjectives, the two most entirely inapplicable to the character of which he treats. For the grosser accusations, the best answer is silence. They are no more worth denying than the calumnies of 'Lui et Elle': indeed, like that 'abominable book,'[34] they stand self-refuted. It is only a matter for regret that they have ever been allowed to emerge from their obscurity, and to darken, even for a moment, the intercourse of two noble lives.
From a misunderstanding of George Sand's character, there is but a short step to a misjudgment of her connection with Chopin. It has been represented as a liaison in our vulgarised English sense of the term: it was in reality a pure and cordial friendship, into which there entered no element of shame and no taint of degradation. Its closest parallel may be found in the relation between Teresa Malvezzi and Leopardi, a relation only to be questioned by those who hold that a sweet and gracious comradeship of man and woman is an impossibility. She was the older in years, she was far the older in character: her feeling for Chopin is well expressed in her own phrase as 'une sorte d'affection maternelle': for ten years she encouraged him in his work, tended him in his sickness, offered him welcome in his holiday: and when at last the rupture came, it was brought about against her will, and maintained, by unforeseen accidents, against her expectation. In short, to describe Chopin as her 'discarded lover' is to make two mistakes of fact in two words.
At first, it is true, they saw but little of each other. For one reason, the fastidious artist was somewhat repelled by the unconventionality of George Sand's surroundings; for a second, they were both busy—he with his pupils, she with her books and with the education of her daughter, Solange. However, it is probable that, in 1837, he formed one of the usual summer party at Nohant, and that he forgot his unreasoning dislike in the kindliness and hospitality which filled that most delightful of chÂteaux. During the winter he was occupied with fresh publications—the second Scherzo, the Impromptu in A flat, and some smaller pieces—and then came a third attack of influenza, which for a time rendered all further work impracticable. In February 1838, he was well enough to accept an invitation to Court; next month he had so far recovered as to play in a concert at Rouen: but during the spring his illness returned in the form of a serious bronchial affection, and the doctor, whom he called in for consultation, peremptorily ordered him abroad.
It happened that George Sand was also contemplating a visit to the South of Europe. Her son Maurice, was suffering from rheumatism: she thought it advisable to save him from the risks of a Parisian December: after some debate, she decided to try Majorca, of which her friend Count Valdemosa had given her an enthusiastic description. Chopin, who was her guest during part of the summer, heard the plan discussed, and, feeling somewhat disheartened at the prospects of a lonely voyage, asked leave to make one of the party. His proposal was accepted with frank good-nature; and, after a few weeks of hesitation and uncertainty, he followed the Sands to Perpignan, crossed with them to Barcelona, and proceeded first to Palma, and then to a little up-country villa, where they hoped to establish themselves for the winter.
Never, since the days of the Ten Thousand, was there a more disastrous expedition. No doubt the scenery was magnificent enough to justify all Count Valdemosa's patriotism, but it was compensated by every form of petite misÈre which a malicious destiny could devise. The house was draughty and ill-constructed: the food was detestable; the peasants were ignorant, superstitious savages, to whom, as to most barbarians, stranger was synonymous with enemy. Chopin's failure to attend Mass on the first Sunday exposed him to the gravest suspicion; and when it was rumoured that his absence was due to ill-health, suspicion ripened into the hostility of panic terror. It became difficult to procure the necessaries of life; it became almost impossible to obtain any service or neighbourly assistance; the whole countryside passed sentence of outlawry upon the newcomers; and as climax of inhospitality, the landlord heard that one of his tenants was consumptive, and immediately turned the whole party out of doors.
All this was bad enough, but it would have been tolerable if only the climate had remained propitious. Unfortunately, after a fortnight's delusive sunshine, the winter broke into a passion of wind and rain. The woods stood dripping and shivering; the mountain roads turned into impassable torrents; and the exiles, driven for shelter to the cells of a disused monastery, found their days heavy with imprisonment, and their nights ghostly with the voices of the storm. It is not surprising that Chopin's nerve began to give way. His material privations he could bear with some fortitude, but he was powerless to banish the vague, nameless apprehensions which spoke in every echo, and haunted every shadowy corner. It required all George Sand's courage and devotion to render his life endurable. It was in her strength that his weakness found support; it was her sympathy and kindness that soothed him, as a mother soothes a sick child. On her, indeed, devolved the whole administration of the household. Overwhelmed as she was with literary work, she yet found time to teach her children, to tend her patients, to clothe empty rooms and bleak walls with some appearance of warmth and comfort. She was never weary, never despondent, never out of humour, and whatever of brightness came to lighten those wintry days of stress and hardship was but the reflection of her unclouded serenity.
During these fluctuations of fear and solace, of convalescence and relapse, Chopin can hardly have completed any work of importance. The Preludes, which are sometimes referred to his sojourn in Majorca, seem to have been composed before he left Paris; and as they are the only publications of the year 1839, we may reasonably conclude that there was nothing else ready. It is possible that one or two of them may have been written at Valdemosa, whence also may have come the inception of the Ballade in F major, the two Polonaises, Op. 40, and the Funeral March Sonata. But none of these look like productions of the sick-room; and it is clear that, as the winter advanced, Chopin grew less and less capable of any sustained effort. Unmistakable symptoms of consumption made their appearance; the local doctors proved wholly incompetent to deal with the case; at last, it became only a question of waiting until the season was warm enough for a journey home. At the end of February, Chopin nerved himself to face the fatigue of travel, and returned to the shores of France in desperate search of the health, for lack of which he had left them.
At Marseilles he stayed for nearly three months,[35] under charge of Dr CauviÈre, who, without concealing the gravity of the disease, told his patient that, with proper care, he might yet count on many years of life and work. There can be no doubt that Chopin's death-warrant had been signed, but it is equally sure that his sentence was one which could allow a long respite, and encourage the continued hope of deferment. Every man stands liable to an unread mandate of execution. Every man goes through the world, like Hernani, waiting for the summons of the fatal horn. Life, in all true reckoning, is counted not by years but by actions; and it is better to lavish the few decades of Schubert or Mozart than to hoard a long, inglorious cycle that has outworn its hopes and outlived its memories. No career is unhappy, however brief it be, that does not fail of its purpose.
And of failure in any form Chopin had unusually little experience. Even at this dark time we hear of rapid recovery, of regained strength and courage, of a summer filled with pleasant days and noble achievement. The cloud of trouble, which had hung over the forests of Valdemosa, lay far removed from the smooth lawns and sunny glades of Nohant; and there, amid music and children's laughter, and a concourse of friendly faces, the winter of discontent was very speedily forgotten. For the next few years, with the exception of 1840, he made a practice of spending his summer vacation at the chÂteau. Life looked more simple in the light of George Sand's simplicity and goodness; beneath her example it was easy to disregard all personal anxieties, and to turn with fresh resolution to the service of Art. Besides, under that hospitable roof, there were always other comrades to share the welcome. At one time Liszt would come, radiant with the triumphs of his last European tour; at another, Mickiewicz, ablaze with some fresh project of social regeneration; at another, Delacroix, busy with his St Anne; or Louis Blanc, intent on a new chapter of his History. Over the whole house was spread a clear, wholesome atmosphere of work, braced with a high seriousness of aim, and made genial with kindly aid and brilliant converse. We may well believe the statement of George Sand that Chopin always wrote his best at Nohant.
For some part of every winter, too, they were near neighbours in Paris. At first they occupied two adjoining houses in the Rue Pigalle; later they moved to the Cour d'OrlÉans, where Chopin took No. 3 on one side of the court; George Sand No. 5 on the other; and their friend Madame Marliani completed the phalanstery by installing herself between them. Here was established that famous salon, the memory of which recalls the better days of the HÔtel Rambouillet. Indeed, though some few names of the classic age are unsurpassed, at no time could Catherine de Vivonne have gathered so notable an assemblage of talent as that which thronged the rooms of the new Arthenice. Chapelain, Godeau, Voiture, the ScudÉrys, even Boileau himself are but dim and uncertain lights beside Dumas and Balzac, Gautier and Heine, Lamennais and Arago and Sainte-Beuve. Here was something better than madrigals and anagrams and the carte du tendre; something which helped to mould the life of a nation, and bore its effect on the whole course of European thought. It was amid these surroundings—now at Paris, now at Nohant—that Chopin lived and worked, stimulated by all that was best in contemporary art, encouraged by the sympathy of his peers and the cordial admiration of his listeners.
Unlike most musicians, Chopin was fond of teaching, and was almost uniformly popular as a master. It is hard to understand how his finely-strung temperament could have endured the strain and irritation of pianoforte lessons, but we have abundant testimony as to the gentleness and tact with which he corrected errors or pointed out nuances of expression. Even on 'stormy days,' his anger was nothing more than a cry of physical pain, and he always softened at once if the culprit showed any symptoms of distress. When things went well, he was the most admirable of teachers; kindly alert, suggestive, often protracting the lesson for two or three hours, and sometimes closing it with the best of all rewards, an improvisation. The qualities which he regarded as paramount were delicacy of touch, intelligence of conception, purity of feeling: in his eyes the only sin worse than affectation was the correct mechanical dexterity that is too dull to be affected. Not, of course, that he undervalued accuracy; every student, however accomplished, had to begin with Clementi's Gradus, and to tread the whole course of studies and exercises; but he was far too great an artist to see any finality in a mere Academic precision. 'Mettez y donc toute votre Âme' was his injunction; and in all education there is no better rule.
Yet it is curious that not one of his pupils has succeeded in making a name of European mark. Filtsch might have done so had not death cut short his career in the early promise of boyhood, but to the rest—Gutmann, Lysberg, Mikuli, Tellefsen—the record of public favour has been singularly indifferent. No doubt many members of his school were amateurs, who, with all their training, never entered the arena: some, like George Mathias, were satisfied to embody in their own teaching the traditions of their master's method; but when all allowances have been granted, it still remains true that Chopin never communicated his secret. Perhaps his secret was incommunicable; perhaps, like his style in composition, it was not so much a method as a manner; something too intimate and personal to be expressed in the concrete language of principle and formula. We know that in later years he began a systematic treatise on the pianoforte, but we may guess that it was not ill-health alone which led him to destroy it unfinished.
The recovery of new vigour and new interests brought him back once more to the uncongenial atmosphere of the concert-room. In the winter of 1839, he played for a second time at the Tuileries; in 1841 and 1842, he appeared twice in Pleyel's rooms, where he presented some of his own most recent compositions to an audience mainly consisting of friends and pupils. And if his activity as a pianist was rare and intermittent, he made up for the deficiency by the number and importance of his published works. The Sonata in B flat minor was printed in May 1840, and then followed a long series of Scherzos and Ballades, of Nocturnes and Impromptus, of Waltzes, Polonaises, and Mazurkas, many of them incontestable masterpieces, all of them valuable contributions to the literature of Music. If we except the Studies and the Preludes, there is nothing in the whole of Chopin's previous production that may hold comparison with the harvest of these abundant years.
Meantime, his health was varying with an almost mercurial instability. On his better days he would be buoyant, gay, even extravagant, playing fantastic tricks at the pianoforte, or mimicking his rivals with inimitable skill and good-natured satire: on his worse he would appear peevish and fretful, not from ill-humour, but from sheer exaggeration of sensibility. To his present mood there was no such thing as a trifle. He broke into fierce anger at a stupid joke of Meyerbeer's, which a moment's thought would have allowed him to disregard. He quarrelled permanently and irrevocably with Liszt over some trivial slight which would never have ruffled the composure of a healthier mind. Like many men of impulsive and nervous temper, Chopin could only half forgive. George Sand says of him, finely and truly, that 'he had no hatreds;' but he equally lacked that broad humane sense of pardon which obliterates the fault as the tide obliterates a footprint upon the shore. If he once felt himself wounded, he could wish no ill to his adversary, but the scar remained.
At the beginning of May 1844, he was prostrated by the sudden news of his father's death. The shock, falling unexpectedly upon an enfeebled frame, was too heavy for him to resist, and during a long anxious fortnight he lay seriously, even dangerously ill. George Sand, with ready sympathy, at once came to the rescue. She wrote his letters to his mother. She summoned one of his sisters from Warsaw. She left her work to watch by his sickbed, nursed him with maternal solicitude, and at the first sign of recovery carried him off to Nohant for convalescence. There he seems once more to have restored to equilibrium the delicate balance of his life. His correspondence with Franchomme catches something of its old lightness of tone; he discusses, with evident interest, the fortunes of his manuscripts and the prospects of his coming work: best of all, he returns to his piano, and at last charms his sorrow asleep. The next two years passed so quietly and uneventfully that they have left hardly any mark on the course of his career. In 1845 he published the Berceuse and the Sonata in B minor, in 1846 the Barcarolle, the Polonaise-Fantasie, and a few Mazurkas and Nocturnes; but even in his art the record is meagre, and in his life it is almost non-existent. We have half-a-dozen unimportant letters, we have half-a-dozen lines of anecdote or conjecture, and the rest is silence. It was the dead, heavy, ominous stillness which precedes a storm.
In 1847 the storm broke, shattering in its fall the closest and most intimate of Chopin's friendships. Its occasion was a quarrel with Maurice Sand, the causes of which, though they are nowhere explicitly related, are by no means difficult to divine. A short time before, George Sand had adopted a distant cousin called Augustine Brault, a quiet, colourless, inoffensive girl, whom she had rescued from the influences of a bad home.[36] Maurice was fond of his cousin; indeed, idle report accredited him with a deeper feeling: Chopin disliked her, and rather resented her appearance as an intrusion. Again, in May 1847, occurred the marriage of Solange Sand with M. Clesinger, a marriage of which, at the time, Chopin alone disapproved. Given Maurice's impetuous character and Chopin's nervous irritability, the matter needs no more recondite explanation. We can well imagine the words of pointed criticism and disdainful rejoinder, the interchange of sharp retorts, the gradual development of a contention which, as we know, culminated in Maurice's threat to leave his home. George Sand tried to make peace: Chopin, barely recovered from a new attack of illness,[37] regarded her interference as an act of hostility: and after a few words of bitter reproach, 'the first,' she says, 'which he ever offered me,' he turned and left her in open anger. It is easy to bring charges of ingratitude, of fickleness, of help forgotten and services ill requited. We are more concerned to note that a rage so sudden and implacable can be traced to no other than a physical origin. Chopin's condition was still serious enough to cause grave anxiety, and his outburst of petulance was not an aggression of deliberate unkindness, but a half-conscious aberration of disease. George Sand herself had no thought that the breach was permanent. Early in 1848 she voluntarily sought a reconciliation, and when the attempt failed—for busy tongues had been at work in the meantime—she bore her trouble without a word of complaint or a thought of rancour. Years afterwards she could write of Chopin, 'He was always the same to me.'
Such is the simplest and most credible version of the story. It offends against no inductions, it violates no probabilities, it is supported by the plain statement of the only authority who had first-hand knowledge, as well as by circumstantial evidence from outside. Of the two other accounts, the more serious and important is that of M. Karasowski. M. Franchomme, who begins by accusing George Sand of literal assault and battery,[38] may, perhaps, be disregarded in spite of the uncertainty of Professor Niecks. But the attack on Lucrezia Floriani involves such grave issues, and contains such perilous half-truths, that it merits some detailed consideration. We must remember that there are two separate points at stake: first, whether the novel had any share in bringing about the rupture; second, whether it was or was not unjustifiable.
To both these questions M. Karasowski returns answer in the affirmative. George Sand, he tells us, finding it impossible to effect a separation by cold looks and petty slights, 'resorted to the heroic expedient' of caricaturing Chopin in a romance. The portrait of Prince Karol was drawn by her with the deliberate intent to wound, with the desire of forcing a quarrel upon the lover whose fidelity had outlasted her own. Let the reader consider this charge for a moment. Here is a sick man, near to death, weak, helpless, sensitive to the least injury, and we are asked to believe that the woman who has held unbroken friendship with him for ten years, the woman whose generosity and compassion are admitted even by her enemies, has taken the opportunity to stab him with a poisoned weapon. The crime is so base, so wanton, so far removed not only from George Sand's character, but from the common level of sane humanity, that we should require the strongest testimony before we could believe it possible. Until it be proved, we have only one view upon the case—reclamitat istiusmodi suspicionibus ipsa natura.
Fortunately, on the first point we have the clear evidence of fact. Lucrezia Floriani was written during the winter of 1846, and was read by Chopin, chapter after chapter, as it proceeded. If, then, Chopin had taken offence at the book, the rupture would have occurred, as M. Karasowski positively declares that it did, 'in the beginning of 1847.' This is certainly not the case. Chopin, who spent the spring at Paris, was in friendly correspondence with George Sand in May,[39] and either paid, or at least projected, his usual visit to Nohant in the summer.[40] It is not credible that he, of all men, would have offered himself as a guest to the woman whom he believed to have held him up to ridicule. Add to this George Sand's poignant distress at the estrangement; add her categorical denial of the charge of portraiture; add the fact that there is a perfectly simple explanation outside of the whole matter, and this side of the case may be regarded as closed. Whatever may be said about the merits of Lucrezia Floriani, two things are certain—one that it was not intended by George Sand as a cause of quarrel, the other that it was not so accepted at the time by Chopin. Grant that, at a later period, his friends persuaded him of a resemblance, which, but for them, he would never have imagined. They knew that he had broken with George Sand; they took his side with a natural partisanship; the weapon lay ready to their grasp; without further thought or consideration they put it in employment. There are some minds which always look for the 'originals' in a work of fiction. Any chance trick of manner or turn of phrase is sufficient for recognition—Numa Roumestan is Gambetta, Harold Skimpole is Leigh Hunt, Falstaff is Sir John Oldcastle, and the rest of it. The scandal is easily set afloat, and no man ever listens to a contradiction.
This brings us to the second point. Is Prince Karol a portrait of Chopin? and is his relation with Lucrezia a description of the ten-years' friendship? To answer these questions in the negative, it is only necessary to read the novel. Prince Karol is an idle, disconsolate dreamer, and his story a tedious analysis of the more unamiable aspect of passion. Their points of resemblance with their supposed prototypes are exhausted in a few superficial accidents; in their essential qualities they are far removed. Where is Chopin's humour, or his buoyancy, or his generosity, or his genius? Where is the life of work which it was the function of friendship to solace and encourage? The whole book is one discordant love-duet, full of recriminations and complaints, of selfish affection and suspicion and jealousy. Nothing could be more unlike the phalanstery of the Cour d'OrlÉans, or the frank, free comradeship of Nohant. And more, it is notorious that in all George Sand's novels there is no real characterisation, much less its attendant vice of portraiture. 'The artistic weakness of Madame Sand,' says Mr Henry James, 'is that she never described the actual.' Here, then, as elsewhere, Chopin's biographers are accusing her of the one fault which is diametrically opposite to her nature. So far from her characters being drawn from life, they were never even corrected by life. They breathe a romantic atmosphere of their own, now fresh with the purity of La Petite Fadette, now charged with the electric passion of Valentine or Indiana, but at no time identical with the warm vital air of true experience.
Here, then, the case may be summed up. The novel was not conceived with the intention of describing Chopin; the character of the hero is not Chopin's character; the story of the hero is not Chopin's story. At the time when the book was written, George Sand had no expectation of a quarrel with her friend; she had certainly no desire to provoke one. He, for his part, read the work through 'without the least inclination to deceive himself,' without umbrage, without suspicion. The estrangement, to whatever cause it was due, did not take place until after the interval of some months; and among all conflicting explanations, that of a breach with Maurice Sand is the most complete and the most probable. Surely, in the face of this evidence, it is not too much to ask that the accusation of portraiture be withdrawn.
Another winter of illness and inaction filled the measure of Chopin's trouble with the further anxiety of straitened means. In February 1848, he was forced by sheer poverty to drag himself from his lodging, and endure once more the labour and fatigue of a concert. It is worth noting that he had at the time a score of manuscripts, the sale of which would have relieved him: but they fell below his standard of self-criticism, and he chose rather to sacrifice his inclination than to offer to the world any work which he regarded as unworthy of his powers. Possibly he looked upon his recent Violoncello Sonata as the beginning of the end: in any case, he held his hand for the future, and allowed no other of his compositions to be published. There is a real heroism in this determination to give only of his best. We might well have forgiven him if he had yielded to pressing need, and taken the readiest means of evading an ordeal which, even in his days of health, he had always feared and detested. But, from first to last, his artistic career was singularly free from any taint of money-worship. The generosity, which had so often aided poor dependents or exiled compatriots, found its complement in a pride that would buy neither ease nor comfort at the cost of reputation.
In the latter part of February came the outbreak of the revolution, and Chopin's further stay in Paris was rendered impossible. At no time could he have heard the presage of war with the enthusiasm of Wagner or the carelessness of Haydn: in his present state of infirmity and depression it would have been mere madness to remain. He therefore accepted a cordial invitation to England, crossed the channel with his pupil Tellefsen for companion, and, about the end of April, established himself in London, where he was soon surrounded with all the help which kindness and sympathy can bestow. His visit to this country, which was of little less than a year's duration, seems at first to have been beneficial to him. His rooms in Dover Street were crowded with visitors, his days 'passed,' as he says, 'like lightning;' he was even persuaded to leave his retirement and give two recitals at the house of his friend Mrs Sartoris. From August to October he travelled northward, giving concerts at Manchester, Glasgow and Edinburgh, and enjoying with evident pleasure the hospitality that met him at every stage. Yet even here we may notice a tone of weariness in his letters, a sense of effort, made rather to satisfy some external claim than to answer to any inward stimulus. Now and again he can shake it off, and write with something of his old buoyancy of spirits; then the burden returns, heavy with a weight of listless indifference, or with a galling load of pain. And at the approach of November there came an ominous change for the worse. The stress of the summer produced an inevitable reaction, the frail body sank back into weakness and suffering, the ebbing life throbbed every day with a fainter pulse. Through the winter months he lay tossing with impatience till he could regain strength enough to escape. London had become unbearable. 'Another day here,' he writes in January, 'and I shall go mad or die.' The whole mind is overstrung, jarred into discord at a touch, or relapsing, not into quietude, but into the silence of despair.
His friends carried him back to Paris, where he lingered in slow wasting disease until the autumn. A few days before his death, George Sand, whose daughter was among the watchers at his bedside, came to his lodging and asked to see him. We can well imagine the yearning anxiety with which she stood for a moment on the threshold of reconciliation, and the bitter disappointment when Gutmann closed the door and refused her admittance. He was afraid, he tells us, that Chopin was too weak to bear the agitation of such a meeting, that the memories of past friendship and past estrangement were too heavily fraught with peril to be recalled.[41] It may be that the decision was right, and yet Chopin spoke of her and wondered at her absence. The fire of life is sacred in its lowest embers, yet a breath of love might have fanned them into a purer flame. In all Chopin's story, there is nothing more pathetic than the narrow chasm which kept asunder two severed hearts at the very point of union.
On the morning of October 17, it was known that the end had come. The tidings, though they could hardly have been unexpected, were heard through the length and breadth of Paris with the greatest regret and consternation. Everyone who had known Chopin felt his death as a personal sorrow; one had been honoured by his friendship, another enriched by his bounty, another gladdened by some kind word or some pleasant greeting; there was no chance acquaintance but had felt his ray of reflection from the master's life. For the rest, the whole world was poorer for the loss of a genius, whose bare forty years of time had sufficed to create a new musical language, and uphold a new idea of art. All preparations were made to celebrate the funeral with befitting pomp. At the Madeleine Mozart's Requiem was sung over the bier, the procession was joined by almost every man of note in Paris, and at PÈre la Chaise, the coffin, covered with flowers and sprinkled with Polish earth, was laid in a place of honour among the great French musicians. The country of his adoption had cherished the exile in his life; in his death, it was her privilege to show him honour.
III
A LYRIC POET
It is intelligible that any attempt to explain the charm of Chopin's music should provoke some attitude of impatience and revolt. His spirit, we may be told, is too volatile for our clumsy alembics, too intangible for our concrete methods of investigation; it eludes our glance, it vanishes at our touch, it mocks with a foregone failure all our efforts at description or analysis. The lyric gift, indeed, has always been allowed a special immunity from criticism. In the larger fields of epic and drama, the poet turns more directly to ourselves: he bids us approach, he confers with us, he interprets for our hearing some great truth of humanity, or some wise and searching judgment of life. But the lyric poet stands apart, careless of our presence, oblivious of our attention, pouring out his heart in a transport of purely personal joy or sorrow, singing because he must, and not because there are any to listen. Of his voice we may say, in the truest sense of the phrase, that it is 'not heard but overheard.' Of his thought we may say, with most justification, that it is self-centred, individual, characteristic. And hence, in estimating him, it would seem that we are confronted by a natural dilemma. Either we sympathise with his mood, and therefore approve, or we fail to sympathise, and therefore stand outside the limits of fair judgment.
Upon this conclusion there are two words of comment to offer. In the first place, the distinction itself is of far less importance in music than in poetry; for music, as such, has no truth of life or nature to interpret. When we speak of a symphony as epic, we are merely using a convenient formula by which we may call attention to its breadth and scale; we do not imply that it has any story to tell, or any record of events to communicate. When we call an overture 'Tragic,' we mean that it can evoke certain undefined impressions of gloom and grandeur; we do not imply that it contains any outline of a plot or any suggestion of dramatis personÆ. No doubt there are in music differences of style, consequent upon differences of dimension, just as in painting the manner of a fresco will differ from that of a miniature. But in spirit the whole art of music is equally subjective: equally intent on expressing, through a medium of beautiful sound, the psychological conditions of the composer. It stands in no direct relation to the external world; it neither observes, nor depicts, nor criticises; its entire function is the embodiment, so far as embodiment is possible, of an abstract idea. If, therefore, when we apply the name 'lyric' to a musician, we mean to lay stress on a certain quality of style, then we are using a term which does not preclude, but invite, the application of the critical faculty. If we mean by it a certain temper of mind, then the term ceases to be distinctive as among musicians, for it belongs to all alike.
In the second place, it is obvious that musical criticism must attach itself primarily to questions of form. Grant that the art has room for certain spiritual distinctions, which bear some remote and shadowy resemblance to those of the great poets or of the great painters; grant that we can describe Schumann's prevailing tone as manly, or Mendelssohn's as tender; that we can notice a want of sternness in Spohr, and a want of reticence in Berlioz; yet such judgments as these are always liable to misuse, and, at best, are speedily exhausted. We cannot imagine ourselves asking of the musicians, as Matthew Arnold asks of the poets, whether their art contains an adequate criticism of life, whether it is marked by insight and benignity. We feel at once that such phrases are inapplicable to music, that they make it too articulate, too definite, too precise. Again, when we read such a line as—
there are two separate and distinct sources of our pleasure: first, the pure serenity of the thought; secondly, the liquid perfection of the verse. But when we turn to a melody of Beethoven, we find that here the two aspects are inseparable: that the verse is the thought, that the embodiment is the inspiration, and that it is virtually impossible to formulate any test of the one which is not at the same time a test of the other. The contrast will become still clearer if we take a poem in which the two qualities are not both present. The epilogue in Browning's Asolando, for example, can hardly be regarded as verse at all: but the uncouthness which deprives it of any claim to the title of a classic, is to most readers compensated by the spirit of sturdy courage that animates it throughout. To this compensation there is no parallel in Music. We may sometimes condone a fault in a melody otherwise admirable—the second strain, for instance, in our ballad of 'The Bailiff's Daughter'—but in so doing we set one portion of the form against another; we do not set the form as a whole against some external counterpart. In short, whatever can be said as to the conditions of vitality in other arts, in Music, at least, it is true that a work is great in proportion as its form is perfect.
This perfection of form was Chopin's ostensible ideal. No composer in the whole history of Music has laboured with a more earnest anxiety at accuracy of outline and artistic symmetry of detail. We have here 'no clattering of dishes at a royal banquet,' no casual indolence of accompaniment; no gap filled with unmeaning brilliance or idle commonplace: every effect is studied with deliberate purpose, and wrought to the highest degree of finish that it can bear. Of course, the thoughts were conceived spontaneously; no man could have written the poorest of Chopin's works by rule and measure: but before they were deemed ready for presentation they were tried by every test, and confronted with every alternative which a scrupulous ingenuity could propose. It is no small commendation that workmanship so elaborate should be beyond the reach of any imitator. As a rule, it is the dashing, daring, impetuous pioneer in Art who distances all followers, and finds himself, he hardly knows how, on a height that they can never hope to attain: in this case the climber has planted every footstep with a careful circumspection, he has employed all his prudence, all his foresight, all his certain command of resource, and yet, at the end of the ascent he stands alone. The reason for this is twofold: first, that Chopin's intuition of style was a natural gift which few other composers have possessed in an equal degree: second, that he brought to its cultivation not only an untiring diligence, but a delicacy of taste which is hardly ever at fault. His limitations are plain and unmistakable. For the larger types of the art, for the broad architectonic laws of structure on which they are based, he exhibited an almost total disregard. His works in 'Sonata form,' and in the forms cognate to the Sonata, are, with no exception, the failures of a genius that has altogether overstepped its bounds. Of Choral compositions, of Symphony, of Opera, he has not left us a single example. But when all this has been admitted, it still remains true that he is a great master, great in his exquisite sense of beauty, in his almost unerring skill, and in the deliberate and reasoned audacity with which he has extended the range of musical expression.
Like all modern composers of acknowledged rank, Chopin was strongly influenced by the popular music of his native country. As a child, he had been fond of collecting and studying the folk-songs which he heard at harvest field or market or village festival; they supplied him with his first models, and in some cases with his first themes as well. In later life, their impression deepened rather than faded. He always thought of himself as a national poet: 'I should like,' he told Hiller, 'to be to my people what Uhland is to the Germans.' No doubt the external qualities of his music are entirely his own: the richness of harmony, the complexity of figure, the delicate elaboration of ornament; but the texture which these colour and adorn is essentially of native growth and native substance. In a word, he made precisely the right use of national materials, taking them as a basis, and developing them into fuller beauty by the force and brilliance of his own personal genius.
There are three chief ways in which this national influence affected his work. In the first place, the popular music of Poland, unlike that of Italy or Germany, is almost invariably founded on dance forms and dance rhythms. Its gifts to the art of Europe are the Polonaise, the Krakowiak, and the Mazurka: types which, however widely they may differ in grade of social acceptance, are all essentially Polish in history and character. The very ballads of the country have the same lilt and cadence; they are primitive dances not yet differentiated from the use of words. They move with recurrent figure, with exact balance of melodic phrase, with that precise symmetry which is required by a 'Muse of the many-twinkling feet.' And it is hardly necessary to point out that in this respect Chopin is a true Pole. More than a quarter of his entire composition is devoted ostensibly to dance forms; and throughout the rest of it their effect may be traced in a hundred phrases and episodes. Grant that his treatment of the rhythmic figures is very different from the simple naÏvitÉ of his models: we are here discussing not treatment but conception, and in conception his indebtedness to his country is incontestable. His Mazurkas, in short, bear somewhat the same relation to the tunes of the peasantry as the songs of Robert Burns to those of the forerunners whom he superseded.
A second point of resemblance is Chopin's habit of founding a whole paragraph either on a single phrase repeated in similar shapes, or on two phrases in alternation. By itself this practice is primitive almost to barbarism, and its employment in many of the Polish folk-songs is a serious depreciation of their artistic value. But when it is confined to an episodical passage, especially in a composition founded on a striking or important melody, it may serve as a very justifiable point of rest, a background of which the interest is purposely toned down to provide a more striking contrast with the central figure. Of its illegitimate use a noticeable example may be found in the 'Spring Song,' which, it must be remembered, Chopin never intended to publish: its true and right employment will be seen in many of the Mazurkas—such, for instance, as the first (in F sharp minor), the fifth (in B flat), and the thirty-seventh (in A flat), which is, perhaps, the most beautiful of all. In the longer works, which are the more varied in proportion to their greater scale, we should hardly expect to find examples of a mannerism which, by its very nature, stands at the opposite pole from variation: but its influence may be noticed in the short, clear-cut phrases and exact balance of such compositions as the Scherzo in C sharp minor. No doubt much of this exactitude is due to an intense desire for clearness and precision: yet none the less the particular way in which that desire is satisfied may be regarded as characteristic of the national manner. Beethoven does not attain the lucidity of his style by such close parallelism of phraseology.
Thirdly, Chopin was to some extent affected by the tonality of his native music. A large number of the Polish folk-songs are written, not in our modern scale, but in one or other of the ecclesiastical modes: notably the Lydian, which has its fourth note a semitone sharper, and the Dorian, which has its third and seventh notes a semitone flatter than the major scale of Western Europe. Some, again, end on what we should call dominant harmony; a clear survival of the ecclesiastical distinction between plagal and authentic. Of this tonal system, some positive traces may be found in the Mazurkas, the cadences of the thirteenth, seventeenth and twenty-fifth, the frequent use of a sharpened subdominant, and the like; while on the negative side it may perhaps account for Chopin's indifference to the requirements of key-relationship. Not only in his efforts at Sonata form does he show himself usually unable to hold together a complex scheme of keys, but in works of a more loose structure his choice seems to be regulated rather by hazard than by any preconceived plan. Sometimes, as in the end of the F major Ballade, he deliberately strays away from a logical conclusion;[42] sometimes, as in the sixth Nocturne, he forces himself back with a sudden and inartistic violence; more often he allows his modulations to carry him where they will, and is so intent on perfecting each phrase and each melody that he has no regard left to bestow on the general principles of construction. No doubt some of this weakness was due to defective training, some, also, to the prevailing spirit and temper of the Romantic movement. But, in Chopin's case, there was a special reason beyond. As a Pole, he approached our western key system from the outside, and although he learned its language with wonderful skill and facility, he never wholly assimilated himself to the method of thought which it implies.
It is quite possible that, in any case, Chopin would have found himself incapable of dealing with large masses. The want of virility, which has already been noted in his character, appears beyond question in his music; leaving untouched all the grace and tenderness, all the rare and precious qualities of workmanship, but relaxing into an almost inevitable weakness at any crisis which demands sustained force or tenacity. When he is at his strongest, we miss that sense of reserve power, that quiet irresistible force, 'too full for sound or foam,' which characterises the dignity of the noblest art. He can be passionate, vehement, impetuous, but he expends himself in the effort. He can express agitation, challenge, defiance, but he lacks the royal magnanimity that will never stoop to defy. Even his melody is never sublime, never at the highest level. Its more serious mood stands to the great tunes of Beethoven as Leopardi stands to Dante, rising for a moment on a few perfect lines to follow the master's flight, and then sinking back to earth under some load of weariness or impatience.
Take, for instance, the B flat minor Sonata, in which Chopin most nearly approximates to the 'grand manner' of composition. The first movement, regarded by itself, is a masterpiece; its exposition clear and concise, its subjects well contrasted, one for thematic treatment and one for melody, its free fantasia an admirable example of an established type, and its recapitulation, though a little too short for perfect balance, a firm and lucid statement which sums up its results without a bar of vagueness or uncertainty. Not less complete is the Scherzo, which develops the simple forms of Mozart and Beethoven without obscuring their outline, and, despite all its rush and vigour, never allows its themes to get out of hand or to pass beyond the legitimate bounds of control. But from this point the value of the Sonata steadily declines. Schumann undoubtedly hits the blot when he declares that the great Funeral March ought never to have formed part of the work at all. As a separate piece it is of incomparable beauty; as the adagio of this particular Sonata it is wholly out of place. Its key is ill selected in relation to the rest of the composition; its contrasts of theme bear too much resemblance to those of the first movement; worst of all, its form is precisely the same as that of the Scherzo; and these objections, not one of which affects the movement in itself, are no less than fatal to it in its present context. The Finale, again, has neither the breadth nor the dignity requisite for its position. Its structure, though perfectly clear, is too simple and primitive to justify it as the fitting conclusion of an important work; and its persistent rhythmic figure gives it somewhat the air of an impromptu. If we had found it in the Volume of Preludes, we should have felt for it nothing but admiration; here, its inadequacy is so obvious that the greater part of critical attention has been distracted from its undeniable merits. In short, the first half of the Sonata gives promise of a Classic such as, with one exception, the world had not seen since the death of Beethoven; the second half, though almost every bar contains something that is beautiful, is a disappointment and a failure. Icarus has flown too near the sun, and the borrowed wings have no longer the strength to support him.
This want of manliness, moral and intellectual, marks the one great limitation of Chopin's province. It is, of course, wholly unreasonable to make it a subject of complaint; we might as well complain of Keats for not being Milton; or depreciate Carpaccio because the genius of Titian has the wider expanse. The lines of Endymion are not less musical because the poem, as a whole, falls below the epic level, and if they were, we have 'La Belle Dame sans Merci,' and the Sonnets and the five Odes. The Saint Ursula pictures are not less sweet and gracious because they lack the majesty of the 'Assumption;' and if they were, we could solace ourselves with the 'St George' and the 'St Jerome.' And similarly, if we accept from Chopin what he has to give, we shall be in no mind to bear malice for what he is forced to withhold. His passion is so keen and vital, his melody so winning, his love of beauty so single-hearted, that to demand the sterner qualities is almost an act of ingratitude. He knows the full secret of that mysterious power—so easy to feel, so impossible to define—through which music fulfils its function of suggesting and typifying emotion. He can appeal to our sensuous nature with a mastery which is almost irresistible, and he never degrades the appeal into vulgarity or sensationalism. Under his spell even the display of technical difficulty acquires life and significance. His Studies, avowedly classed as exercises of dexterity, stand to those of other writers as pictures to freehand drawing. His 'virtuoso passages' differ from those of Herz, and Hunten, and even Thalberg, as a pianoforte differs from a barrel-organ. In his lightest moment he is a poet: graceful in fancy, felicitous in expression, and instinct with the living spirit of romance.
There is hardly need to select examples of a gift which he exhibits on almost every page, yet a few typical instances may serve to concentrate our attention for a moment on the characteristic features of his melody, and to show the particular way in which he fulfilled the first requisite of a composer. Apart from works already considered, some special study may be given to the two Nocturnes, Op. 37, to the Ballade in A flat, to the second and third Impromptus, to the wonderful Étude in F minor, written for Moscheles, and to the fourth, eighth, fifteenth, nineteenth and twenty-third of the Preludes. These compositions are chosen, not because they are more tuneful than the rest—that is a question upon which every hearer must consult his own judgment—but because their elements of tunefulness seem to be in an eminent degree central and representative. No doubt many favourites will be found missing from the catalogue, the Prelude in C minor, the Nocturne in D flat, the more famous of the Waltzes and Polonaises; they have been purposely omitted, because, with all their beauty, they only contain tendencies of thought and manner which the list already exemplifies. As a rule, except for an occasional appoggiatura, Chopin keeps his melody within the strict limits of the diatonic scale, or of some equally diatonic ecclesiastical mode, and uses his chromatic effects sometimes for the accompaniment figure, sometimes for the subsequent thematic treatment. His tunes, for the most part, are as simple in outline as folk-songs, and the moods which they imply, whether melancholy, tender, playful or passionate, are an outcome of the more direct personal emotions. Sometimes his thought is as transparent as that of a child, and appeals to our sympathy with all a child's unquestioning and irresistible confidence. Sometimes he strikes a deeper note with a no less frank, outspoken freedom of disclosure. And always, whether severe or vehement, whether gay or dejected, he offers for our admiration the same perfection of curve, the same delicate balance of rhythm, and the same plasticity of melodic stanza.
There are two characteristics in Chopin's music which deserve some detailed consideration,—first, his sense of harmony; second, his use of accompaniment figures. No doubt, as standpoints for general criticism, they are not of parallel importance; the one implies a habit of mind as a whole, the other denotes a degree of technical skill and technical efficiency. But in both respects Chopin occupies a position so far apart from that of other composers—in both his manner is so original, so unique, so far removed from common or customary ways—that in his work they assume an almost equal value and interest. Again, in estimating their worth, we are dealing with a more definite and concrete material than when we endeavour to outline with words the impalpable spirit of melody. The tunes of a musician, though they constitute the chief part of his gift, constitute also that part which least admits of any profitable discussion; and the very qualities, through which alone they are susceptible of analysis, can be more easily noted and appraised in the secondary functions of treatment and elaboration. We cannot gauge the success of an effort unless we have already ascertained its intention; and the intention, though not always obscure in melody, is undoubtedly clearer to trace in the polyphonic scheme by which melody is supported and sustained.
Now, when we examine Chopin's harmony, we are at once struck with an apparent contradiction. We feel that, in its broader aspects, it is wonderfully pure and lucid, flowing along an established course, deviating but little from the simpler and more ordinary progressions. Yet every now and again we come across passages, the sight of which is enough to make orthodox professors of music 'stare and gasp;'—passages which seem to break with resolute and unflinching defiance the elementary rules that stand at the beginning of our text-books. Worst of all, these apparent solecisms, the commission of which by any other hand would be wholly intolerable, offer themselves to our notice as though they were the most natural and regular forms of expression. They are not obvious slips, like the 'misprint' in the Ninth Symphony; they are not importations from some alien musical language, like the occasional extravagances of Grieg or DvorÁk; on the contrary, they take our recognised system of harmonic laws, and literally honour it more in the breach than the observance. Are consecutive fifths and octaves forbidden? There is, in one of the Études, a delightful passage, which consists exclusively of the prohibited intervals.[43] Are consecutive major thirds justly regarded as harsh and dissonant? Chopin, at his dreamiest and most contemplative, can employ them with unfailing effect.[44] Is the dominant seventh a chord which, to all well-regulated ears, demands instant resolution? The twenty-first Mazurka rejects the claim, and sends one floating down four bars of chromatic scale with no hope of rest until it reaches the bottom. And the manner of composition which these instances exemplify can be traced in plenty of other phrases, less extreme, perhaps, but not less audacious. In parts of the fourth and sixth Nocturnes we can find harmonic schemes which it is probable no other musician would have ever dared to devise, schemes which set at naught our established distinctions of concord and discord, which display in unbroken series artifices that are usually kept for single isolated points of excitement, and which, nevertheless, are as undoubtedly intentional as they are undeniably successful in their aim.
There is no shirking the difficulty. Here is a composer who is brought up on Bach, and whose general sense of harmony is as pure and sincere as that of his great master. Here are passages, written by him with obvious care and deliberation, the acceptance of which would seem impossible without throwing discredit on the harmonic code. And, as climax of bewilderment, the code is right and the passages are beautiful. It may certainly appear for the moment as though there were no solution in view unless we take a despairing refuge in some Hegelian identification of opposites.
Now, the impression which harmony produces is that of a third dimension in Music. It is the element of solidity and substance on which the melody rests. In a Chorale, for instance, the tune describes a sort of pattern on the superficies of the work, and the chords sustain and support it from underneath. And just as certain tunes can give us the effect of breadth, that is, of wide sweep over their superficial area, so certain harmonisations give us the effect of massiveness, that is, of strength and bulk in its substratum. It is not, of course, pretended that the artistic value of a composition can be summed up in so crude a metaphor: nothing more is attempted than to represent the one factor in the case, which is germane to the present purpose. Further, all the harmonic rules have been devised with a view to making the solid body of the Music as firm and compact as possible. They deal with the substratum, not with the superficies; with the perpendicular aspect, not with the horizontal. The law of consecutives is not held to be broken if in an orchestral piece a violin phrase is doubled by the violoncello or the bassoon: such a device gives us the lines of the pattern in duplicate, and lies altogether outside the material on which the pattern is superimposed. So in these disputed passages of Chopin. They are not really harmonic at all, they lie in the same plane as the melody, and, for their support, imply a separate and distinct scheme of chords, which the ear can always understand for itself.
A few examples may help to make this clearer. In the twelfth bar of the well-known Nocturne in E flat (Op. 9, No. 2), there is a connecting passage which, when we see it on paper, seems to consist of a rapid series of remote and recondite modulations. When we hear it played in the manner which Chopin intended, we feel that there is only one real modulation, and that the rest of the passage is an iridescent play of colour, an effect of superficies, not an effect of substance. Precisely the same impression is produced in the middle section of the sixth Nocturne, and in the return to the opening theme at the end of the fifteenth. So it is with these apparent consecutives. They are not ungrammatical, because, like the Emperor Sigismund, they are 'supra grammaticam:' they do not defy harmonic laws because they belong to a different jurisdiction: in a word, they are to be treated not as harmonisations of their theme, but rather as new forms of melodic extension. Their real harmony is implied, not expressed: a construction to be understood from the general context and tenour of the passage: and it is because the general tenour is unmistakable that these 'sense constructions' are fully justified. Chopin's harmonic system, in short, is like a river—its surface windswept into a thousand variable crests and eddies, its current moving onward, full, steadfast and inevitable, bearing the whole volume of its waters by sheer force of depth and impetus.
Hence it is that of all musicians he is most at the mercy of his interpreters. Beethoven's Adelaide is 'so beautiful' that not even Mr du Maurier's tenor 'can make it ridiculous:' but there are few of us who have not seen Chopin crushed out of recognition in the grasp of some conscientious and heavy-handed pianist. These surface-effects lose all their charm if they are played with stress and insistance, if they are forced down into a third dimension, which they were never intended to fill. There is much of Chopin's music in which solidity of execution is as fatal as strictness of time; in which the phrases are essentially light, wayward, aerial, demanding for their interpretation not only the most flexible sympathy of feeling, but the daintiest delicacy of touch. Even Moscheles, great musician as he was, found himself baffled by the new style. 'Chopin has just been playing to me,' he writes, 'and now for the first time I understand his music. The rubato, which, with his other interpreters, degenerates into disregard of time, is with him only a charming originality of manner: the harsh modulations which strike me disagreeably when I am playing his compositions no longer shock me, because he glides over them in a fairy-like way with his delicate fingers. His piano is so soft that he does not need any strong forte to produce his contrasts: and for this reason one does not miss the orchestral effects which the German school requires from a pianoforte player, but allows oneself to be carried away as by a singer who, little concerned about the accompaniment, entirely follows his emotion.' We of the present day may express ourselves with more warmth of approbation; but if we wish to understand Chopin, this is the standpoint from which we must regard him.
The second point for consideration is the almost incomparable power which Chopin displays in his use of accessory figures. By figure, in this sense, is meant a certain group of notes, having a clearly defined curve and rhythm, and maintained, with such changes as the harmony necessitates, through a phrase, or a paragraph, or even a complete work. In the use of this device there are two difficulties against which a composer has to contend. On the one hand, the group, if it is to command any part of the hearer's attention, must exhibit a distinct character, almost a distinct melody of its own; on the other hand, it will fail of its purpose unless it is sufficiently plastic to be adapted to different context and different requirements. Now, it is obvious that the more allegiance is claimed by the first of these conditions, the more skill is needed in order to satisfy the second. A figure which consists merely of simple arpeggios or of plain repeated chords can suffer any degree of harmonic alteration without loss of continuity; but as its intrinsic interest is heightened, either by elaboration of curve or by peculiarity of rhythm, so it becomes more individual, and therefore, under a change of circumstance, more difficult to adjust. Thus it not infrequently happens that a composer is forced to remodel his scheme because the group of notes which he has devised to support the first strain of his melody proves unsuitable to the next; or because a curve, that can adequately fill a bar of uniform harmony, may lose all fitness when applied to a bar in which the harmony changes. In Schumann's Widmung, for instance, the beautiful accompaniment figure wavers in the third bar, and breaks down altogether in the fourth; not because the composer wishes to put forward a new pattern, for he retains the rhythm of the old, but because nothing short of a total alteration of curve will satisfy the harmonic conditions of the tune.
But, so far as concerns this particular exhibition of skill, we never feel that Chopin is at the mercy of his materials. His simplest figures are interesting, his most elaborate are moulded to his use with an entire and unhesitating mastery. Under his hand the stubborn edges grow smooth, the obdurate lines become pliant and tractable, the recurrent shape preserves its unity without appearing wearisome or monotonous. The Prelude in F sharp minor (No. 8) is perhaps the most astonishing instance in music of this particular form of decorative effect; and hardly less remarkable are the Étude in E flat minor (Op. 10, No. 6), the Prelude in G major (No. 3), and the Prelude in F sharp major (No. 13). Indeed, Chopin's method of ornament is altogether his own; sensuous it may be in origin, evoked, at any rate in part, by an imperious craving for the pleasure of beautiful sound, but yet raised to the true artistic level by its refinement of taste and its finished accuracy of detail. It is no small matter that a type of art which appeals so frequently to sense and emotion should never be either vulgar or trivial or commonplace; that there should be nothing meretricious in its sentiment, nothing indolent in its expression; that with every incentive to a lax and careless Hedonism it should yet maintain an ideal of unswerving labour.
So far Chopin's music has been treated from the creative side. It now remains to add a few words on the peculiar tact and intelligence with which he employs his medium. In pictorial art this quality is of acknowledged importance: oil, water, pastel, have their own conditions and their own limitations, to overstep which is to invite failure; and it is recognised as an adverse criticism if we can say of an example in any one process that its effects could have been equally well produced by another.
The same law is valid in musical art. The orchestra, the string quartett, the organ, the pianoforte, are so diverse in tone and so disparate in character, that they admit no community of treatment, and hardly even a close community of idea. An arrangement may sometimes be condoned as a tour de force, it may sometimes be allowed as a preparation or a means of study, but to regard it as possessing any absolute value is to convict the original work of a serious imperfection. It is, therefore, a high testimony to the exactitude of Chopin's writing that it has almost entirely escaped the sacrilegious hand of the transcriber. Some of the Mazurkas are occasionally adapted for the voice, one or two of the Nocturnes misused to the service of the violin or the violoncello: but by far the greater number of Chopin's compositions are too obviously suited to the piano for any other medium to be regarded as possible. His very narrowness gave him concentration: his want of sympathy with all other instruments enabled him to devote his whole attention to the one that he understood. And, as a result, he gives us Pianoforte Music which, considered as a pure expression of technical intelligence, is almost without rival in the history of the art. No other composer has ever surpassed the unerring judgment to which we owe these wide-spread arpeggios, these wonderful liquid ripples of chromatic scale, these showers of sparkling notes which fall, as Liszt said, 'like dew drops' on some bend of phrase or turn of cadence. Beethoven, of course, understood the piano as fully as he understood everything else: but since Beethoven's time musicians, and especially romantic musicians, have a little tended to blur and obliterate these necessary distinctions, and to merge a due recognition of piano technique into their overmastering desire for emotional significance. Hence the fatal error of trying to extract orchestral effects from the keyboard, an error into which Schumann falls occasionally, and Liszt habitually, but from which Chopin may be regarded as entirely free. In a word, he appreciates both the capacities and the limitations of his material, and, while he draws from it every tone that it can legitimately produce, he never strains it beyond the due and fitting bounds of its proper individuality. It may be noted that Mendelssohn had something of the same gift, but in pianoforte music, Mendelssohn's thought is shallower than that of Chopin, and, therefore, more easily kept within its range. Indeed, since 1827, there has been no composer who could unite such poignancy of feeling with so exact an estimate of the means at his disposal.
To sum up, Chopin can claim no place among the few greatest masters of the world. He lacks the dignity, the breadth, the high seriousness of Palestrina and Bach and Beethoven: he no more ranks beside them than Shelley beside Shakespear, or Andrea beside Michael Angelo. But to say this is not to disparage the value of the work that he has done. If he be not of the 'di majorum gentium,' he is none the less of the Immortals, filled with a supreme sense of beauty, animated by an emotional impulse as keen as it was varied, and upholding an ideal of technical perfection at a time when it was in danger of being lost by the poets or degraded by the virtuosi. In certain definite directions he has enlarged the possibilities of the art, and though he has, fortunately, founded no school—for the charm of his music is wholly personal—yet in a thousand indirect ways he has influenced the work of his successors. At the same time, it is not as a pioneer that he elicits our fullest admiration. We hardly think of him as marking a stage in the general course and progress of artistic History, but, rather, as standing aside from it, unconscious of his relation to the world, preoccupied with the fairyland of his own creations. The elements of myth and legend that have already gathered round his name may almost be said to find their counterparts in his music; it is etherial, unearthly, enchanted, an echo from the melodies of Kubla Khan. It is for this reason that he can only make his complete appeal to certain moods and certain temperaments. The strength of the hero is as little his as the vulgarity of the demagogue: he possesses an intermediate kingdom of dreams, an isle of fantasy, where the air is drowsy with perfume, and the woods are bright with butterflies, and the long gorges run down to meet the sea. If his music is sometimes visionary, at least it is all beautiful; offering, it may be, no response to the deeper questions of our life, careless if we approach it with problems which it is in no mind to resolve, but fascinating in its magic if we are content to submit our imagination to the spell. And precisely the same distinction may be made on the formal side of his work. In structure he is a child, playing with a few simple types, and almost helpless as soon as he advances beyond them; in phraseology he is a master whose felicitous perfection of style is one of the abiding treasures of the art. There have been higher ideals in Music, but not one that has been more clearly seen or more consistently followed. There have been nobler messages, but none delivered with a sweeter or more persuasive eloquence.