Piano writing.

It is worth noting that Chopin had already reached full maturity as a composer before he arrived in Paris in the autumn of 1831. Four of the familiar Chopin genres – the mazurka, nocturne, é tude and waltz – were already in place, and in something like their mature formulation, before he left Warsaw. They were consolidated in Vienna and in the early Paris years by the earliest pieces in these genres released for publication by Chopin himself. These included the Mazurkas opp.6 and 7, composed in Vienna, the Nocturnes opp.9 and 15, the remainder of the op.10 Etudes, which were completed in Paris in 1832, and the E major Waltz op.18, composed two years later, somewhat on Weber's formal model. By presenting his Viennese mazurkas to the publisher in conventional sets of four and five compatible pieces (opp.6 and 7), Chopin crystallized the genre and in a sense defined it, investing the salon dance piece with a complexity and sophistication which immediately transcended habitual meanings. Here, and in the early Paris sets (opp.17 and 24), he established a new model for the stylization of folk idioms, marrying elements of peasant music with the most ‘advanced’ techniques of contemporary art music in a cross-fertilization which would set the tone for Slavonic nationalists generally in the later 19th century. From this point onwards he carved out for the mazurka a special niche in his output, with a singular repertory of technical and expressive devices. It is fitting that his nationalism should have been expressed thus, through the renovation of a simple dance piece rather than through the more usual channels of opera and programmatic reference.

In a similar way, Chopin's engagement with an expressive aesthetic was filtered into the piano nocturne rather than made specific in the art song. When John Field published his first three nocturnes in 1812, neither the title ‘nocturne’ nor the ‘nocturne style’ were in any sense novelties, but they had not yet been drawn together to form a genre. By the 1820s, however, there was some measure of generic consistency in the nocturne, especially among composers associated with Field. Central to the genre was the idea of vocal imitation, whether of French romance or Italian aria, and this was facilitated by the development of the sustaining pedal, enabling those wide-spread arpeggiations supporting an ornamental melody which we recognize today as the archetype of the style. To some extent, then, Chopin's early E minor Nocturne already belonged to a tradition, but his op.9 set effectively formalized that tradition. If we were to speak of a normative design, it would be one which allows an ornamental aria (subject to cumulative variation) to alternate with a sequentially developing, tension-building theme. In reality, however, no two of the Chopin nocturnes are alike, and already in the op.15 set it became clear that the title ‘nocturne’, once its connotative values had been established, could attach itself to music of highly varied formal and generic schemes, and even – as in op.15 no.3, which effectively confronts a ‘mazurka’ and a ‘chorale’ – to pieces which seem blatantly to defy the expectations of the genre.

The major achievement of this creative period was the set of 12 Etudes op.10, whose composition spanned the Warsaw, Vienna and early Paris years. They have special significance within Chopin's output as the opus which most clearly signified his transcendence of the brilliant style, confronting virtuosity directly, but conquering it on home ground. The tradition of the é tude had developed at the turn of the century as part of a much wider institutionalization of instrumental pedagogy, notably at the Paris Conservatoire; indeed there is a real sense in which the é tude was a creation of the Conservatoire. By the 1830s it had already emerged as the principal channel for artistic virtuosity, joining forces with emergent ‘lyric’ and ‘character’ pieces to challenge the sonata as the archetypal keyboard genre. Unlike the virtuoso é tudes of Liszt and Thalberg, Chopin's op.10 retains a link with the ‘school é tude’, addressing one principal technical problem in each piece and crystallizing that problem in a single shape or figure. But it goes without saying that he achieved a balance between technical and artistic aims which was unprecedented in the earlier history of the genre. As Schumann remarked, ‘imagination and technique share dominion side by side’.

The é tudes are a workshop in Chopin's piano technique, which was by common consent strikingly individual, predicated on a ‘natural’ hand shape (with B major as the paradigmatic scale), and on an acceptance, controversial at the time, of the imbalance and functional independence of the fingers. The third of the op.10 Etudes, a study in the control of legato melody and in its appropriate phrasing, perfectly exemplifies this, and an adequate performance of it would heed Chopin's caution that ‘the goal is not to play everything with an equal sound, [but rather] it seems to me, a well-formed technique that can control and vary a beautiful sound quality’. He believed in a flexible wrist and supple hand, so that the wrist and not the arm is in movement. The first of the é tudes, with its massive, striding arpeggios, would have been performed by him in just this way, and of course it further cultivates a capacity to use the pedal to best effect (as does the third é tude in a rather different way). ‘The correct employment [of the pedals] remains a study for life’. Moreover, in the interests of fluidity of movement and evenness of tone he was prepared to sanction unorthodox fingerings, as in the detailed autograph fingerings in the second é tude. He was happy, for instance, to use the thumb on the black keys not only in the fifth (‘black key’) é tude, where we would of course expect it, but also in the sixth, where it helps the performer maintain the legato of the countermelody alongside the sustained bass notes.

Chopin's mature piano style was defined above all in these works, bridging the final year in Warsaw and the early years in Paris. It remains essentially distinct from that of other bravura pianist-composers of the early 19th century, as it does from the lyrical character pieces of a Prague–Vienna axis (Tomá š ek, Voř í š ek, Schubert) and the ‘symphonic’ piano style of Beethoven, Schumann and Brahms. Drawing together aspects of Viennese bravura writing (Mozart, Hummel) and a lyrical manner derived from French and English schools (Adam, Clementi, Field), it achieved a unique synthesis which in turn laid the foundations for later piano styles, notably in French and Russian music of the late 19th century. More directly than any of his predecessors, Chopin derived his piano writing from the instrument itself (its uniformity of sound, its diminuendo on every note, its capacity for dynamic shading and its sustaining pedal), and from the physical properties of the two hands (the limitations of compass within each of them, and the absence of any such limitation between them). Hence the idiomatic counterpoint which characterizes his textures, and their separation into two layers, collaborating in many different ways, but above all functioning as ‘sonoristic counterweights’.

Within that global approach we can identify three very broad categories of piano texture in these early works. The mazurkas and waltzes represent the first and most straightforward category, where the basic texture is derived from the functional dance, though Chopin achieved a remarkable diversity of keyboard layout even in apparently simple textures such as these. The nocturnes form a second category, comprising an ornamental cantilena with widespread broken chord accompaniment. Characteristically there is a delicate balance here between ‘vocal’ substance and ‘pianistic’ ornament, and often a blurring of distinction between the two, as parallel extracts from the F major Nocturne op.15 no.2 demonstrate (ex.1). Fundamental to this texture is a rhythmically stable accompaniment layer which promotes continuity, filling the ‘gaps’ in the melody and thus helping to simulate vocal legato, supporting it when it takes off in flights of ornamental fancy, and binding together its impulsive contrasts of register and dynamics. The characteristic role of the accompaniment layer is interactive rather than supportive (there is on occasion a motivic relationship between the two layers), emphasizing that the ‘Chopin melody’ is first and foremost a texture and not just a line.

The é tudes make up a third category of texture, one whose main component is figuration of numerous kinds. The first two é tudes set the terms for the main categories of figuration, generated respectively by harmony (a widespread arpeggiation) and melody (an intricate chromatic scalar movement), and these categories are replicated elsewhere in the op.10 collection. At the same time Chopin's textures in op.10 often blur the boundaries between melody, harmony and figuration, and even between principal voice and accompaniment. This interpenetration of functions tends in two opposing directions, towards a differentiated pianistic counterpoint on the one hand, and an undifferentiated sonority on the other. These tendencies can be illustrated by the sixth and third é tudes respectively. Superficially the texture in op.10 no.6 is a ‘melody’ and ‘accompaniment’, but in reality the four ‘voices’ balance each other in a counterpoint which is perfectly moulded to the piano, where independent lines can be added or lost with no threat to the contrapuntal flow nor to the illusion of a homogeneous texture (ex.2). Conversely, in the middle section of op.10 no.3 the music splinters into symmetrically mirrored figurations which threaten (but only threaten) to lose touch with an underlying harmonic foundation (ex.3). In such passages we sense harmony dissolving into ‘colour’, to use a common metaphor.

Chopin, Fryderyk Franciszek