Light, graceful, dainty, capricious, full of playful tenderness and delicate fancy is this little work, written for and presented as a wedding gift to one of his favorite pupils, La Comtesse de Lobau, to whom it is dedicated. The first movement embodies the joyous, hopeful, congratulatory spirit of the occasion, expressed with all that refined elegance and polished perfection of style of which Chopin was so preëminently the master, both in music and language. It is the most unqualifiedly optimistic strain from his pen with which I am acquainted.

The trio, in F minor, brings a touch of half-veiled sadness and irrepressible regret, as if called forth by the thought that their art work together is now to end. She has been for years one of his most talented, diligent, and interesting students. She is, like himself, a Polish exile in a foreign land, and their community of sympathies and sorrows, combined with her charming personality and congenial temperament, have tended to merge the relations of teacher and pupil into the closer bonds of a life-long friendship. He is naturally reluctant to lose her, but this mood of depression is soon subordinated to the thought that she has found the philosopher’s stone, the fabled blue flower of the German poets, the subtile, yet supreme panacea for all human ills—love. This idea is expressed in the last half of the trio as only Chopin could express it; and the work ends with a repetition of the first strain, brightly, happily, with a certain restful completeness of fulfilled desire in the reiterated closing chords.

Among other manuscripts found on Chopin’s writing-table after his death was the original of this composition, complete in every detail, but written across the back, in his own trembling hand, were the words, “To be destroyed when I am gone.”

It is difficult to account for this injunction, except upon the theory that he feared that both the form and the content of the work were too original, too subtle and complex, and too wholly unfamiliar to the musical world of his day, to be readily comprehended, and that it would either suffer from incorrect rendition or be condemned and ignored. So he preferred a quick death by fire for this child of his sad later days, to a slow death by mutilation or cruel neglect.

Fortunately the request was disregarded by his friends. The work was published and has become one of his most beloved, as it is one of his most faultlessly beautiful compositions. The peculiarity of form referred to is familiar to all who have attempted the study of this impromptu. The whole first movement, consisting of a continuous rapid figure of four notes in the right hand against three in the left, is one of the most unusual and difficult musical problems to solve satisfactorily, and only to be mastered by long and special practice—a case, as I have often said, where it is well to remember the biblical injunction, “let not thy right hand know what thy left hand doeth.” But when smoothly played, it produces just that sinuous, interwoven, flowing effect which the composer desired, and which could not have been obtained, in such perfection, in any other way.

The content of this composition, like that of many of Chopin’s smaller works, is purely emotional, like a strictly lyric poem, by his literary counterpart Tennyson, for instance; it is a wholly subjective expression of a mental state, an emotional condition, not of any scene or any action. It touches the minor key and sounds the plaintive harmonies to which his heart-strings were tuned and vibrating at the time when it was written. It voices a soft summer twilight mood, half sad, half tender, full of vague regrets, of indefinite longings and aspirations, of fluttering hope, never destined to be realized, and bright fleeting memories that rise and pass, dimmed by intervening clouds of sorrow and disappointment, like the shifting forms and hues of a kaleidoscope seen through a misty glass, or the luminous phantoms of dead joys and shadowy suggestions of the “might have been,” against the gray background of a sad present and an uncertain, promiseless future. It is a strange, delicately complex mood, a mood of life’s sunset hour, colored by the pathetic glories of the dying day, and the depressing, yet tranquilizing shadows of the coming night—a mood well-nigh impossible to express, but perfectly embodied in the music.

The following simple little verses, in which, as will be seen, has been made a somewhat free use of the suggestive symbolism of nature, may serve to illustrate, though by no means to the writer’s satisfaction, his conception of the artistic significance of this composition:

Brilliant, effective, and not excessively difficult though it be, this admirably constructed and thoroughly characteristic tarantelle in A flat is but little played; perhaps because it appeals less to the love of the “true Chopinism of Chopin” than most of his compositions, as being out of the recognized Chopin vein, deficient in the special melodic and emotional elements usually distinguishing his works. Nevertheless, considered objectively as a tarantelle, from the standpoint, not of Chopinism, but of what the true tarantelle should be, it is one of the best ever written,—hence one of his masterpieces,—and furnishes another proof of the almost infinite versatility of his creative power, both in style and in mood.

The origin of the tarantelle, as a musical form, is interesting and must be considered in judging the real merit of this or any similar work. The name is derived from that of the tarantula, that venomous denizen of southern climes, of the spider species, whose bite is usually fatal. There is a generally prevalent belief among the peasants of both Spain and Italy, a belief founded, no doubt, upon centuries of experience, that there is but one reliable cure for this poison, and one which Nature herself prescribes and imperatively demands—that of violent and protracted bodily exercise, and the consequent excessively profuse perspiration, enabling the system to throw off the poison through the pores. The idea has the same pathological base as the ancient Arabic cure for hydrophobia, recently revived with great success in this day of resurrection of buried wisdom—an extremely hot and long-continued steam bath.

It is claimed that the victim of the tarantula is seized by a delirious desire, an uncontrollable madness for dancing, which, if fully gratified, in fact encouraged and stimulated to the utmost, may save his life by means of the prosaic but practical process above suggested. So his friends assemble in haste, form a circle on the village green or plaza, strike up the wildest, most furiously rapid and exciting music possible, on any instrument that may be at hand, preferably the mandolin and tambourine, as the most rhythmic and inspiring, and take turns dancing with him, until each is exhausted and gives place to the next, and until the victim recovers or dies of fatigue. The faster the tempo, the more intoxicating the music, the better the purpose will be served, and the greater the hope of a successful cure.

From this crude and primitive germ the modern musical art form, known and used all over the world, has gradually developed, retaining, of course, as must every characteristic dance form, the spirit and fundamental element of the situation and circumstances which gave it birth.

The true tarantelle may be either in a major or minor key, the latter being most common; but it must be wild, stirring, exceedingly rapid, with a strong rhythmic swing and a certain dash and go, irresistibly suggesting the fever of the dance at its most delirious ecstasy. It is always written in six-eight time, which is somewhat singular, as it has none of the usual rhythmic peculiarities of that measure, but invariably produces the impression of twelve-eight, or, perhaps still more strongly, that of four-four with the beats divided into triplets. In fact, this is generally the best method of counting it for the pupil. It should contain no harmonic or technical complexities to distract the attention of either player or listener from the regular rhythmic swing and form and movement of the dance; and the melodic trio, occasionally introduced by some composers, is always an incongruous artistic absurdity, wholly out of place.

Though the musical form is common property of all composers in all lands, the actual dance, as such, is specially identified with southern Spain and Italy, and is rarely used elsewhere. To the tourist one of the most unique and vividly interesting episodes of his sojourn in these localities is the performance of the tarantelle by one of the trained dancing girls, which may be witnessed almost any evening, given with all the dash and verve of the southern temperament, a perfect embodiment of grace and fire and dance frenzy.

This tarantelle by Chopin possesses all the essential characteristics in a high degree, with not a single lapse or irrelevant digression in mood, in form, even in the details of accompaniment. It may be taken as a model of the true tarantelle, spirited, well sustained throughout, and eminently playable.

The Chopin Berceuse (which is the French word for cradle-song) is a most unique as well as most ideally beautiful composition, standing alone in all piano literature, as regards its form and harmonic structure, the only one of its species. It is beyond all question or comparison, the finest cradle-song ever written for the piano, an exceptionally perfect example of that rare blending of spontaneous genius and mechanical ingenuity, for which Chopin was so preëminent, resulting in a work matchless in its originality, its suggestive realism, its delicacy of finish, and its poetic content. An organ point on D flat, which is its only bass note, sustained throughout the entire composition, and a couplet of the simplest chords, the tonic and dominant seventh, alternating back and forth in a swinging, rocking motion, form the accompaniment, continued practically without change, from first measure to last, portraying naturally, easily, yet unmistakably, the soothing monotony of the rockaby movement. The left hand may be said to rock the cradle throughout the whole composition, while in the soft, continually intertwining melody in the right hand, like an endless, infolding circle of maternal love, we find the lullaby song of the mother, sung as she sits there in the hush of the twilight, rocking her little one to sleep.

Around and over this melody Chopin has flung, with his own inimitable delicacy, a silver lace-work of embellishment, falling soft and light as the moonlight spray from fountains in fairyland, as through the idealizing summer haze, half veiling a distant landscape, we seem to catch dim glimpses of the dream-pictures, the fleeting fancies, the changing phantasmagoria of prophetic visions, that drift through the brain of the mother as she sits there in the gathering dusk, waiting for the little eyes to be tightly closed, and wondering vaguely to herself on what scenes they will open in the far future years.

Slower and gentler grows the motion of the cradle, softer and lower the lullaby song, further and further the dream pictures drift into the shadows, until at last the wings of slumber are folded about the little one. Silence reigns. The mother’s daily task of loving ministry is ended and she, too, may rest. The two lingering closing chords, soft and slow, suggest the moment when she rises from the cradle and spreads her hands in silent benediction over the sleeping child.

Infinite tenderness and delicacy are needed for the interpretation of this composition; a tone like violet velvet, and a light, fluent finger technic, to which its really extreme difficulties seem like dainty play.

A very familiar, yet always fresh and intensely interesting composition is this scherzo. The name is an Italian word signifying a jest, and we find in musical nomenclature a number of derivatives from it, as scherzino (little jest) and scherzando (jestingly, playfully). The term is used by most composers to designate compositions that are bright, playful, humorous in character. Nearly all the leading composers have written more or less in this vein. Mendelssohn particularly excelled in it, and even serious old Beethoven became quite jocose at times in the scherzo movements of his symphonies; though it always reminds one of the sportive dancing of an elephant.

Chopin applied the name to four of his greatest, most intense and impassioned works, seemingly without the smallest reason or relevancy. Why, no one can even surmise, unless it may have been in a mood of sardonic perversity, of sarcastic bitterness, purposely to mislead the public as to the real artistic intention and significance of the music, and see if they would have sufficient perception to discover it for themselves. It is a sad commentary on the insight of many of our so-called musicians, that they have not done so even to this day, and persist in playing the Chopin scherzi jestingly and as trivially as possible, which may be the subtle, covert jest which Chopin intended. Who knows? In reality these four works, especially the first three of them, are among his greatest and grandest. They are broad, heroic, seriously and profoundly emotional productions, marking the high-water line of his creative power; full of the strength and virile energy which those acquainted only with his nocturnes and waltzes are inclined to deny him altogether, but in which he far exceeds all other composers, past or present, with the possible exception of Beethoven and Wagner. Jests only in name, or, if in fact, then in the sense of bitterest satire, aimed at the world and at life, jests written in the heart’s blood of the composer; written when Poland, his beloved native land, lay in her death agony, when three great European powers had combined to write the word finis in Polish blood and tears, across the last page of her history. What wonder that the music throbs with intense but conflicting emotions—fiery indignation, fierce defiance, bitter scorn, and, in the next breath, pitiful tenderness for the wronged and the suffering, heart-breaking sorrow for the unavailing heroism and wasted lives of his countrymen!

All these moods will be found in swift and sharply contrasting succession in all the four scherzi, but notably in the one in B flat minor, which I regard as the best of the four. The seeming incongruity between its name and its musical content, its ostensible and its real significance, always recalls to me famous lines:

A unique position in pianoforte literature is occupied by these Preludes, Op. 28. They derive their name rather from their form than from their musical import. Like the usual preludes to songs, or more extended musical works, they are short, fragmentary tone sketches rather than complete pictures; each consisting, as a rule, of a single, simple movement, and embodying but a single concrete idea, and seeming to imply by its brevity and its suggestive rather than fully descriptive character, that a more elaborately developed composition is to follow, to which this has been but an introduction and in which the idea, here merely outlined, will receive more exhaustive treatment. In reality, however, each of these preludes is complete in itself; an exquisite musical vignette containing, like some dainty vial of hand-cut Venetian glass, the distilled essence of dead flowers of memory and experience from Chopin’s past; particularly of scenes, episodes, and emotional impressions of his romantic life on the island of Majorca. Just as a painter might have sketched, with hasty but truthfully graphic pencil, on the pages of his portfolio, the fleeting impressions produced upon his senses and imagination by this novel, picturesque environment, so the composer has preserved in these bits of offhand but vivid tone painting, glimpses into his daily life, his moods and experiences during that winter of 1838-39.

Banished by his physicians to this Mediterranean isle, in the hope of benefit to his fast failing health, and refused shelter in any hotel or private residence, on account of the there prevalent belief that consumption was contagious, Chopin and the little party of devoted friends who accompanied him (most notable among whom was the famous French novelist, George Sand) were forced to improvise a temporary abode in the semi-habitable wing of an old ruined convent, which had been abandoned by the monks. It was picturesquely situated on a rocky promontory, commanding a view, on the one side, of the open sea, dotted with the countless white sails of Mediterranean commerce; on the other, of the sheltered bay, the village beyond, and the lofty volcanic mountains in the background. Here they spent the winter, and here nearly all of the preludes, with many others of Chopin’s most poetic smaller works, originated—artistic crystallizations of passing impressions and experiences, concerning which and the life in which they originated, George Sand writes: “While staying here he composed some short but very beautiful pieces which he modestly entitled preludes. They were real masterpieces. Some of them create such vivid impressions that the shades of the dead monks seem to rise and pass before the hearer in solemn and gloomy funeral pomp. Others are full of charm and melancholy, glowing with the sparkling fire of enthusiasm, breathing with the hope of restored health. The laughter of the children at play, the distant strains of the guitar, the twitter of birds on the damp branches, would call forth from his soul melodies of indescribable sweetness and grace. But many also are so full of gloom and sadness that, in spite of the pleasure they afford, the listener is filled with pain. Some of his later tone-poems bring before us a sparkling crystal stream reflecting the sunbeams. Chopin’s quieter compositions remind us of the song of the lark as it lightly soars into the ether, or the gentle gliding of the swan over the smooth mirror of the waters; they seem filled with the holy calm of nature. When Chopin was in a despondent mood, the piercing cry of the hungry eagle among the crags of Majorca, the mournful wailing of the storm, and the stern immovability of the snow-clad heights, would awaken gloomy fancies in his soul. Then again, the perfume of the orange blossoms, the vine bending to the earth beneath its rich burden, the peasant singing his Moorish songs in the fields, would fill him with delight.”

The Prelude in D flat, No. 15, which I select as one of the most beautiful and characteristic of these sketches, embodies a strange day dream of the composer in which, as he says, “vision and reality were indistinguishably blended.”

One bright, late autumn morning the little party of friends had taken advantage of the weather, and of the fact that Chopin seemed in unusually good health and spirits, to make a long-talked-of excursion to the neighboring village, promising to return before sunset. During their absence a sudden tropical tempest of terrific severity swept the island. The wind blew a hurricane, the rain descended in floods, the streams rose, bridges and roadways were destroyed, and it was only with extreme difficulty and considerable danger that they succeeded in reaching the convent about midnight, having spent six hours in traversing the last mile and a half of the distance. They found Chopin in a state bordering on delirium. The physical effect of the storm on his shattered nerves, combined with his own depression and his keen anxiety for them, had combined to work his sensitive, and at that time morbid, temperament up to a state of feverish excitement, in which the normal barriers between perception and hallucination had well-nigh vanished. He told them afterward that he had been a prey to a gruesome vision of which this prelude is the musical portrayal.

He fancied that he lay dead at the bottom of the sea; that near him sat a beautiful siren singing in exquisitely sweet and tender strains, a song of his own life and love and sorrow. But though her voice was soothing in its dreamy pathos, and though he felt oppressed by a crushing languor and fatigue and longed for rest, he could not lose consciousness, because tormented by the regular, relentlessly monotonous fall of great drops upon his heart. As the drops continued increasing steadily in weight and in importunate demand upon his attention, as if burdened with some great and sad significance which he must recognize, he became aware that they were the tears of his friends on earth whom he had loved and lost. With this knowledge, vivid memory and poignant pain awoke together, and his anguish grew to an overpowering climax of intensity. Then, nature’s limit being reached, the force of his tempest of grief finally exhausted itself, and he sank gradually into a state of dull, despairing lethargy, and at last into welcome unconsciousness, the last sound in his ears being the soothing strains of the siren, and his last sensation the now faint and feeble, but still regular falling of his friends’ tears upon his heart.

This composition should be conceived and executed so as to render, to the full, its intensely emotional character. The first theme in D flat major, with its sweetly languorous tone, should be given quite slowly, with pressure touch, producing a penetrating, but not loud, singing quality of tone, while the reiterated A flat in the accompaniment, which, throughout the whole work suggests the falling drops, must be at first vaguely hinted rather than distinctly struck. The middle part in chords should be commenced very softly with a whispering, mysterious tone, affecting the hearer like the first shadow of an approaching thunder cloud, or the presentiment of coming woe. Then the power should steadily increase—gradually, relentlessly, like the stealthy, irresistible rising of the dark cold tide about some chained victim in an ocean cave, where the light of day has never penetrated; mounting steadily—not rapidly—to the overwhelming climax of the reiterated octave B in the right hand.

In the repetition of this passage the same effect should be produced, with the climax still more intensified. Then let the power as gradually decrease, till at the return of the siren’s song it has sunk into pianissimo and the closing measure should fade away into silence, like the echo of dream bells.

I have dwelt at some length upon this prelude because it is the best known of the set; the most complete and, generally speaking, the most effective; and because, in connection with the suggestive quotation from George Sand, it will serve as a helpful illustration to the student in arriving at an intelligent comprehension of the others. But a few words in further elucidation of some of them may be in place.

The first, in somber, sonorous chords, expresses Chopin’s initial impressions of the stately, but half-ruined monastery in which he and his little party had found refuge, and the solemn thoughts called up by its decaying grandeur, its silent loneliness, its vast, gloomy, memory-haunted halls and cloisters.

The third represents an evening scene, with the setting sun kindling to crimson and gold the spires and picturesque whitewashed cottages of the village of Majorca, a mile away across the little bay, while the gentle breeze, like the sigh of departing day, brings the sound of silvery bells from the little village church ringing the vesper chimes.

The fifth and sixth embody the same mood, in an almost identically similar setting. They may be effectively combined into one picture of a dark, depressing, late autumnal day; a day of gray skies and leaden sea; of heavy, windless calm, the calm of exhaustion and utter weariness, with the low, sad rain dripping monotonously upon the roof like the tears of the gods for a dying world. In one, the melody expressing the element of human sorrow is in the soprano, plaintively, touchingly, sweetly pathetic. In the other, it is placed in the lower register of Chopin’s favorite orchestral instrument, the ’cello, which it reproduces, throbbing with a more passionate intensity, a more poignant pain. But in general character and treatment the two belong together.

No. 8 tells of the gay carol of the birds at dawn, floating in at the open windows of Chopin’s chamber. No. 17 is a rustic dance of the Majorcan peasants. No. 24, the last, is a graphic description of a tropical storm with the flash of lightning and the ominous roll of the thunder literally portrayed.

Space does not permit of a detailed analysis of all the numbers, but each has its special character and suggestive import, and is a picture of some episode or mood during that winter’s sojourn on Majorca.

Every dance, the waltz included, is based upon and adapted to some particular dance movement. All its effects, whether of melody, harmony, rhythm, or embellishment, are carefully calculated by the composer to meet the requirements of this special movement, to conform to and express its general character and be governed by its usual rate of speed. Each of these dance movements embodies in itself some peculiar quality or characteristic, such as stately grace in the minuet, martial pomp in the polonaise, impetuous vivacity in the galop, which the music must indicate and supplement. The Chopin waltzes are no exception to this rule. They are distinctly and preëminently waltzes; and though of course not for actual dance purposes, they are intended as idealized tone-pictures of the waltz, and of ball-room scenes and experiences.

The one in question, Op. 42 in A flat, is planned upon a broader scale, contains more variety, and taxes more thoroughly the resources of the accomplished pianist than any other work of Chopin in this vein. Its tender, floating melodies, bright, delicate passage work, and swinging, swaying rhythms are replete with all that eloquent, gliding grace, that arch coquetry, that passionate warmth of mood, which we so invariably associate with the festive scenes,

Lights sparkle, delicate draperies are afloat, like perfumed clouds, upon the languid air, bright eyes scintillate with mirth or soften with emotion, and

And yet throughout all there runs a half-hidden undertone that tells of deeper, sterner thought and far intenser feeling; that tells of dark forebodings, of distant alarms, of sudden trumpet calls; so that the work in its entirety cannot but seem to us the counterpart in music of that familiar, almost hackneyed, but immortal word-picture of Byron, describing the great ball on the eve of the battle of Waterloo, to whose thunderous music the fate of nations was reversed, like the steps of the dancers in a ball-room, and France changed monarchs as a lady shifts her partners.

The somber trio strain, about the middle of the composition, suggests to us “Brunswick’s fated chieftain,” who sat apart and watched the dancers and listened to the revelry with “Death’s prophetic ear.” Later, where the rhythmic pulsation of the waltz is abruptly and violently interrupted in the midst of its flowing cadences, by a strong emphasized G natural F, repeated twice by both hands in unison, we are forcibly reminded of the line—

After a moment of consternation and suspense, the waltz movement proceeds, appearing almost flippant by contrast, and seeming to say, like the verse which follows,

Lastly, the breathless, impetuous finale indicates the “hurrying to and fro,” the “mounting in hot haste,” and “marshalling in arms,” with which the dance broke up at midnight, as cavaliers rushed from the ball-room to the battlefield. Both Chopin, the greatest musician of Poland, and Mickiewicz, her greatest poet, were powerfully impressed by the personality and poetry of Lord Byron, and there is no doubt that our composer had the stanzas of the contemporaneous English writer in mind in the creation of this work.

The first duty of the performer in rendering this composition should be to suggest irresistibly to the listeners both the mood and movement of the waltz, and to force them to feel, as far as may be, the elastic swing of the rhythm and the warm, voluptuous mood of the music. The tone quality employed should constantly change to suit the contrasting colors of the different strains; now warmly lyric, now sparkling and vibrant, at times deeply somber, and again strikingly dramatic and declamatory.

As to tempo, I would caution the player against an extreme rate of speed. Remember that the usual waltz step is, approximately at least, our guide in choosing the proper movement. I am aware that many pianists, of the greatest skill and reputation, are guilty of the cardinal error of playing one of these beautiful poetic little compositions of Chopin’s at prestissimo tempo, so as to display their phenomenal finger dexterity at the expense of all musical and artistic truth; so fast, indeed, that even if the notes were all struck with accuracy, which is by no means always the case, its graceful rhythmic swing and all its melodic and harmonic effects are utterly lost, leaving nothing but an incoherent, formless, purposeless whirlwind of tone, as dry and unlovely as the eddies of dust in a September gale, suggesting neither the mood nor movement of a waltz.

In derivation and general significance the term nocturne coincides with our English word nocturnal. It is music appertaining to the night, a night piece, suited to and expressing its usually quiet, dreamful, pensive mood, and frequently portraying some nocturnal scene or episode. The name nocturne was originally used as synonymous with that of serenade, and they were virtually identical in character. But in later times it has come to have a much broader application, and to-day, though every serenade is of course a nocturne, all nocturnes are by no means serenades.

The serenade is a real or imaginary song of love, and presupposes a fair listener at a lattice window and a lover singing beneath the stars, to the accompaniment of a harp, mandolin, or guitar. The nocturne may legitimately embody any phase of human emotion or experience, or any aspect of inanimate nature, which can rationally be conceived of as appropriately emanating from or environed by nocturnal conditions.

It must not be supposed that this vein of composition was Chopin’s only or even his most important field of activity. To judge him exclusively by his nocturnes and waltzes is precisely like judging Shakespeare solely by his sonnets. But it was a vein in which, owing to his peculiarly poetic temperament and fertile imagination, he far excelled all other writers, no less in the quality than in the number and variety of his creations.

This perhaps is the easiest and certainly the best known of Chopin’s nocturnes. Scarcely a student but has played it at one time or another. In fact, it has been worn well-nigh to shreds; yet still retains its simple, tender charm, if approached in the proper spirit. It is replete with melodic beauty and warm harmonic coloring, and is an excellent study in tone-production and shading, as well as a model of symmetrical form. It was one of his early works, and the glow of first youth still lingers about it, in spite of its over-familiarity and much abuse. As a teaching-piece it sometimes surprises the weary teacher with a waft of unexpected freshness, like the fleeting odor from an old and much-used school-book in which violets have been pressed.

It is a pure lyric, a love-song without words, but to which a dreamily tender poetic text can easily be imagined and supplied; and the very evident suggestion of the harp or guitar in its accompanying chords facilitates the effort and brightens the poetic effect. So far as I can learn, it has no definite local background, either in fact or tradition; no special place or persons to which it refers. It is an abstract idea treated subjectively, the embodied emotional reflex of imaginary conditions. The scene is a garden—any garden, so it be beautiful, rich with the vivid luxuriance of the South, fragrant with the breath of sleeping flowers, with the South summer-night hanging fondly over it, and the summer stars glittering above. The melody is the song of the ideal troubadour, pouring out his heart to the night and his listening lady, while the accompanying chords are lightly swept from vibrant strings by the practised fingers of the minstrel. The cadenza at the close is intended as a mere delicate ripple of liquid brilliancy, as if the moon, suddenly breaking through a veil of evening mist, had flooded the scene with a rain of silvery radiance.

This nocturne, though one of Chopin’s most intrinsically beautiful compositions for the piano, is even more frequently heard upon the violin. It has been, for decades, a favorite lyric number with all the leading violinists of the world, and adapts itself admirably to the resources and peculiar character of this instrument.

For this there is an excellent reason, far other than mere chance. On a certain evening in the early thirties were assembled in an elegant Parisian salon a company of the musical and literary élite of the French capital, to meet several foreign celebrities and enjoy one of those rare opportunities for intellectual and artistic converse and companionship, of which we read with envious longing, but which are practically unknown in our busy, prosaic age.

There were present Chopin, Liszt, Mendelssohn, the latter then in Paris on a brief visit, besides many local musicians of note, including some of the professors of the Conservatoire, also George Sand, Heinrich Heine, Alfred De Musset, with some lesser literary lights, and a brilliant gathering of social leaders. It was an evening long to be remembered for the sparkling wit and repartee, flashed back and forth from these brilliant intellects, like the rays of light from the glittering jewels of the ladies, for the occasional bursts of glowing eloquence and poetic thought from the profounder minds, and especially for the music, which was plentiful and of the best.

It may have been on this very occasion that Rossini made his famous, but most unfriendly, hit at the expense of Liszt’s marvelous powers of improvisation, which he, Rossini, was inclined seemingly to doubt. Liszt was being pressed to play and to improvise, and Rossini called out across the room: “Yes, my friend, do improvise that beautiful thing that you improvised at Madam —’s last Friday, and at Lord So and So’s the week before.”

In the course of the evening a local violinist of prominence played for the company a new composition of his own, a sweet, long-sustained cantilena, with a more involved second movement in double stopping. When he had finished and the applause had subsided, one of the ladies was heard to remark, “What a pity that the piano is incapable of these effects! It is brilliant, dramatic, resourceful, what you will; but only the violin can stir the heart in that way.”

Chopin rose, bowing with one of his equivocal smiles, half-sad, half-playfully mocking, stepped to the piano and improvised this nocturne, a perfect reproduction of all the best violin effects, cantilena and all, including the double-stopping in the second theme, with a certain warmth and poetry added, which were all his own. Of course, it was afterward finished and perfected in detail, but in substance it was the same as the D flat nocturne which we all know so well and which the violinists, though most of them unconscious of the reason, have singled out as specially adapted to their instrument.

The player should keep the violin and its effects in mind in rendering it, the lingering, songful, string quality of tone in the melody, the smooth legato, the leisurely, well-rounded embellishments; and the tempo should never be hurried. It may be well to say, in this connection, that in these Chopin nocturnes, and in all other lyric compositions, the embellishments, grace-notes, and the like should be made to conform to the general mood and character of the rest of the music. Symmetry and fitting proportions are among the primal laws of all art.

In a Liszt rhapsody, a cadenza should flash like a rocket, but in a Chopin nocturne it should glide with easy, undulating grace, should float like a wind-blown ribbon, a fallen rose-leaf. Too often we hear the ornamental passages in a lyric played as if they were wholly irrelevant matter, dropped in there by accident out of some other entirely different compositions,—a bit of vain, noisy display in the midst of a poetic dream, breaking instead of enhancing its charm, utterly incongruous. Harmonize the embellishments with the subject! Fit the trimming to the fabric!

Although technically easy and thoroughly musical, this little work is strangely enough but little played. It is technically no harder than the Op. 9 referred to, though it requires more intensity and stronger contrasts in its treatment.

It is singular that a comparatively simple composition, of such intrinsic merit, by one of the great composers, comprising, as it does, so many attractive elements in such small compass, should be so little used. Possibly, to those not acquainted with its subject, the closing chords, with their sharp, almost painful contrast, and utter dissimilarity to the preceding movement, have seemed incongruous and unintelligible; but, when the theme and purpose of the whole are understood, it is seen in what a masterly manner, and with what simple material, Chopin has produced the most striking dramatic results.

The subject of this nocturne is the same as that of Robert Browning’s later poem, “In a Gondola”; an episode to be found in the annals of Venice, when, at the height of her pride and power, she was nominally a republic, but from the large legislative body elected exclusively from among the nobility, an inner, higher circle of forty was chosen, and they, in turn, selected from their number, by secret ballot, the mysterious, potent Council of Ten, gruesomely famous in history, who wielded the real power of the State, often for the darkest personal ends, the Doge being little more than a figure-head. Highest and most dreaded of all was the Council of Three, chosen from their own number by the Ten, by an ingenious system of secret ballot so perfect that only those selected knew on whom the choice had fallen, and they did not know each other’s identity. They met at night, in a secret chamber, in which the three tables and three chairs, and even the blocks of marble in the pavement of the floor were symbolically triangular. They entered at the fixed hour, by three separate doors, disguised in black masks and long black cloaks, conferred in whispers only, and their decrees, like those of the Greek Fates, were inexorable and inevitable. Veiled and shielded by mystery, they worked their awful will, from which there was no escape and no appeal.

The story runs that once a beautiful and high-spirited heiress, the daughter of a former Doge, and the special ward of the Council of Three, as the disposal of her hand and fortune was an important State matter, had the courage to brave their prohibition and secretly to welcome the suit and return the love of a young, gallant, but fortuneless knight, who risked his life to obtain their brief, stolen interviews, or to breathe his love in subdued but heart-stirring melody beneath her window. One night, when a great ball at the palace seemed to afford an opportunity for her to escape unnoticed, he came disguised as a gondolier, and for a few sweet moments they were alone together upon the moonlit water.

The first theme of this nocturne suggests the scene in the gondola, with its softly swaying motion as it feels the faint swell of the great sea’s distant heart-throb, while the melodic phrases embody the tender mood of the lovers as if in a sweet, low song. Browning expresses the mood in his opening lines:

The second theme is somewhat more intense, though still subdued. It tells of greater passion and also of deeper sadness, with an occasional passing thrill of suppressed terror. Browning sings it:

To which the lady answers:

The last measures of the lyric melody, full of lingering sweetness, are like the parting kiss. Then suddenly, brutally, with the G major chord against the crashing F’s in the bass, the voice of fate breaks the tender spell. Death enters with swift, heart-crushing tread, and his icy hand snatches his victim from the very arms of love; and the closing chords, brief, but impressive, voice the shock, the cry of anguish, and the swift sinking into black despair, which were the lady’s more bitter share in the tragedy. For too soon the time had passed. Their brief happiness had been saddened and softened to deeper, graver tenderness by the knowledge of impending danger, by the ever-recurrent cloud like the passing thought that Browning voices in the line:

They must return or be detected. Reluctantly he guides the boat back to the landing, and just in the moment of their farewell he is surprised, overpowered, and stabbed to death by waiting assassins, dying in her arms.

The closing of the nocturne as just described is, to my thinking, more dramatic, more realistic, and far stronger than the last lines of Browning’s poem:

Opus 37, No. 1, in G minor, was written during Chopin’s winter sojourn on the island of Majorca already described. On this occasion also the composer had been left alone to occupy himself with his piano, while his more active friends went for a sail on the bay. The sun had disappeared behind a western bank of cloud. The evening shadows were fast closing around him, filling with gloom and mystery the distant recesses of the vast, irregular apartment where he sat, and the columned cloister beyond, which led from the ruined refectory of the monastery to the chapel where the priests and abbots of ten centuries lay entombed. The ruins of a dead past were on every side. The silent presence of Death seemed all about him. He felt that, like the day, his life was swiftly declining, and the mood of the place and the hour was strong upon him. It found utterance in the sorrowfully beautiful, passionately pathetic first melody of this nocturne, with its falling minor phrases, like the cry of a deep but suppressed despair, and its somber, sobbing accompaniment, like the muffled moan of the surf on the adjacent beach. A precisely similar mood is powerfully expressed in Tennyson’s poem “Break, break, break,” especially in the closing lines,

Suddenly, in the midst of his melancholy reveries, Chopin was seized by one of those deceptive visions, so frequent at that time. The shadowy forms of a procession of dead monks seemed to emerge from beneath the obscure arches of the refectory, in a slow funeral march along the cloister behind him to the chapel, where their evening services were formerly held, solemnly chanting as they passed their Santo Dio. This impressive chant, as if sung by a chorus of subdued male voices, is realistically reproduced in the middle movement of the nocturne. The very words Santo Dio are distinctly suggested by each little phrase of four consecutive chords.

When the monks have vanished, and their voices have died away in the distance beneath the echoing vault of the chapel, Chopin recovers himself with a shudder and resumes his sad dreaming, symbolized by a return of the first melody. But just at its close the sun sinks below the western bank, its last rays gleam for a moment on the white sail of the boat just rounding up to the landing. His friends return. His lonely brooding is cheerfully interrupted. His mood brightens and the nocturne ends with an exquisite transition to the major key.

The player should strive in this work for a somber intensity of tone, and should render each phrase of the melody as if the pain expressed were his own, making the undertone of the sobbing sea distinctly apparent in the accompanying chords. In the middle movement, where the monks’ chant is introduced, the imitation of a muffled chorus of male voices should be made deceptively realistic. All the notes of each chord must be pressed, not struck, with a firm but elastic touch, and exactly simultaneously; and each little quadruplet of chords must rise and fall in power, so accented as to enunciate the words Santo Dio. This is at once the saddest, the deepest, and the most descriptive, while technically the easiest, of all the Chopin nocturnes.