Chopin and the Ghost of Beethoven

Chopin and the Ghost of BeethovenAuthor(s): Wayne C. PettySource: 19th-Century Music, Vol. 22, No. 3 (Spring, 1999), pp. 281-299Published by: University of California PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/746802Accessed: 25/07/2010 22:37

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available athttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unlessyou have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and youmay use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.

Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained athttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucal.

Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printedpage of such transmission.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

University of California Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to 19th-Century Music.

http://www.jstor.org

Chopin and the Ghost of Beethoven WAYNE C. PETTY

Of all the composers of his generation, Chopin is the one usually regarded as least influenced by Beethoven. The notion that Chopin remained aloof from Beethoven, although it surely arose from genuine differences between the two composers, still owes much of its endurance to critical practice. Perhaps unwittingly, critics have tended to mythologize these two composers in opposing ways: Beethoven, the heroic figure larger than life; Chopin, more the anti- hero, a creature too fine for this cruel world. The "life and works" genre of criticism rein- forces a similar separation as it narrates the historical record on Beethoven into three peri- ods but that on Chopin into styles and genres,

often relegating to one small chapter the influence of Austro-German traditions on Chopin's music. In addition, there is the related tendency to regard influence as manifested princi- pally by continuities of styles and materials, a tendency that has led critics to estimate the influence on Chopin of a charming Field, or shallow Moscheles over that of such a tower- ing figure as Beethoven.' Of these critical hab- its, the last is certainly the most pernicious. We are fortunate, therefore, to see new models of influence emerging; in particular I have in mind Kevin Korsyn's innovative work that en- gages Harold Bloom's theories of poetry and Mikhail Bahktin's theories of dialogism in lan-

19th-Century Music XXII/3 (Spring 1999). ? by The Re- gents of the University of California.

I am grateful to Kevin Korsyn, Andrew Mead, and Janet Schmalfeldt for their helpful comments during the prepa- ration of this article.

'See, for example, Gerald Abraham's book Chopin's Musi- cal Style (London, 1939), which discusses the influence of Bach, Bellini, Elsner, Field, Hummel, Kalkbrenner, Moscheles, Mozart, Polish folk music, Rossini, Schubert, Spohr, and Weber, but dismisses Beethoven as an influence on Chopin (p. ix).

281

19TH CENTURY

MUSIC guage.2 In addition, we are confronted with Jef- frey Kallberg's and Jim Samson's new work on Chopin reception, which has begun to expose many of the ideological structures that have informed the myth-building around Chopin.3 The time is right, then, to reassess Beethoven's influence on Chopin.

Any judgment of Beethoven's influence on Chopin will be complicated by the inconclu- sive nature of the available evidence. Two com- monly held views must be confronted at the outset: that, so far as we can prove, Chopin knew only a handful of Beethoven's works; and that those few works he did know did not suit his taste. The first claim will always be a problem for scholars, because we can never be certain of all the Beethoven music that Chopin encountered in his rich musical life.4 Here is it useful to recall that Chopin, around age twenty, made two trips to Vienna: a brief one for three weeks in 1829, then another in late 1830 that turned into an eight-month stay immediately preceding his move to Paris. During these peri- ods Chopin immersed himself in the musical life of the Austrian capital and associated with many persons who had been close to Beethoven.5 It is difficult to imagine that such

a supremely gifted young pianist-composer as Chopin could have moved in these circles without encountering a good deal more Beethoven than those few works that are documented. Consider, for instance, the following anecdote by Charles Hall6: "One day, long after I had emerged from my retirement and achieved some notoriety as a pianist, I played at [Chopin's] request, in his own room, the Sonata in Eb, op. 31, no. 3, and after the finale he said that it was the first time he had liked it, that it had always appeared to him very vulgar. I felt flattered, but was much struck by the oddity of the remark."6 What tends to attract our attention in this anecdote is Chopin's description of a Beethoven sonata as "vulgar." Equally striking, though, is the casualness of the remark, that "it had always appeared to him" that way. It is apparent that Chopin had known the Sonata for a long time. Yet this should hardly come as a surprise: Chopin lived his entire adult life in the com- pany of pianists, always in cities with a vibrant concert life and well-stocked music stores that carried the latest music. He could visit Maurice Schlesinger's in Paris, for example, and pur- chase a vocal score of Beethoven's Fidelio for his pupil Carl Filtsch; he could send his former teacher Elsner another recent Schlesinger publication, F6tis's Etudes de Beethoven, complete with dedication.7 These events remind us that Beethoven must have been a routine part of Chopin's world, and they suggest that the documentary record concerning Chopin's awareness of Beethoven's music must be irretrievably incomplete.

The second problem, that Chopin allegedly found much of Beethoven's music distasteful, is suggested not only by Hall6's anecdote about op. 31, no. 3, but also by other reports, including one from the painter Delacroix, who recorded Chopin drawing a negative contrast be-

2Kevin Korsyn, "Towards a New Poetics of Musical Influ- ence," Music Analysis 10/1-2 (1991), 3-72, and "Direc- tional Tonality and Intertextuality: Brahms's Quintet op. 88 and Chopin's Ballade op. 38," in The Second Practice of Nineteenth-Century Tonality, ed. William Kinderman and Harald Krebs (Lincoln, Neb., 1996), pp. 45-83. Both articles deal with Chopin in original and provocative ways. 3Jeffrey Kallberg, "The Harmony of the Tea Table: Gender and Ideology in the Piano Nocturne," and "Small Fairy Voices: Sex, History, and Meaning in Chopin," in Chopin at the Boundaries: Sex, History, and Musical Genre (Cam- bridge, Mass., 1996), pp. 30-61 and 62-86. Jim Samson, "Chopin Reception: Theory, History, Analysis," in Chopin Studies 2, ed. John Rink and Jim Samson (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 1-17. 4Chopin's students testified to his teaching and playing of Beethoven's concertos and several piano sonatas, including op. 14, no. 2; op. 26; op. 27, no. 2; op. 31, no. 2; and op. 57. See Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger, Chopin: Pianist and Teacher, trans. Naomi Shohet et al., ed. Roy Howat (Cam- bridge, 1986), pp. 62, 116, 137, 138, 277-78. SThese persons included Carl Czerny, Count Moritz Lichnowski, the Malfattis, Ignaz von Seyfried, the publishers Tobias Haslinger and Anton Diabelli, and, appar- ently, Anton Schindler. Chopin's visits to Vienna are documented by Frederick Niecks in Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician (3rd edn. London, 1902), I, 93-107 and 176-95; see also Jim Samson, Chopin (Oxford, 1996), pp. 70-78, and Eigeldinger, Chopin, p. 292.

6C. E. Halle and Marie Halle, Life and Letters of Sir Charles Halle Being an Autobiography (1819-1860) with Corre- spondence and Diaries (London, 1896), p. 35, cited in Eigeldinger, Chopin, p. 138. 7Eigeldinger, Chopin, p. 142. The Book of the First Inter- national Musicological Congress Devoted to the Works of Frederick Chopin, ed. Zofia Lissa (Warsaw, 1963), plate 13 at p. 416.

282

tween Beethoven and Mozart.8 But these reports need to be carefully assessed. It is doubt- ful, for one thing, that Chopin would have given Carl Filtsch the Fidelio score if he had regarded Beethoven as a corrupting influence. Nor is a guarded attitude toward an important precur- sor necessarily a sign of a lack of influence. Rather, Chopin seems to have been careful to maintain some critical distance from Beethoven, which is hardly the same thing as freedom from influence. Consider Wilhelm von Lenz's ac- count of Chopin playing the variation movement from Beethoven's op. 26, a work that Chopin gave more than one of his students to play:

Chopin had been called on to play Beethoven's sonata (the variation movement). How then did Chopin play Beethoven's op. 26? He played it beautifully, but not as beautifully as his own compositions; not seizing it, not in relief, not like a story whose sus- pense is heightened from one variation to the next. His mezza voce was whispered, but he was unri- valled in the cantilena, with an infinite perfection in the continuity of structure: ideally beautiful, but feminine! Beethoven is a man, and never ceases to be so! . . . As we drove back together, I was quite honest when he asked my opinion. "I indicate," (j'indique) he replied, without a trace of touchiness, "it's up to the listener to complete (parachever) the picture. "9

This report appears to suggest something of the same guarded attitude toward Beethoven. Here it seems that Chopin, when called on to assume a Beethovenian pose, took satisfaction in playing those variations but did not fully immerse himself in them-a distancing in which Lenz heard a feminizing impulse. Chopin's reply, "j'indique . . ," suggested the matter was not up for discussion. This interpretation of the anecdote would be consistent with our awareness of the ambivalent stance that great artists often adopt toward their precursors, a need, so richly elaborated in the work

of Harold Bloom, for artists to guard against influence. In short, the claim that Chopin is known to have expressed cool reservations about much of Beethoven's music would prove little one way or another about the role of Beethoven in his creative life.

The need to resist influence might also ac- count for Chopin's refusal to publish the one work that he did model directly on Beethoven: the Fantaisie-Impromptu, op. 66, composed in 1834 but published posthumously, against the composer's wishes. In an article written in 1947 that remains the most important case study of Beethoven's effect on Chopin, Ernst Oster sought to demonstrate that Chopin modeled the Fantaisie-Impromptu on Beethoven's C#- Minor Piano Sonata, op. 27, no. 2 (the "Moon- light"). Oster concluded that Chopin had not published the Fantaisie-Impromptu because the composer did not regard it as a sufficiently original piece: "To him it was not an authentic, not an independently wrought composition."'0 Those persuaded by Oster's arguments might easily read the story of the Fantaisie- Impromptu as revealing not only Chopin's deep understanding of Beethoven's music, but also his keen sensitivity to what distinguishes a work that is strongly original from one that is not.

Here I shall argue that Chopin's most serious engagement with Beethoven's music appears not in the Fantaisie-Impromptu, but rather in the Bb-Minor Sonata, op. 35, completed in 1839. During Chopin's earlier Paris years, Beethoven had been a presence largely through his absence. After Chopin settled in the French capital in 1831, the new works that he wrote were almost entirely in genres that kept a safe distance from the Viennese master. Mazurka, polonaise, nocturne, prelude, 6tude, ballade, the independent scherzo-not only were these genres closely tied to Chopin's identity as Pol- ish patriot and virtuoso pianist, they were also genres in which Beethoven had provided no

WAYNE C. PETTY Chopin and Beethoven

8Diary entry, 7 April 1849, in Journal de Eugene Delacroix (Paris, 1932), I, 283-85. 9Lenz, Die Grossen Pianoforte-Virtuosen unserer Zeit aus pers6nlicher Bekanntschaft: Liszt-Chopin-Tausig-- Henselt (Berlin, 1872), p. 39; cited in Eigeldinger, Chopin, pp. 277-78.

'0Ernst Oster, "The Fantaisie-Impromptu: A Tribute to Beethoven," in Aspects of Schenkerian Theory, ed. David Beach (New Haven, 1983), pp. 189-207, 205.

283

19TH CENTURY

MUSIC significant examples." The piano sonata, however, was a genre in which Beethoven's examples could not be ignored. If Chopin was to write in this genre, he would need come to terms with Beethoven, whose achievements would have to be acknowledged and absorbed-- but also resisted. When Chopin did write his first piano sonata for publication, the Bb-mi- nor, he would show that he had indeed come to terms with Beethoven. In this work Chopin stages a separation ritual from Beethoven, finding his own voice in response to Beetho- ven's, and thereby inscribing himself into the history of one of music's most prestigious genres. Chopin's implicit critique of Beethoven is so merciless that even Schumann could not face it; yet it is also deeply humane and ultimately ironizes even itself, making this work a fertile ground for considering what it meant to Chopin to be an artist living in a world haunted by the ghost of Beethoven.

II The main outlines of the Bt-Minor Sonata's

composition history are well known. Chopin wrote the Funeral March first, in 1837, later adding the remaining movements; he completed the work in 1839, and the usual three editions (French, German, and English) were published the following year.12 To my knowledge no one has firmly established why Chopin added the three movements to make a sonata. But one reason may have been the dissemination of his early C-Minor Sonata in Vienna around this time. The Viennese publisher Tobias Haslinger had received this work on a visit from the young Chopin in 1829, had agreed to publish it, and

then had later changed his mind. Haslinger kept the manuscript, however, and by 1839-new works by Chopin were now much in demand- he decided to have it engraved for publication. Chopin no longer wanted the old work published, but the matter was out of his hands: it had been engraved and was already beginning to circulate. In August 1839 Chopin wrote to Julian Fontana, "My father has written to say that my old sonata has been published by Haslinger and that the German critics praise it"; in the same letter Chopin mentioned that he had been composing the Bb-Minor Sonata and described each of its four movements.13 Haslinger's actions could only have increased any pressure the composer was already feeling to publish a piano sonata. With an early work beginning to circulate, Chopin would be judged against tradition, including Beethoven, on the basis of a student composition. Keenly aware of the importance of critical reception for a composer's reputation and career, he could ill afford to have that piece become his only essay in the genre. And it probably would not go too far to speculate that Chopin may have taken satisfaction in blocking the sales of a work that Haslinger had originally obtained without cost.14

Whatever might have spurred Chopin to compose the Bb-Minor Sonata, Beethoven would become the central presence in this new work. Many experienced musicians seem to have felt a Beethovenian presence in this sonata, but no one has really explored it in sufficient depth. Studies of Chopin's sonata have tended to men- tion Beethoven only indirectly, usually by mea- suring Chopin's work according to the stan- dards of Austro-German traditions of sonata composition (with Beethoven as the standard- bearer), or by comparing the slow movement

"Beethoven's Polonaise, op. 89, is really a rondo alla Polacca and would not in any case have discouraged Chopin from composing his own polonaises. Chopin did publish works in Beethovenian genres during this period, including the two concertos, but these works had been written before Chopin left Warsaw. 120n the composition and publication dates of Chopin's op. 35, see Krystyna Kobylafiska, Frederic Chopin: Thematisch-bibliographisches Werkverzeichnis (Munich, 1979), p. 85. See also the source commentary to the Na- tional Edition of the Works of Fryderyk Chopin: Sonatas, ed. Jan Ekier and Pawel Kamiriski (Cracow, 1995). Accord- ing to Ekier and Kamifiski, the changes that Chopin en- tered in subsequent impressions of the original French edition included a change in the title of the third movement from Marche funebre to simply Marche.

'3Letter to Fontana, 8 August 1839, in Selected Correspon- dence of Fryderyk Chopin, trans. and ed. Arthur Hedley (London, 1962), pp. 180-82. On Haslinger's original receipt of the C-Minor Sonata, see Samson, Chopin, p. 25. Haslinger would eventually send Chopin the proofs to the C-Minor Sonata, but Chopin refused to authorize the publication. Exactly when Chopin received these proofs cannot be determined from the composer's other letters, but by August 1839 he had to know that the work had been engraved. 14Chopin's often contentious dealings with his publishers are richly documented in Kallberg, "Chopin in the Mar- ketplace" in Chopin at the Boundaries, pp. 161-214.

284

with that of Beethoven's "Funeral March" So- nata, op. 26, a work that Chopin played and taught, or by asserting an overgeneralized sense that the first movement relies on certain Beethovenian procedures.15 Instead, analysts have been largely concerned with the Sonata's "unity," an issue first raised in Robert Schumann's famous 1841 review of the piece.16

"Schumann's reaction," as Charles Rosen puts it, "sets the pattern for most later criticism of Chopin: an acknowledgment of imagi- native power along with an assertion of techni- cal limitations."17 Schumann found Chopin's title "Sonata" capricious and slightly presump- tuous, for Chopin "simply gathered up four of his most unruly children, using this title perhaps to smuggle them into places where they could not otherwise have penetrated."'8 In today's climate a critic might take Schumann's review as an invitation to explore what in the Chopin sonata might have troubled Schumann, what might have led him to choose a metaphor of concealment, or what might have resisted the work's perception as a coherent aesthetic object. One might even ask whether this review reflects Schumann's own anxiety toward Chopin's mastering the intimidating task of composing in the sonata tradition. But analysts have tended to read Schumann in light of their own concerns with unity, turning this small part of his review into a charge to be either confirmed or refuted. Studies by Rudolph R6ti,

Alan Walker, and most recently Anatole Leikin have argued on behalf of this unity, chiefly by demonstrating thematic connections among the movements.19 These studies have had the salu- tary effect of encouraging a close reading of Chopin's Sonata, and they have disclosed many such thematic relations, some of them promis- ing. But for all their diligence these authors have done little to answer Schumann's implication that the Chopin sonata does not cohere. Rather than refuting Schumann, they ironically support his view by showing that the movements share certain outward features-that Chopin's four unruly children all have his blue- gray eyes, or that they inherited the composer's legendary souplesse.

Jim Samson has recently suggested a way past this approach, one that might help us re- cover some of the wider context in which the Sonata op. 35 was written and received. Al- though Samson largely accepts the transmovemental thematic connections (at the same de- claring himself a skeptic), he advocates a "generic approach" to this sonata. He argues, for instance, that Chopin embeds nocturnes, or nocturne-like sections within each of the sonata's first three movements. In neither the scherzo nor the Funeral March, however, "does the central song feel like an outgrowth of the flanking sections. It remains remote from them, strengthening our impression of a series of con- trasted, relatively self-contained musical worlds juxtaposed rather than smoothly joined.""20 A genre-based approach to the sonata is promis- ing, I think, because it opens a path toward a dynamic field of musical discourse, including Beethoven's. As Jeffrey Kallberg has argued, genre situates a work in social contexts by es- tablishing a kind of contract between compos-


"For a summary of the literature on Chopin's BM-Minor Sonata, see Samson, The Music of Chopin (London, 1985), pp. 129-33. On Chopin's engagements with Beethoven's op. 26, see Eigeldinger, Chopin, pp. 59, 61, and 277-78. Comparisons of the thematic development in the first movement of the Chopin sonata to Beethoven's practice have occasionally been traced; see, for example, Janusz Dobrowolski, "Do Zagadnienia Wplywu Klasyk6w na Chopina" (The Question of the Influence of the Classical Composers on Chopin) in F. F. Chopin, ed. Zofia Lissa (Warsaw, 1960), pp. 124-32. '16Robert Schumann, "Neue Sonaten fiur das Pianoforte," in Gesammelte Schriften fiber Musik und Musiker (3rd edn. Leipzig, 1875), II, 205-07. '7Charles Rosen, The Romantic Generation (Cambridge, Mass., 1995), p. 284. 8"1Daf? er es 'Sonate' nannte, m6chte man eher eine Ca- price heifen, wenn nicht einen Uebermuth, daf? er gerade vier seiner tollsten Kinder zusammenkoppelte, sie unter diesem Namen vielleicht an Orte einzuschwirzen, wohin sie sonst nicht gedrungen wiren" (Schumann, "Neue Sonaten," p. 205).

'9Rudolph Reti, The Thematic Process in Music (New York, 1951), pp. 298-310; Alan Walker, "Chopin and Musical Structure," in Frideric Chopin: Profiles of the Man and the Musician, ed. Alan Walker (London, 1966), pp. 239-49; Anatole Leikin, "The Sonatas," in The Cambridge Com- panion to Chopin, ed. Jim Samson (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 160-75. 20Samson, Chopin, p. 211.

285

19TH CENTURY

MUSIC ers and listeners.2' And genres, as Kevin Korsyn has reminded us, refer outside themselves to the world of prior discourse; by reading generic codes in an intertextual space, analysts may view works as relational events, as responses to the otherness of prior works.22 Samson's idea that the Funeral March harbors a nocturne would be an interesting possibility, for the nocturne, besides being one of the genres most closely identified with Chopin, was for some listeners also feminized, suggesting its possible use to create distance from an authoritative discourse.23 The gendered nocturne-if that is how Chopin himself heard it-could become one means for the composer to communicate identity and otherness that are necessary elements of any situation involving influence. These approaches need not deny that the four movements of the sonata form some kind of unified whole. But they can also give us a way to expand the horizon of signification to em- brace a broader range of potential meanings in the work. For now, these ideas on genre must remain somewhat abstract, however; only a sustained reading of the Chopin sonata can tell us how genre, in combination with other musical factors, might help the work simultaneously absorb and resist Beethoven's influence.

In what follows I shall first be concerned, in section III, with one transmovemental connection that I find especially convincing, partly because it also contains allusions to Beethoven. In section IV, I shall consider some of the compositional problems this connection raises for the Sonata op. 35, especially for the Funeral March, and investigate how the composer ad- dresses them. This reading will allow us to explore, in section V, how Chopin, having staged

the march as a kind of death ritual, went on to situate his own voice in the trio as a commentary and remembrance. And finally, in section VI, I shall consider some of the implications of these compositional ideas for recovering potential meanings embodied by the sonata as a whole-such as what it might have meant for Chopin to be an artist engaged with the world. I do not say "engaged with his world," for my project is not intended, nor should it be taken, as primarily an effort to reclaim past meanings by tracing the Chopin sonata to any particular source or group of sources, even if the presence of quotation and allusion will necessarily draw us to specific works and genres. Instead, by stressing equally the antithetical side of influence, I hope to suggest how Beethoven is both a presence and an absence in the Chopin sonata, how Chopin could join a wider human enter- prise that includes the achievements of others, yet also remain an individual-in short, what allows the work to speak, as if with a living voice, to us as artists engaged with our worlds. It is with this aim in mind that we now move to a closer reading of the piece itself.

III If drawing thematic parallels between move-

ments does nothing by itself to prove the "unity" of a work, that does not mean that all such resemblances need be rejected out of hand. One such connection in the Chopin sonata is enormously suggestive: that between the opening of the first movement and the beginning of the Funeral March. Several authors have noted a similarity between these two openings; many have also recognized that Chopin wrote the remaining movements around the Funeral March; but they satisfy themselves prematurely when they find unity only in uniformity. In reexamining the openings of these two movements, we find more than just thematic resem- blance: a tonal progression connects these openings, of which the resemblances are more a sign than an actual cause.24

21Kallberg, "The Rhetoric of Genre: Chopin's Nocturne in G Minor," in Chopin at the Boundaries, p. 5; Kallberg draws on the work of Philippe Lejeune, Le Pacte Autobiographique (Paris, 1975); and Heather Dubrow, Genre, The Critical Idiom, vol. 42 (London, 1982), pp. 31- 37. 22Korsyn touches on the intertextual implications of genre in his review of Wordless Rhetoric, by Mark Evan Bonds, Music Theory Spectrum 16 (1994), 132. On reading works as responses to the otherness of prior works, see his "To- wards a New Poetics of Musical Influence," esp. pp. 12- 15. 2-30n the gendering of the nocturne, see Kallberg, "The Harmony of the Tea Table."

240n the need for identifying a progression from one movement to the next rather than mere resemblances among movements, see my "Cyclic Integration in Haydn's Eb Pi- ano Sonata Hob. XVI:38," Theory and Practice 19 (1994), 31-33.

286

interrupted cadence

D6,

C I DV Grave Doppio movimento

f

D6

AiIiagitato

basic idea of agitato theme

Example 1: Chopin, Sonata op. 35, movt. I, opening.


Chopin's Grave opens the sonata with a move toward closure that the composer boldly inter- rupts (ex. 1).25 The Grave begins off the tonic, on a leading-tone diminished seventh to the dominant, which passes through an apparent C#-minor six-three to a cadential dominant that accompanies the falling top voice Db-C (3-2), preparing a cadence on B6; at the doppio movimento the dominant harmony resolves to the tonic, but a rest in the top voice suppresses closure on B6 (1) in the melody, yielding an interrupted cadence.26 The accompaniment of

the doppio movimento picks up the first melodic note of this failed closing gesture, D6, then the agitato theme takes up the D6 in the higher octave. This new theme reminds us almost obsessively of the failed cadence by repeatedly composing out the space between tonic (1) and mediant (3), always with the emphasis on the mediant. Chopin thus builds into the basic idea of his agitato theme all the energies and implications of the failed cadence out of which that basic idea directly grows-hence its anxious character.27

The potency of this opening gesture makes us listen for that missing cadence, but nowhere in the first movement do we ever hear it. Only much later, at the beginning of the Funeral March, does Chopin supply the specific tonic chord suppressed when the doppio movimento interrupted melodic closure. The missing chord

21The musical examples in this article follow the National Edition (see n. 12 above), itself based on the fifth impression of the original French edition. Notes in parentheses appear in some sources but not in others; fingerings in parentheses originate with the composer. 26I regard the C#-minor 6 as "apparent" because the chord with that spelling functions as the dissonant linear chord E-G#-Dk. This reading rests on the assumption that a sen- sitive listener will construe the opening interval as a diminished seventh, contradicted only momentarily, if at all, by the apparent six-three. (The Grave might call for a somewhat different interpretation if it is repeated following the exposition.) The term "interrupted cadence" refers in this instance to the resolution of a cadential dominant without melodic closure in the top voice. This dominant differs from that which typically closes a slow introduction; the latter would be what Schenker termed a dividing dominant, not a cadential dominant.

27I take the term "basic idea" from the work of William E. Caplin, who uses it something in the manner of Schoenberg's Grundgestalt, as "an initiating function con- sisting of a two-measure idea that usually contains several melodic or rhythmic motives constituting the primary material of a theme." See Caplin, Classical Form: A Theory of Formal Functions for the Instrumental Music of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven (New York, 1998), pp. 37 and 264.

287

19TH CENTURY

MUSIC Bb MARCHE

Lento 1 (3)

basic idea of the March (compare to Grave)

Example 2: Funeral March, opening.

MARCHE Grave Lento

cadence

Example 3: Grave and Funeral March, openings conjoined.

appears, in register, at the beginning of the march (ex. 2). To strengthen a feeling of closure, Chopin repeats the tonic pitch several times at the beginning of the march, support- ing it with heavy chords underneath. When the march theme does finally present its own basic idea, in mm. 3-4, this new idea recalls the falling line from the Grave, again in the same register, reminding us of the interrupted cadence. In the Funeral March, though, the emphasis lies on the tonic (1), not the mediant. In a gesture that the march will reenact many times, the tonic pitch drags the melody down, like a weighty sigh, as though the melody can barely muster the strength to rise above the tonic's oppressive gravity. Thus the Grave presents a thwarted closing impulse realized only by the first chord of the march; the thematic reference confirms the relationship, making it audible.

This transmovemental progression suggests, among other things, that the beginning of the Funeral March is no "beginning" at all, at least not in a conventional sense; rather, the Funeral March opens by projecting an overwhelming sense of ending. Chopin uses the most potent musical sign of closure-the perfect authentic

cadence-across movements to convey a sense that the Funeral March begins at the end. Ex- ample 3 makes this connection directly audible. Note that the first measure of the march even uses a generic convention (1 repeated in the rhythm ; J) that funeral marches typically reserve for phrase endings, following a cadence, not beginnings.28 One can sense at the beginning of the Funeral March, then, that somehow the events in the tonal life of the piece have come to an end: the tonic triad has reached its final resting place. Just as the Fu- neral March evokes an image of death, so this image finds its counterpart in a specifically musical gesture: the perfect authentic cadence, signaling by convention "the end has arrived."

This connection must be defended further on musical grounds, but first we must explore another crucial feature common to both the

28For relevant examples, see the first tonic cadence in the Funeral March to Beethoven's Third Symphony, op. 55, m. 8; the Funeral March from his Piano Sonata, op. 26, m. 8 (without the dotted rhythm); and Chopin's own early C- Minor Funeral March, op. 72, no. 2, m. 10. Chopin's own piece shows that the composer was familiar with this convention.

288

Maestoso

r. W ..M...

tf sf s~f cr- p

, , ?;-- ? k

f

Example 4: Beethoven, op. 111, movt. I, opening.


Grave and the Funeral March. Both allude to Beethoven. Chopin begins the sonata with a conspicuous reference to the opening of Beethoven's Piano Sonata in C Minor, op. 111 (ex. 4).29 Beethoven had also begun with an unaccompanied diminished-seventh leap in oc- taves, resolving it as a leading-tone diminished seventh to the dominant. But while Beethoven's opening develops into a long introduction, Chopin's Grave plunges into the doppio movimento by way of the interrupted cadence. Chopin could thus invoke Beethoven as an ori- gin, taking Beethoven as his starting point, yet curtail the discourse of his predecessor by in- terrupting it, thereby allowing himself symbolically to invent a new future for Beethoven. That gesture inscribes Beethoven implicitly into all that follows-especially the Funeral March, which will later pick up where the Grave left off. We may now read the Funeral March as a second allusion to Beethoven (probably to his op. 26) rather than simply an evocation of a generic type of funeral music with which both he and Beethoven were in dialogue (though it is that too). Conjoining these two Beethoven allusions into a cadence now gains a potent symbolic force. Chopin, having interrupted Beethoven and rewritten him, brings him back at a moment of tonal closure, as if to signal that Beethoven's discourse has reached an endpoint. Chopin thus enacts a kind of death scene, the first allusion in the Grave imagining Beethoven as a living force to be contended with, the second, in the Funeral March, putting him to rest.

This symbolic enactment of a death scene involving Beethoven may have been what Schumann found so disturbing in Chopin's sonata.30o We should be interested in what Schumann had to say-and just as important, what he might have been expected to say but did not-for Schumann, besides being himself a master composer who was confronting many of the same issues as Chopin, was also a critic who listened for allusions to other composers in new works and discussed them along with questions of influence and originality in his reviews. One would surely expect him to remark on Beethoven's presence in this new Chopin sonata. But when confronted with these bold allusions to Beethoven, Schumann averts his gaze. He states flatly, "Chopin no longer writes anything one can find in other composers; he is true to himself, and with good reason." Just as odd, when Schumann does men- tion Beethoven, it is only in relation to the title scherzo ("a scherzo in name only, like many of Beethoven's"). As if to deflect attention from Beethoven even further, Schumann devotes a good deal of space to Bellini's influence in his discussion of the first movement, though here again Beethoven was the more obvious choice. Schumann's oddly squeamish manner of treat- ing these allusions, barely mentioning Beethoven at all, and then only in contexts where Beethoven's influence seems least in evidence, suggests that Schumann might have heard something very troubling here that he could not bring himself to utter; at the very least he was not prepared to discuss it openly. It is possible, of course, that Schumann missed these allusions, but other phrases in his review

29This allusion to Beethoven's op. 111 has not gone unno- ticed. At least one person has mentioned it in print; see James Huneker's preface to the Schirmer edn. of Chopin Sonatas, ed. Carl Mikuli (New York, 1895).

30Here I will draw freely from the Schumann review, "Neue Sonaten," without citing passages individually.

289

19TH CENTURY

MUSIC suggest that he had indeed heard them. The one passage from the Chopin work that he quotes in musical score is the opening of the first movement, with its pointed reference to Beethoven; later he finds in this movement a "defiant originality." And his description of the Funeral March as "repulsive" would certainly be consistent with his perceiving death here, not as an abstract principle easily treated with relative dispassion, but rather in relation specifically to Beethoven, where a death scene might well arouse feelings of disgust. But whatever Schumann may have thought, we need not adopt his view that the Funeral March is "repulsive." We could read the death scene more symbolically, as a ritual that Chopin enacts to make the ultimate separation between himself and Beethoven. This scene, though it might seem violent or disgusting, allowed Chopin to affirm his own identity against Beethoven's.

This connection to Beethoven's op. 111, vi- tal though it is, must remain partly conjec- tural; no documentary evidence of which I am aware proves that Chopin knew Beethoven's last piano sonata. But this conjecture is sup- ported by strong circumstantial evidence. Chopin's main publisher in Paris, Maurice Schlesinger, also published original French editions of Beethoven's last two piano sonatas: op. 110 (1822) and op. 111 (1823). Chopin could have had ready access to op. 111 through his dealings with Schlesinger. Strong internal evidence in Chopin's music also supports this claim. As Korsyn has shown, two other of Chopin's most serious and ambitious works also allude to op. 111. The coda to the "Revolu- tionary" ttude, op. 10, no. 12, presents a reference to the coda of the first movement of op. 111; and Chopin's Polonaise-Fantaisie, op. 61, positions in its central section a long triple trill on the dominant of the flat mediant, just as Beethoven had done in the central episode of the Arietta in op. 111.31 So close are these allu-

sions that they all border on quotation; more- over, they appear at analogous points in each piece, with very similar effects. The meanings of these references may not be the same for each of these works, but taken as a group, this series of allusions makes Chopin's familiarity with op. 111 a virtual certainty. These claims do need to be weighed, of course, against Lenz's view that Chopin was unaware of Beethoven's last works;32 but in the case of Beethoven and Chopin, internal evidence must play a central role because the record of "hard" documentary evidence is so obviously incomplete. These three allusions to op. 111 and the preoccupa- tion with Beethoven's last sonata that they ex- hibit cannot easily be discounted.

IV The transmovemental progression from the

Grave to the Funeral March may be suggestive, but it needs further musical support. Here two related questions must be addressed. First, if the opening chord of the Funeral March completes the interrupted cadence from the first movement, how does Chopin manage to defer closure throughout all the intervening music? And second, if the opening chord of the Funeral March does signal a cadence, how does Chopin design the rest of the Funeral March to sustain the idea that the music has, in some sense, already reached an endpoint? The artistic problem for Chopin, I think, was to forge this long- range connection while still respecting the in- tegrity of each movement-that is, without re- sorting to facile recalls of earlier music.

To see how Chopin defers completing the interrupted cadence from the Grave to the beginning of the Funeral March, a descriptive ac- count of the formal and tonal plans of the first movement and scherzo will suffice. In the first movement, Chopin designs the first group as a large antecedent, to which the consequent becomes the modulating transition, assuring that there will be no tonic cadence in the exposition. He then leads the development section to a recapitulation of only the second group, now in the tonic major. The second group will pro- 31Korsyn, "Compositional Techniques in the Late Works of Beethoven," lectures in Yale College, February 1980.

Korsyn's lectures on op. 111 ranged widely, from historical precedents in Bach, Mozart, and earlier Beethoven, to the sonata itself, to its influences on Beethoven's own "Diabelli" Variations and on Chopin. This material, much of it highly original, remains unpublished.

32Lenz, Die Grossen Pianoforte-Virtuosen, p. 40; cited in Eigeldinger, Chopin, p. 138.

290

vide a perfect authentic cadence in the tonic, of course, but that cadence should not be under- stood as revisiting the one interrupted in the Grave, for it will lie in the tonic major, not minor. When the cadence closing the second group does arrive, in mm. 208-09, Chopin also sets it in a higher register than that of the initial interrupted cadence (although the bass line, arpeggio, and suspension in m. 208 still remind us of the Grave), with a stretto suggesting an inability of this cadence to provide satis- factory closure. The closing group in the recapitulation will then try to inflect the music back to the minor mode, as if to revisit the interrupted cadence, but to no avail; as the final cadence draws near, the music stalls for a moment, at m. 229, then surges upward, again in stretto, to its final cadence, which brings hardly any repose. Plagal progressions at the end deny the movement its last opportunity for strong tonic-dominant progressions, leaving the movement open.

Chopin then designs the second movement, the scherzo, so that it will also avoid full closure. Its two-key plan (starting in Eb minor, ending on Gb major) largely avoids the strong directional tendencies toward the second key that characterize Chopin's independent two- key works. Although events early in the scherzo do give the movement enough of a tendency toward Gb major/minor that this ending does not sound arbitrary, these do not prepare the eventual close in a manner quite like that of Chopin's other two-key pieces. There is no "synthesis" here, no feeling of a carefully prepared motion toward the second key. Instead, as the scherzo is about to close in Eb minor (after m. 253), it makes a last-minute escape to Gb minor (mm. 260-65), which is then soon inflected to major.33 The ensuing recall of the trio then

resembles the procedure Beethoven had used in the scherzos to the Seventh and Ninth Sym- phonies, where a reference to the trio appears just before the end of the movement. Chopin inverts Beethoven's procedure, however, by re- fusing to close the movement in the original key (Eb minor); here the reference to the trio simply ends the movement in the "wrong" key (Gb major). That dreamy ending also lends the movement an open quality, which helps to con- nect it with the Funeral March.34

Chopin may have succeeded in postponing closure to the beginning of the Funeral March, but his task now is to sustain that idea throughout the march itself.35 We need to examine this aspect of the Funeral March in some depth, because if Chopin is to continue the sense that the first chord of the march is both a beginning and an ending, he must reflect and confirm that sense of closure in the character of the movement.

The clearest means that Chopin uses to convey a sense that "the end has arrived" is through the genre of the funeral march itself. Images of death and mourning pervade the march from the start, the opening chord, pitched low and missing its third, conveying emptiness and loss. A somber ostinato then starts up an oscillation of minor thirds in the bass, while the tenor line alternates the dominant with its half step above, all in a grim, plodding rhythm. These features, rife with symbolism of death, project a gloomy atmosphere that settles thick over the march


33Chopin thus avoids the kind of "unity in the powerful synthesis" that William Kinderman finds in the second Ballade, op. 38; see his "Directional Tonality in Chopin" in Chopin Studies, ed. Jim Samson (Cambridge, 1988), p. 75. Samson (The Music of Chopin, p. 131) does hear a synthesis at the end of the scherzo, because the piece had earlier prepared the closing key of Gb minor/major. Harald Krebs uses similar observations to read the scherzo in Gb with a nontonic beginning; see his Third Relation and Dominant in Late 18th- and Early 19th-Century Music (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1980), I, 144-46 and II, 65- 66. I find the scherzo quite different from Chopin's other

two-key works, however, as befits its role in a larger work; here it may be significant that Chopin refers to the scherzo as being in Eb minor (letter, 8 August 1839; see n. 13 above). 34More could be said about the scherzo, including further transmovemental thematic relationships and Beethoven allusions that circulate in it. For instance, Chopin embeds into the scherzo a few telling references to the overall tonality, Bb minor, at strategic moments in the scherzo's design, even providing a cadence in that key in its opening section (m. 59, revisited at m. 247), and the opening of the scherzo's trio section, mm. 85-106, composes out the Bk- Db-Bb idea from the other movements. Allusions to the first movement of Beethoven's "Lebewohl" Sonata, op. 81a, mm. 17-25, can be heard circulating, with consider- able symbolic force, in mm. 37-64 of the scherzo. Since these passages are consistent with the rest of my argu- ment, I will not explore them here. 35I will use the term "march" to refer to the outer sections, trio to refer to the inner section in Db major. Trio is my term, not Chopin's.

291

19TH CENTURY

MUSIC

and never lifts. When the tune finally enters in the third measure, it begins a series of waves that seem only to add layer on layer of grief, like a welling up of tears. Yet for all its grim- ness there is also something oddly soothing about this march. Its use of pure minor lends it the archaic, ecclesiastical sound that evokes the solemnity of an ancient ritual. Liszt, for instance, maintained that "this chant, so fune- real and doleful, is possessed of such sweetness that it seems to be not of this world."'36

Other compositional techniques besides the use of genre allow Chopin to sustain the idea that an endpoint has been reached. Earlier, in ex. 2, we observed that the march begins in a tonal position that signals the tonic triad at rest. I also suggested that the basic idea in mm. 3-4 composes out the space between tonic and mediant (1 and 3), always emphasizing the tonic, at once indicating that the first movement's failed cadence has finally been realized and sus- taining the feeling that "the end has arrived." Chopin will now prolong this impression of closure in a number of ways throughout the march. Clearly the ostinato plays an important role-the first part of the march clings to the tonic harmony-but so do the march's formal and cadence plans. Chopin designs the march (the "A" section of the overall A B A) as a small binary form, each part of which is melodically and harmonically closed. Reinforced by sheer repetition, these closed sections will support the march's initial projection of an ending. From the standpoint of formal function, the first part most closely resembles a sentence, with presentation phrase in mm. 3-6 and continuation phrase in mm. 7-10, the latter repeated an octave higher in mm. 11-14; the second part (mm. 15-22, repeated in mm. 23-30) forms a large continuation of the first, with mm. 15-18 and 19-22 organized by the formal functions of continuation and cadential, respectively.37 Chopin's way of handling the passages of cadential function is most unusual, however: there are no

perfect cadences. Each time a cadence comes formally due (mm. 10, 22, and parallel passages), Chopin has already brought back the basic idea from mm. 3-4. That substitution of the basic idea for a standard cadence has two important effects. It confirms that the piece has already secured tonal closure at the beginning, as though a formal closing gesture is no longer necessary; and the return of the basic idea at the section endings confirms that the march's opening gesture was in fact an ending, since that is just what it becomes. This compositional design helps the march to continue, with grim determination, the closure with which it began.

Thematic content enhances this effect. Chopin presents a few crucial motives at the beginning, then adheres to them over the course of the march. Example 5 names these motives in the two-measure introduction and presentation phrase. Thus the monotone repeated-note idea is the march motive; the motion from Bb to Db then passing back to Bb in the basic idea is motive a; and the same thing a third higher is motive b. To these we should add the half-step neighboring motion to the dominant, F-GL-F, motive c. Motive a, the basic idea, grows out of the introduction in a couple of ways. The tone repetition that begins and ends motive a develops from the march motive; and the motion between tonic and mediant in motive a grows from the bass ostinato pattern, which repeats (and doubles) these same two notes, Bb and Db. The basic idea and the ostinato thus grow from the same kind of impulse-the ostinato bleak and barren, the basic idea no less bleak but thematically more developed.

Chopin's manner of composing out the tonic triad using these motivic ideas lends the march that special quality, described by Carl Schachter, in which the tonic triad becomes "analogous to a place or milieu within which actions-melodic, contrapuntal, and harmonic-occur."38 For the rest of the march, we can hear Chopin continuing his initial ideas by weaving them ever more deeply into the tonal fabric of the composition. This point can be illustrated effi-

36Franz Liszt, Frederic Chopin, trans. Edward N. Waters (London, 1963), p. 38. 37Terms relating to musical form are based on Caplin, Classical Form; see esp. chap. 7 on the small binary, pp. 87-93. One need not subscribe to Caplin's approach to follow my discussion of the formal sections and the un- conventional cadence plan of the march.

38Carl Schachter, "The Triad as Place and Action," Music Theory Spectrum 17 (1995), 149.

292

Introduction Presentation: basic idea repetition of basic idea motive a motive b

march motive D C F E D

motive c

F motive

cF (passingtone) (passing tone)

r rG r r Fr r (rsr ri tr B6 D6 B6

bass ostinato (prepares motive a)

Example 5: Funeral March, motives. a. motivic enlargements

a enlarged

a enlarged a enlarged (March) end end

a b a ofb ofa a

--

'"

---s-

b enlarged sum. b enlarged sum.

b. m. 1 3 5 7 9 11 13 14 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29

(Pt) 1 2 3 2 1

ft (coupling)-- --- ---- - - fourth

S>--- fifth

+f fifth-arp. 7 3 65 3 65 65 865

B6 minor: I III V ----I

form: a b

presentation continuation .

continuation continuation cadential

Example 6: March, analysis.


ciently by using some Schenkerian voice-leading analyses. Example 6a shows that when the theme returns to its beginning point in mm. 9- 10, Chopin's continuation phrase completes an enlargement of motive a begun in the presentation phrase, within which the continuation enlarges motive b.39 These enlargements create

the impression that mm. 3-10 make a series of swells on a tonic pitch that, on a deeper level, remains fixed, an impression reinforced by the unchanging tonic harmony underneath. Mean- while, the peak notes in mm. 7-13 only add new layers of tonic, reinforced through arpeggiations and octave couplings, themselves emphasized by Chopin's dynamics (ex. 6b, mm. 7 and 11). Although they create melodic activity and expand the register upward, these octave couplings sustain the effect of a tonic pitch that remains fixed.

The second part of the march proper, mm.

39The enlargement of motive a lacks the descending passing tone cl found in the basic idea, so it reproduces only the stable tones of motive a: i, , and 1. These notes have been sustained, partly in inner voices, throughout the theme.

293

19TH CENTURY

MUSIC 15-22, seems to promise relief from the gloomy atmosphere of the first part when the harmony finally changes to III at m. 15; but the continuation of the march rhythm tells us immediately that this new section will continue work- ing with thematic ideas like those presented earlier. As ex. 6a shows, the top voice enlarges both motives a and b in mm. 14-21. The top voice begins motive a by rising bbl-db2 in mm. 14-15 leading into the second part of the march; the falling third from dbl back to bb completes motive a in m. 20. This allows the march as a whole to enlarge motive a, because Bb had already been prolonged in the top voice throughout the first part of the march. Within this enlargement of a, mm. 15-19 enlarge motive b, except that now the falling third from F to Db shatters into the falling step f2-eb2 in m. 16, answered sequentially by the step db2-c2 from motive a. The closing progression in mm. 19- 20 picks up the pieces of these shattered motives, forming the falling thirds from a and b anew, even as it buries them in inner voices and nearly engulfs them by drum rolls in the left hand. Meanwhile the bass also works with thirds related to motives a and b, accommodat- ing them to its special role as harmonic support. Here we find an arpeggiation from I through III to V then back through III to I. Foreground arpeggios in mm. 17-18 and 20-21 summarize these progressions, suggesting that these harmonic ideas, conventional though they are, have been invested with thematic signifi- cance. The effect is a hypnotic saturation of the march with motives drawn from its opening. This specific way of composing out the tonic triad sustains our initial impression that the piece begins "at the end," for it all develops from the initial march motive.

V These features of the march allow the trio to

enter as if from a distance. As Samson observes, the trio seems sealed off from the march, "juxtaposed rather than smoothly joined,"40 as if Chopin had inserted a nocturne within a funeral march. Odd as it might seem to breathe

the air of the salon at the graveside, Samson's reading of generic reference is not altogether inapt, for it records the intimate and personal voice that now comes onto the scene. Samson's reading also captures something of the way in which the masculine, military overtones of the march now yield to the feminine, perhaps even to a specific feminizing of the overtly masculine trio in Beethoven's Funeral March from op. 26, with its heroic fanfares and drum rolls. But fixing the reference to any specific source, generic or otherwise, is not the crucial activity, for it will not be productive of the kinds of meanings that are at issue here. The key points are that Beethoven's presence was implicated in all that had preceded this trio, and that the trio itself stations a distinctly Chopinesque voice antithetically to what came before. This allows us to hear in the quality of otherness peculiar to this trio something of the distance that Chopin seems generally to have maintained toward Beethoven.41

Yet if all we hear is that distance, we miss a great deal. Chopin actually negotiates a deli- cate balance between distance and integration, allowing the trio to maintain a paradoxical relation to the march. Through its nocturnal character, this trio still partakes of the dark atmosphere that surrounds it, as though this particular nocturne still sees the world through a veil of tears. Its melody is unusually spare for a nocturne, making it seem as much like a song or prayer; and somehow its luminous key of Db major casts but a faint glow over the darkness that surrounds it. Even the programmatic quality of the piece-the march approaching a burial scene, the trio giving words of commentary and remembrance, then the march departing the burial scene-suggests a tendency toward integration, as though the trio cannot forget

40See n. 20 above.

41Schumann also seems to have heard Chopin's authentic voice in the trio. In his criticism of the Sonata, he wrote that, in place of the Funeral March, "an adagio, perhaps in D6, would have made a far more beautiful effect" (an seiner Stelle ein Adagio, etwa in Des, wiirde ungleich sch6ner gewirkt haben ["Neue Sonaten," p. 142]). Since the trio essentially provides just that, an Adagio in D6, Schumann seems to record an impression that the trio represents Chopin's own voice stationed within the march.

294

a. Bass line b. from: March Trio March 7 Jj

- 0 1 11b - a I

Bb Db Bb Bb Db Bb bass ostinato

Example 7: Funeral March, key areas.

reference to March, motive a 43

-

it115 5)

effect of Bb minor: I II V

Dbmajor: III3 V3

Example 8: Trio, mm. 43-46.


what has come before.42 This very quality of the trio is what Lenz heard in Chopin's own performance of the Funeral March:

Nothing is easier than to reduce this trio to the trit- est platitude, nothing more difficult than to raise its melodic spell to the level of sorrow that hangs over the whole poem which this "Funeral March" is. And this is what it is about: never in Chopin's interpretation did his subdued expression in the trio section strike me as contradicting the character of the march-despite the many critics' remarks to that effect. This trio is a touchstone for recognizing whether the performer is a poet or merely a pianist; whether he can tell a story or merely play the piano.43

For Lenz, then, the trio, however much it might seem closed off from its surroundings, partici- pates crucially in the overall mood. Its consol- ing, intimate voice never forgets-rather, it ac- knowledges-the grief-stricken world of the march. This paradoxical relation between the

march and the trio needs to be explored further if we are to understand how Chopin positions himself in relation to Beethoven.

Perhaps the best evidence for integration of the trio and the march lies in the key of Db major in which Chopin writes the trio, and in the relation of this key to that of the outer sections. We have already seen the key of Db major try to emerge within the march, only to be absorbed by the tonic key, B6 minor. Now that earlier implication comes to fruition as D6 major becomes the tonal center of an entire section, the trio. Even more tellingly, the tonics of the three sections-Bb, Db, and BK-bear the most intimate relation to one of the princi- pal motives of the march. These tonics enlarge the motive from the bass ostinato, so that a single process of motivic enlargement spans the bass line of the entire work (ex. 7). Chopin could therefore bind the three closed sections into a larger whole that, in its entirety, partakes of the spirit of the march. And just as the march had prepared the key area of the trio, so the trio refers back to the key area of the march. The trio's middle section ends with a progression drawn squarely, if only locally, from Bb minor, the key of the march (mm. 43-46, shown in ex. 8). Probably to strengthen this connection, Chopin wrote a passage in mm. 44-45

420ne performance tradition, recorded by Rachmaninov, literalizes just such a program by playing the first state- ment of the march with a steady crescendo, the restatement with a decrescendo, to suggest the approach and departure of a funeral cortege. 43Lenz, "Ubersichtliche Beurtheilung der Pianoforte- Kompositionen von Chopin" (Berlin, 1872), p. 289; cited in Eigeldinger, Chopin, p. 86.

295

19TH CENTURY

MUSIC that recalls the march's dotted rhythm and its sighing appoggiatura on B6 (from motive a). Here again one senses that the trio belongs to the world established by the march. Chopin's dynamic indications, including the long crescendo, may be taken as an invitation to make the most of this relationship.

The trio's basic idea, originally heard in D6 major (m. 31), heads this BI-minor passage (m. 43). This appearance of the trio's basic idea in the key of the march implies that there may be other subtle relationships between these two sections that a close analysis might reveal. Con- sider the basic idea at the beginning of the trio (ex. 9a). It begins by decorating F in the melody, with an upper neighbor GC. The melody then falls in eighth notes down to the leading tone C, a falling line in which the initial Db-major harmony supports two tones of the new tonic triad, F and Db, spanned by a passing Ek. Some of these elements seem to recall motives from the march (ex. 9b). The upper-neighbor motion F-G1-F had appeared repeatedly in the ostinato pattern of the march (motive c), and the motion through a third from F to D6 had appeared in the presentation phrase (within motive b). And yet it would be premature to claim another thematic discovery here. Such a relationship might be accidental, especially when common patterns-upper neighbors and simple passing motions-are concerned. Nevertheless, the relationships claimed in ex. 9 do seem plau- sible, in part because the march and trio dis- play so many other interrelationships, and in part because these motivic ideas have become so ingrained from their repetitions in the march. Beyond this, I find something special about Chopin's 4-4 fingering in m. 31, suggesting as it does a special lingering on the upper neighbor Gb. Still, questions remain: does Chopin work out these motives in similar ways? And especially, does he compose them into the voice leading and harmonic fabric of the trio as deeply as he had done in the march?

A voice-leading reduction of the trio (ex. 10) reveals that Chopin does indeed treat the first measure of the trio's basic idea to an enlargement, similar to those noted earlier in the march. Starting on f2, an enlargement of the trio's first measure spans the entire first part of this section, mm. 31-38. The repetition of the basic

a. Basic idea of the trio. falling third: F E6 D6

31 (4 4) A-I -I1, . . . I

__ Nn pp

s s)

b. Motive b, from the march. 5 falling third: F E6 D6

motive c

'Nn

q;

,

6. T J

_

Example 9: Funeral March, mm. 31-32 and 5-6.

idea in mm. 33-34 introduces the upper neighbor gb2 (enlarging motive c), then the continuation phrase reestablishes f2 and brings it down through eb2 to db2 at the cadence in m. 38, enlarging the falling third progression of motive b. The similarity of this enlargement to those in the march helps to confirm the thematic relationships proposed earlier in ex. 9. What is more, just as the march had twice enlarged its basic idea (motive a)-once in its opening section, then again over the course of the entire march- the trio does the same thing with its basic idea. After enlarging the opening measure once in the first part, the trio as a whole expands it again. The upper voice of the middle section rises through a third to gb2, reached in m. 46, against a bass that falls stepwise through a fifth from V to I, the first step of this falling bass progression composed out as a rising seventh.44 The resolution of gb2 to f2 in the top voice at m.

44This falling fifth marks another relationship between the trio and the march, which also composed out the falling fifth from V to I, at mm. 18-21, a falling fifth that shares two chords with the one in the trio (the F-major triad and the Db-major triad). March and trio thus share an inter- mingling of these two key areas, D6 major and Bb minor, but with opposite tonal priorities.

296

a. motivic enlargements enlargement

enlargement

-b Nn (Trio) Nn

Nn from c

:b. m. 31 33 35 37 39 41 43 44 45 46 47 49 51 53

third-progression down third-progression up third down (Nn)

(Nn) (Nn)

basic idea (Nn) -: - pp cresc.

fifth-progression

-b --

-------

seventh) 4 7 7 6 7 7 ?6 6 6 6 5 6 36

3-3 - D major: (I II V I) (effect of Bbm: I II V) (DV: I II V I)

(5- -7) D major: I V I

form: a1 b a2

presentation continuation presentation continuation pres. cont.

Example 10: Trio, analysis.

March Trio March m. 1 5 9 14 15 18 21 31 35 38 39 46-- 47 51 54 55 68 69 72 75

3 23 26 29 57 77 80 83

a3 (a(b)-

b(end)

PP f

form:fifth

fifth

5 --- 7

I II V I (=I V I) I II I

form: a b a1 b a2 a b


Example 11: Funeral March, analysis.

47 completes an enlargement of the first three notes of the trio's basic idea, f2-g6b2-f2; then the restatement of the first section completes the enlargement of the trio's first measure. These enlargements help to confirm the relationship between the middle and outer sections. The

trio could thus become a kind of commentary on the march-distant, to be sure, yet still part of the same world.

This analysis of the trio allows us to situate it in the entire movement (ex. 11). The enlargements in the trio join with those in the march

297

19TH CENTURY

MUSIC to enlarge all of motive b, framed by enlargements of motive a in the outer sections, enact- ing at the background level the progression of the march's first part (mm. 3-10). The initial motives that Chopin used at the outset to es- tablish the quality of a funeral march thus pen- etrate ever more deeply into the composition, through a series of successive enlargements. Motivic development and voice leading merge to such a degree that there is barely any dis- tinction between the two. That initial march motive, suggesting a beginning after "the end has arrived," gives rise to those grieving swells-- first small, then longer and deeper, finally sub- suming even the trio.

VI This paradoxical relation between the march

and trio-the two seem to dwell in separate worlds yet share the same world-can help us better understand Chopin's relationship to Beethoven. On the one hand, Chopin can invoke Beethoven through a conscious reference at the beginning of the sonata, then interrupt him in order to invent a new future for him, a future that Chopin ultimately stages as a death ritual when he invokes Beethoven again through the Funeral March. Chopin can also set himself apart from Beethoven by situating his own voice antithetically to Beethoven's in the trio, signaling his refusal to create on someone else's terms. On the other hand, Chopin refuses to dance on Beethoven's grave. The trio, for all its seeming aloofness, does still remember the march and draw sustenance from it. This bonding between the sections might be read in many different ways, to be sure, but I find it a deeply humaniz- ing gesture from Chopin. By integrating the march and trio Chopin recognizes that he shares this world with Beethoven; he can still acknowledge their common humanity, and, in a sense, their common aims as artists. Chopin cannot become Beethoven and still retain his identity; he must draw the line. But Chopin can still acknowledge their bonds even as he draws the ultimate boundary between them.

A death ritual like the one Chopin symbolically enacts in this sonata makes a fitting alle- gory for the ambivalent relations between artists and their precursors. Death marks the ultimate separation between two people; it affirms

their separate identities. The deceased becomes something like an object, a mere relic in an ancient ritual; the survivor remains a living subject. The funeral rite itself also has a powerful symbolizing function. As Slavoj Zifek argues, in the funeral rite the subject reenacts the process of death in symbolic form, repeating this natural, inevitable process as the subject's own free act of symbolization; the subject "pre- tends that this process resulted from his own free decision."45 When Chopin symbolically repeats Beethoven, then, he can similarly pre- tend that the music of Beethoven became his own free act, not that of another person, allowing himself to guard against Beethoven's influence. Yet this separation is only half the picture. The deceased person never quite becomes a mere thing; the deceased retains a human form, and traces of its subjectivity remain in memory. Rituals of grief and mourning do still commemorate-they forge a link to the past- and by eliciting compassion they draw the sur- vivors more deeply into human experience, hence more into the sources of artistic cre- ation. And by arousing the awareness of one's own mortality, these rituals also lend a greater urgency to the creative process, for they remind us that our time is limited. Thus the death ritual could both separate Chopin from Beethoven and at the same time draw him toward the past, one including Beethoven.

Such a reading might help us come to terms with Chopin's enigmatic finale. In the first three movements, Chopin has said that he is prepared to live in this world and accept at least some of its terms, yet he insists on maintain- ing a separate identity. The finale then adopts an ironic perspective on these human values. Its disembodied, ghostly character suggests that something unknowable lies beyond this life. If Chopin's first three movements spoke of humanity and its struggles with individuality and collectiveness, the finale stations these worldly struggles as minor events in some other story, the meaning of which we cannot ultimately know. Its brevity does not even allow us to contemplate it.

45Slavoj Ziiek, The Sublime Object of Ideology (London, 1989), p. 219.

298

a. Opening chord from the Grave (cf. ex. 1). FINALE

Presto

sotto voce e legato

b. Motives from the Funeral March (cf. ex. 5). b a b a

69

Example 12: Finale, beginning and ending.


In one sense the finale recapitulates the preceding movements by making fleeting references to them. It begins on the same harmony that began the sonata, a leading-tone diminished-seventh chord to the dominant (ex. 12a), now stripped of its drive toward closure.46 Later, near the end of the movement (mm. 69-70), allusions to motives from the Funeral March appear (ex. 12b). These references to other movements appear at or near the finale's temporal boundaries, so that the final movement can vaguely recapitulate the preceding music. Yet these ideas also evaporate in the finale; all that is left of them is the barest trace. When all the preceding human struggles disintegrate into

these ghostly remains, we are left only with the unknowable future, whatever might remain beyond our physical and mental lives. Chopin thus rejects two ways of following on images of death in music: the solution adopted by Beethoven in the Eroica Symphony, in which the Funeral March unleashes a burst of positive creative energy; and the solution in which death leads to resurrection or transfiguration. Chopin does neither of these. Instead, his solution-a profoundly original one-is to give a final ironic perspective to the sonata as a whole, what Schumann so aptly termed "a sphinx with a mocking smile."47 In the end, both Chopin and Beethoven become "others" in relation ' to the unknowable.

I--3 46The similarity between the opening chords of the first movement and finale is also mentioned by Walker ("Chopin and Musical Structure," p. 248) and Rosen (Romantic Gen- eration, p. 294).

47"Einer Sphinx gleich mit sp6ttischem Licheln" (Schumann "Neue Sonaten," p. 207).

299

Article Contentsp. 281p. 282p. 283p. 284p. 285p. 286p. 287p. 288p. 289p. 290p. 291p. 292p. 293p. 294p. 295p. 296p. 297p. 298p. 299

Issue Table of Contents19th-Century Music, Vol. 22, No. 3 (Spring, 1999), pp. 213-303Volume Information [p. 303-303]Front MatterAs Wonderful as Star Clusters: Instruments for Gazing at Tonality in Schubert [pp. 213-232]Suffering Children: Perspectives on Innocence and Vulnerability in Mahler's Fourth Symphony [pp. 233-267]Kierkegaard, a Kiss, and Schumann's "Fantasie" [pp. 268-280]Chopin and the Ghost of Beethoven [pp. 281-299]Comment & Chronicle [pp. 300-302]Back Matter

Date post:	06-Jan-2016
Category:	Documents
Upload:	abelsanchezaguilera
View:	14 times
Download:	2 times

Chopin and the Ghost of Beethoven

Documents