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Notes on Chopin
By André Gide, Bernard Frechtman Philosophical Library
Copyright © 1949 Philosophical Library, Inc.
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4532-4465-4
CHAPTER 1
I announced my "Notes on Chopin" as early as 1892, almost forty years ago. It is true that at the time I announced: "Notes on Schumann and Chopin." Today the coupling of these names causes me a malaise comparable to that which Nietzsche said he experienced before "Goethe and Schiller." At the time, it seemed to me that there was much to be said about Schumann too; but it has seemed to me less and less important.
Schumann is a poet. Chopin is an artist, which is quite different; I shall go into this later on.
But, by a strange destiny peculiar to him, the more the performers of Chopin try to spread a knowledge of his work, the more he is misunderstood, Bach, Scarlatti, Beethoven, Schumann, Liszt or Fauré can be more or less well interpreted. One does not falsify their meaning by slightly distorting their character. Chopin is the only one who is betrayed, who can be deeply, intimately, totally violated.
Have you ever heard actors declaiming Baudelaire as if they were doing Casimir Delavigne? They play Chopin as if it were Liszt. They do not understand the difference. Thus presented, better Liszt. There the virtuoso finds at least something to take hold of, something to be taken with; through him. Liszt truly allows himself to be grasped. Chopin utterly escapes him, and so subtly that, indeed, the public does not suspect it.
We are told that when he was at the piano Chopin always looked as if he were improvising; that is, he seemed to be constantly seeking, inventing, discovering his thought little by little. This kind of charming hesitation, of surprise and delight, ceases to be possible if the work is presented to us, no longer in a state of successive formation, but as an already perfect, precise and objective whole. I see no other meaning in the titles that he was fond of giving to certain of his most exquisite pieces: Impromptus. I do not think it possible to admit that Chopin improvised them, in the strict sense of the term. No. But it is essential to play them in such a way that they seem to be improvised, that is, with a certain, I dare not say slowness, but uncertainty; in any case, without that unbearable assurance which a headlong movement carries with it. It is a promenade of discoveries, and the performer should be cautious about giving the impression of knowing in advance what he is going to say, or that all of it is already written down; I like the musical phrase which gradually shapes beneath his fingers to seem to be emerging from him, to astonish even him, and subtly to invite us to enter into his delight. Even in such a work di bravura as the energetic and tempestuous Etude in A minor (the second of the Second Book), what emotion do you expect me to experience if you experience none yourself and do not let me feel that you experience any, you, a pianist, suddenly entering A flat major, then immediately E major—a sudden sunbeam piercing the torment and the shower—if you give me to understand by your assurance that you knew it in advance and that everything was prepared? Each modulation in Chopin, never trivial and foreseen, must respect, must preserve that freshness, that emotion which almost fears the surging up of the new, that secret of wonderment to which the adventurous soul exposes itself along paths not blazed in advance, where the landscape reveals itself only gradually.
That is also why, almost always, I like the music of Chopin to be spoken in an undertone, almost in a murmur, without any brilliance (I except, obviously, certain dashing pieces, including most of the scherzos and polonaises), without that unbearable assurance of the virtuoso which thus strips it of its most winning allure. That is how Chopin himself played, so we are told by those who could still hear him. He always seemed to fall short of the fullest sonority; I mean: almost never made the piano yield its full sound, and thereby very often disappointed his audience which thought that it "hadn't gotten its money's worth."
Chopin proposes, supposes, insinuates, seduces, persuades; he almost never asserts.
And the more reticent his thought becomes, the better do we listen to it. I have in mind that "confessional tone" which Laforgue praised in Baudelaire.
Someone knowing Chopin only through the too clever virtuosi might take him for a purveyor of show-pieces ... whom I would detest, were I not able to question him myself, were he not able to say to me in a low voice: "Don't listen to them. Through them, there is nothing more you can say. And I suffer much more than you from what they have made of me. Better to be ignored than taken for what I am not."
The swooning of certain listeners before certain famous interpreters of Chopin irritates me. What is there to like in them? All that is left is the worldly and the profane. Nothing that, like the song of Rimbaud's bird, "stops you and makes you blush."
I have often heard Beethoven compared to Michael Angelo, Mozart to Correggio, to Giorgione, etc. Although these comparisons between artists of different arts seem to me rather futile, I can not refrain from observing how often remarks which I might make about Chopin are equally applicable to Baudelaire, and vice versa. So that, in speaking of Chopin, the name of Baudelaire has come quite naturally to my pen a number of times. Chopin's works used to be called "unhealthy music." Les Fleurs du Mal used to be called "unhealthy poetry," and, I rather think, for the same reasons. Both have a like concern for perfection, an equal horror of rhetoric, declamation and oratorical development; but I would like particularly to note that I find in both the same use of surprise and of the extraordinary foreshortenings which achieve it.
When, at the beginning of the Ballade in G minor and immediately after the opening, in order to introduce the major theme which he later takes up in different keys and with new sonorities, after a few indecisive measures in F where only the tonic and the fifth are given, Chopin unexpectedly sounds a deep B flat which suddenly alters the landscape like the stroke of an enchanter's wand, this incantatory boldness seems to me comparable to a surprising foreshortening by the poet of Les Fleurs du Mal.
Moreover, it seems to me that, in the history of music, Chopin occupies, approximately, the place (and plays the role) of Baudelaire in the history of poetry, both of them having been misunderstood at first, and for similar reasons.
Ah! how hard it is to struggle against a false image! In addition to the Chopin of the virtuosi, there is the Chopin of young ladies. A too sentimental Chopin. He was that, alas! but he was not only that. Yes, to be sure, there is the melancholy Chopin who even drew from the piano the most heart-broken sobs. But, to hear certain people talk, it seems that he never left the minor. What I love and what I praise him for is that through and beyond this sadness he nevertheless attains joy; it is because the joy in him is dominant (Nietzsche felt this very well); a joy which has nothing of the somewhat hasty and vulgar gaiety of Schumann; a felicity which joins hands with that of Mozart, but more human, participating in nature, and also incorporated in the landscape that may be found in the ineffable smile of the scene at the water's edge in Beethoven's Pastorale. Before Debussy and certain Russians, I do not think that music was ever so shot through with the play of light, with the murmur of water, with wind and foliage. Sfogato, he wrote; has any other musician ever used this word, would he have ever had the desire, the need, to indicate the airing, the breath of breeze, which, interrupting the rhythm, contrary to all hope, comes freshening and perfuming the middle of his barcarolle?
How simple are Chopin's musical propositions! Nothing comparable here to what any other musician had done before him; the latter (I exclude Bach, however) start with an emotion, like a poet who then seeks words to express it. In the manner of Valéry, who, quite the contrary, starts with the word, with the verse, Chopin, like a perfect artist, starts with notes (this too is what made people say that he "improvised"); but, more than Valéry, he at once allows a quite human emotion to invade this very simple situation, which he enlarges so that it becomes magnificent.
Yes, Chopin, and it is very important that this be noted, lets himself be led and counseled by the notes; one might say that he meditates upon the expressive power of each one. He feels that a certain note or a certain double note, a third or a sixth, changes meaning depending upon its position in the scale and, through an unexpected modification of the bass, suddenly makes it say something other than what it said at first. Therein lies his expressive power.
I admit that I do not understand the title that Chopin liked to give to those short pieces: Preludes. Preludes to what? Each of Bach's preludes is followed by its fugue; it is an integral part of it. But I find it hardly easier to imagine any one of these preludes of Chopin followed by any other piece in the same key, be it by the same author, than all of these preludes of Chopin played immediately one after the other. Each one of them is a prelude to a meditation; nothing can be less a concert piece; nowhere has Chopin revealed himself more intimately. Each of them, or almost (and some of them are extremely short), creates a particular atmosphere, establishes an emotional setting, then fades out as a bird alights. All is still.
Not all are of equal importance. Some are charming, others terrifying. None are indifferent.
The first Prelude is, among all of Chopin's compositions, one of those which most readily give rise to misunderstanding, one of those which can most easily be spoiled, whose misinterpretation seems to me most monstrous. Taking as authority the word agitato inscribed at the head of the selection, all performers, without exception (at least to my knowledge), here launch forth in a frenzied, reckless movement. Is it likely, I ask you, that at the threshold of this book, in the most limpid of tones, Chopin desired so disturbing a manifestation? Think of the first Etude, likewise in C major, so serene. Think of the two Preludes in C major of the Well-tempered Clavichord; what purity, what calm; what a quiet and evident proposition. Think of Bach's organ preludes in the same key; of their extraordinary introductory character. And I am by no means trying to liken this Prelude of Chopin to those of Bach. But I rather like to see there, at the head of the book, a kind of very simple ornamental front, one that invites. Like the first prelude of Bach's Clavichord, it offers at the start a very pure phrase, which develops fully only after taking a new breath. A first impulsion forms a perfect unit, of four measures in Bach, of eight measures in Chopin, and returns to the starting-point; then takes off anew for a more complete prize whose possibility was merely indicated by the first departure. To manage to make of this exquisite offering something chaotic is a tour de force which the virtuoso achieves and which leaves me dumbfounded. This piece, quite the contrary, should be played very casually; no strife should be felt in it, no effort. It is fitting that the discreet melody be not abandoned only to the upper part of the last two fingers of the hand, which merely double at the octave the melody of the middle part which Chopin was careful to indicate "tenuto"; an indication which, quite often, is not observed, and which nevertheless is of the utmost importance. Yes, this work, in its entirety, is simply like a lovely, quiet wave (despite the agitato which usually is pushed to the point of tempest), preceded by another and smaller wave, and the whole draws to a close in an eddying which dies out gently.
In general, for Chopin's music, but why not say it here and now, since nowhere is it more applicable than in this short piece, the performer "adopts" too rapid a movement (half again too rapid here). Why? Perhaps because Chopin's music is not in itself difficult enough and the pianist is bent on showing off, as if it were much more difficult, when one attains a certain mastery, to play quickly than to play slowly. Above all through tradition. The performer who, indeed, for the first time, would dare (for a certain courage is needed) to play Chopin's music in the proper tempo, that is, much more slowly than is customary, would really be bringing out its meaning for the first time, and in a way capable of plunging his audience into a deep ecstasy: which is Chopin's due. The way he is usually played, the way all the virtuosi play him, hardly anything remains but the effect. All the rest is imperceptible, which, indeed, signifies above all: the very secret of a work in which no note is negligible, in which no rhetoric enters, no redundancy, where nothing is simple padding, as happens so often in the music of so many other composers, and I speak even of the greatest.
The cinema has enabled us to see the surprising grace which a human or animal gesture can achieve when it is shown in slow-motion; imperceptible when the movement is rapid. It is not a question here (though one may do it) of slowing down the tempo of Chopin's music excessively. It is very simply a matter of not hurrying it, of allowing it its natural movement, easy as breathing. I should like to inscribe, at the head of Chopin's work, the exquisite verses of Valéry:
Est-il art plus tendre
Que cette lenteur? ...
(Is there art more gentle
Than this slowness?)
And it goes without saying that a number of Chopin's pieces (the scherzos in particular and the finales of the sonatas) involve a fantastically rapid pace, but, in general, each virtuoso indiscriminately plays almost all of Chopin's compositions as quickly as possible, and that is what I find monstrous. At any rate, the verses of Valéry nowhere find a more striking application than in the first Prelude.
A few words more about this first Prelude: the melody, in a manner of which we shall find a few other examples in Chopin's work, is found obstinately reflected in the higher octave, so subtly and plausibly that it permits the sensitive performer to accentuate the first indication or its reflection as he pleases, thus broadening the phrase.
In addition, this first indication never falls exactly on the strong beat marked by the bass, but rather immediately after it, which gives to the melody a charmingly indecisive kind of spiritedness. It would be a serious mistake to give a systematically greater importance and accent to one or the other of these two voices which sing after one another in unison. Sometimes one prevails, sometimes the other; at times they almost blend. Often there are, strictly speaking, no voices in Chopin; he did not write for singing but, to be exact, for the piano, and it often happens (in certain Nocturnes—the Seventh, Eighth and Ninth, for example—in particular) that in the course of a selection he introduces a second brief voice, as if for an uncertain duo, which is soon interrupted and reabsorbed into the whole. The piece would appear ill composed if the pianist, anxious to give too much emphasis to the melody, were to evoke two instruments, a violin and a viola, one of which would thenceforth remain idle almost constantly.
Unbearable practise of certain pianists, phrasing Chopin and punctuating, so to speak, the melody. Whereas the fact is that what is most exquisite and most individual in Chopin's art, wherein it differs most wonderfully from all others, I see in just that non-interruption of the phrase; the insensible, the imperceptible gliding from one melodic proposition to another, which leaves or gives to a number of his compositions the fluid appearance of streams.
Whereby this music recalls the non-discontinuous melody of the Arabian clarinet which never allows us to feel the moment when the musician takes a fresh breath. There are no longer any periods or commas; and that is why I can not approve the "organ points" which certain ill-advised editors and performers have added in the Chorale of the Nocturne in G minor, for the satisfaction of fools....
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Notes on Chopin by André Gide, Bernard Frechtman. Copyright © 1949 Philosophical Library, Inc.. Excerpted by permission of Philosophical Library.
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