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Concerning Chopin's “Enigmatical” Finale in the Sonata in B♭ Minor, Op. 35

2012; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 31; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/01411896.2012.643451

1547-7304

Roland Jackson,

Music Technology and Sound Studies

Abstract The common perception of the finale of Chopin's Sonata in B♭ minor as puzzling or enigmatical is due primarily to its unusual texture—octaves between the two hands throughout, challenging the listener to differentiate between its successive chordal and nonchordal tones. Despite the finale's perceived strangeness, its musical substance—its content of ideas and procedures—can be found in similar guises in a number of Chopin's other works. Moreover, its rapidly changing harmonies and unusual texture can be more readily comprehended if the movement is played at a slower tempo than has been hitherto observed by performers. Notes 1As cited by Hugo Leichtentritt, Analyse der Chopin'sche Klavierwerke, 2 vols. (Berlin: M. Hesse, 1921–22), 2:228. “[R]ätselhaft, einer Sphinx gleich mit spöttischen Lächeln.” 2Charles Willeby, Frederic François Chopin (London: Samson Low, Marston & Company, 1892), 225. 3Leichtentritt, Analyse, 2:229. “Ein … kühn vorgreifendes Stück eines musikalischen Impressionismus, der seiner Zeit um 75 Jahre voraus ist.” 4Leichtentritt, Analyse, 2:229. “[A]n dies Stück knüpften mancherlei Bestrebungen der neuesten, eines Schönberg an.” 5Alan Walker, “Chopin and Musical Structure: An Analytical Approach,” in Frédéric Chopin: Profiles of the Man and the Music, ed. Alan Walker (New York: Taplinger, 1967), 248. A similar view was held by Peter Gould, “Concertos and Sonatas,” in Walker, Frédéric Chopin, 161, and Bernard Gavoty, Frederic Chopin (New York: Charles Scribners, 1977), 387, both of whom characterize the movement as beyond the bounds of tonality. 6Charles Rosen, The Romantic Generation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), 298. 7Jim Samson, Chopin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 211. 8Leichtentritt, Analyse, 2:230. “das unisono, das die harmonischen Zusammenhänge verwischt und verdunkelt.” 9Rosen, Romantic Generation, 298. 10Leichtentritt as part of a comprehensive survey of Chopin's keyboard music (Analyse, 2:228–45) and Rosen as part of a volume on early Romantic style (Romantic Generation, 294–302). 11In Ignace Jan Paderewski, Fanny M. Smith, and Bernard Boekelman, eds., The Century Library of Music. The finale, with chord reductions by Boekelman, appears in volume 8, pp. 602–7 (New York: The Century Company, 1900). 12Jurij Cholopow, “Űber die Kompositionsgrundsätze bei Frédéric Chopin: Das Rätsel des Finales der Sonate B-Moll,” in Chopin Studies: The International Musicological Symposium “Chopin and Romanticism,” ed. Zofia Chechlinska (Warsaw: Frederick Chopin Society, 1990), 269–95. 13Rosen, Romantic Generation, 298. 14Precise datings of these recordings are difficult to establish in that many consist of re-releases; such a dating would require a specialized discographical study. James Methuen-Campbell lists a number of pianists who recorded the finale, but provides only the length of time they recorded Chopin in general; for example, Arthur de Greef (1925–27, on HMV), Artur Rubinstein (1928–66, on RCA), Vladimir Horowitz (1928–84, on HMV and RCA), and Guiomar Novaës (1950–68, on Vox); see “A Historical Survey of Chopin on Disc,” in The Cambridge Companion to Chopin, ed. Jim Samson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 284–94. Jan Weber provides a list of early recordings of the Sonata in B♭ minor, including those of Joseph Hofmann (1919 piano roll), Arthur de Greef (1925, HMV), Percy Grainger (1927, Columbia), Leopold Godovsky (1930, British Columbia), Alexander Brailovski (1930, Polydor), Alfred Cortot (1933, HMV), and Edward Kilenyi (1938, Pathé), in “Chopin Encounters: Records versus Concerts, Research into the Beginnings of Chopin Recordings,” in Chopin Studies: The International Musicological Symposium, vol. 4, ed. Zofia Chechlinska (Warsaw: Frederick Chopin Society, 1994), 43–50. 15The timings listed in Tables 1 and 2 are calculated on the basis of the entire movement, including the final three measures and last fermata chord, to which certain variances of pace may be ascribed. Alan Walker (“Chopin and Musical Structure,” 248), in view of this, provides a number of timings (additional to those provided here) without these three measures: Vladimir Horowitz, 1’10”; Sergei Rachmaninoff, 1’10”; Artur Rubinstein, 1’15”; and Alfred Cortot, 1’16”. These are all close in their overall speed to those of the other pianists I have listed. As James Methuen-Campbell points out, the notion that recent pianists play Chopin more rapidly than did those in the earlier twentieth century “is not really substantiated by discographic evidence”; “Chopin in Performance,” in The Cambridge Companion to Chopin, ed. Jim Samson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 191. 16Another work marked “presto” is the Etude, Op. 10, no. 4, in C♯ minor; but its metronomic indication of 40 per measure is considerably slower than the rate taken by the finale's pianists. 17Thomas Higgins, “Tempo and Character in Chopin,” Musical Quarterly 59/1 (1973), 110. 18Higgins also raises the issue of Chopin's favored Pleyel piano, on which his fast markings come out more clearly than on a modern instrument (ibid., 115). This would seem to argue that the finale be taken at a slower pace than in its recordings, but the question is moot in that from a performance-practice standpoint a pianist would still want to approximate the tempo Chopin had in mind, whether on an original or a modern instrument. 19This characterization of the movement by Rubinstein is cited, for example, in Karol Mikuli's edition of the Chopin Sonatas, as revised by James Huneker (New York: Schirmer, 1895), “Preface,” col. 3. 20It seems likely, however, that this interpretation has little to do with Chopin's original intention. He was notoriously averse to programmatic interpretations of his music, and as Jeffrey Kallberg has made clear, was even disinclined to accept the idea that his third movement was a “funeral” march; see Kallberg, “Chopin's March, Chopin's Death,” 19th-Century Music 21/3 (2001), 3–26. 21For example, by Liszt, who heard him play in accordance with this interpretation and objected to it—see Rosen, Romantic Generation, 298. 22Rosen, Romantic Generation, 298. Rosenthal's lifetime (1862–1946) spanned the time of both pianists. That Rachmaninoff performed the work very rapidly is described previously in note 15. 23The quote is taken from G. C. Ashton Jonson, A Handbook of Chopin's Works (New York: Doubleday, 1905), 123. 24As reported by Amy Fay, Music Study in Germany (New York: MacMillan, 1896), 194. 25Walker, “Chopin and Musical Structure,” 247; Rosen, Romantic Generation, 298. Also, as Rosen tells us “the finale is popularly supposed to represent the wind sweeping over the graves of the cemetery after the departure of the funeral procession” (298, emphasis added). 26Jim Samson, The Music of Chopin (London: Kegan Paul, 1985), 130. 27The finale examples are cited throughout without left-hand doublings, with the exception of Example 7a, which includes both hands. 28The finale was presumably without pedal indications, as seen, for instance, in the edition by Mikuli (Chopin's pupil). 29Rosen, Romantic Generation, 294. 30Ibid., 180. 31Beginning pieces on a vii7/V of the main key was not an uncommon procedure by Chopin's time. A previous example may be seen, for instance, in the first movement of Beethoven's Sonata in C minor, Op. 111, which, like Chopin's beginning, also outlines the outer notes of the diminished seventh in octaves. It is doubtful, however, that Chopin was thinking of Beethoven's opening or was even aware of it. According to Wilhelm von Lenz, Chopin was not familiar with Beethoven's later works (Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger, Chopin: Pianist and Teacher as Seen by His Pupils [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986], 106), although on one occasion Liszt did play Op. 106 for him, which Chopin reportedly did not care for (ibid., 138). Chopin's exposure to Beethoven was for the most part limited to Op. 14/2 and Op. 26, each of which he performed publicly (ibid., 137), and to Op. 27/2, Op. 31/2, and Op. 57, which he used in teaching (ibid., 137, 165). 32Rosen, Romantic Generation, 294. 33A conclusion also reached by Cholopow, “Űber die Kompositionsgrundsätze,” 279, who, like Leichtentritt, feels that Chopin begins his finale in F minor. For Leichtentritt, the quick succession of diminished-seventh chords, each unprepared and unresolved, may have suggested to him something Schoenbergian—see note 4. 34Leichtentritt, Analyse, 2:232. “Anfang auβerhalb der herrschenden Tonart, in einfaltigen Sequenzen, F-moll, G-moll, B-moll.” 35The second Ballade, a piece beginning in F major but ending in A minor, may constitute an exception. Otherwise, Chopin's more unusual openings are on chords of the principal key; for example, Ballade no. 1 in G minor on a Neapolitan sixth chord (C–E♭–A♭) and Scherzo no. 3 in C♯ minor on a iv chord (F♯–A). 36During Chopin's time the vii7 of a key was theoretically considered to be a V9 with a missing root, as Gottfried Weber indicates in his Versuch einer geordneten Theorie der Tonsetzkunst (1817–21); see Thomas Christensen, ed., The Cambridge History of Western Music Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 783. 37Even in written form neither Leichtentritt (Analyse, 2:232) nor Rosen (Romantic Generation, 301) identify the augmented-sixth chord, although Boekelman (Paderewski, Smith, and Boekelman, Century Library of Music, 602) presents it in reduction. Rosen calls its notes simply “chromatic grace notes” (301). 38In the “Alla polacca” section of the Variations (mm. 98–102), parallel descending diminished-seventh chords move downward from G♯ to D♭, an octave and a half lower. In the Mazurka, after an F-minor sixth chord on A♭, seventh chords in two forms appear successively on G, G♭, F, and E. Other examples appear in several Mazurkas (e.g., Op. 6/3, Op. 17/4, Op. 30/4), in Etudes (e.g., Op. 10, nos. 1 and 3), and in both Piano Concertos. Unusual examples are found in the Prelude no. 4, at the beginning of the Scherzo no. 3, and in the Ballade no. 3, between measures 9 and 18. Richard S. Parks describes the procedure and cites still further examples in “Voice Leading and Chromatic Harmony in the Music of Chopin,” Journal of Music Theory 20 (1976), 189–214. 39This and the dates of other Chopin works are provided by J. M. Chominski and T. D. Turlo, Katalog dziel Fryderyka Chopina (Warsaw: Frederick Chopin Society, Polskie Wydawn Muzyczne, 1990), 157. 40Gerald Abraham, Chopin's Musical Style (London: Oxford University Press, 1939, reprint 1960), 81–85. 41Such as in the final movement of Mozart's String Quintet in D major, K593, or in the slow movement of his Wind Quintet in E♭ major, K452. 42Johann Nepomuk Hummel, The Complete Sonatas for Solo Piano, ed. Joel Sachs (New York: Garland, 1989), 107. 43As Samson points out, Chopin played a number of Hummel's works during his conservatory years in Warsaw (Music of Chopin, 35). 44Leichtentritt. Analyse, 2:232. 45It is of interest that Boekelman (Paderewski, Smith, and Boekelman, Century Library of Music, 602) reduces the chords in the same manner as Leichtentritt, thereby also obscuring their half-step succession. Boekelman, moreover, presents these chords mainly in inversion, rather than in alternating and inversions. 46Rosen, Romantic Generation, 301–2. 47The analyses of Tuchowski and Kholopov (written in Polish) are summarized by Iwona Lindstedt in “Some Remarks on the Computer-Assisted Analysis of the Finale of Chopin's Sonata in B flat Minor Op. 35,” Analytical Perspectives on the Music of Chopin, ed. Artur Szklener (Warsaw: Narodny Instytut Frederyka Chopina, 2003), 209f. Yuri Kholopov (sometimes cited in this article as Jurij Cholopow, see note 12) analyzes this same passage elsewhere (“Űber die Kompositionsgrundsätze,” 278) as based on descending half steps. 48Cholopow, to the contrary, holds in special esteem the rendition of Rachmaninoff for the differentiation he accords this section (“Űber die Kompositionsgrundsätze,” 295). In the recording by Rachmaninoff currently available on the Internet (which may or not be the one Cholopow is referring to) the speed is very rapid (1’26”) and loud surges of sound (departing from Chopin's overall sotto voce marking) are introduced in many of its sections. Measures 24–30, however, do stand apart by being played more softly, which is perhaps the differentiation to which Cholopow is referring. 49Leichtentritt, Analyse, 2:230. “Dadurch kommt der nächtliche, dämonische, unheimlich gespenstische, grauenhaft visionäre Zug in das Stück hinein”—this in reference to the work's seemingly unconnected harmonies. 50Rosen, Romantic Generation, 298. 51The note G♭ below the chromatic line, however incidental, seems to imply a Neapolitan, and as such points up the dominant chord in the next measure. 52Leichtentritt, Analyse, 2:237. 53Rosen, Romantic Generation, 295. 54Within the V9 chord in this scheme Chopin frequently substitutes F♭ in place of the normal E, another instance of his attraction to enharmonic spellings in the finale. The F♭ at the beginning of measure 38 could also be interpreted as the seventh of the ensuing Neapolitan chord (G♭–B♭–D♭–F♭), but was more likely intended by Chopin to belong to the V9 chord, since he did not, to my knowledge, call on the N7 chord—despite its previous use by Beethoven (e.g., with the N6/5 at the climax of the first movement of the “Eroica”). 55Analysts of this passage have (as in the first transition) consistently failed to recognize its chromatically descending half steps as well as its thirteenth-chord formations. Leichtentritt, for example, takes A♭ as the first chord's root, and considers the section (as he had the first transition) as forming a modulation from A♭ major to G♭ major to E major to D major. Iwona Lindstedt, similarly, cites an analysis in which the first chord is an A♭–C–G seventh chord, its resolution to a C♭-major chord a third away, beginning a series of progressions by third uncharacteristic of Chopin's style: Lindstedt, “Some Remarks,” 213. Boekelman also proceeds inconsistently: A♭–C♭–B♭–A–E–G–D (Paderewski, Smith, and Boekelman, Century Library of Music, 606). 56Samson, Music of Chopin, 180–84, and Chopin: The Four Ballades (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 78. 57It seems noteworthy that neither Leichtentritt nor Rosen direct attention to Chopin's embedded chromatic notes in the conclusion. 58I am grateful to my colleague Professor Peter Gach (Pianist in Residence at Palomar College, San Marcos, CA) for this translation as well as a number of helpful comments regarding it. The original text, in Bronislaw Edward Sydon, ed., Korespondencja Fryderyka Chopina (Warsaw: Panstwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 1955), 1:353, is as follows: “Ja tu piszę Sonatę Si b mineur, w której będzie mój marsz, co znasz. Jest Allegro potem Scherzo mi b mineur, marsz i finałek niedługi, może ze 3 strony moje; lewa ręka unisono z prawą ogadują po marszu.” 59The full titles of these dictionaries are: Kazimierz Bulas, Lawrence L. Thomas, and Francis J. Whitfield, eds., The Kosciuszko Foundation Dictionary (New York: The Kosciuszko Foundation, 1965); Jan Stanislawski, ed., Wielki Slownik Polsko-Angielski (Warsaw: Panstwowe Wydawnictwo Wiedza Powsechna, 1970); Hipolit Szkiladz, ed., Slownik Jezyka Polskiego (Warsaw: Panstwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1988). 60For example, in E. L. Voynich's translation of Chopin's Letters, ed. Henryk Opieński (New York: Vienna House, 1973), 204; and in Arthur Hedley's translation of Selected Correspondence of Fryderyk Chopin, ed. Bronislaw Sydow (London: Heinemann, 1962), 181. 61Kallberg, “Chopin's March,” 4 (footnote), also considers briefly the word ogadują, without coming to any definite conclusion concerning it.