Frederic Chopin
The Polish-born pianist Frédéric Chopin was the first composer to make full use of the expressive qualities and coloristic potential of the piano when it was a still-developing keyboard instrument, and he rightly has been called the "Poet of the Piano." Much of all piano music by subsequent composers shows his influence, and his revolutionary use of chromatic harmonies and unusual key relationships profoundly influenced composers of symphonic music and operas as well, such as Franz Liszt and Richard Wagner--thus Chopin's importance in the development of the "Romantic" style in general can not be overestimated.
The vast majority of Chopin’s music is for piano solo, and his few other works all feature the piano. Chopin’s four chamber music pieces likewise include parts for the solo cello, and the earliest of these is the Introduction and Polonaise brilliante, Op. 3, dating from 1829. Patterned after a stately Polish dance that has become closely identified with Chopin, the Polonaise brillante was originally written as a diversion for a piano-playing princess and her cello-playing father. It demonstrates that the 19-year-old composer had already found a compositional voice which was not merely an imitation of other composers—in this regard Chopin’s precociousness surpassed even Mozart’s. Chopin added the Introduction the following year for his own public performances of the showpiece.
It comes as no surprise that Chopin held the keyboard works of J.S. Bach in very high regard, and Chopin's 24 Preludes, Op. 28, perhaps best can be viewed as a tribute to the Baroque master. In each his two books called the Well-tempered Clavier, Bach uses a prelude-fugue pairing to explore all 24 major and minor keys. Chopin dispenses with the fugue, but his Preludes likewise traverse all 24 keys, although he organizes them by the "Circle of 5ths" rather than by ascending half-steps as Bach had done. The melancholy Prelude No. 6 was performed at Chopin's funeral, and is often nicknamed "Tolling Bells," but it also is sometimes called "Homesickness."
Among his many other achievements, Chopin was the first to "liberate" the scherzo form from its previously subsidiary role as an interior movement in symphonies and and other multi-movement works. With Chopin the scherzo becomes an independent piece that retains the lively tempo and 3/4 time of its precedents, but which often dispenses with the jocularity implied by the title ("scherzo" is the Italian word for "joke"), and which rather expansively elaborates on the traditional "ABA" formal design. Following the stormy turbulence of the opening "A" section of Scherzo No. 1, Op. 20, first published in 1835, the "B" middle section provides a tranquil respite with a setting of the Polish Christmas carol, Lulajze Jezuniu (Sleep Little Jesus). In Chopin's Scherzo No. 2, Op. 31, published two years later, the beginning and concluding "A" sections share characteristics of sonata-allegro design, but with an interruption by the episodic central "B" section thrown in.
For proof of Chopin's "Wagnerian-like" modulations, one need look no further than the Prelude in C# minor, Op. 45, composed in 1841--when Wagner was just starting to discover his voice with the premiere of The Flying Dutchman, and almost two decades before Tristan und Isolde would emerge. Judging by a letter from Chopin to his music copyist, composer Julian Fontana (1810-1869), Chopin impressed even himself with his seamlessly shifting tonal centers. Composed two years after his 24 Preludes, Op. 28 (1839), Op. 45 is often called "Prelude No. 25," and it was the last piece with that title Chopin wrote.
Chopin is credited with establishing the Ballade as an extended instrumental form, and all four of his solo piano works bearing this title are considered among the crowning achievements of the Romantic period. British pianist and composer John Ogdon (1937-1989) called the Ballade No. 4, Op.52, completed in 1842, ”the most exalted, intense and sublimely powerful of all Chopin’s compositions ... it contains the experience of a lifetime.”
Among the five Polish national dances, the polonaise (stately 3/4 time) and mazurka (lively 3/4 time) are the best known, thanks to Chopin having written so many of them both. (The three lesser-known dances are Kujawiak, krakowiak and oberek -- the polka was widespread throughout Central Europe and not exclusively Polish, in case you're wondering.) Chopin's earliest known compositions were two polonaises written when he was seven years old, probably before he could even reach the pedals, and his last work in the genre, the Polonaise-Fantaisie, was written three years before he died. Among Chopin's 18 (or so) polonaises, the "Military" Polonaise, Op. 40, no. 1 (1838), and the "Heroic" Polonaise, Op. 53 (1842, sometimes nicknamed "Drum"), are the most-recognizable by the general public. The "oh, that one" main tune of the "Heroic" is preceded by a flurry of rumblings and chromatic scales. The polonaise in general has been described as being like a march in triple meter, and that is certainly the case in this piece. Although it holds true to its 3/4 time signature throughout, the middle "B" section, with its descending 4-note ostinato, is especially martial. The music suddenly becomes rather delicate, almost waltz-like, before an ocatve run leads into the triumphal return of the principal tune from the beginning.
Chopin’s Sonata in G minor for Cello and Piano, Op. 65, composed in 1846 and dedicated to the celebrated French cellist and composer Auguste Franchomme (1808-1884), was the last of Chopin's works published before he died. Chopin, already gravely weakened with tuberculosis, gave his final public concert in Paris on February 16th, 1848, and for it he was joined by Franchomme for a performance of the Sonata.
The last three of Chopin's 21 Nocturnes were published posthumously, but the piece now known as Nocturne No. 20 was not actually named that by the composer. Written for his sister Ludwika in 1830 as a study to prepare for playing his 2nd Piano Concerto, it was first published in 1856 under its tempo indication, Lento con gran espressione ("Very slowly with much emotion"). But an 1870 editon called it "Nocturne" and the title stuck, although it sometimes also is called "Reminiscence." This Nocturne was featured in the World War II bio-pic, The Pianist (2002), and it played a major part in another real-life drama from the same dark period. In 1943, the commandant of a Nazi concentration camp discovered that Polish pianist Natalia Weissman (1911-2007) was among his prisoners, and he ordered her to play for his birthday. She chose the Nocturne in C-Sharp Minor, and so impressed her captors that they spared not only her life, but also the life of her sister. After the war she resumed her concert career, performing into her 90s as Natalia Karp, and she was known especially for her interpretation of the piece that had saved her life.
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