Part 3: Musical Style (pp. 65-92)

Part 3 of chopin-pianist-and-teacher-as-seen-by-his-pupils (pp. 65-92).

Question this unit answers

Once the mechanical apparatus is in place (previous unit, “Basic Technique”), what did Chopin actually teach his pupils to do with it? This unit assembles the pupils’ testimony into a doctrine of musical style: how a phrase is punctuated and declaimed, why singing (not other pianists) is the model, how legato and cantabile are produced by fingering rather than by the pedal, what rubato precisely meant to Chopin, how ornaments and dynamics behave, how sparingly the pedal is used, and what repertoire and theoretical study the pupil was set alongside all this.

Key terms

• Musical prosody / punctuation — the doctrine that music is a language with syllables, words, commas and full stops; “All the theory of the style which Chopin taught to his pupils rested on this analogy between music and language” (p. 66). Practical rules: long, high, dissonant and syncopated notes are stronger; phrase-endings weak; ascent = crescendo, descent = decrescendo; metrical accents strong-weak (p. 65).
• Declamation — phrasing modelled on speech-delivery, but explicitly without rhetorical excess: “It was a declamation without pathos; but both simple and noble” (p. 66).
• Over-declamation — the failure mode of the above; Chopin could rebuke a pupil with “does one really always have to speak in such a declamatory way?” (p. 81).
• Bel canto — the Italian singing school (Pasta, Rubini, Malibran, Grisi) as the source of naturalness, breadth and sustaining power; Chopin sent Mme Rubio to take singing lessons (p. 69) and told pupils “Il faut chanter avec les doigts!” (p. 69).
• Breathing / souplesse — where a singer would breathe, the pianist raises the wrist and lets it fall again on the singing note with maximal suppleness (p. 69); condensed in Chopin’s own sketch: “The wrist: respiration in the voice.” (p. 69).
• Portamento — carrying one sound into the next, “but only at the last moment” and never exaggerated (p. 70); Chopin “loved to find in piano playing what we understand by portamento in singing” (p. 70).
• Legato / gebunden — the “bound” vocal tone; the failure to achieve it drew his severest censure, “Il (ou elle) ne sait pas lier deux notes” (p. 70).
• Cantabile — the singing register in which his tone was “immense [riesengross]”, comparable only to Field (p. 70).
• Finger substitution / same-finger legato — repeating one finger on adjoining notes, sliding black-to-white, and changing fingers on a held key “as often as an organ-player” (p. 73); “Substitute fingers as much as possible.” (p. 73). The third finger is singled out as “a grand chanteur” (p. 72).
• Agogics — the paired means of expression, “the modification of tone and of tempo” (p. 75), governing all fluctuation of movement.
• Rubato (Chopin’s sense) — not free tempo. The accompanying hand keeps strict time while the melodic hand lingers or anticipates, later falling back onto its axis; “The left hand,” he said, “is the choir master [Kapellmeister]: it mustn’t relent or bend. It’s a clock.” (p. 75).
• Borrowed time — the same idea stated as bookkeeping: “We in all cases borrow the time from notes of smaller importance for the purpose of giving it to the principal notes.” (p. 76).
• Demi-rubato — Kleczyński’s term for the two-hand-independence species of rubato, which he thinks applies only in particular cases; elsewhere “the trunk totters” (p. 77).
• Fioritura / gruppetto / arabesque / parenthesis — improvised or notated ornamental figures; Chopin improvised them onto Field’s Nocturnes and liked ornamental variants in his own Mazurkas (p. 78).
• Subordination of ornament — Kleczyński’s rule that ornaments accelerate rather than slacken, and must “disappear in it like a little brook which loses itself in a great river” (p. 79).
• Spianato — the smooth, undifferentiated playing indicated by huge slurs spanning whole periods, “without nuances or discontinuities in the rhythm” (p. 81).
• Simplicity — the ideal reached only after exhausting difficulty; “Simplicity is everything.” (p. 80).
• Trill beginning — normally on the upper/auxiliary note; a preceding small note at the principal pitch signals starting on the principal note instead (p. 86).
• Clementi’s Préludes et Exercices — the core drill repertoire, second book required even of advanced pupils, first Exercice in A flat singled out (p. 87).

Propositions

1. Musical style is grounded in a language analogy: phrases must be punctuated, and unpunctuated music is “a succession of sounds without connection, an incomprehensible chaos” (p. 66).
2. Wrong phrasing is not a small blemish but a disqualification — the pseudo-musician “must relinquish all hope of his speech having any effect on the listener” (p. 66).
3. Phrases must not be over-subdivided: do not slacken movement on units of more than four bars, because that “fatigues the attention of the listener” (p. 67); carry the idea “in one long breath” (p. 68).
4. The model for pianistic style is the singer, not the pianist: theory of declamation “should be grounded upon the rules which guide vocalists” and “perfected by hearing good singers” (p. 68).
5. Legato and cantabile are produced by hand and fingering (same-finger repetition, substitution, wrist-breathing), not by pedal (pp. 71-73, 85).
6. Chopin was rhythmically strict, not free: he “required adherence to the strictest rhythm, hated all lingering and dragging, misplaced rubatos, as well as exaggerated ritardandos” (p. 74), and “the metronome never left his piano” (p. 74).
7. Rubato is therefore a local freedom inside a globally intact rhythm: “rubato is never a defect in the time” (p. 76); the total duration and rhythmic frame stay respected while internal pacing varies (p. 75).
8. Rubato cannot be reduced to rules — it “requires a certain musical intuition, that is to say, a certain particular talent” (p. 76) — which is why Chopin eventually stopped writing the term into his scores at all (p. 76).
9. Ornaments are subordinate: they belong to the phrase, must sound improvised, and must not be inflated into independent events as the Italian school’s cadenzas were (pp. 78-80).
10. Dynamics are relative and continuously graduated, not extremes: Chopin “insisted on a real and exactly graduated increase and decrease of loudness” (p. 84), while “his forte was relative, not absolute” (p. 84).
11. Interpretation is legitimately variable: he “never played his own compositions twice alike” (p. 82), and taught pupils to find ever-different expression (p. 82).
12. The pedal is an addition, not a foundation: “Use the pedal with the greatest economy.” (p. 85) and its correct use “remains a study for life” (p. 85).
13. Study is intellectual as well as physical: pupils were pushed into theory with Reber (p. 86) and required to analyse each work’s formal structure and its psychological content (p. 87).
14. Bach, Clementi and Field form the pedagogical backbone; Chopin’s own Etudes were reserved for the most advanced (pp. 87-89).

Arguments

Language analogy → punctuation rules. Premise: sound is to music what words are to language (p. 65). Premise: unpunctuated speech is unintelligible. Conclusion: the eight-bar period needs a full stop at its end (slight pause, lowered voice) and commas/semicolons at its two- or four-bar subdivisions — demonstrated on the Waltz op. 69/1, where every second bar’s closing note is shorter and weaker (pp. 66-67).

Language analogy → prohibition of over-phrasing. Premise: punctuation aids comprehension. Premise: excessive punctuation is a way to “spread the thought out too much” and so tires the listener. Conclusion: slackening is admissible on short thoughts (an Adagio) “but never when it consists of more than four measures” (p. 67).

Singing is prior to piano → imitate singers. Premise: the voice is the natural instrument of musical declamation; “music ought to be song” (p. 69). Premise: Italian singers demonstrate breadth, ease and sustaining power (p. 68). Conclusion: pupils should hear singers frequently, and even take singing lessons (p. 69); Chopin’s own playing was “entirely based on the vocal style of Rubini, Malibran and Grisi” though realised in “a purely pianistic ‘voice’” (p. 69).

Rubato as compensated displacement. Premise: the left hand is the clock (p. 75). Premise: expression requires anticipation and delay. Conclusion: the hands go temporarily out of phase and then “you make a compensation which re-establishes the ensemble” (p. 75).

Corollary (Viardot). This needs full independence of the hands, and pupils lacking it fake it by dislocating the accompaniment or simply playing one hand after the other — “It would be a hundred times better just to play in time, with both hands together.” (p. 74).

Ornament subordination. Premise: gruppetti mostly decorate a returning motif, becoming richer at each return (pp. 78-79). Premise: a rallentando “would invest them with too much importance, would make them appear to be special and independent ideas” (p. 79). Conclusion: render the motif with nearly the same shading in all its guises, and accelerate rather than slacken the ornament (p. 79) — a deliberate break with the era’s cadenza-like treatment (p. 80).

Simplicity as terminus, not starting point. Premise: simplicity is “art’s final seal”, emerging only after exhausting difficulties and immense quantities of notes. Conclusion: “you can’t begin with the end” (p. 80).

Simplicity → limits on tempo modification. Since the style admits no affectation, it “does not allow too great changes of movement” (p. 81) — tying the simplicity ideal directly back to the restraint on rubato.

Dynamic economy → expressive contrast without force. Premise: Chopin’s piano “is so like a soft breath” (p. 84). Conclusion: no vigorous forte is required to obtain contrast (p. 84), so the whole scale is shaded “with infinite gradations” from pianissimo upward while avoiding “indistinct muttering” below and pounding above (p. 83). Counter-caution from Chopin himself: the goal is “the response evoked in the listener, not the means used to evoke it” — astonishing news lands whether shouted or whispered (p. 84).

Evidence

• Phrasing. Chopin’s diagnostic analogy for bad phrasing: reciting a memorised speech in an unfamiliar language, mangling syllable quantities and even “making full stops in the middle of words” (p. 66).
• Phrasing, Mathias’s verdict. “At phrasing a melody, at bringing out a thematic fragment, at making a ‘line’, he was inimitable.” (p. 68). He taught by playing whole pieces to pupils, not only passages.
• Phrasing slurs. He attached great importance to them (while admitting they are often mis-drawn in his printed works) and detached the hand at their end after diminishing the tone (p. 70).
• Bel canto in practice. Gretsch reports his “new, simple way” of expressing breath through the wrist, and his delighted “C’est cela, parfait! merci!” when she achieved it (p. 69). Rubio was told “You must sing if you wish to play” and sent to a singing teacher (p. 69).
• Legato fingering. Documented with musical examples over pp. 71-73: Nocturne op. 9/2 bars 4-6 and 26-8, Nocturne op. 48/1 opening, Nocturne op. 37/1 bars 5-6 — all illustrating same-finger melodic connection and substitution. Hipkins on the held key: he “changed fingers upon a key as often as an organ-player” (p. 73).
• Repeated notes. For repeated notes in moderate tempo he refused finger-alternation, preferring one fingertip, “very carefully and without changing fingers” (p. 74); the hand stayed “tranquil and flexible” even then (p. 74).
• Rubato, first-hand. Mikuli’s account of accompaniment-in-time versus melody freed “from all rhythmic fetters” (p. 74); Mme Dubois’s version reported by Mathias, with Chopin recommending it specifically in Weber — the Sonata in A flat op. 39 and the A flat passage of the Concertstück op. 79 agitato (p. 75); Lenz’s clock metaphor plus the five-minute-piece formulation (p. 75).
• Rubato, Mikuli’s qualification (reported by Michałowski): the rubato “possessed an unshakeable emotional logic” justified by melodic line, harmonic detail and figuration (p. 75).
• Rubato, its limit. It “never degenerated into exaggeration or affectation” (p. 76); Liszt’s tree-and-wind image makes the same point figuratively (p. 76, restated p. 77).
• Rubato, Kleczyński’s counter-examples where the trunk itself totters: Polonaise op. 26/1 third part, Nocturne op. 32/2 middle section, Impromptu op. 29 (p. 77).
• Rubato and score notation. Chopin later dropped the marking “tempo rubato” from his music, reasoning that the term “taught nothing to whoever already knew, and said nothing to those who did not know” (p. 76).
• Ornamentation. He improvised fiorituras onto Field’s Nocturnes (pp. 77-78) and pencilled “a few small but very important modifications” into Lenz’s score of op. 9/2 (p. 78); Koczalski via Mikuli notes his predilection for ornamental variants in the Mazurkas (p. 78). Model example: Fantasia on Polish National Airs op. 13, bar 65 (p. 78). Kleczyński’s catalogue of accelerating ornaments (Nocturne op. 9/2 bars 16 and 24; Concerto op. 21 Larghetto bars 26, 28, 30, 40, 75, 77) and of rapid pianissimo “parentheses” (Nocturne op. 32/2 bars 14 and 22; op. 15/1 bar 20 and 68; op. 37/1 bar 36) (p. 79).
• Restraint, Courty’s formulation. “just simplicity, as in all that is beautiful” (p. 80).
• Restraint, Karasowski. Chopin “had a horror of all exaggerated accentuation”, which drained the poetry and produced “a sort of dry pedantry” (p. 81). Lenz’s Beethoven op. 26 anecdote belongs here too: an intensely declamatory reading earned both praise and a gentle rebuke about speaking too declamatorily.
• Variability. Péru: Chopin “never played his works twice with the same expression, and yet the result was always ideally beautiful” (p. 82), and her extended account of being made to weep as he re-played her piece differently each lesson, ending with “It was almost good, only not the way I feel it.” (p. 82).
• Dynamics. Peruzzi on the extraordinary pianissimo, “Every little note was like a bell, so clear.” (p. 83); Gutmann: he “played generally very quietly, and rarely, indeed hardly ever, fortissimo” (p. 83); Mathias: extraordinary vigour “only by flashes” (p. 83); Michałowski’s report that Chopin forbade Mikuli a stronger touch, at some cost to Mikuli’s own sound (p. 83).
• Dynamics, the Arabella Goddard anecdote. Chopin’s parting words to her mother: “Never let the child play loud.” (p. 84)
• Dynamics, decrescendo. Gretsch found it “as enchantingly beautiful as it is difficult to attain” (p. 84).
• Pedal. Streicher on lifelong study and strictness about misuse (pp. 84-85); Franchomme: learn to make a diminuendo without the una corda pedal first (p. 85); Courty: he discouraged pupils from the pedal while using it himself, especially the soft pedal, precisely so they would not overstep its resources (p. 85). Marmontel details coupling both pedals for veiled sonority versus separate use for brilliance, sustained harmony, deep bass and ringing chords, plus the Pleyel dampers’ precision (p. 85). Kleczyński lists soft-pedal graces (op. 15/2 bar 51, op. 37/1, op. 21 Larghetto, op. 29 trio, op. 27/2), abrupt open-to-soft pedal changes in enharmonic modulation (op. 21 bar 6, op. 40/2 bars 81-2, op. 17/4, op. 26/1 bar 33), and passages best played with no pedal at all (op. 15/1 opening; the 3/4 middle of the Andante spianato op. 22) (pp. 85-86).
• Ornament execution. Viardot’s rule on trill starts and the preceding small note (p. 86); Mikuli on trills valued for evenness over speed, with a tranquil closing turn, and on the great Italian singers as models for turn and appoggiatura (p. 86).
• Theory. Pupils were sent to Henri Reber for basic theoretical studies (p. 86).
• Analysis. Works were to be analysed for structure and for “the feelings and psychological processes which it evokes” (p. 87). The anonymous Scottish lady describes him teaching Beethoven op. 26 by structure and composer’s intentions, then playing his own works, “letting me hear the framework” around which the strange harmonies were grouped.
• Curriculum. Clementi’s Préludes et Exercices alongside scales in the same tonal sequence (p. 87).
• Curriculum, Zaleska’s account. The A flat Exercice’s arpeggio “which has caused many tears to flow”, to be worked quickly and slowly, forte and piano, staccato and legato until “the touch became equal, delicate and light without feebleness”, plus the “dog barking” rebuke (p. 88).
• Curriculum, the graded list. Cramer’s Etudes, Clementi’s Gradus ad Parnassum, Moscheles’s Stylstudien, Bach’s Suites and individual fugues from the WTC (p. 88). Dubois confirms Clementi book 2, Gradus, and the forty-eight, with Chopin’s parting advice in 1848 to practise Bach constantly as the best means of progress (pp. 88-89). Mathias: Clementi, Bach and Field for beginners (p. 89). Gutmann: Gradus, Bach’s fugues and Hummel are “the key to pianoforte-playing” and preparation for Chopin’s own works (p. 89). Field’s and Chopin’s Nocturnes doubled as legato études (p. 89).
• Named pupils’ repertoire. Gretsch: mostly Bach, Beethoven and Chopin, “he gave absolute priority to Bach” (p. 89). Roubaud: Weber op. 39, Beethoven op. 26, plus Chopin’s Polonaise op. 22(?), Nocturne op. 48/1 and Sonata op. 58 — whose Largo made her weep when he played it (p. 89). Dubois: a detailed list (pp. 90) — much Hummel, Field, Beethoven concertos and sonatas, Weber sonatas op. 24 and 39 played “with extreme care”, Schubert Ländler/waltzes and duets, Mendelssohn only op. 25 and the Songs without Words, of Liszt only two transcriptions, and “Schumann: nothing.” Stirling: an all-Chopin list spanning Ballades, Concerto op. 21, both Etude sets, Fantaisie, Impromptus, Mazurkas, Nocturnes, Polonaises op. 26, Preludes, Sonatas op. 35/58/65 and Waltzes (p. 91).
• Ensemble. Chamber music recommended, but only with highly accomplished partners; otherwise four-hand duets (p. 91). Concrete practice: sight-reading duets with Chopin (p. 91), Schubert marches/polonaises/Divertissement Hongrois (p. 91), all of Weber’s duets plus Moscheles op. 47 and Hummel’s Grand Duo with Peruzzi (pp. 91-92). A pianino stood beside the teaching grand so he could play the orchestra part himself, from Hummel to Beethoven concertos (p. 92), including for his own concertos (p. 92) and the F minor Concerto’s slow movement with Streicher (p. 92).

Quotes

• “We use sounds to make music just as we use words to make a language.” (p. 65)
• “A long note is stronger, as is also a high note. A dissonant is likewise stronger, and equally so a syncopated note. The ending of a phrase, before a comma, or a stop, is always weak.” (p. 65)
• “Under his fingers each musical phrase sounded like song, and with such clarity that each note took the meaning of a syllable, each bar that of a word, each phrase that of a thought. It was a declamation without pathos; but both simple and noble.” (p. 66)
• “do not play by too short phrases” (p. 67)
• “He advised his pupils not to fragment the musical idea, but rather to carry it to the listener in one long breath.” (p. 68)
• “During lessons Chopin would repeat indefatigably: ‘Il faut chanter avec les doigts!’” (p. 69)
• “The wrist: respiration in the voice.” (p. 69)
• “He loved to find in piano playing what we understand by portamento in singing.” (p. 70)
• “The third finger is a grand chanteur.” (p. 72)
• “Substitute fingers as much as possible.” (p. 73)
• “In keeping time Chopin was inexorable, and some readers will be surprised to learn that the metronome never left his piano.” (p. 74)
• “The left hand,” I often heard him say, “is the choir master [Kapellmeister]: it mustn’t relent or bend. It’s a clock. Do with the right hand what you want and can.” (p. 75)
• “We in all cases borrow the time from notes of smaller importance for the purpose of giving it to the principal notes.” (p. 76)
• “they should sound as though improvised” (p. 78)
• “Simplicity is everything.” (p. 80)
• “Use the pedal with the greatest economy.” (p. 85)
• “Chopin considered that trills should begin on the upper note.” (p. 86)
• “Any work selected for study should be carefully analysed for its formal structure, as well as for the feelings and psychological processes which it evokes.” (p. 87)
• “Chopin earnestly recommended ensemble-playing and cultivation of the best chamber music – but only together with highly accomplished musicians.” (p. 91)

Tensions and links

• Back to Basic Technique. The suppleness, hand tranquillity and finger independence drilled there are here revealed as means to a vocal end: the wrist that was trained for freedom becomes the organ of “respiration in the voice” (p. 69), and finger substitution exists to serve legato line (p. 73). Technique is not autonomous in this pedagogy — it is prosody’s servant.
• Strictness vs freedom. The unit puts two testimonies in the same frame: Chopin as metronome-keeper who mocked draggers with “Je vous prie de vous asseoir” (p. 74), and Chopin as the rubato player whose melody “wavers capriciously” (p. 74). These reconcile only if rubato is understood as displacement with compensation (p. 75) rather than as tempo freedom.
• Internal disagreement about rubato’s scope. Mikuli, Mathias and Lenz all describe the strict-left-hand model; Kleczyński explicitly demotes it to “a demi-rubato” and insists some passages require the whole texture to move (p. 77). This is an unresolved disagreement among the witnesses, not a settled doctrine.
• Pedal: precept vs practice. He forbade pupils the pedal while using it constantly himself, deliberately withholding the fact (p. 85) — a pedagogical staging, foundation first and colour later, that resembles the simplicity argument on p. 80: you cannot begin with the end.
• Dynamics vs nuance. He demanded exactly graduated shading (p. 84) yet warned against becoming “prisoners of excessive shading”, since only the effect on the listener matters (p. 84).
• Forward to Part 2: Interpretation of Chopin’s works. The score references here (op. 9/2, 15/1-2, 26/1, 27/2, 29, 32/2, 37/1, 48/1, 69/1, op. 21 Larghetto, Andante spianato op. 22) are the same repertoire the interpretation section will treat piece by piece; the general rules of this unit are the premises the next unit applies. The variability testimony (p. 82) also sets a limit on how prescriptive that next unit can be.
• Bel canto as a cross-cutting thread. Italian singers are invoked three separate times for three different purposes: phrasing theory (p. 68), tone and breath (p. 69), and the execution of turns and appoggiaturas (p. 86).

Open questions

• The core phrasing example (Waltz op. 69/1) and the “should be executed as follows” realisation are given as engravings (pp. 66-67); the text alone does not reveal how the shortening and weakening was notated, so the rule stays under-specified without the score.
• Same for the fingering examples on pp. 71-73 — the prose says “the same finger to play two adjoining notes” (p. 71) but which specific fingers in which bars of op. 9/2, 48/1 and 37/1 requires reading the plates.
• Whether Chopin’s metronome use (p. 74) was for setting tempo, for drilling steadiness, or both, is not stated.
• How the compensation in rubato was actually measured — Mathias says “you make a compensation which re-establishes the ensemble” (p. 75), but the time-scale (within the bar? within the phrase?) is left open, and Lenz’s five-minute formulation implies a much larger window (p. 75).
• Kleczyński’s “demi-rubato” objection (p. 77) is his own inference, decades later; it is unclear whether any direct pupil endorsed a whole-texture rubato.
• Chopin’s remark that the goal is the listener’s response “not the means used to evoke it” (p. 84) is flagged in the source itself with a doubtful “as he wrote [?]” — the attribution chain (Czartoryska? / Działyńska) is uncertain.
• Roubaud’s “Polonaise in E flat [op. 22?]” (p. 89) is conjectural in the source.
• Likewise Dubois’s Field concerto, “the one in E flat [no. 1, 3, 4?]” (p. 90), and several Hummel/Liszt identifications.
• “Schumann: nothing.” (p. 90) is stated without explanation — whether aversion, chronology, or availability is not addressed here.