Part 6: The Studies - Titanic Experiments (Ch. VI)

Part 6 of chopin-the-man-and-his-music (Chapter VI: The Studies - Titanic Experiments).

Question this unit answers

What did Chopin actually invent in the twenty-seven Etudes (opp. 10, 25, and the Trois Nouvelles Etudes), how should each one be understood technically and expressively, and which of the competing critical editions can a player trust? This is the opening chapter of Part II (“His Music”) and it doubles as a piece-by-piece commentary and a survey of editorial practice.

Key terms

• Etude / study — a piece with “a special end in view,” promoting facility and leading to “the conquest of some particular difficulty, whether of technics, of rhythm, expression or delivery” (Schumann’s definition, quoted via Kullak).
• Chord of the tenth / dispersed harmony — widely-spaced arpeggiated harmony exceeding the octave span; Chopin’s characteristic left- and right-hand figuration (op. 10 no. 1, op. 10 no. 11).
• Agogic accent — Riemann’s term for accent produced by lengthening rather than by dynamic stress; used alongside dynamic accents in his editions.
• Chopin fingering vs. Czerny (Clementi) fingering — rival fingerings for chromatic double thirds in op. 25 no. 6; the dividing line of “digital politics” among pianists.
• Perpetuum mobile — continuous unbroken motion, the type of op. 10 no. 10.
• Rubato — tempo license; Huneker insists it can be felt but not taught.
• “Chopin whisper” — the characteristic murmuring pianissimo (op. 25 nos. 2, 6).
• Double notes / double thirds / double sixths — the parallel-interval technique of op. 25 no. 6 (thirds) and op. 25 no. 8 (sixths).
• Trois Nouvelles Etudes — three later studies published 1840 in the Fetis-Moscheles Methode des Methodes.
• Toccata style — the double-note repeated-key idiom of op. 10 no. 7.
• Cantilena — the sustained upper melody standing in “relief” above the accompaniment (op. 25 no. 4).
• Variante / variant — an editor’s alternative reading of the text, often for concert use.

Propositions

1. Chopin’s style was fully formed before he reached Paris; the chronology (op. 10 begun 1829, the C minor written at Stuttgart September 1831) refutes Lina Ramann’s claim that Liszt influenced the Etudes — “the influence was the other way” (Ch. VI).
2. Chopin created a new piano technique rather than extending an existing one: taking dispersed harmony and raising “the chord of the tenth to heroic stature” was something only he could do (Ch. VI).
3. “The nub of modern piano music is in the study” — op. 10 no. 1 is the skeletonized statement of the whole technical system, “the key with which Chopin unlocked—not his heart, but the kingdom of technique” (Ch. VI).
4. The Etudes are simultaneously poetry and pedagogy; both “the material and the spiritual” must be studied, and the aesthetic side is “nowhere neglected for the purely mechanical” (Ch. VI).
5. Chopin’s own metronome marks are systematically too fast for modern instruments: they “sprang from the expressively light mechanism of the prevailing pianos of Chopin’s day,” and the deeper key-dip and fuller tone of a modern piano require “greater breadth of style and less speedy passage work” (Ch. VI).
6. Chopin’s fingering choices were likewise instrument-dependent — Von Bulow argues the Chopin chromatic-thirds fingering, viable on Pleyel’s shallow, pliant touch, is “irreconcilable with conditions of crescendo legato” on the modern grand (Ch. VI).
7. Tradition transmitted by pupils is unreliable as a textual authority: Mikuli and Tellefsen were both Chopin pupils copying from his manuscripts under his supervision, yet they disagree — “little reliance can be placed on the brave talk about tradition” (Ch. VI).
8. Klindworth is the only editor who rises to “a work of genius,” though not faultless; the four editions worth consulting are Klindworth (most genially intellectual), Von Bulow (most pedagogic), Kullak (poetic) and Riemann (scholarly, phrasing over fingering) (Ch. VI).
9. Riemann’s re-phrasings and re-groupings are pedagogically valuable but interpretively suspect — he “is disposed to refine upon the gold of Chopin,” and his accentuation “may be ugly, but it is useful” (Ch. VI).
10. Chopin deliberately avoided the scale figure, the stock-in-trade of Hummel, Thalberg and Herz; the only real scale studies are op. 10 no. 2 and the closing run of op. 25 no. 11 (Ch. VI).
11. Pedalling is not ornament but structure in this music: without “pedalling of the most varied sort” op. 25 no. 1 “will remain as dry as a dog-gnawed bone,” and in op. 25 no. 12 the pedal “must change with every new harmony” (Ch. VI).
12. Chopin fixed the boundary between piano and orchestral writing — op. 25 no. 11 achieves maximum fullness of sound while remaining “entirely and utterly unorchestral” (Von Bulow) (Ch. VI).
13. Hand position and fingering in Chopin cannot be standardized: “No two hands are alike, no two pianists use the same muscular movements. Play along the easiest line of resistance” (Ch. VI).
14. Where technical figure and musical phrase conflict, the figure wins in performance — in the working-out of op. 10 no. 12 “most virtuosi place the accent on the fifth finger, regardless of the pattern. This is as it should be” (Ch. VI).
15. Both excesses of interpretation are wrong: “rose-leaf sentimentalism” and the “healthy” reading of “pianists with more brawn than brain” (Ch. VI).
16. The Etudes will outlast the rest of Chopin’s output and constitute his claim to classic status alongside Beethoven and Bach (Ch. VI).

Arguments

Against the Liszt-influence thesis. Huneker answers Ramann’s assertion (that op. 10 nos. 9 and 12 and op. 25 nos. 11 and 12 show Liszt’s hand) purely with dates: composition begun 1829, the Revolutionary written at Stuttgart in 1831, op. 25 heard by a Polish visitor in Paris in 1834 though only published 1837. “Figures prove the fallacy of her assertion.” Liszt’s three concert studies are then offered as evidence of the reverse debt.

Why the editions cannot be reconciled by appeal to authority. The chain of argument: the early French, German and Polish printings are useless for misprints; the pupil-editors who worked from the autographs contradict each other; therefore the “modern critical editions” have no secure foundation and must be judged on internal merit (scholarship, fingering, phrasing) rather than on lineage. Hence Huneker’s method throughout the chapter: quote four editors side by side on each study and adjudicate.

Why the metronome marks should be disobeyed. Kullak’s position, which Huneker endorses: the marks reflect the shallow key-dip and light action of Chopin’s Pleyel; the modern piano’s “noble, more sonorous tone” requires breadth. Applied to op. 10 no. 1 (176 impairs “the majestic grandeur”; 152 recommended) and op. 10 no. 8 (autograph 96, Kullak takes Klindworth’s 80). For op. 10 no. 12, “speed should give way to breadth at all hazards.”

Why the Etudes are music before they are exercises. Argued by cases rather than in the abstract: op. 10 no. 3 is “more in the nocturne than study style”; op. 10 no. 11 is a Corot landscape surpassing the nocturnes proper; op. 25 no. 6 is “first music, then a technical problem,” Chopin’s “transfiguration of such a barren subject” as the exercise in thirds; op. 25 no. 11 “is magnificent, and moreover it is music”; op. 25 no. 12 shows “Chopin the musician, not Chopin the composer for piano.” The prediction follows: “the Chopin studies will be played for their music, without any thought of their technical problems.”

Against Willeby on op. 25 no. 12. Willeby calls the piece monotonous because the arpeggio figure never varies. Huneker concedes only the analogy: “Monotonous as is the thunder and spray of the sea when it tumbles and roars on some sullen, savage shore” — i.e. sameness of figure at this scale is elemental, not poverty.

Against Von Bulow’s classificatory instinct. Von Bulow pairs op. 10 no. 3 with no. 6 as expression studies; Huneker objects that “emotions should not be hunted in couples” and that variety of mood is the point of the collection. Similarly he mocks Von Bulow’s transposition exercises (“man’s years are but threescore and ten!”) and rejects his interlocked-octave variant for op. 10 no. 12 as “clangorous padding.”

On the Godowsky transcriptions. Defended against the charge of irreverence on the grounds that they are musical (unlike “the Brahms derangements”), technically prophetic, and that reverence is beside the point — “Plato is parsed in the schoolroom, and Beethoven taught in conservatories!”

Evidence

• Dating. Letters to Titus Woyciechowski, 20 October and 14 November 1829 (“I have composed a study in my own manner”). Niecks dates op. 10’s publication to July/August 1833; op. 25 to 1837. Karasowski gives 1846 (Gebethner & Wolff, Warsaw) as the first complete edition. Trois Nouvelles Etudes published 1840 in Fetis and Moscheles’ Methode des Methodes.
• Editions surveyed. Tellefsen, Klindworth (Moscow 1873-76; called by Von Bulow “the only model edition”), Scholtz (Peters, based on French/German/English originals plus Mathias), Mikuli (assisted by Chopin’s pupils and Ferdinand Hiller), Mertke (Steingraber), Kullak (Schlesinger), Riemann, Von Bulow, Reinecke, Scharwenka (Augener).
• Textual cruxes cited. op. 10 no. 1 bar 29, treble C vs. B flat (Von Bulow); op. 10 no. 5 bar 4, E flat (Klindworth, Riemann) vs. D flat (Mikuli, Kullak, Von Bulow); op. 10 no. 6 bar 11, an A flat missing from the autograph; op. 10 no. 8, a dominant-seventh chord unique to Kullak from the Berlin autograph; op. 10 no. 11, bass notes fifteen bars from the close (B flat + two A naturals vs. two B flats + one A natural); op. 10 no. 12 bar 15 from end, B natural vs. B flat in Klindworth; op. 25 no. 3, a misprinted A for F in Kullak; op. 25 no. 11 bar 15, B natural vs. B flat.
• Contemporary reception. Rellstab in the Iris, 1834: those with distorted fingers may straighten them on these studies, others should not play them “without having a surgeon at hand.” Schumann’s review (the “strange star seen at midnight”; the aeolian-harp description of op. 25 no. 1; op. 25 no. 2 “soft as the song of a sleeping child”; preference for op. 10 over op. 25). Heller in the Gazette Musicale, 24 February 1839, marking op. 25 nos. 4, 5 and 7 as favourites. Henrietta Voigt’s diary, Leipzig, 12 September 1836, on Chopin’s “velvet fingers.” Mendelssohn’s astonishment, Moscheles’ “perplexed wrath” at op. 10 no. 11.
• Genesis of the Revolutionary. Karasowski’s account: news of Warsaw’s fall on 8 September 1831 reaching Chopin at Stuttgart; “the image is evoked of Zeus hurling thunderbolts at the world.” Huneker will not vouch for it but holds the piece great either way.
• Performance history. Annette Essipowa played all twenty-seven studies in one recital — the only occasion Huneker recalls hearing op. 25 no. 5. Rubinstein and Essipowa’s echo-effect ending to op. 25 no. 2 (Kleczynski). Joseffy’s concert variation on op. 10 no. 5. Godowsky’s manuscript transcriptions seen in 1894, including “Badinage” combining op. 25 no. 9 with op. 10 no. 5. Brahms’ double-note and Isidor Philipp’s left-hand-alone arrangements.

Quotes

• “When Chopin arrived in Paris his style had been formed, he was the creator of a new piano technique.” (Ch. VI)
• “The nub of modern piano music is in the study, the most formally reckless Chopin ever penned.” (Ch. VI)
• “This study is the key with which Chopin unlocked—not his heart, but the kingdom of technique.” (Ch. VI)
• “The Chopin studies are poems fit for Parnassus, yet they also serve a very useful purpose in pedagogy.” (Ch. VI)
• “You can no more teach a real Chopin rubato—not the mawkish imitation,—than you can make a donkey comprehend Kant.” (Ch. VI)
• “Were ever Beauty and Duty so mated in double harness?” (Ch. VI)
• “The pedals are half the battle in Chopin playing. ONE CAN NEVER PLAY CHOPIN BEAUTIFULLY ENOUGH.” (Ch. VI)
• “The real Chopin player is born and can never be a product of the schools.” (Ch. VI)
• “This study is first music, then a technical problem.” (Ch. VI)
• “That question answered, your digital politics are known. You are classified, ranged.” (Ch. VI)
• “It is open air music, storm music, and at times moves in processional splendor. Small souled men, no matter how agile their fingers, should avoid it.” (Ch. VI)
• “The illustration serves to show how Dr. Riemann is disposed to refine upon the gold of Chopin.” (Ch. VI)
• “In the years to come the Chopin studies will be played for their music, without any thought of their technical problems.” (Ch. VI)
• “In them is mirrored all of Chopin, the planetary as well as the secular Chopin.” (Ch. VI)

Tensions and links

• Huneker vs. the pupils’ testimony. Huneker treats the pupil-editors as mutually contradictory and therefore unreliable, which cuts against the whole evidentiary basis of chopin-pianist-and-teacher-as-seen-by-his-pupils. Yet he leans on the same pupils (Mikuli, Mathias, Gutmann) whenever he needs a reading settled. The reconciliation is probably that pupil testimony is good for sound and intention but poor for notation.
• Suppleness vs. force. Chopin’s own technical philosophy as recorded by his pupils — see 02-basic-technique — puts suppleness, natural hand shape, unequal fingers and tone quality ahead of strength. Huneker’s Etude commentary largely agrees (op. 10 no. 5 needs “smooth, velvet-tipped fingers and a supple wrist”; op. 25 no. 3 requires stillness of the body “which is the acquisition of a loose wrist”), but op. 10 no. 1 and op. 25 nos. 11-12 demand “granitic” basses and “prodigious power and endurance,” which sits awkwardly with the picture of Chopin as a small-toned player.
• The instrument as the hidden variable. Both the tempo argument and the fingering argument reduce to Pleyel-vs-modern-grand. This connects Chopin’s pedagogy directly to instrument history: his fingerings and metronome marks are correct for his piano. Worth linking to any page on period instruments or historically informed performance.
• Technical purpose vs. musical purpose. Von Bulow’s ranking of op. 25 no. 8 as “the most useful exercise in the whole range of etude literature” while Kullak finds it “devoid of depth of content” is the chapter’s cleanest case of the two criteria pulling apart.
• Huneker vs. Schumann on op. 25. Schumann prefers op. 10; Huneker insists op. 25 contains “at least two of Chopin’s greater studies—A minor and C minor.” Schumann’s incidental remark that the studies were “composed in a bunch” is used by Huneker to reject biographical readings of individual pieces.
• Programme vs. abstraction. Kullak’s elaborate narrative programme for op. 25 no. 7 (the broken heart that “has lost—not something, but everything”) is quoted at length and then implicitly deflated: Huneker calls the piece “both morbid and elegiac” and cuts off Kullak’s forest imagery with “but enough of subjective fancies.” Compare his refusal to vouch for the Revolutionary legend and his line on the Byronic posturing of Chopin’s circle.
• Transcription as reception. The Godowsky, Brahms and Philipp arrangements raise the question of whether these studies are fixed texts or raw material — relevant to any page on arrangement, transcription, or the ethics of editing.

Open questions

• What exactly did Chopin mean by “a study in my own manner” (1829) — manner of figuration, of harmony, or of the study genre itself?
• Are the Trois Nouvelles Etudes a “gleaning” (Niecks) or, as Huneker argues, works whose “artistic stature” the last decade has raised? What changed to make them look better?
• Whose chromatic-thirds fingering actually descends from whom? Huneker reports Kautz’s claim that the “Czerny” fingering is really Clementi’s, and simultaneously that the “Chopin” fingering “derives directly from Hummel.” Both attributions want checking against the sources.
• If Chopin’s metronome marks are artifacts of his instrument, is the right response to slow down (Kullak’s answer) or to play a period instrument at his tempo?
• Huneker predicts the Godowsky transcriptions will be curriculum material “in ten years.” They were not. What does the failure of that prediction say about how the technical standard actually advanced?
• Op. 10 no. 9’s left-hand figure is called “a distinct forerunner of the bass of the D minor Prelude.” How systematically do the Etudes prefigure the Preludes, given both sets were largely written in the same period?