Part 8: Impromptus and Valses (Ch. VIII)

Part 8 of chopin-the-man-and-his-music (Chapter VIII: Impromptus and Valses).

Question this unit answers

What kind of music are Chopin’s four Impromptus and fifteen Valses, and how should each be ranked, understood, and played? Huneker asks in particular whether the Impromptus really are improvisations (he says no — they have form), and whether the Valses are danceable ballroom music or purely inward “dances of the soul” (he says the received view over-spiritualizes them).

Key terms

• Impromptu — a piece with “all the freedom of an improvisation” that nonetheless has “a well defined form”; free, original patterns over real structural impulse (Ch. VIII).
• Rubato — flexible tempo; required in the A flat Impromptu, and needed in the valses but less obtrusively than in the mazurkas (Ch. VIII).
• Limpidezza — clarity/purity of line; Huneker’s measure of the first Impromptu’s superiority in grace over the second.
• Organ-point (pedal point) — the “glittering melodic organ-point” that climaxes the F sharp Impromptu.
• Vorhalt / Nachton — Rosenthal’s terms (via Riemann) for accented passing note and aftertone, used to argue where accents fall in op. 42.
• Perpetuum mobile — the ceaseless spinning quality of the F major Valse, op. 34 No. 3.
• La Gaya Scienza — Nietzsche’s “Gay Science,” Huneker’s emblem for the valses’ aristocratic cheerfulness.
• Objective vs. psychic — the valses are the most “objective” Chopin, opposed to the inward “Sargasson seas” of nocturnes and scherzi.
• Fioriture — Bellini-like vocal ornamentation heard in the opening of the Fantaisie-Impromptu.
• Terpsichore group vs. mood-frame group — Kullak’s two-part division of the valses.

Propositions

1. The Chopin impromptu is not formless: despite improvisatory freedom it has “a well defined form” and “structural impulse,” with free but genuine patterns (Ch. VIII).
2. Mood-color varies little across the first, third, and fourth Impromptus; only the second (F sharp, op. 36) has a ballade-like, tragic cast (Ch. VIII).
3. Op. 29 in A flat is the best-named of the set — its “seething, prankish, nimble, bubbling quality” fits the title from the first bar (Ch. VIII).
4. Against Niecks, the F sharp Impromptu is the most important of the four: irregular and wavering in outline, but deeper in passion precisely because its figuration is less varied (Ch. VIII).
5. The third Impromptu, G flat op. 51, is the weakest — faded, blasé, “hardly healthy in sentiment” — though redeemed by freer modulation and by that Poe-like “strangeness” Huneker treats as a mark of great art (Ch. VIII).
6. The Fantaisie-Impromptu, op. 66, is charming but shallow; the D flat section is saccharine, and Fontana’s added title “Fantaisie” is superfluous (Ch. VIII).
7. Chopin’s Impromptus are less naive and more sophisticated than Schubert’s — they “do not smell of nature and her simplicities” (Ch. VIII).
8. The valses are the most objective of Chopin’s works, ballroom music of aristocratic reserve rather than peasant vigor (Ch. VIII).
9. Refusing on principle to dance to the valses is a mistake: several are dancable, and to deny it removes Chopin from the social world he loved (Ch. VIII).
10. In valse performance the bass must be shaped, not banged nor neglected — the fundamental tone cared for, subsidiary harmonies lightly indicated (Ch. VIII).
11. Op. 42 in A flat is the best-rounded product of Chopin’s experiments with the form, surpassing even Schumann’s “Carneval” in finish (Ch. VIII).
12. The C sharp minor Valse, op. 64 No. 2, is the most poetic of all, its first theme unexcelled by Chopin for “veiled melancholy” (Ch. VIII).
13. The posthumous valses (opp. 69, 70, E minor, E major) “need not detain us,” and taken as a whole the valses are not Chopin’s highest achievement — but they dignified a conventional dance form (Ch. VIII).

Arguments

• Form under freedom. Huneker’s opening move is definitional: the impromptu title promises spontaneity, but analysis of the actual pieces (contrasted rhythms, ternary returns, codas) shows deliberate design. Hence “unrestrained feeling and pondered intention” together — the chapter’s controlling paradox.
• Ranking by depth rather than polish. He concedes the first Impromptu more purity of line, then still prefers the second. The argument is that thinner accessory figuration concentrates rather than dilutes emotion: “just because the ‘figure in the carpet’ is not so varied in pattern, its passion is all the deeper.” This is an explicit dissent from Niecks.
• Programme by association. For the F sharp Impromptu he substitutes evocation for analysis — carillon bass, Hauptmann’s “Sunken Bell,” approaching cavalcade — and infers that the piece “surely suggests a narrative, a programme.”
• Defending an ugly detail by intention. The fortissimo final octaves “always seem brutal,” yet “its logic lies in the scheme of the composer”; Huneker rescues them with a biographical analogy to Chopin’s habit of jolting friends out of reverie with a glissando.
• Against over-spiritualizing the valses. Ehlert’s “dances of the soul and not of the body” is met with the music’s own evidence — animated rhythms, insouciance, coquetry, “the true atmosphere of the ballroom” — plus an argument from consistency: mazurkas and polonaises are still danced in Poland, so why not the valses.
• Reserve as the differentiating trait. Chopin’s valses are placed against Beethoven, Grieg, Brahms and Tchaikovsky, whose dances Huneker hears as “brawling peasants,” and against Vienna itself: Chopin rivals Strauss while admitting he could not play in the Viennese manner.
• Performance tradition as corruption. The D flat “petit chien” Valse and the cantabile passages are damaged by habit — taken at “a meaningless, rapid gait,” sentimentalized, or arranged for concert display. Counter-evidence is the practice of an actual Chopin pupil.
• Anecdote admitted but discounted. He accepts the cat story and the dog story as well grounded, then judges them irrelevant to worth: “it is so ineffably silly!”

Evidence

• Harmonic detail, op. 29: the treble D natural set against C and E flat in the bass, called “a most original effect”; flowing triplets in the first part; the F minor section’s simple duple measure supplying rhythmic relief; a short coda and chiaroscuro close.
• Structural walk-through, op. 36: nocturnal carillon-like opening; D major episode; two bars of “anonymous modulation” that “creak on their hinges”; first subject returning in F, climbing to F sharp, dissolving into a brilliant melodic organ-point; fortissimo octaves at the end.
• Op. 51: “ophidian curves in triplets,” interludes of double notes, coloring “tropical and rich to morbidity,” an E flat minor trio praised as fine melodic writing.
• Op. 66: composed about 1834, published by Fontana in 1855; difficulties chiefly rhythmical; the D flat trio likened to the mawkish trio of the “Marche Funèbre.”
• Publication and dedication record: Impromptu 1 (Comtesse de Lobau) December 1837; 2, May 1840; 3 (Comtesse Esterházy) February 1843. Valse op. 18 (Mlle. Laura Harsford) June 1834; op. 34 set December 1838; op. 42 July 1840; op. 64 set September 1847, dedicated to Comtesse Delphine Potocka, Baronne Nathaniel de Rothschild, Baronne Bronicka.
• Dating of posthumous valses: op. 69 No. 1 in F minor 1836; B minor 1829; G flat op. 70 1835; F minor 1843; D flat 1830; E major and E minor 1829 — all issued by Fontana.
• Quoted authorities: Kleczynski on the totter-yet-clarity of op. 29; Kullak on abandoned symmetry in op. 36, on the bass in valse tempo, on the two-group division, on the “psychologic motivation” of the C sharp minor Valse; Niecks on op. 36’s want of pith, on op. 70 No. 3 containing germs of opp. 42 and 34, and on the Heller anecdote; Schumann on countesses as dancers and rhapsodic praise of op. 18; Poe on strangeness in art; Ehlert and Nietzsche as foils.
• Editorial evidence: Klindworth and Kullak named safest for dynamics in the A flat Valse op. 34 No. 1 because of careless copying and piracy; Kullak prints Fontana and Klindworth variants of op. 69 No. 1; op. 64 No. 1 arranged for concert by Tausig, Joseffy, Theodore Ritter, Rosenthal, Isidor Philipp.
• Rosenthal’s letter to the London “Musical Standard” on op. 42: bar-by-bar accentuation (tonic bass in bar 1 needing no accent; C as Vorhalt in bar 2; B flat in bar 4; A flat, B flat, C characteristic in bars 6-8, E flat only secondary), with the caveat that “these accents must be felt rather than executed.”
• Anecdotes: George Sand’s dog chasing its tail behind the D flat Valse; Chopin’s cat on the keyboard behind the F major Valse; Chopin taking Stephen Heller to lunch at the Café Riche on learning they shared a favorite valse; Georges Mathias playing the “petit chien” not prestissimo, with a sforzato at the top of the D flat scale.
• Influence claim: the coda of the A flat Valse op. 34 No. 1 shows “the debt Schumann owes Chopin” for a passage in the Préambule of “Carneval.”

Quotes

• “With all the freedom of an improvisation the Chopin impromptu has a well defined form.” (Ch. VIII)
• “A bird flew that way!” (Ch. VIII)
• “But only an artist with velvety fingers should play this sounding arabesque.” (Ch. VIII)
• “There is something sphinx-like in the pose of this work.” (Ch. VIII)
• “It is another Ballade, sadder, more meditative of the tender grace of vanished days.” (Ch. VIII)
• “Of the Chopin Valses it has been said that they are dances of the soul and not of the body.” (Ch. VIII)
• “As Schumann declared, the dancers of these valses should be at least countesses.” (Ch. VIII)
• “The F major Valse, the last of this series, is a whirling, wild dance of atoms.” (Ch. VIII)
• “It is for superior souls who dance with intellectual joy.” (Ch. VIII)
• “He flew where we merely limp after.” (Ch. VIII)

Tensions and links

• Huneker vs. Niecks on op. 36. Niecks finds it lacking pith; Huneker calls it “of more moment than the other three.” An unresolved disagreement about whether formal irregularity is a defect or the source of depth.
• Ehlert vs. Huneker on the valses. “Dances of the soul and not of the body” is dismissed as “poetic exaggeration,” yet Huneker himself calls the C sharp minor a “soul dance” and admits a few valses are “poetically morbid” — his own position slides toward the view he mocks.
• Form vs. spontaneity. The chapter opens insisting the impromptus are designed, then praises the F sharp for wandering and capricious moods; the value of design is asserted more than demonstrated.
• Strangeness as virtue and as symptom. Op. 51 is faulted as unhealthy and morbid but credited with the Poe-sanctioned “strangeness”; the same trait is both charge and defense.
• Popularity vs. worth. The Fantaisie-Impromptu and the “petit chien” Valse are the most played and among the least esteemed here — Huneker treats wide diffusion as a corrupting force, tying performance history to aesthetic judgment.
• Anecdote vs. analysis. He records the cat, the dog, and the Café Riche luncheon while denying them explanatory weight, illustrating the biographical-critical mixture of the whole book.
• Links. Cross-references the mazurkas (rubato practice, the B minor mazurka’s color, valses straying into mazurka rhythm), the nocturnes and scherzi (their “Sargasson seas” as the valses’ opposite), the ballades (op. 36 as “another Ballade”), the “Marche Funèbre” trio, and the supplementary D flat study.

Open questions

• Which valses did Chopin himself consider danceable, and is Huneker’s list (1, 2, 5, 6 “and a few others”) anything more than personal taste?
• If op. 36 suggests “a narrative, a programme,” what programme? Huneker names the images but never the story.
• How can the fortissimo close of op. 36 be both brutal and logical “in the scheme of the composer” — what evidence establishes that scheme beyond the improvising anecdote?
• Are the claimed Chopin-to-Schumann debts in “Carneval” chronologically supportable, or retrospective resemblance?
• Does Kullak’s Terpsichore / mood-frame division survive contact with the individual pieces, or do most valses fall in both groups?
• Are the posthumous valses genuinely negligible, or is Huneker deferring to Fontana’s dubious editorial reputation rather than to the music?