Part 10: The Ballades - Faery Dramas (Ch. X)

Part 10 of chopin-the-man-and-his-music (Chapter X: The Ballades - Faery Dramas).

Question this unit answers

Was Chopin genuinely helpless with large-scale form, or do the four Ballades prove he could invent and sustain a form of his own? Huneker uses the Ballades to rebut the charge that Chopin was only a miniaturist of the exquisite phrase, and then reads each of the four in turn — G minor (op. 23), F major (op. 38), A flat (op. 47), F minor (op. 52) — as narrative tone-poems that are simultaneously Polish and universal.

Key terms

Ballade — the one large form Chopin did not inherit but created; compact narrative structures, usually in six-eight or six-four time.
Narrative tone — the storytelling voice Huneker hears in the Ballades, strongest in the G minor, and (he claims) abandoned after the first page of the F minor.
Programme — a concealed extra-musical story; Huneker insists Chopin had a definite one but left no clue beyond Mickiewicz.
Mickiewicz’s Lithuanian poems — the Polish poetic source: “Konrad Wallenrod” (G minor), “Le Lac de Willis” (F major), “Undine” (A flat).
Tempo rubato / “lingering” — de Lenz’s term for Tausig’s micro-elasticity of time, made of “atomic time values” notation cannot express.
Cesura (“letting in air”) — a well-chosen incision that lets performer and listener breathe without damaging rhythm.
The disputed E flat — the last bar of the G minor introduction, the chapter’s central textual crux.
Apotheosis of the ornament — Huneker’s phrase for the F minor Ballade’s figuration, which sets off the idea rather than decorating it.
Inverted dominant pedal — the contrapuntal device in the A flat Ballade’s C sharp minor episode that reveals a master.
Editorial variants — Kullak, Klindworth, Mikuli, Mertke, Scharwenka readings, weighed throughout.

Propositions

Hadow’s verdict — that Chopin is “a child playing with a few simple types” structurally but a master of phrase — cannot be accepted unconditionally (Ch. X).
In the Ballades Chopin is creator, not imitator: the dance forms were handed to him, the Ballade was not (Ch. X).
The Ballades are compact, unified structures, not loosely-jointed ones — Niecks holds they are the acme of Chopin’s artistic power (Ch. X).
The Ballades were incited by Mickiewicz’s poetry, on Chopin’s own admission to Schumann in Leipzig (Karasowski) (Ch. X).
Chopin had a definite programme but deliberately withheld it, so any programme “could be sworn to” — which discredits programme-hunting rather than the music (Ch. X).
Only a Slav can hope to understand Chopin thoroughly, yet the Ballades are his most universal works: “They belong as much to the world as to Poland” (Ch. X).
The G minor Ballade shows real feeling for organic unity — thematic parallelism, the first theme returning in A minor answered by the second in E, and genuine development (Ch. X).
The contested last bar of the G minor introduction must be E flat, not D natural; the D natural “robs the bar of all meaning” (Ch. X).
Schumann’s ranking of the F major Ballade as “a less artistic work than the first” is invalid, because two wholly dissimilar things cannot be weighed that way (Niecks) (Ch. X).
The F major’s A minor ending is psychologically right: “A major ending would have crushed this extraordinary tone-poem” (Ch. X).
There is no lack of affinity between the F major’s andantino and presto — the surprise is dramatic, and the later development justifies the presto (Ch. X).
The A flat Ballade is popular but misread: schoolgirls see only prettiness, whereas its playfulness carries delicate irony and only psychical meanings should be read into its episodes (Ch. X).
The ease with which the A flat Ballade floats disproves the claim that larger forms daunted Chopin — when he was in mental health (Ch. X).
The F minor Ballade is Chopin at the supreme summit: lyric, self-absorbed, Slavic in its shyness, comparable only to Bach’s Chromatic Fantasia, Beethoven’s op. 27 no. 2 and op. 110 arioso, and Schumann’s C major Fantaisie (Ch. X).
Chopin’s ornamentation is never display for display’s sake (Ch. X).
Tempo rubato — de Lenz’s “lingering” — is “fatally misunderstood by most Chopin players” (Ch. X).

Arguments

Against Hadow (form). Huneker concedes Chopin had little sympathy with complex classical organisms, then produces counter-evidence: two excellent movements of the B flat minor Sonata, and above all the Ballades, a form Chopin had to invent. If the man who is “almost helpless” beyond simple types can create a new large form and fill it four times without repeating himself, the charge collapses to a matter of taste in genres.

Against programme-reading. Huneker’s tactic is self-undercutting parody: he sketches his own fanciful reading of the G minor (the lily in the fountain, the slender-hipped girl) and predicts the reader would be “aghast or puzzled.” Because any programme can be sworn to, no programme can be verified — so the Mickiewicz attribution is admitted as source, not as key.

On the E flat. A layered case: (a) pupil testimony (Gutmann, Mikuli) and editors (Klindworth, Kullak) favour E flat; (b) internal evidence — a parallel effect twenty-eight bars later, plus the first bar of the valse episode in the bass — which even Willeby, who personally prefers D natural, concedes; (c) Niecks’s aesthetic argument that the dissonance is “the emotional keynote of the whole poem”; (d) decisive documentary evidence — Ferdinand Von Inten saw the autograph at Stuttgart, in Lebert’s possession, and the E flat stands there. Huneker calls this “final.”

Against Schumann on the F major. Huneker leans on Niecks’s methodological objection (incommensurables cannot be ranked) and adds a psychological one: Schumann’s memory of an F major ending is beside the point, since the A minor close is the only ending the poem can bear.

On interpretation. Two performance anecdotes do argumentative work. De Pachmann played the G minor coda pianissimo and prestissimo — objectively wrong, yet “according to his own lights the Russian virtuoso was right,” because Moscheles’ account of Chopin’s own soft playing licenses inverted shading when strength fails. Tausig’s F minor demonstrates the positive doctrine: comprehension of the programme, conquest of the difficulties, and the “lingering” that is the bloom on the peach.

Evidence

Testimony: Karasowski on Chopin’s confession to Schumann about Mickiewicz; Moscheles on Chopin’s piano needing no strong forte; Von Inten’s inspection of the Stuttgart manuscript; de Lenz’s extended account of Tausig playing the F minor.
Critical citations: Hadow (“Studies in Modern Music”); Niecks (Ballades as the acme of Chopin’s power; the E flat as emotional keynote; the F major’s opening “drawn from the people’s store-house of song”; the F minor “fully worthy of its sisters”); Ehlert (each Ballade wholly different; the F major as fairy tale; “coquettish grace”); Schumann (the G minor as most spirited and daring; the A flat as aristocratic Parisian Pole); Rubinstein (the F major as field flower and wind — rustic maiden and knight); Willeby (mistakenly gives the F major’s key as F minor).
Publication and dedication data: G minor published June 1836, dedicated to Baron Stockhausen; A flat published November 1841, dedicated to Mlle. P. de Noailles; F minor published December 1843, dedicated to Baronne C. de Rothschild. The F major was written at Majorca while Chopin was gravely disturbed in body and soul.
Editorial collation: Kullak’s metronome marks (60 to the half note at the G minor moderato; 84 and 66 to the quarter in the F major); F natural vs F sharp on the third page of the G minor; eighths vs sixteenths on its last page; E vs F readings and D vs D sharp in the F major coda; the measure missing in Kullak’s A flat after the trills, relegated to a footnote; transient shake vs appoggiatura; Klindworth attacking the trill on A flat. Two score excerpts compare Kullak/Mertke (Steingräber) with Klindworth in op. 47.
Meyerbeer, quoted by de Lenz on rhythm and women — the aside that frames rubato as ungovernable.

Quotes

“Here he is not imitator, but creator.” (Ch. X)
“It is the Odyssey of Chopin’s soul.” (Ch. X)
“They belong as much to the world as to Poland.” (Ch. X)
“This dissonant E flat may be said to be the emotional keynote of the whole poem.” (Ch. X)
“The D natural robs the bar of all meaning. It is insipid, colorless.” (Ch. X)
“It would inspire a poet to write words to it.” (Ch. X)
“It appears like some fairy tale that has become music.” (Ch. X)
“And how difficult it seems to be to write of Chopin except in terms of impassioned prose!” (Ch. X)
“It is the schoolgirls’ delight, who familiarly toy with its demon.” (Ch. X)
“There is moonlight in this music, and some sunlight, too.” (Ch. X)
“Chopin always wears his learning lightly; it does not oppress us.” (Ch. X)
“Here is the very apotheosis of the ornament.” (Ch. X)
“Rub the bloom from a peach or from a butterfly—what remains will belong to the kitchen.” (Ch. X)
“I know of nothing in music like the F minor Ballade.” (Ch. X)
“Its witchery is irresistible.” (Ch. X)

Tensions and links

Programme vs. anti-programme. Huneker asserts Chopin certainly had a definite programme, then demonstrates that any programme fits equally well. He never resolves whether the programme is a fact about the music or a fact about Chopin’s private life; de Lenz’s Tausig account reasserts it as a performance requirement (“Chopin writes according to a programme”), which raises the question of how a performer can comprehend a programme nobody can identify.
Slavic exclusivity vs. universality. “Only the Slav may hope to understand Chopin thoroughly” sits uneasily beside the claim that these are his most universal works.
Ehlert’s paradox. Ehlert says the Ballades lack the “positive reality” of a Beethoven sonata; Huneker’s reply (“Which means that Chopin was not such a realist as Beethoven?”) is a rhetorical shrug rather than a refutation.
Formal blur admitted. In the A flat, Huneker prefers the repeated measure for emphasis while conceding “it is a formal blur” — a small crack in the chapter’s case for Chopin’s structural rigour.
Health and form. The claim that Chopin “in mental health was not daunted by larger forms” implies the converse for the Majorca-written F major, whose episodic looseness Huneker elsewhere defends as unpremeditated art.
Neglect vs. popularity. The second Ballade is “quite neglected” for the third, which “has the voice of the people” — reception does not track Huneker’s own valuation.
Links: the F minor Ballade is paired with the Fantaisie-Polonaise; the F major’s unpremeditated quality is likened to the second Impromptu in F sharp; the B flat minor Sonata is cited as evidence in the form debate; the rubato discussion connects to Chopin’s quarrel with Meyerbeer over mazurka rhythm.

Open questions

If no programme can be verified, what exactly is the “comprehension of the programme as a whole” that de Lenz makes the first requirement for playing the F minor?
Is the Von Inten manuscript testimony really “final,” given that Chopin’s autographs and first editions elsewhere disagree — and does Huneker apply the same evidentiary standard to the other disputed readings he settles by taste?
Does Huneker offer any structural analysis of the F minor comparable to his thematic account of the G minor, or does the volume he says he “could write” stand in for the analysis he does not give?
What would it take to make Schumann’s and Niecks’s disagreement over the F major decidable, if ranking dissimilar works is illegitimate in principle?
Where does the “narrative tone” go after the first page of the F minor, and can a Ballade still be a Ballade once it becomes “moody and melancholic pondering”?

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