The Faustian Moment in Chopin

7/29/2019 The Faustian Moment in Chopin

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In a well-known journal entry, Delacroix relates a conversation with Chopin that

contains the composers artistic credo: [Lart] est la raison elle-mme orne par le

genie, mais suivant une marche ncessaire et contenue par des lois suprieures.[Art] is

reason itself, adorned by genius, but following a necessary path and contained by higher

laws.iObeying those higher laws did not prevent him from writing music that observers

from the early 19th

century to the present consider quintessentially Romantic. This

paradox is at the heart of Chopins aesthetic. As Chopin developed his own modern voice

on the foundation of his idols, Bach and Mozart, he had a sympathetic model in Louis

Spohr. His music, like Chopins, owes a great debt to the classical style. Spohr also looks

daringly forward, with program music, leitmotifs and harmonies that may have inspired

Wagner.iiRecent accounts of Chopins compositional development have tended to

explain the influence of canonical composers, opera and contemporary piano music.iii

Spohrs music lies outside these categories but shows an intriguing point of contact with

Chopin at the cusp of his mature style.

Chopins letter of September 18th, 1830, to Tytus Woyciechowski contains the

following:

Graem Quintetto Spohra na fortep., clar., fag., waltorni i flet. Przeliczny. Ale

strasznie nie w palec. Wszystko, co chcia umylnie na fortepian napisa dla

popisu, jest nieznonie trudnym i nie mona czsto palcw wyszuka.

I played Spohr's Quintetto for piano, clarinet, bassoon, horn and flute.

Beautiful. But it fits terribly under the hands! Everything he writes for the pianist

to show-off is annoyingly difficult and often you cant find a fingering.iv


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Through these difficulties, several features of the work must have appealed to Chopin.

Friedrich Niecks, Chopins early biographer, ruminates that the gliding cantilena in

sixths and thirds of the minuet and the serpentining chromatic passages in the last

movement of [Spohrs Quintet] must have flattered his inmost soul!vChopins claim

that the piece is pianistically awkwardSpohr was a violinist and conductor and this

Quintet was his first piece to feature the piano in a leading rolesuggests that the young

composer was inspired by more than instrumental texture. When examined against

contemporary practice and Chopins own compositions, a surprising modulation on the

first page ofSpohrs pieceseems to have provided a model for what would become a

signature harmonic device.vi

This device is a small-scale harmonic digression that

provides a whiff of the exotic, a kind of dream-state firmly contained by traditional

harmonic and formal functions.

Spohrs first movement is in sonata-allegro form, with a transition that grows out

of a restatement of the main theme. Example 1 includes the original version of the main

theme, ex. 2 is the beginning of the transition. The passage starting in m. 29 has the

quality of a parenthesisa dream-like world not participating in, but placed alongside of

the main argument of the movement. Spohr creates this impression through a

combination of technical means. The passage is not only in a distant key, but presents a

melody previously heard in a normal key. The tonic-dominant relationship is stable and,

at 8 measures in length, not fleeting. Equally important is the way that Spohr achieves the

modulation. The key change is motivated by a half-step shift in the main themethe B-

natural in m. 4 becomes B-flat in m. 24. The harmony is subsidiary to the melodic

change. The G-flat major chord in m. 24 is nonsensical in the key of C minor; it supports


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a melodic variant. The key change is not the goal of a modulatory process. It is an abrupt

shift that happens within a phrase, rather than at the joint between phrases. The turn

towards G-flat minor in m. 28 creates an even more rarefied atmosphere. The modal

mixture is particularly effective because the G-flat major passage is stable and diatonic. A

classically standard transition resumes in m. 33. The G-flat major passage stands out as a

rarity within a harmonically conservativethat is, congruent with late-18th

-century

Viennese practicemovement.

To recap, the compositional elements in Spohrs Quintet that create the sense of

parenthesis are the following:

1. Incorporation of a distant key area.2. Appearance within a phrase (as defined by cadences).3. Motivation by a stepwise melodic variance.4. Restatement of a theme heard previously in a normal key.5. Abruptness of harmony changelack of a pivot chord.

In less technical terms, the feeling of being through-the-looking-glass is created by the

passages harmonic strangeness and stability and the sense of abrupt disconnection with

the surrounding music. The idea that a parenthesis appears within a phrase is essential for

making the specific connection between Spohrs Quintet and the pieces Chopin

composed immediately after becoming acquainted with it. The psychological effect of

parenthesis can occur at higher levels of structurepainted with broader strokesas in

the fourth Mazurka from Chopins Op. 7, in which he employs a block of distant

harmonic material articulated by cadences. Chopin frequently uses enharmonic

respellings to justify colorful harmonic digressions. In fact, the term parenthesis has been


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used before, by Gerald Abraham, to describe similarities between Spohr and Chopin.vii

I

will be looking narrowly at the construction, influence, and extra-musical resonance of

the particular kind of parenthesis found in Spohrs Quintet; my examples are a more

harmonically disjunctive subset of the phenomena that Abraham describes.

Examples from Beethoven, Spohrs idol, will shed light on Spohrs compositional

strategy. A modulation to G-flat major in a C minor piece was not unprecedented, as

Bellman points out in the review quoted above. A passage similar to Spohrs Quintet

from Beethovens Piano ConcertoNo. 3 in C Minor, Op. 37, shows that distant harmony

is not a sufficient condition for the effect of parenthesis. Spohr was an active proponent

of Beethovens music, both as a violinist and conductor; he frequently conducted Op. 37

with his wife, Dorette, as soloist. In ex. 3, a passage from the first movement, Beethoven

eschews the colorful key of G-flat minor, but more important is the way he arrives at G-

flat major. E-flat minor is achieved through modal mixture; the chord on the second beat

of m. 190 is far less shocking than the first G-flat major chord in the Quintet because it

continues the tonic harmonic function and only one of its three notes is unprepared.

Unlike Spohrs example, the surprising chord is not motivated by a melodic deviation. It

occurs at a cadence point, so that the surprising harmony is safely contained by

grammatically appropriate punctuation. Beethovens insistent cadential progressions

create a more forward-driving music than Spohrs dreamy oscillation between tonic and

dominant. To continue the grammatical analogy, Beethoven crafts a complete sentence

that develops and intensifies a previously expressed idea, rather than a commentary

grammatically unconnected to the sentence that contains it. The G-flat major passage

from Beethovens concerto is healthy, logical and direct in a way that Spohrs parenthesis


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is not.

The first movement of Spohrs Quintet resembles Beethovens Concerto so

closely that Spohrs deviation from Beethovens model can be read as a broader

commentary on generational differences. Spohrs creative misreading is not a failure to

write in the heroic style of Beethoven. He uses a modified version of an identifiably

Beethovenian strategy for incorporating distant key areas. The hammering on a note or

chord is a specific example of what Scott Burnham , in describing Beethovens heroic

style, calls the monumentalization and dramatization of classical-style morphology and

syntax.

viii

When Spohr and others recall Beethovens harmonic digressions without the

hammering, they are actively avoiding the heroic style and its concomitant psychological

baggage. Spohrs passage in G-flat is dreamy and escapist. Beethovens never loses the

sense of process and direction. Spohrs piece is a post-Napoleonic version of Beethovens

concerto, less confident in the perfectibility of man, more indulgent and Romantic.

Spohrs parenthesis originates in Beethoven and contradicts the older composers

style. The modulation strategies that Beethoven often features in the return of his rondo

themes will demonstrate how Spohrs Quintet diverges from established practice. The

Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 61, contains a famous example. While the violin trills

after a cadenza, the orchestra enters with the opening motive. First it outlines an A-major

dominant-seventh chord, which would lead appropriately back to the tonic. The dominant

seventh changes to a diminished seventh, which becomes an E-flat dominant seventh

chord when the violin drops the lower note of its trill to E-flat. This chord leads to a

return of the rondo theme in A-flat major. The coincidence of the confirmation of the

distant key and return of the theme cause this example to lack the feeling of distance, the


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irrationality of the parenthesis. Chopin uses a similar method to introduce the key of E-

flat in the second return of the theme in his rondo from the Piano Concerto in E Minor,

Op. 11. In Spohrs Quintet, the arrival of G-flat major and the thematic restatement are

not synchronized.

Beethoven often strives to integrate the use of distant key areas into the large-

scale structure of his pieces. In the Rondo from the Piano Sonata in E-flat Major, Op. 7,

the final return of the theme includes a substantial passage in E-major. Measures 155-60

of ex. 4 look like a parenthesis, albeit one that comes at a natural break in phrasing. The

unharmonized B-natural continues a scalar motion and is not as shocking as Spohrs G-

flat major chord, but it is abrupt and irrational. The essential difference between this and

the parenthesis in Spohrs Quintet is the extent to which Beethoven has prepared the

disjunctive event. The sonata emphasizes the various possible directions that B-flat and

the B-flat triad can move. At critical juncturesleading into the coda of the first

movement, effecting a substantial passage in C-flat major in the third movement

Beethoven plays with listeners expectation of dominant-tonic resolution. In the last

movement, this impulse in manifest in the melodic B-flat, B-natural, C, of the main

theme. The fermata on B-flat resolves differently in each cycle of the Rondo. Thus the

passage in E major, though locally parenthetical, is a manifestation of a structural

strategy that underpins the whole Sonata. This kind of integration is a fundamental

feature of Beethovens style and one that works against the disconnected, irrational and

dreamlike qualities of Spohrs parenthesis.

The Rondo from Beethovens Piano Concerto in C Minor, Op. 37, creates the

feeling of distance with a drawn-out common-tone modulation to E major (ex. 5). The


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time-scale of the change of A-flat to G-sharp and subsequent reharmonization causes the

listener to forget the C minor context and replace it with E major. A key element of

parenthesis is the subordination of the parenthetical statement within the still-vivid

grammatical context. In Spohrs Quintet, the stability of the prevailing C minor key area

and the abruptness of the shift to G-flat major create a need for resolution which remains

acute throughout the distant key area. In Beethovens Concerto, the passage closes so

emphatically on a root position E-major chord that the distant key area seems

retrospectively real and stable. Spohrs dreamy G-flat key area is not confirmed by

cadence or texture change, but enclosed within a harmonically conventional transition.

Though the E-major passage in Beethovens Rondo from Op. 37 is dream-like and highly

colored, its relationship to its surroundings is not parenthetical.

The etymology ofparenthesis is Greek, to place alongside of. The key

features in any context are subordination and grammatical disconnect. In music, the

grammatical disconnect can be caused by an abrupt and irrational harmonic procedure

that places the listener in a state of heightened sensitivity to the narrative process. As the

reception history of pieces like theEroica symphony and Chopins Ballade, Op. 38,

shows, events in absolute music that challenge or exceed the expected logic of

progression demand extra-musical explanation. The sense of subordination is related to

the kind of music presented after the ruptureabsence of strongly-directed cadential

progressions, oscillating harmony, distant key, changes of texture, orchestration and

dynamicsafter which the normal flow of events is resumed. Subordination is also

related to the moment of harmonic disjuncture. If the area of distant harmony is contained

within a phrase, rather than being articulated by cadences at its endpoints, it is more


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likely to sound subordinate. These technical means disrupt the listeners sense of a

consistently forward-moving chronological sequence of music events, creating separate

tonal streams.ix

The parenthetical music describes something outside of real timea

memory, aspiration, or alternative vision.

The effect of parenthesis is a feature of Chopins mature style in general; Spohrs

version is a feature in particular. The middle section of the Nocturne in B-flat Minor, Op.

9 No. 1 (ex. 5), contains a modulation that seems to be modeled on Spohrs Quintet. This

passage features a local modulation by tritone in a restatement of a theme heard

previously in a normal key. The modulation is caused by a nonsensical chord (in this case

a dominant seventh chord in first inversion in the second half of m. 24). This dominant-

seventh chord does not continue the tonic function of harmony like the parallel chord in

m. 20. The new key occurs not as the goal of modulation at a cadence point but within the

phrase. Tonic and dominant oscillate in the key of G major, creating the Faustian moment

(Tarry a while! You are so fair!).x

The dream dissolves when the melody turns to B-

flat, akin to Spohrs use of G-flat minor. In Chopins piece the key of G minor is only

alluded to; a diminished seventh chord supports the flat third scale degree in the melody.

Where Chopins elegance surpasses Spohr is in the melodic motivation. The enharmonic

recontextualization of F-flat may be something he learned from Mozart.xi

In m. 2 the F-

flat is introduced in a melodic shape that drags the tenor thumb along with it. Thus

Chopin only needs to change one notethe A-flat becomes A-naturalto create an

extremely distant and colorful chord in m. 24. Chopin gives a Mozartian touch to Spohrs

post-Beethovenian technique.

Chopin performed Spohrs Quintet in September of 1830, shortly before leaving


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Poland forever. He began composition of the Op. 9 nocturnes, two of which feature a

version of Spohrs parenthesis, during his stay in Vienna from October 1830 to July

1831, though they were not published until 1832.xii

Though many of Chopins early

works feature colorful harmonic moments and daring modulation, nothing that Chopin

composed before 1831 features a parenthesis of the type found in Spohrs piece. Though

Chopins works from before the fall of 1830 contain many examples of colorful

harmonies and daring modulations, the particular balance of exotic harmony

grammatically disconnected from a simple, direct tonal planas in the Nocturne Op. 9

No. 1he seems to have learned from Spohr.

The third Nocturne from Op. 9, in B major, also features this type of parenthesis.

In the dramatic B minor middle section, Chopin abruptly modulates to C major in m. 89.

Music heard previously in a normal key is heard in the distant key. A melodic variant is

supported by a harmonically nonsensical chord. The harmonic change happens not at a

cadence point, but within a phrase. The music in C major is not strongly directed

harmonically. Parenthesis in later works occurs at m. 72 in the Nocturne in C-sharp

Minor, Op. 27 No. 1, from 1835, and at m. 16 in the Fantasy in A-flat Major, Op. 49,

from 1841. The elements of the parenthesis in Spohrs Quintet are all present

restatement of material in a distant key, lack of a pivot chord, motivation by melodic

variant, tonicization not confirmed by a cadence and oscillation of tonic and dominant

harmonies. The parenthesis in the Fantasy creates a somewhat different effect because of

its close integration to its phrase. The single line leading to C-flat is a comparatively

smooth way to introduce the distant key. The feeling of grammatical disconnect is

dependent on the expectation generated by the three previous, diatonic iterations of the


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same material. The parenthetic dream-world of E major seems more distant because of

the force with which Chopin drives the music back to the tonic. Parenthesis of this type

becomes less frequent in the later works of Chopin. As his music becomes more overtly

contrapuntal through the 1840s, Chopin prized more and more the subtlety of his

transitions. The abruptness of the harmony change in the above examples all but

disappears.

The Scherzo in E Major, Op. 54, contains an extraordinary passage that sounds

like the young composers idea of parenthesis tempered by the late style. In ex. 7, the

abrupt, disconnecting chord is a root position dominant-seventh on D. Chopin achieves

harmonic disjuncture without changing harmonies. The chordal seventh does not arrive

until the second bar, making the digression even smoother. We expect to settle in the kind

of oscillating-harmony dream-world of Op. 9, especially after the way D major was so

tantalizingly presented in the earlier statements of this theme. The music, however, never

loses its process of transition. First G major appears as a possible resting place, but the

chordal seventh pushes toward C major after two bars. When Chopin avoids creating a

dominant seventh out of the C major harmony, we feel a sense of arrival that is then

diverted to F major. As a whole, the passage is merely a sequence of dominant chords,

but Chopin controls its forward motion in a teasing way. The affect of this music is

similar to that of the passages cited previously, but Chopin has added the exquisite

pleasure of continuous transition. The smoothing-out of the sectional nature of

parenthesis parallels on the small scale the broader change in Chopins formal methods

endless melody, less sharply defined sectional boundaries, emphasis on counterpoint and

transitions, less repetition.


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These parentheses express a concept crucial to Romantic philosophy. They are

made possible by a general classicism of harmony and phrasing. Phrase structure in both

Chopin and Spohr tends toward the Mozarteanperiodic with clearly defined cadences.

Surface chromaticism is related to a classical harmonic structure in the background;

chords retain their late 18th

century conventional functions. The parenthesis, as used by

Spohr and Chopin, parallels passages by another bastion of classicism capable of

describing Romanticism in the most compelling manner, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

The Sunset Speech (lines 1064-99) fromFaust, Part I, follows the same structure as

the musical parenthesis. The specifically parenthetical part (1070-1091) is reproduced

below:

Observe how in the flaming evening sun

Those green-embowered cabins glitter.

He yields and sinks, the day is lived and done,

He hastes beyond, new life to breed and nourish.

Oh, that I have no buoyant wings to flourish,

To strive and follow, on and on!

Id see in endless vesper rays

The silent world beneath me glowing,

The valleys all appeased, each hill ablaze,

The silver brooks to golden rivers flowing.

No more would then this rugged bluff deny

With cliff and precipice the godlike motion;

Already with its sun-warmed bays the ocean


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Reveals itself to the astonished eye.

At last, it seems, the god is downward sinking;

Yet to new urge awakes the mind,

I hasten on, his ceaseless radiance drinking,

The day ahead of me, night left behind,

Te waves below, and overhead the sky.

A happy fancymeanwhile he must pass.

To spirit wings will scarce be joined, alas,

Corporeal wings wherewith to fly.

xiii

An external motivatorfor Faust, the evening light, in the Quintet, the arbitrary melodic

change in m. 23creates a dream-like, self-contained and stable image. Faust imagines

himself following the sun, so that day no long changes into night. He is subject no more

to mortal travails, but in an infinite communion with nature and the cosmos. Spohr

expresses this feelingthe absence of desire, the purely synchronic experience of time

through harmony. By prolonging the distant key of G-flat major in the transition section,

where the listener expects volatility, he creates a moment outside of the formal demands

of the sonata genre. By avoiding a strongly-directed cadential progression, Spohr creates

music free from desire. The state that Faust desires is a paradox. It is a purely fulfilling

moment of the sort he wagers Mephistopheles will not be able to provide for him in

which he is simultaneously striving forward towards new horizons. This idea is uniquely

suited to musical expression, perhaps suggesting the reason for musics primacy in many

early 19th

century aesthetic hierarchies, because music necessarily moves forward in time.

The chromatic inflection towards G-flat minor, the most poignant moment, perhaps


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reflects Fausts painful realization that the moment cannot last. The vision ends abruptly;

Faust states A happy fancymeanwhile he must pass. / To spirit wings will scarce be

joined, alas, / Corporeal wings wherewith to fly. A true Romantic hero, like the speaker

ofDichterliebeor Byrons Manfred, is unable to resolve the contradiction between desire

and reality and often dies as a result. In contrast, Faust recognizes the impossibility of his

vision. In Spohr, the prevailing conventional harmony and structure quickly resumes. The

music in G flat is kept on the local scale, preserved as a fancy instead of elevated to the

level of structure by cadential confirmation.

Chopin knew GoethesFaustfrom a performance in Dresden in August of 1829.

In a letter to Felix Wodzinski he states Okropna, ale wielka fantazja. W czasie antraktw

grano wyjtki z opery tego imienia SpohraIt is a terrible but great fantasy. For the

entractesthey played excerpts from Spohrs opera of the same name.xiv

This link

between Spohr and Goethe in Chopins mind is enticing. As evidence that Chopins use

of parenthesis is related to the Sunset Speech fromFaust, it is unconvincingly

circumstantial. Scholars have argued for connections between Chopins absolute music

and political, artistic and literary inspiration, with varying degrees of documentary

support.xv

The possibility exists that Chopin used a technical device learned from Spohr

to depict a situation like the one inFaust. More likely, listeners of a certain sensibility

may have interpreted the parenthesis in Chopins music as related somehow to the

philosophy proffered by the Sunset Speech, ideas that were central to intellectual

discourse in Europe in the first part of the nineteenth century.

The Sunset Speech is a version of Friedrich Schlegels arabesque, a kind of

digression in which the decorative becomes essential. The defining qualities of the


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arabesque are movement and multiplicity, such that the human eye is ultimately unable

to fix and perceive the image in its entirety, thus alluding to the aesthetic ideal of the

Absolute, i.e., that which cannot, by definition, be signified or become manifest before

our eyes.xvi

In the same way, the infinite motion that Faust describes is ultimately

striving for a synchronic experience of time. Goethelike Chopin, no indulgent

Romanticregarded the arabesque as a subordinierte Kunst,subordinated form of

art.xvii

Thus Goethe uses the arabesque inFaustto describe Romanticism from a critical

distance. Chopins arabesques are, unlike Schumanns for example, always governed by

musical logic. Like Fausts Sunset Speech, the alternative experience they depict is

ultimately proved impossible.

Chopin would have been familiar with the philosophy of Friedrich Schlegel and

the other Jena Romantics from his university education, particularly through attending

lectures from Kazimierz Brodzinski. Brodzinski, a literature professor, was one of the

first and the most resounding voices in the debate on Polish Romanticism.xviii

The

Warsaw Romantics, including figures like Mochnacki and Odyniec, eventually pinned

their hopes on Chopin to articulate a uniquely Polish Romanticism. As Goldberg states:

Chopin learned from salon debates on the intellectual topics occupying his Romantics

peers, and his emerging compositional style was nourished by the new artistic tendencies

surrounding him.xix

Though Chopins use of parenthesis is probably not an active

imitation of Fausts Sunset Speech, it is a demonstrably Romantic device. Chopin was

both aware and in control of its philosophical ramifications.

One of Chopins musical models for an essentially Romantic style was Webers

operaDer Freischutz. The Warsaw Romantics saw Webers opera as a model in their


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quest to create art that would satisfy the particular needs of the Polish people by its use

folk mythology and vernacular language. Already familiar with the music from popular

piano arrangements, Chopin saw the opera performed in Warsaw in 1826 and in Berlin in

1828. In a letter to his friend Jan Bialoblocki, Chopin admires its najzwyczaj [sic]

wyszukan harmoni extremely sophisticated harmony.xx

The salient feature of

Webers harmony inDer Freischutzis how it represents characters and themes in the

drama. Folk-inflected diatonic choruses and arias are contrasted with the supernatural

elements connected to Samiel. Within the context ofDer Freischutzan abrupt

modulation to a distant key signifies the terrifying grasp of the spirit world. Two

particular passages resonate with the concept of parenthesis as expressed in Spohr and

Chopin. The dramatic situations in Webers opera show possibilities for reading similar

techniques used in absolute music, making the connection between musical parenthesis

and the broader literature of Romanticism more vivid.

ThoughDer Freischutzdoes not contain a parenthesis that is technically like

those in Spohrs Quintet and Chopins Op. 9, it occasionally presents distant harmonies

in a parenthetical way. In the act 2 trio Wie? Was? Ensetzen! Weber creates a kind of

parenthesis to depict moonlight. Max sings Noch trbt sich nicht die Mondenscheibe; /

Noch strahlt ihr Schimmer klar und hell; / Doch bald wird sie den Schein verlieren, The

moonlight is not waning yet; / Its shimmer still beams clear and bright; / But soon it will

lose its gleam. This line recalls the dialogue from act 1, when Max learns that the free

bullets can be forged during the lunar eclipse. Max wants to prolong the moonlight and

delay his dangerous task. Like Faust, but for different reasons he might have said the

swift moment I entreat: / Tarry a while! You are so fair!xxi

The exotic harmony enters


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smoothly; E-flat major becomes E-flat minor which moves to the submediant. C-flat

major is not tonicized, increasing the sense of subordination. Webers parenthesis does

not begin as abruptly as Chopins Op. 9 or Spohrs Quintet. The shattering disconnect

between dream and reality comes at the end of an extreme expansion of predominant

harmony. A diminished seventh chord, representing Samiel, arrives by common-tone and

does not resolve, strangling the life from C-flat major. Many of the aspects of Spohrs

parenthesis are present. Essential to the feeling of parenthesis and present in this example

is the temporal expansion of a distant but static harmonic space which seems subordinate

to the prevailing harmonic context. The distant harmony accommodates a variation of a

previously heard melody. The C-flat major chord arrives in the middle of the phrase,

creating the impression of subordination. The harmony within the parenthetical section

oscillates between the exotic chord and a neighboring 6/4, creating the feeling of stasis.

The abruptness of the diminished-seventh chord creates the sense of distance. This

passage, technically similar to Spohrs Quintet and Chopins Op. 9 Nocturnes, expresses

the same longing for a synchronic experience of time as Fausts Sunset Speech.

Agathas Cavatina from act 3 ofDer Freischutzshows the difference in meaning

between parenthetical presentation and a more straight-forward modulation. Agatha sings

Und wr' dies auch mein letzter Morgen, / Rief' mich sein Vaterwort als Braut (Even

if this were my last morning, / His paternal word would call me as a bride) over a chord

progression which strongly resembles the moonlight music in act 2. Peter Mercer-Taylor

has demonstrated the parallelism of these passages, as a part of Webers strategy for

unifying the music of the opera on the largest scale.xxii

This parallelism encourages

scrutiny of the different harmonic procedures in the two passages. The musical deviations


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depict the changed dramatic situation with specificity. The techniques which made the

earlier example parenthetical are now lacking. Entry and exit from C-flat major are

achieved smoothly. E-flat minor serves as a pivot chord going in. The seventh between

G-flat and F-flat in m. 36 is resolved to a sixth between G and E-flat at the end of m. 37,

creating a dominant seventh chord in the home key of A-flat major. This return to the

tonic quotes Samiels diminished seventh chord, but takes away its sting by subsuming it

into a more natural harmonic progression. C-flat major does not oscillate with its

dominant or neighboring 6/4 chord. The melody over the C-flat major section is new, not

a variant of something that happened before. Agatha forsees the possibility of her own

death, but her faith in God enables her to accept her fate. C-flat major represents here not

a longing contrary to possibility as it did for Max in act 2, but a safe and vivid future.

Weber represents unfulfillable, Romantic desire with parenthesis, inspired forbearance

with modulation.

The harmonic techniques that Weber used to dramatize his story may have been

comprehensible to audiences on first hearings, or through the operas popularity they may

have become part of the musical vocabulary. Webers operatic use of parenthesis either

exemplified or provided an emotional, narrative interpretation of the purely musical

device. Chopins parentheses appealed to listeners in the same way.

Harmonic parenthesis, of the very specific type identified in this study, helps to

place Chopins aesthetic within both the contemporary musical culture and the

philosophy of Romanticism. Chopins conservatism, his veneration for Bach and Mozart,

is sometimes difficult to resolve with the emotional content of his music. The timeline of

Chopins acquaintance with Spohrs quintet and the composition of his own Op. 9


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strongly suggests direct inspiration. The dissimilarities between Spohrs parenthesis and

his Beethovenian models are emblematic of a shifting zeitgeist. Certain concepts of this

nascent Romanticism seem intimately connected with the musical techniques of

parenthesis. With its parallels toFaust, parenthesis shows Chopins interpretation of

Schlegels arabesque. Like Goethe, he describes the longing for the unknowable

Absolute while subordinating it to musically rational procedures. WebersDer Freischutz

an important musical embodiment of Romanticism for the young Chopin, provides

support for reading Chopins parentheses as Faustian moments, aspiring to the synchronic

while acknowledging its impossibility. The feeling that Chopins works aspire to opera

and narrative, that they express something more than the purely musical, has been an

ever-present strand in the reception of his music. Wessels titles, enduring arguments

about Mickiewicz and the Ballades, and fanciful concert reviews must to some extent be

based on heard musical events. Study of parenthesis provides tangible links between

Chopins compositional development and contemporary practice and between absolute

music and the broader spirit of early nineteenth-century Romanticism.

iEugne Delacroix,Journal de Eugne Delacroix (Paris: Plon, 1932), I:365.

Translations are my own unless indicated otherwise.

iiClive Brown,Louis Spohr: A Critical Biography (New York: Cambridge

University Press, 1984), 199200.

iiiSee, for example, Jim Samson, Chopins Alternatives to Monotonality in The

Second Practice of Nineteenth Century Tonality, ed. William Kinderman and Harald

Krebs (Lincoln, Neb.: University of Nebraska Press, 1996), 34-45, Anselm Gerhard,


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Ballade und Drama: Frederic Chopins Ballade opus 38 und dis franzsiche Oper um

1830,Archiv fr Musikwissenschaft48, No. 2 (1991): 110-25, Robert Wason, Two

Bach Preludes/Two Chopin Etudes,Music Theory Spectrum 24, No. 1 (Spr. 2002): 103-

20.

ivThe Frederic Chopin Institute, Frederic Chopin Information Center

Letters, accessed September 3, 2012,

http://en.chopin.nifc.pl/chopin/letters/detail/page/3/id/676.

vFredericks Niecks,Frederic Chopin as Man and Musician (New York: Cooper

Square Publishers, 1973), 1:213.

viJonathan Bellman, review ofMusic in Chopin's Warsaw by Halina Goldberg,

Journal of the American Musicological Society 62, No. 1 (Spring 2009): 229. Motivation

for this paper came from this review, in which Bellman states: The first movement of

Spohrs piece has an opening paragraph that is strongly influenced by Beethovens C-

Minor mood, even including a local modulation to G-flat major that seems almost

directly lifted from the first movement of the Piano Concerto No. 3 in C Minor, Op. 37.

An inflection to G-flat minor, though, instantly removes us from a Beethovenian context

and puts us in a highly colored enharmonic realm of the kind later associated with Chopin

himself. Were passages like this standard at the time, or did this work provide Chopin

with a signature harmonic device?

vii Gerald Abraham, Chopins Musical Style (New York: Oxford University Press,

1939), 91-92.

viiiScott Burnham,Beethoven Hero (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995),

40.


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ix

Christopher Lewis, The Minds Chronology in The Second Practice of

Nineteenth-Century Tonality, ed. William Kinderman and Harald Krebs (University of

Nebraska Press, 1996): 128.x

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,Faust: A Tragedy, trans. Walter Arndt, ed. Cyrus

Hamlin, 2nd

edn. (New York: Norton, 2001), 46.

xiThis technique appears, for example, in the retransitions of K. 331/I and K.

451/II.

xiiJohn Rink, Tonal Architecture in the Early Music, in The Cambridge

Companion to Chopin, ed. Jim Samson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1992),

88.

xiiiGoethe 30.

xivThe Frederic Chopin Institute,


xvSee, for example, Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger, Chopin and 'La Note Bleue': An

Interpretation of the Prelude Op. 45,Music & Letters 78, No. 2 (May, 1997): 233-253.

Jeffrey Kallberg, The Rhetoric of Genre: Chopin's Nocturne in G Minor, 19th-Century

Music 11, No. 3 (Spring, 1988): 238-261. Jonathan Bellman, Chopins Polish Ballade:

Op. 38 as Narrative of National Martyrdom (New York: Oxford University Press 2009).

xviCarsten Strathausen, EichendorffsMarmorbildand the Demise of

Romanticism, inRereading Romanticism, ed. Martha Helfer (Amsterdam: Rodopi,

2000), 375.

xviiQtd. in ibid. 375.


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xviii

Halina Goldberg,Music in Chopins Warsaw (New York: Oxford University

Press, 2008), 137.

xix

Ibid. 176.xx

The Frederic Chopin Institute,


xxiGoethe 46.

xxiiPeter Mercer-Taylor, Unification and Tonal Absolution in Der Freischutz,

Music & Letters 78, No. 2 (May, 1997): 220-232.

Documents

The Faustian Moment in Chopin