same cannot be said of his less obvious wider influence.
Indeed, nothing is more common than to overlook his
connection with the main current of musical history
altogether, to regard him as a mere hors d’oeuvre
in the musical menu of the universe. My
opinion, on the contrary, is that among the notable
composers who have lived since the days of Chopin
there is not to be found one who has not profited more
or less, consciously or unconsciously, directly or
indirectly, by this truly creative genius. To
trace his influence we must transport ourselves back
fifty or sixty years, and see what the state of music
then was, what composers expressed and what means of
expression they had at their disposal. Much that
is now familiar, nay, even commonplace, was then a
startling novelty. The appearance of Chopin was
so wonderful a phenomenon that it produced quite an
electrical effect upon Schumann. “Come,”
said Berlioz to Legouve in the first years of the
fourth decade of this century, “I am going to
let you see something which you have never seen, and
someone whom you will never forget.” This
something and someone was Chopin. Mendelssohn
being questioned about his enthusiasm for one of this
master’s preludes replied: “I love
it, I cannot tell you how much, or why; except, perhaps,
that it is something which I could never have written
at all.” Of course, Chopin’s originality
was not universally welcomed and appreciated.
Mendelssohn, for instance, was rather repelled than
attracted by it; at any rate, in his letters there
are to be found frequent expressions of antipathy
to Chopin’s music, which seemed to him”
mannered “(see letter to Moscheles of February
7, 1835). But even the heartless and brainless
critic of the Musical World whose nonsense I quoted
in Chapter XXXI. admits that Chopin was generally
esteemed by the “professed classical musicians,”
and that the name of the admirers of the master’s
compositions was legion. To the early popularity
of Chopin’s music testify also the many arrangements
for other instruments (the guitar not excepted) and
even for voices (for instance, OEuvres celebres de
Chopin, transcrites a une ou deux voix egales par Luigi
Bordese) to which his compositions were subjected.
This popularity was, however, necessarily limited,
limited in extent or intensity. Indeed, popular,
in the comprehensive sense of the word, Chopin’s
compositions can never become. To understand them
fully we must have something of the author’s
nature, something of his delicate sensibility and
romantic imagination. To understand him we must,
moreover, know something of his life and country.
For, as Balzac truly remarked, Chopin was less a musician
than une ame qui se rend sensible. In short,
his compositions are the “celestial echo of
what he had felt, loved, and suffered”; they
are his memoirs, his autobiography, which, like that
of every poet, assumes the form of “Truth and
Poetry.”