Frederick Chopin, as a Man and Musician — Complete eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 995 pages of information about Frederick Chopin, as a Man and Musician — Complete.

Frederick Chopin, as a Man and Musician — Complete eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 995 pages of information about Frederick Chopin, as a Man and Musician — Complete.
his weakest points.  Indeed, Chopin’s originality is gone as soon as he writes for another instrument than the pianoforte.  The commencement of the first solo is like the opening of a beautiful vista after a long walk through dreary scenery, and every new entry of the orchestra precipitates you from the delectable regions of imagination to the joyless deserts of the actual.  Chopin’s inaptitude in writing for the orchestra is, however, most conspicuous where he employs it conjointly with the pianoforte.  Carl Klindworth and Carl Tausig have rescored the concertos:  the former the one in F minor, the latter the one in E minor.  Klindworth wrote his arrangement of the F minor Concerto in 1867- 1868 in London, and published it ten years later at Moscow (P.  Jurgenson).[Footnote:  The title runs:  “Second Concerto de Chopin, Op. 21, avec un nouvel accompagnement d’orchestre d’apres la partition originale par Karl Klindworth.  Dedie a Franz Lizt.”  It is now the property of the Berlin publishers Bote and Bock.] A short quotation from the preface will charactise his work:—­

The principal pianoforte part has, notwithstanding the entire remodelling of the score, been retained almost unchanged.  Only in some passages, which the orchestra, in consequence of a richer instrumentation, accompanies with greater fulness, the pianoforte part had, on that account, to be made more effective by an increase of brilliance.  By these divergences from the original, from the so perfect and beautifully effectuating [effectuirenden] pianoforte style of Chopin, either the unnecessary doubling of the melody already pregnantly represented by the orchestra was avoided, or—­in keeping with the now fuller harmonic support of the accompaniment—­some figurations of the solo instrument received a more brilliant form.

Of Tausig’s labour [footnote:  “Grosses Concert in E moll.  Op. 11.”  Bearberet von Carl Tausig.  Score, pianoforte, and orchestral parts.  Berlin:  Ries and Erler.] I shall only say that his cutting-down and patching-up of the introductory tutti, to mention only one thing, are not well enough done to excuse the liberty taken with a great composer’s work.  Moreover, your emendations cannot reach the vital fault, which lies in the conceptions.  A musician may have mastered the mechanical trick of instrumentation, and yet his works may not be at heart orchestral.  Instrumentation ought to be more than something that at will can be added or withheld; it ought to be the appropriate expression of something that appertains to the thought.  The fact is, Chopin could not think for the orchestra, his thoughts took always the form of the pianoforte language; his thinking became paralysed when he made use of another medium of expression.  Still, there have been critics who thought differently.  The Polish composer Sowinski declared without circumlocution that Chopin “wrote admirably for the orchestra.”  Other countrymen of his dwelt at greater length, and

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Frederick Chopin, as a Man and Musician — Complete from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.