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When this kind of inspiration laid hold of Chopin his playing assumed a distinctive character, whatever the kind of music he executed might be dance-music or dreamy music, mazurkas or nocturnes, preludes or scherzos, waltzes or tarantellas, studies or ballades.
Schumann compared the second SCHERZO, Op. 31, to a poem of Byron's, "so tender, so bold, as full of love as of scorn." Indeed, scorn an element which does not belong to what is generally understood by either frolicsomeness or humour plays an important part in Chopin's scherzos. The very beginning of Op. 31 offers an example. It must be a charnel-house, he said on one occasion."
James Huneker, the raconteur of the Musical Courier, discussing the compositions of Chopin, in his delightful and inspiring book, "Chopin, the Man and His Music," calls the studies Titanic experiments; the preludes, moods in miniature; the nocturnes, night and its melancholy mysteries; the ballades, faery dramas; the polonaises, heroic hymns of battle; the valses and mazurkas, dances of the soul; the scherzos, the work of Chopin the conqueror.
And yet almost none of the comparatively few scherzos that have been written here have had any sense of the hilarious jollity that makes Beethoven's wit side-shaking. They have been rather of the Chopinesque sort, mere fantasy. To the composers deserving this generalization I recall only two important exceptions, Edgar S. Kelley and Harvey Worthington Loomis.
The piu lento is certainly one of the most scherzo-like thoughts in Chopin's scherzos so light and joyful, yet a volcano is murmuring under this serenity. The return of this piu lento, after the repeat of the first section, is very fine and beneficently refreshing, like nature after a storm. The Marche funebre ranks among Chopin's best-known and most highly-appreciated pieces.
No doubt, scherzo, if we consider the original meaning of the word, is a misnomer. But are not Beethoven's scherzos, too, misnamed? To a certain extent they are. But if Beethoven's scherzos often lack frolicsomeness, they are endowed with humour, whereas Chopin's have neither the one nor the other.
The twenty-four Preludes were composed before the trip to Majorca, though they were perfected and polished while there. Written early in his career, they have a youthful vigor not often found in later works. "Much in miniature are these Preludes of the Polish poet," says Huneker. There are four Impromptus and four Ballades, also four Scherzos.
She opened the piano and sang, played charming nocturnes and scherzos with a grace and sentiment which displayed a perfect freedom of mind, thus triumphing over her father, whose darkling face showed no softening. The old man was cruelly hurt by this tacit insult; he gathered in this one moment the bitter fruits of the training he had given to his daughter.
The great third Scherzo was played with grandeur, and it is in the Scherzos, perhaps, that Chopin has built his most enduring work.
But as the poet is born, not made-which "being born" is not brought about without travail, nor makes the less desirable a careful bringing-up so also does a work of art owe what is best in it to a propitious concurrence of circumstances in the natal hour. The contents of Chopin's impromptus are of a more pleasing nature than those of the scherzos.
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