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Updated: May 10, 2025
Mikuli asserted that Chopin brought out an "immense" tone in cantabiles. He had not a small tone, but it was not the orchestral tone of our day. Indeed how could it be, with the light action and tone of the French pianos built in the first half of the century? After all it was quality, not quantity that Chopin sought.
Mikuli relates that Chopin had a predilection for Field's A flat Concerto and the Nocturnes, and that, when playing the latter, he used to improvise the most charming embellishments. To take liberties with another artist's works and complain when another artist takes liberties with your own works is very inconsistent, is it not?
In different degrees of tempo, strength and rhythmic accent it should be practised, omitting the thumb and first finger. Mikuli's metronome is 144 to the quarter, Von Bulow's, 114; Klindworth's, the same as Mikuli, and Riemann is 72 to the half, with an alla breve. The fingering in three of these authorities is almost identical. Riemann has ideas of his own, both in the phrasing and figuration.
It must be remembered that with the studies, while they completely exhibit the entire range of Chopin's genius, the play's the thing after all. The poetry, the passion of the Ballades and Scherzi wind throughout these technical problems like a flaming skein. With the modern avidity for exterior as well as interior analysis, Mikuli, Reinecke, Mertke and Scholtz evidence little sympathy.
The tempo rubato is probably as old as music itself. It is in Bach, it was practised by the old Italian singers. Mikuli says that no matter how free Chopin was in his treatment of the right hand in melody or arabesque, the left kept strict time. Mozart and not Chopin it was who first said: "Let your left hand be your conductor and always keep time."
Mikuli says that, carefully arranged according to their difficulty, Chopin placed before his pupils the following compositions: the concertos and sonatas of Clementi, Mozart, Bach, Handel, Scarlatti, Dussek, Field, Hummel, Ries, Beethoven; further, Weber, Moscheles, Mendelssohn, Hiller, Schumann, and his own works.
There is also some editorial differences in the metronomic markings, Mikuli being, according to Kullak, too slow. Mention has not been made, as in the studies and preludes, of the tempi of the Mazurkas. These compositions are so capricious, so varied, that Chopin, I am sure, did not play any one of them twice alike.
More remarkable still is the diversity of opinion regarding the first three bass chord groups in the fifteenth bar from the close: the bottom notes in the Von Bulow and Klindworth editions are B flat and two A naturals, and in the Riemann, Kullak and Mikuli editions the notes are two B flats and one A natural.
Klindworth contents himself with a straightforward version of the C major study, his fingering being the clearest and most admirable. The Mikuli edition makes one addition: it is a line which binds the last note of the first group to the first of the second. The device is useful, and occurs only on the upward flights of the arpeggio.
The jump is to F sharp, instead of G, as in the Mikuli, Kullak and Riemann editions. Von Bulow uses the F sharp, but without the ninth below. Riemann phrases the piece so as to get the top melody, B, E and G, and his stems are below instead of above, as in Mikuli and Von Bulow. Kullak dots the eighth note. Kullak writes that the figure 184 is not found on the older metronomes.
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