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Updated: June 23, 2025
The nocturnes including the Berceuse and Barcarolle should seldom be played in public and not the public of a large hall. Something of Chopin's delicate, tender warmth and spiritual voice is lost in larger spaces. In a small auditorium, and from the fingers of a sympathetic pianist, the nocturnes should be heard, that their intimate, night side may be revealed.
Whistler saw himself in every primitive artist; and seeing himself as a dreamer apart misunderstood by the common herd, he saw the primitive artist as one living in a primitive White House, and producing primitive nocturnes for his own amusement, unnoticed, happily, by primitive critics. But his view, though refuted both by history and by common sense, is still held by many artists and amateurs.
The two Concertos are cherished by virtuosi and audience alike, and never fail to make an instant and lasting appeal. And think of the eleven Polonaises, those courtly dances, the most characteristic and national of his works; the fourteen Valses, beloved of every young piano student the world over; the eighteen Nocturnes, of starry night music; the entrancing Mazurkas, fifty-two in number.
Gradually satiated with erotic passion, gradually convinced that it is rather a mischief-maker than a reconstructive force in a decrepit society, she is groping, indeed, between her successive liaisons for an elusive felicity, for a larger mission than inspiring Musset's Alexandrines or Chopin's nocturnes.
And Cicely, at a sign from Maryllia, went to the piano and played divinely, wild snatches of Polish and Hungarian folk-songs, nocturnes and romances, making the instrument speak a thousand things of love and laughter, of sorrow and death, till the glorious rush of melody captivated some of the wanderers in the garden and brought them near the open window to listen.
His cosmos bulged with ego of such density that he and his pastels and nocturnes were crowded together in it indistinguishably. Admiration of his work was necessarily admiration of himself. It was only a question of degree.
But just as dreams are sometimes agitated and dramatic, so some of these nocturnes are complete little dramas with stormy, tragic episodes, and the one in C sharp minor, e.g., embodies a greater variety of emotion and more genuine dramatic spirit on four pages than many popular operas on four hundred.
Thirteen years of silence elapsed, and at last, in 1860, he produced his legendary opera, "Lurline," at Covent Garden. It gave great satisfaction at the time, but is now rarely performed. Besides his operas he also wrote many waltzes, nocturnes, studies, and other light works for the piano.
"Never, perhaps," said Dion, with equal carelessness. "Often one lives for years in London without knowing, or even ever seeing, one's next-door neighbor." "To be sure!" said Daventry. "One of London's many advantages, or disadvantages, as the case may be." And he began to talk about Whistler's Nocturnes.
Then the great gloomy cloister vibrated with mysterious music which seemed to float in from afar through the heavy walls. It was Chopin, bending over the piano composing his Nocturnes.
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