12 Etudes Op.25 (1836)

No.1 in A flat major

No.2 in F minor

No.3 in F major

No.4 in A minor

No.5 in E minor        

No.6 in G sharp minor

No.7 in C sharp minor

No.8 in D flat major

No.9 in G flat major

No.10 in B minor

No.11 in A minor

No.12 in C minor

Chopin apparently did not consider his Etudes to be so very different from the general run of technical studies available at the time. Far from protecting his pupils from the more or less mechanical Gradus ad Parnassum or School of Velocity kind of thing, he put them to work on Clementi, Cramer and Czerny even after he had completed his first set of twelve Etudes Op.10. In 1839, three years after he had completed this second set, Op.25, he happily supplied three more examples for the frankly pedagogical Méthode des Méthodes of Fétis and Moscheles.

Some of Chopin’s more enlightened contemporaries, on the other hand, were very well aware of the uniquely imaginative quality of his achievement in these works. Liszt, to whom the Op.10 set was dedicated in 1833, definitively declared that “they spring, like all his works, from the nature of his poetic genius.” Schumann, always in search of piano studies which “offer nourishment for both hand and spirit,” said that Chopin’s “are all true poetic images.”

Schumann actually had the good fortune to hear Chopin play some of the Op.25 set. “Imagine an Aeolian harp,” he wrote, “with all the scales mingled together by an artist’s hand in all kinds of fantastic decoration, but in such a way that you could always hear a deeper fundamental tone and a softly singing melody.” He was thinking of No.1 in A flat, a study which could be described in technical terms as an exercise in the legato articulation of rapid arpeggios in even semiquavers but with the melody notes made to stand out in the right hand and occasional bass notes in the left. In the same terms, No.2 in F minor is a cleverly calculated study in cross rhythms; according to Schumann, the composer made it sound “like a child singing in its sleep.” If he was less enthusiastic about Etude No.3 in F major – “also beautiful, if less original in character than in figuration” – it must be because he failed to appreciate the wit in Chopin’s treatment of his virtuoso material.

Like No.3 in F, most of the Etudes retain the same figuration throughout. No.4 in A minor, however, which is basically a study in staccato, ingeniously mixes syncopated legato phrases with clipped off-beat chords in the right hand. Occasionally the composer goes so far as to introduce a contrasting middle section, like the lovely E major trio of the miniature scherzo which is No.5 in E minor. In No.6 in G sharp minor the right hand is occupied exclusively with a brilliantly frivolous continuity of parallel thirds. No.7 in C sharp minor, on the other hand, is deeply serious, calling for a left hand of exceptional eloquence and a tactful right. Whereas No.8 in D flat is a sustained exercise in parallel sixths in the right hand, with conflicting phrasing in the left, and whereas No.9 in G flat flutters along in the same “butterfly” figuration from the beginning almost to the end, the fierce double-octaves of No.10 in B minor give way to a lyrical middle section in the relative major, the octaves now radiantly colouring the melody in the right hand.

Although it is often claimed that Chopin did not intend either set of his Etudes to be presented complete and in sequence as a concert item, he certainly made sure that Op.25 would have a dramatic ending. No.11 in A minor, the longest of all the Etudes, is so much a tone poem in its combination of swirling semiquavers in the right hand and defiantly harmonised melody in the left that it has long been associated with the nickname of “Winter Wind.” After that, the uninterrupted cascade of arpeggios in No.12 in C minor – the two hands in parallel motion and rhythmic unison throughout – is both aptly and impressively conclusive.