Ballade No.1 in G minor, Op.23

When Chopin told Schumann that his Ballades were “inspired by poems of Mickiewicz” he was presumably thinking of the general idea of a poetic narrative rather than specific items in the Polish poet’s Ballady i romanse. While the Ballade in G minor is traditionally associated with Mickiewicz’s Konrad Wallenrod it is impossible to reconcile that bloodthirsty epic with Chopin’s romantic lyricism, dramatically articulated though it is. The narrator is almost as prominent as the principal characters here but the story he tells is one of vividly characterised thematic protagonists involved in harmonic adventures against a distant sonata-form background.

After a short harp-like prelude, the narrator introduces one of the principal thematic characters, the melancholy but excitable first subject, in G minor. The second subject is happier and more relaxed in E flat major. Goaded by the first theme, however, the second is compelled to change its mood during the course of the development. It achieves full-scale eloquence in A major and, at the end of a scherzando episode based on the narrator’s theme, urgently asserts itself in E flat major again. The first subject is recapitulated in the tonic but without the second subject and all conventional expectations are swept away in a presto con fuoco coda.

The Ballade in G minor is traditionally associated with Adam Mickiewicz’s poetic novel Konrad Wallenrod, which was first published in 1828. Chronologically, even if the work were conceived in Vienna in 1831 - and that early date is now dismissed as unreliable - some such association is clearly not impossible. Temperamentally, assuming that the First Ballade was actually written in Paris in 1835, it is not at all unlikely that a Polish nationalist poet exiled in the same city, where they were certainly known to each other, would have influenced the composer in one way or another. Mickiewicz’s Ballady i romanse did at least supply Chopin with a title for this new form of piano music.

Aesthetically, however, it is impossible to reconcile Mickiewicz’s bloodthirsty epic Konrad Wallenrod with Chopin’s romantic lyricism, dramatically articulated though it is. The Ballade in G minor is, it is true, a narrative poem - the narrator is almost as prominent as the principal characters - but, like its three successors, it is a story of vividly characterised thematic protagonists involved in harmonic adventures against a distant sonata-form background.

The First Ballade begins with a short harp-like prelude which establishes the bardic personality. The narrator then introduces one of the principal thematic characters, the melancholy but excitable first subject, in G minor. The second subject is happier and more relaxed in E flat major. Goaded by the first theme, however, the second is compelled to change its mood during the course of the development, achieving full-scale eloquence in A major and, at the end of a scherzando episode based on the narrator’s theme, urgently asserting itself in E flat major again. The first subject is recapitulated in the tonic but without the second subject: all conventional expectations are swept away in a presto con fuoco coda. The narrator adds a dramatically expressive epilogue, where funereal allusions in G minor to a characteristic rhythmic feature of the second subject confirm the unhappy ending .