Fantasy in F minor Op.49 (1841)

Written in 1841, between the Third and Fourth Ballades, Chopin’s Fantasy in F minor could almost be taken for another work in the same series. It is of much the same structural stature as the Ballades, though a little longer than the longest of them, and it too seems to have some kind of dramatic rather than purely musical inspiration behind it - so much so, in fact, that a variety of stories have been spuriously attached to it, ranging from the heroically patriotic to the trivially domestic. The two opening bars, with their beckoning fourths, are clearly not George Sand knocking ominously on Chopin’s door at Nohant, just as the wistfully harmonised reply is not the composer’s reluctantly given permission to enter. The early transformation of the latter phrase into a poignant funeral march carries emotional implications of a quite different kind.

The fact is that the Fantasy is just what it claims to be. Including several conventionally fantasy-style cadenzas as a clear indication of its historical associations, it is an improvisation even more spontaneous than any of the Ballades. Its main theme, introduced in F minor directly after the first of the cadenzas and opening with another falling fourth, is a melody so agitated by its syncopated rhythms that it seems to be falling over itself in panic. But that same theme emerges not much later as a brisk march in E flat major and - after another appearance in its minor mode between two more cadenzas - as a peaceful chorale in B major. Once more it appears in the minor but it takes only an assertive re-entry of the march in the relative major and just a hint of the choral in the same key to bring the work to an end, unexpectedly but quite logically, not in F minor or F major but in A flat major.

The one form which Chopin can be said to have invented is the ballade. He did, however, elevate the barcarolle to a status it had never even aspired to before, and would not achieve again until Fauré adopted the form, and he wrote the one nineteenth-century piano fantasia that can be compared with Schumann’s three-movement example in C major.

Written in 1841, between the Third and Fourth Ballades, Chopin’s Fantasia in F minor could almost be taken for another work in the same series. It is of much the same structural stature as the ballades, though a little longer than the longest of them, and it too seems to have some kind of dramatic rather than purely musical inspiration behind it - so much so, in fact, that a variety of stories have been spuriously attached to it, ranging from the heroically patriotic to the trivially domestic. The two opening bars, with their beckoning fourths, are clearly not George Sand knocking ominously on Chopin’s door at Nohant, just as the wistfully harmonised reply is not the composer’s reluctantly given permission to enter. The early transformation of the latter phrase into a poignant funeral march carries emotional implications of a quite different kind.

The fact is that the Fantasia is just what it claims to be. Including several conventionally fantasia-style cadenzas as a clear indication of its historical associations, it is an improvisation even more spontaneous than any of the Ballades. Its main theme, introduced in F minor directly after the first of the cadenzas and opening with another falling fourth, is a melody so agitated by its syncopated rhythms that it seems to be falling over itself in panic. But that same theme emerges not much later as a brisk march in E flat major and - after another appearance in its minor mode between two more cadenzas - as a peaceful chorale in B major. Once more it appears in the minor but it takes only an assertive re-entry of the march in the relative major and just a hint of the chorale in the same key to bring the work to an end, unexpectedly but quite logically, not in F minor or F major but in A flat major.

Written in 1841, between the Third and Fourth Ballades, Chopin’s Fantasy in F minor could almost be taken for another work in the same series. It is of much the same structural stature as the Ballades, though a little longer than the longest of them, and it too seems to have some kind of dramatic rather than purely musical inspiration behind it – so much so, in fact, that a variety of stories have been attached to it, ranging from the heroically patriotic to the trivially domestic. Leaving aside the clearly absurd notion that it is a reflection of a row between George Sand and the composer at Nohant, it is difficult to ignore the similarity between the Tempo di marcia opening bars and Kurpinski’s “Song of the Lithuanian Legionaries,” which was written at the time of the Warsaw uprising in 1831 and which would have been familiar to every Polish exile in Paris. While this does not imply that the work was intended to represent an epic military struggle, the predominance of the falling fourth is so basic to its melodic inspiration that it could legitimately be described as a fantasy on Kurpinski’s song.       

Certainly, Chopin took care to establish its credentials as a fantasy not only in it title but also in its construction. Including several conventionally fantasy-style cadenzas as a clear indication of its historical associations, it is an improvisation even more spontaneous than any of the Ballades. Its main theme, introduced in F minor directly after the first of the cadenzas and opening with another falling fourth, is a melody so agitated by its syncopated rhythms that it seems to be falling over itself in panic. A variant of that theme emerges not much later as a brisk march in E flat major and then, between two more cadenzas, it reverts to its syncopations and its minor mode. The situation is transformed, however, by the entry of a new Lento sostenuto episode based on a peaceful chorale in B major. Once more the main theme appears in the minor but it takes only an assertive re-entry of the march in the relative major and just a hint of the choral in the same key to bring the work to an end, unexpectedly but quite logically, not in F minor or F major but in A flat major.