Four Ballades Op.10 (1854)

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 the second set, Op.25, he happily supplied three more examples for the frankly pedagogical Méthode des Méthodes of Fétis and Moscheles. Even so, and although he did derive some of his ideas from Clementi and Moscheles, Chopin must have intended his studies not only for exercise but also for concert use: the overall structure of the Op.10 set, which includes several complementary pairs and which ends with the most sensational of them as an obvious finale, is surely an indication of something of the kind.

Chopin’s more enlightened contemporaries were very well aware of the uniquely imaginative quality of his achievement in these pieces. 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.” As a connoisseur of piano studies, Robert Schumann too was quick to see their very special virtues. Inspired in the first place by a Paganini performance in Warsaw in 1829 (when the earliest of them were written) but also much influenced by the keyboard style of J.S.Bach, they corresponded closely with what Schumann was looking for among the mechanical compilations proliferating at the time. They “offer nourishment for both hand and spirit,” he said, declaring them “all true poetic images.” Berlioz found in in them “harmonic combinations of astonishing profundity.”

There is nothing mechanical or merely muscular in a Chopin study, however useful an exercise it might be. The right hand part of the first Study in C major consists exclusively of broken chords which not only exercise the fingers but which also pour cascades of interesting harmonies on the melody in the left hand below. The A minor Study is an exercise in finger-crossing for the right hand - with a witty parody in the left. Many of the Op.10 studies have, in fact, appealed to the popular imagination as successfully as any other category of Chopin’s work. No.3 in E major, one of the composer’s own favourites, is such a well prepared exercise in legato expression that, at half the original tempo, it was once adopted as pop tune. No.4 in C sharp minor, a study in what used to be known as velocity, has earned itself the nickname of “The Torrent” and No.5 in G flat major, which is a very characteristic example of the way Chopin devised his figuration to fit the shape of the hand on the keyboard, has earned a special encore status as the “black keys” study.

Study No.6 in E flat minor has achieved less familiarity but is a remarkably beautiful exercise in polyphony with a middle voice undulating in semi-quavers betwen melodic lines in treble and bass. That kind of writing is scarcely baroque counterpoint, of course, but there is more than a hint of the pre-classical toccata in the delightful seventh Study in C major. The eighth in F major is perhaps the most brilliant in the set, calling for a flexible left hand which retains its good humour in spite of all the difficulties experienced by the right. In the ninth in F minor the roles are reversed, the left hand sustaining an unbroken accompaniment of the smoothest legato arpeggios while the right picks out the semi-staccato melody set against it.

The technical problem of the tenth in A flat major, which is the contradictory rhythmic accents of right hand and left, creates its own physical exhilaration. Perhaps it was this one which moved Rellstab to make his famous remark that any one who attempts these studies “should have a surgeon at hand.” Or perhaps he feared that the spread chords of the eleventh in E flat would dislocate his fingers (although the secret of playing them, according to best Chopin practice, is in the wrist). But even Rellstab, who was poet enough to invent the “Moonlight” title for Beethoven’s Piano Sonata in C sharp minor, would have recognised the passionately “revolutionary” quality of the last piece in the set - a study so emotional that it gave rise to, or at least sustained, the idea that it was inspired by the failure of the Warsaw uprising, crushed by the Russian army, in 1831. In fact, there is no evidence as to precisely when it was written.

12 Etudes, Op.25

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

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. No.8 in D flat is a sustained exercise in parallel sixths in the right hand, with conflicting phrasing in the left, and 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, however, 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.

Gerald Larner

Ballade

The piano ballade has a short history. Invented and developed by Chopin in the 1830s and early 1840s, the form (or at least the name) was taken up by Franck, Liszt and Brahms in the later 1840s and 1850s and then, except in isolated cases like Grieg’s in G minor, abandoned. It is, on the other hand, an interesting history, not least in the disputed question as to how when writing his First Ballade in Vienna in 1831 or, more likely, in Paris in 1835 Chopin conceived the idea. According to Robert Schumann, to whom the Ballade No.2 in F major is dedicated, both it and its predecessor in G minor were “inspired by poems of Mickiewicz.” That, he clearly states, is what Chopin told him when the Polish composer played it (or part of it) in his presence in Leipzig in 1836. So, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, we can safely accept that the keyboard ballade has its origins in a form of narrative poetry. And it is not at all improbable that a Polish nationalist poet exiled in Paris, where he and Chopin were certainly known to each other, would have influenced the composer in one way or another. The internal evidence of the four Ballades, which combine a narrative element with sonata form and make a special feature of the storyteller, surely confirms as much.

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)

Four Ballades Op.10 (1854)

No.1 in D minor: Andante

No.2 in D major: Andante

No.3 in B minor: (Intermezzo) Allegro

No.4 in B major: Andante con moto

Although Brahms must have known Chopin’s Ballades when he wrote his own Four Ballades Op.10 in 1854, he seems to have been not in the least influenced by them - unless, that is, he took them as a challenge to create a specifically Germanic version of the form. Certainly, the first of them was inspired by a ballad in Herder’s Stimmen der Völker which, though translated from a Scots original, was already part of the German romantic tradition by virtue of vocal settings by Schubert and Loewe.

Brahms’s melodic material here is as closely related to the text of Edward as it would be if he too were setting it as a song. The Scots words fit the opening bars almost as neatly as those of Herder’s translation:

Why dois your brand sae drap wi bluid? Edward, Edward!

Why dois your brand sae drap wi bluid, and why sae gang ye o?

“O I hae killed my hawk sae guid, O I hae killed my hawk sae guid.”

Brahms’s structure derives from Edward too, at least in the question-and-answer form of the first part. The middle section is a dramatic development of fragments of the mother’s and the son’s themes and is perhaps a reflection of the violence that results in Edward’s murder of his father. In the closing section only the mother’s voice, now drained of its colour, is recalled. Twenty-four years later, incidentally, Brahms made a setting of the same Edward ballad for vocal duet.

It is not known whether Brahms had any specific literary models for the other three Ballades. Bearing in mind the close key relationships between the four of them, it could be that he had no other intention than to write three more pieces in a similarly romantic vein to make a coherent set. It would seem, however, from the extreme contrast between the serene outer sections of Ballade No.2 in D major and the highly eventful, sometimes aggressive middle section beginning in B minor, that there must be some extra-musical background to it. Ballade No.3 is, as the heading in the score indicates, an Intermezzo, weirdly capricious in the B minor outer sections and exquisitely poetic in the bell sounds ringing from the top half of the keyboard in the middle section.

Ballade No.4 is a touching reminder that when Brahms wrote these pieces he was staying in Düsseldorf to be near Clara Schumann after her husband’s suicide attempt and his subsequent removal to the sanatorium at Endenich. If there is any extra-musical background in this case, with a tender and characteristically Schumannesque soprano melody in the opening section answered by a handsome tenor melody in the middle, it could well be an expression of the emotional dilemma Brahms found himself in at the time.

Franz Liszt (1811-1886)

Ballade No.2 in B minor (1853)

Although Liszt was sincere in his flattery of Chopin when he adopted forms indelibly associated with the other composer - polonaise, mazurka, berceuse, ballade - he was not always wise in indulging himself in that way. The Ballade in B minor, which was written in 1853 and is one of the more successful in this group of works, encapsulates the problem most interestingly. In the opening section Liszt himself rises unmistakably in B minor out of chromatic rumblings at the bottom end of the keyboard. The key changes to F sharp major and Chopin enters equally unmistakably in a brighter register of the instrument with an elegantly expressive melody harmonised mainly in tenths. The rest of the work is a quest to balance and reconcile these two contrasting elements as they pass through a variety of ballade-style adventures. What the Liszt themes gains in military vigour the Chopin theme compensates for by taking on a lyrical ally. When, towards the end, Liszt waxes eloquent in the tenor register in B major and is then glorified in a heroic grandioso in the same key it seems that his more poetic colleague has finally been forced out of the way but (in the revised and more commonly performed ending) Chopin makes an irresistible last appear­ance just before the very quiet closing bars.

There is a tradition that the Ballade is actually based on Gottfried Bürger’s Lenore, which was later adopted as the subject of the Fifth Symphony by Liszt’s Weimar associate Joachim Raff and of an early symphonic poem by Henri Duparc. It is difficult, however, to associate the events of Bürger’s spooky ballad with those of the Ballade in B minor.

Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849)

Going back to Chopin and Adam Mickiewicz, the question is not whether Chopin borrowed the title and the general idea of a poetic narrative from Mickiewicz’s Ballady i romanse - which must surely be byond doubt - but whether, in spite of his avowed disapproval of programme music, he based the ballades on specific poems. The First Ballade is traditionally linked with Mickiewicz’s poetic novel Konrad Wallenrod. Chronologically, in that the novel was published in 1828, some such association is clearly not impossible. Aesthetically, it is scarcely possible to reconcile Mickiewicz’s bloodthirsty epic with Chopin’s romantic lyricism, dramatically articulated though it is. The one literary association to which any kind of credence can be attached is that of No.2 in F with Mickiewicz’s Switez: a mysterious woman rises slowly from the lake to tell the story of the struggle of the Lithuanians against the Tsars and to describe how the inhabitants of Switez were engulfed by the waters and transformed into aquatic flowers. It is a very unlikely scenario but it is more credible at least than the Ondine story associated with the Third Ballade. As for the Fourth, it is uniquely fortunate in having had no literary likeness attributed to it.

Ballade No.1 in G minor Op.23 (c1835)

The First Ballade begins with a short harp-like prelude which establishes the bardic personality destined to reappear in the other Ballades. The narrator introduces the first thematic character, 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 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.

Ballade No.2 in F major Op.38 (1839)

When Schumann heard Chopin play the First Ballade in 1836 he declared it “the best of all his works.” Chopin agreed with him. In 1839, when he had finished the second Ballade in F major, he dedicated the new work to his German colleague. It quickly became a favourite too. Chopin performed it frequently but never, apparently, in its entirety. He is said to have played only the first part, in an extended version. Obviously, this is the most attractive part, and it is particularly inspired in the way its gentle pastoral theme grows so naturally out of the repeated harp notes in the first few bars. The parts Chopin did not play are the two stormy presto con fuoco episodes, with the narrator’s voice from the First Ballade rising in an impassioned cry in the left hand. The idyll is definitively drowned by the second episode, which leads not into F major again but to an agitato coda ending in a desolate A minor

Ballade No.3 in A flat major Op.47 (1841)

The third Ballade was completed two years after the second and is already more subtle in construction than the its predecessors. It is impossible to say for certain whether the first section, which is so elusive and so changeable in colour, is introduction or exposition. The opening bars return, are converted into a low echo of the narrator’s theme from the First Ballade and pause on a chord of A flat major. A delightful new theme enters, preceded by an outline of its lilting rhythm in the right hand. This could be a second subject or it could easily be the first main theme. Whatever it is, it is closely related to the earlier material. It dominates the piece from this point on in an apparently spontaneous series of variations, passing dramatically through C sharp minor and into a climax of keyboard brilliance and acoustic magnitude.

Ballade No.4 in F minor Op.52 (1842-3)

The ballade conventions - the 6/8 metre, the narrative style, the bardic prelude - are retained in the fourth and last in the set, written in 1842. The F minor Ballade is, however, even more liberated in form than the A flat major and is on a larger scale. One of Chopin’s greatest works, it is a structural masterpiece and, like all the best examples of story-telling, never predictable. The main theme, introduced after the short prelude with the characteristic repeated notes, sounds like a fragile stray from one of the nocturnes. Although it at first gives no hint of the epic trials it is about to withstand, it proves to be an adaptable melody, capable of carrying a weight of passionate expression, before it is relieved by the entry of a happier, less complicated theme in B flat major. The burden of the main climax is borne by this more robust second subject, now in D flat major. But the brilliant coda, beginning after the slow and quiet chords which bring the music temporarily to rest on C major, is yet another transformation of the mercurial main theme.

Gerald Larner ©2005