Four Impromptus

No.1 in A flat major Op.29 (1837)

No.2 in F sharp major Op.36 (1839)

No.3 in G flat major, Op.51 (1842)

Fantaisie-Impromptu in C sharp minor Op.66 (1834)

Chopin was another Bach enthusiast – he had a copy of the 48 Preludes and Fugues beside him as he wrote his own Preludes Op.28 – and, in spite of the essential inwardeness of his music, his classical sense of decorum resisted autobiographical or poetic interpretations of his work. It would take an uncommonly fanciful commentator to dream up a non-musical interpretation of any of the Impromptus, let alone the four of them as a set. Although they actually work well together when presented in order of publication, they were never intended to be performed that way. The first of them to be written was the one in C sharp minor which for no known reason Chopin withheld from publication and which was published six years after his death as the Fantaisie-Impromptu. It is clear from the similarities between that and the Impromptu in A flat that he did not expect the earlier work to be published. He set off in an adventurous new direction with the Impromptu in F sharp and reverted to the original pattern with the last in G flat. Although the title Fantaisie-Impromptu was not Chopin’s own, incidentally, it has done it no harm in popular estimation.

No.1 in A flat major, Op.29

No.2 in F sharp major, Op.36

No.3 in G flat major, Op.51

Fantaisie-Impromptu in C sharp minor, Op.66

Chopin’s first approach to the impromptu seems to have been fairly casual. The story behind the work now known as the Fantaisie-Impromptu - what inspired it and why it remained unpublished during the composer’s life time - is not entirely clear. What is known is that he wrote it as an Impromptu for the album of one of his aristocratic pupils, the Baronne d’Este, in 1834. What is conjectured is that, being a member of a family with a long and distinguished history of musical patronage, Mme d’Este paid him well for the Impromptu, though on the understanding that she would have the only copy of it. In that case, since he did not intend it to become public property, Chopin was probably not too concerned if it appeared to owe something to a recently published Impromptu in E flat by Ignaz Moscheles. In fact, it was not until six years after his death that, with its title lengthened by its editor to Fantaisie-Impromptu, it finally appeared in print.

Obviously, in 1834 Chopin had no idea how successful his unambitious Impromptu in C sharp minor would one day turn out to be. He must, on the other hand, have had some idea of its potential. Certainly, he did not intend to waste it: the Impromptu in A flat major, written in Paris three years later, is clearly a replacement for Mme d’Este’s Impromptu. It is not only that both works are in ternary form, with quicker outer sections based on a distinctive figuration and a song-like episode between them, but also that the theme of the middle section of the Impromptu in A flat major has more than a little in common with that of the earlier piece.

The Impromptu No.2 in F sharp major, Op.36, which was written at Nohant in 1839, is far more adventurous than either of its two predecessors but not entirely different from them even so. Its first theme, arising in the right hand over a two-part ostinato in the left, is clearly related to the middle sections of both the Fantaisie-Impromptu and the Impromptu in A flat. What is peculiar to this work is that the F sharp major opening section is lyrical rather than agitated and that, after the first theme has been pushed aside by an assertive gesture in C sharp, the middle section takes the form of an aggressive march in D major. The lyrical material duly returns but with so little help from the modulating harmonies at the end of the middle section that it it is forced to make its re-entry in the alien key of F major before it can find its way back into F sharp to present itself in two progressively decorative variants. The assertive gesture also returns but this time to end the piece decisively in the tonic.

After his inspired departure in a different direction in the Impromptu in F sharp, Op.36, Chopin returned to the early pattern in the Impromptu G flat major, Op.51. The triplet figuration of the outer sections of Op.51 is clearly based on that of Op.29, but it does discover its own kind of chromatic frisson and the left-hand melodic line of the central Sostenuto is developed with true improvisatory eloquence. Written at Nohant in 1842, in the same summer as the Fourth Ballade and the Fourth Scherzo, the Impromptu in G flat is clearly not as ambitious as either of those works but it is more than the “occasional piece” modestly dismissed by the composer himself.

The so-called Fantaisie-Impromptu differs from the Moscheles Impromptu in E flat in several important respects (as it does from the Schubert Impromptu in E flat which has also been postulated as a model) but none more significant than that Chopin’s outer sections are in a minor key. The C-sharp-minor harmonies combine with the Allegro agitato tempo and the cross rhythms between the two hands to put the piece to unhappy flight. So when the key changes to D flat major and the tempo slows to Moderato cantabile the dreamy lyricism of the middle section is set in high relief. The cross rhythms are still there, however, though less disturbingly. It is only in the closing bars, as the dreamy melody is quietly echoed low in the left hand in C sharp major, that all tensions are resolved.