Scherzo No.4 in E major, Op.54

Though no less a romantic than Schumann, Chopin was rather more fastidious about his private life. In fact, deeply subjective though his music is, the inspiration of remarkably little of it can be traced directly to the influence of “anything extraordinary that happened” to him. It often seems to work the other way.

    Intolerable though he considered life in George Sand’s manor house to be - and as her children grew up his situation there became all the more uncomfortable - it was at Nohant that, in the summer of 1842, he started work on a scherzo remarkable for the evidence it offers of a settled, happy and even playful state of mind. Certainly, in comparison with its three more or less demonic predecessors, all in minor keys, the Scherzo in E major is a serene and radiant inspiration. The pìu lento middle section in C sharp minor might be taken as a suggestion that the emotional reality is not so cheerful or it might, on the other hand, be no more than a professionally calculated contrast. And, on the return of the E major material, do those new details in harmony and colouring add a touch of petulance to the prevailing capriciousness?

Intolerable though life in George Sand’s manor house might have been - and as her children grew up Chopin’s situation there became all the more uncomfortable - it was at Nohant that, in the summer of 1842, he started work on a scherzo remarkable for the evidence it offers of a settled, happy and even playful state of mind. Certainly, in comparison with its three more or less demonic predecessors, all in minor keys, the Scherzo in E major is a serene and radiant inspiration. If, on the other hand, there is anything at all significant in the regular turn-over of eight-bar phrases and in the symmetrical reversal of the harmonic pattern of the earlier examples, it could be that Chopin had made the professional decision that it was time to write a different kind of scherzo.

    No one could argue that the opening section, with its five or six thematic components capriciously shuffled and reshuffled, is anything but brilliantly entertaining. The late entry of a new theme in duple-time rhythms gently crossing the prevailing triple-time metre, is a particularly delightful event. But then there is the pìu lento middle section in C sharp minor which seems to suggest, in its confiding sort of way, that the emotional reality is not so cheerful. If that is true, perhaps it is confirmed on the return of the E major material by those new details in harmony and colouring which hint that there might now be just a touch of petulance mingled with the capriciousness. And is the coda angry or merely impetuous?