Three Nocturnes, Op.9

chopin: ballade in A flat

Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849)

Three Nocturnes, Op.9

No.1 in B flat minor

No.2 in E flat major

No.3 in B major

When the three Nocturnes, Op.9, were first published in this country - by Messrs Wessel of Regent Street in 1833 - they were presented under the spurious title of Murmures de la Seine. “Wessel is an imbecile,” said Chopin. “If he is losing money on my compositions it is because of the imbecility of the titles he insists on giving them.” Perhaps so. But the fact is that Wessel was trying to sell music of formidable harmonic sophistication to a public which at this time knew scarcely more of what to expect from a piano nocturne than they did of Frédéric Chopin.

The first section of the Nocturne in B flat minor would not have put off those few who enjoyed the nocturnes of John Field and who had the dexterity to fit the complex decorative figurations into the regular 6/4 metre. But what would they have made of the middle section, where the key changes to D flat major and, slipping immediately into D flat minor with one disconcertingly simple move in the melodic line in the right-hand octaves, goes on from there into a whole series of unsettling modulations? It would obviously have been easier to sell such things as murmurings of a river than as purely musical poetry.

As far as Op.9, No.2 was concerned, Wessel’s title presumably made no difference either way: in its melodic elegance, its harmonic charm, its apparent ease and its actual brevity, the Nocturne in E flat major was always destined to be a favourite. It was, on the other hand, slightly imbecilic to put No.3 in B major under the same heading: abandoning the regularly flowing left-hand rhythms and the nostalgic melodic lines of the other two for a peculiarly wistful and capricious kind of scherzo, it incorporates a passionate agitato middle section with a dramatically rumbling rather than gently murmuring left hand.