Two Impromptus

Impromptu No.3 in G flat major, Op.51

Fantaisie-Impromptu in C sharp minor, Op.66

Chopin’s first approach to the impromptu form 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 The story behind the work now known as the Fantaisie-Impromptu - what inspired it and why it remained unpublished during the composer’s life time - is not entirely clear.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, but 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 No.1 in A flat major, Op.29, written in Paris three years later, is clearly a replacement for Mme d’Este’s Impromptu. Although the Impromptu No.2 in F sharp major, Op.36, departs in a different direction and is far more adventurous than either of its two predecessors, the Impromptu No.3 in G flat major, Op.51, returns to the early pattern. The triplet figuration of the outer sections of Op.51 is clearly based on that of Op.36. It does, however, 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 George Sand’s château 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.