The Mentor: Famous Composers, Vol. 1, Num. 41, Serial No. 41

Henry Finck

Henry T. Finck

The Mentor: Famous Composers, Vol. 1, Num. 41, Serial No. 41

FAMOUS COMPOSERS

While it is generally understood that the three great musical countries are Italy, Germany, and France, it must not be forgotten that Poland revolutionized the music of the pianoforte, the most popular and universal of all instruments. That small country looms up very big indeed in the history of the piano. Paderewski, the greatest pianist of our time, and one of the best composers (although his day as such has not yet come), is a Pole, and so is the pianist who ranks next to him, Josef Hofmann. Karl Tausig, in his day, was a piano giant; while three other Poles are well known to all music-lovers of our time,—Moszkowski and the Scharwenka brothers, all of them composers for the same instrument.

CHOPIN, THE SOUL OF THE PIANO

Greatest of all the Poles, however, is Frédéric François Chopin. While his name is usually printed with the French accents, and the French are inclined to claim him as their own because his father emigrated from France to Poland, he himself was as thoroughly Polish in all his sympathies as his mother, and there is reason to believe that his paternal ancestors also came originally from Poland. Some of the traits that have endeared his music to all players and listeners—its elegance, its charm, its polished style—make it seem French; but the Poles also are noted for these same qualities; and in other respects Chopin’s music is as thoroughly and unmistakably Polish as it is an expression of his unique genius.

This is true particularly of his polonaises and his mazurkas. Polonaises seem to have been played originally at the coronation of Polish kings when the aristocrats were marching past the throne; while the mazurkas were quaint old folk dances. In Chopin’s pieces the aristocratic and the folk elements are artistically blended, and that is one of their principal charms. Like Luther Burbank’s wonderful new fruits, they unite the raciness of the soil with the qualities of his own creative genius.

Why does an audience invariably applaud a Chopin valse enthusiastically, provided it is well played? Because the Chopin valse is both popular and artistic. No one thinks of the ballroom while it is heard: it is enjoyed because of its enchanting melody, its rhythmic swing, its elegance, and its exquisite harmonic changes. Why are his études applauded with no less fervor? Because, though modestly called studies, they are dazzling displays of skill and at the same time lofty flights of poetic fancy, astonishing in their originality, like most of his works. “Preludes,” he called more than two dozen of his short pieces; but they are so many precious stones, every facet polished by a master hand.

His splendid sonatas were for a long time underrated, because he refused to cut them according to traditional patterns; but in these days of musical free thinking we laugh at such objections and applaud his sonatas as much as his short pieces.

While the public loves Chopin for the reasons hinted at, experts hold him in highest honor also because he discovered the true language of the piano, which all the composers who came after him had to learn to speak. By his ingenious use of the pedal to combine “scattered” tones into chords he revealed an entirely new world of ravishing tone colors of extraordinary richness and variety. Quite new, too, were the dainty ornamental notes that here and there bedew his melodies like an iridescent spray. He created not only a new style of playing, but also pieces of new patterns, or forms; whereas most of even the greatest masters had contented themselves with accepted traditional forms and simply enlarging or improving them.

When Paderewski plays a Chopin mazurka, he varies the pace incessantly, with most enchanting, poetic effect. This is called “tempo rubato.” It was used before Chopin, notably by opera singers; but it was through him that it became the accepted mode of interpreting all p