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Chopin at an Impasse...
Some composers pace the floor while
they are writing. Wagner could be seen in an upstairs
window pacing around between phrases of Gotterdammerung,
for example. Brahms and Beethoven liked to get their
ideas while out for a walk. And Chopin, said George
Sand, once spent some 24 hours wrapped in thought,
trying to figure out how to compose the next two
measures of a piece he was working on.
It has been a long time since I read
that anecdote but I�ve never forgotten it. Imagine, a
composer struggling that long to figure out what to do
with the next small bit of musical information.
Then imagine that composer is an
inveterate improviser.
Strange, no? Somebody who can make up
an entire piece of music out of whole cloth the instant
he sits down at the piano, having that much trouble
deciding which notes to put on a page?
We are told that Chopin did not
particularly enjoy writing notes. Maybe it was
practical. After all, hand cramps can result from
putting too many of those black dotes on a page, to say
nothing of all the lines and squiggles that go with it.
But it was probably more than that.
An improvisation is temporary. It is
an experiment, and, if it fails, it fails. You can work
with it again. Try different methods, possibilities, go
in a different direction. You are thinking at the
keyboard, conversing in sounds. Also, in Chopin�s day,
there was nobody recording it.
But put it down on a page and it
seems so�permanent.
(Actually, this concept is getting
harder to explain, now that so much of our written
correspondence is not only not physically present
anywhere except some server somewhere, and so easy to
produce, it now overlaps neatly with temporary, instant
conversational speech. But there was a time when it took
a great deal of trouble and expense to put something
down on a page, and before that, you had to chisel it in
stone!)
The psychological effect of the page
as a permanent thing is that it seems to say, �this is
the way this piece goes.� It could have veered this way
and that, but it didn�t. And if it did, the composer has
long since crossed it out, added a measure over here,
corrected a time signature over there, and, having
chosen the sacred text, sent it off to the publisher,
and woe unto him if he makes a typographical error. This
has been how we have regarded written music in the West
for quite some time, with some contemporary exceptions.
So it is not difficult to imagine the
strain on a composer to get things right, to connect his
musical motives by the most efficient economy, making
every note point to a piece�s ultimate purpose
(musicologists are keeping score) and to be certain not
to leave an ounce of unnecessary musical fat behind.
They�ll be talking about it for centuries, if we�re
lucky.
Thus Chopin paced. And, if we will
believe it, may have taken quite an excruciating amount
of time on some of his best compositions�though, that
possibility is subject to politics. Those, in
particular, who equate speed of composition with the
genius of the composer, are not liable to be friendly
with this position, and with Chopin there does not seem
to be enough corroborating evidence to know just how
long pieces gestated. My Dover edition suggests that his
first Ballade may have taken Chopin some four years to
compose, though a recent biography argues for a more
compressed timeline.
As a wise man said, read a book and
you will know things. Read many books and you will find
you know nothing.
Actually, I said that just now. Maybe
somebody else did, too. Anyhow, you can have it.
The point being, that people are
still arguing over this.
And yet this strange relationship
between improvisation and composition does not strike me
as so odd. Perhaps that is because I am both a composer
and an improviser myself, and can often feel the two
processes seeming miles apart. One is a rough draft, as
it were. The other, polished and presentable.
Nonetheless, the two can be in flux.
Improvisation, in particular, seems a dying art among
classical pianists. It was in force into the 20th
century, but since has largely disappeared. Pianists are
not expected to present their own works anymore, or to
make up variations on the spot for the entertainment of
the crowd. Improvisation, the world of art music, has
largely stopped being a public art. Now it is just a
composer�s sketch pad.
When Chopin improvised, when he
worked with a musical idea, when he developed it, tried
it upside down, in different keys, in combination with
different harmonies, as journey or destination, loudly
or softly, purposefully or playfully: how do you suppose
that idea made it into the final product (we are
ignoring for the moment the multiple written versions of
some pieces)? What if that musical idea were gestating
for years, even part of an entirely different musical
composition that got rejected by its composer and found
another home in a completely different context where,
due to the composer�s genius, you would never have
guessed that it wasn�t there from the start?
Or, maybe he just thought of it that
morning.
We don�t really know how music
journeys through the mind of a composer. They all have
different habits, some of them revealed by sketches left
behind, verbal commentary, or veiled by complete
silence. And, if they are wise, part of their musical
journey will consist in figuring out how they themselves
work, and how they get the best results out of
themselves. �Know thyself� ran the oracle at Delphi.
Even that is difficult. But it is really the only person
we can know, anyway.
Chopin left us some fascinating
music. Most people don�t think to ask how it got there.
But you can sort of see why. It�s complicated. And it�s
ultimately unknowable. Perhaps the only ones who need
ponder this are other creators, who use it to learn
about their own process.
As for the rest, do you like a good
mystery that may never be solved?
Maybe some morning we�ll be glad we
thought about it for a moment. Perhaps�.
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