File:Frédéric Chopin 1847, drawing by Franz Xaver Winterhalter.jpg

Identifier: modernmusicmusic02elso (find matches)
Title: Modern music and musicians : (Encyclopedic)
Year: 1918 (1910s)
Authors: Elson, Louis Charles, 1848-1920
Subjects: Piano Musicians Composers
Publisher: New York : The University Society Inc.
Contributing Library: Harold B. Lee Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Brigham Young University

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n the Nocturnes, Opils33, No. 1. and Opus 37, No. 2, which containa direct address. His method of compositionwould seem to have been to draw his inspira-tion from the noblest poetry of France orPoland, to found his melodies upon theirmeters, and then with a double poetical andmusical consciousness to work out his com-position. Besides his principal melodies,which he often treated like the grand Italianaria, all the minor elements of his tone-poems maybe resolved into melodies, treatedin various ways, and sometimes completelydisguised. Beneath his wealth of embellish-ment, or hidden in his modulatory passages, 225 226 WHAT POET IS MOST AKIN TO CHOPIN? the original folk-song must be discovered if motifs became complete melodies; his pro- the interpretation is to possess either grace gressions and cadences, motifs. Even the or meaning. Chopin was even accustomed last two chords of the final cadence at the to build upon the close of his theme new end of a movement, Chopin loved to include
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CHOPIN. From a drawing by Winterhalter in 1*47. melodic passages, forceful and dignified,but on analysis resolving into melodizedcadences. Sequences of modulatory chords, bold andstiff, such as other composers abound in,Chopin loved to transform into beautifulthemes, by breaking their harmonic struc-ture into rhythmic and melodic motifs. Hereversed the principle of Wagner, whosemelodies degenerated into motifs; Chopins within the limits of a melody, often in songform. His inner harmonic voices are oftenmelodies such as the composer of to-daywould send forth as independent creations.In short, Chopin subjected every note of hiscomposition to the laws of poetical meter;as a consequence, all of it lives and moves—to the despair of the impersonal orchestralpianist of to-day. It follows that Chopin antedates our or- WHAT POET IS MOST AKIN TO CHOPIN? 227 chestral color-painting. His harmonic coloris astonishingly transparent and pure. Itis as subtile as it is transparent; but he depends up

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