Form Informed

The Adagio of Chopin’s Op. 2: A “Fantastic Tableau” After All?

Eytan Agmon — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 07:16:54 +0000

On December 7, 1831, the Leipzig Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung published Schumann’s review of Chopin’s op. 2 variations on Là ci darem la mano, the famous duet from Mozart’s Don Giovanni. The review is remembered today primarily for the words spoken by Eusebius, one of four fictional characters that Schumann brings, with exquisite literary skill, to life: “Hats off, gentlemen, a genius!” The subsequent “analysis” of the variations, which Florestan communicates to Julius, the narrator, “as if talking in his sleep,” receives a dismissive remark already in the review itself. “These private feelings may well be praiseworthy” Julius tells Florestan, “if rather subjective” (Schumann on Music, tr. and ed. by H. Pleasants, New York, 1965).
Chopin himself, writing to his friend Titus Woyciechowski on December 12 of the same year, is far blunter.
“Concerning these [the op. 2 variations] I received a few days ago a ten-page review from a German in Cassel who is full of enthusiasm for them. After a long-winded preface he proceeds to analyze them bar by bar, explaining that they are not ordinary variations but a fantastic tableau. In the second variation he says that Don Giovanni runs round with Leporello; in the third he kisses Zerlina while Masetto’s rage is pictured in the left hand–and in the fifth bar of the Adagio he declares that Don Giovanni kisses Zerlina on the D flat. Plater asked me yesterday where her D flat was, etc! I could die of laughing at this German’s imagination” (Selected Correspondence of Fryderyk Chopin, tr. and ed. by A. Hedley, London, 1962).
Since Schumann’s review was published only five days earlier (and moreover, is only two printed pages long, not ten), it has been suggested that Chopin refers in the above letter to a different review, possibly by Schumann’s future father in law, Friedrich Wieck, who was actually in Kassel at the time, on tour with Clara. I shall nonetheless proceed on the assumption that the review is Schumann’s. (Wieck’s review was published early in 1832 in the Hamburg musical journal Cecilia. From the excerpts quoted in Florence May’s The Girlhood of Clara Schumann (2007), a relationship between Wieck’s review and Schumann’s is far from apparent.) This decision has little bearing on the main question I would like to pose, which is the following: is Chopin’s wholesale dismissal of a pictorial interpretation of his variations justified? In particular, is it justified in the case of Variation 5, an Adagio in B-flat minor?
The following table juxtaposes excerpts from Schumann’s account of Variations 2 and 3, and his entire account of the Adagio, with Chopin’s corresponding readings.

	Schumann (Pleasants’ translation, modified)	Chopin
2nd Var.	“…as if two lovers chase each other and laugh rather more than usual.”	“Don Giovanni runs round with Leporello”
3rd Var.	“Pure moonlight and fairy-magic is here. Masetto stands in the distance and curses rather audibly, by which Don Giovanni does not let himself to be disturbed.”	“…in the third he kisses Zerlina while Masetto’s rage is pictured in the left hand.”
Adagio	“The Adagio sounds in B-flat minor (it seems natural to me that Chopin allows the first part to repeat), which cannot be more appropriate, since it warns the Don, morally so to speak, of his deeds. It is naughty, of course, and lovely, that Leporello eavesdrops from behind the bushes—laughing and mocking, and that oboes and clarinets magically entice and gush forward, and that the B-flat major, in full bloom (das aufgeblühte B-dur), signals the first kiss of love.”	“…in the fifth bar of the Adagio he declares that Don Giovanni kisses Zerlina on the D flat.”

Chopin is apparently commenting on the review from memory, for he gets certain details wrong. (For example, in the second variation he confuses Schumann’s “lovers” with the Don and his servant.) More interestingly, Chopin fills in certain details that are missing in the Schumann. For example, in the third variation he identifies Masetto’s rage with the left-hand’s busy accompaniment in thirty-second notes. In the Adagio, he corrects Schumann’s B-flat major kiss to a D-flat major one, and locates it in the fifth measure. (Schumann’s references to B-flat major, and to oboes and clarinets, are most puzzling. There is no B-flat major chord in the entire Adagio, which, except for one timpani roll, is accompanied throughout by strings.)

Assuming, again, that the review in question is Schumann’s (as printed in the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung), it seems to me that Chopin, by filling in the details noted above, inadvertently discloses some sympathy to the idea that his variations are not dramatically neutral. Moreover, I believe that at least as far as the Adagio is concerned, Chopin is being most unfair to Schumann. For Chopin’s Adagio refers most clearly to certain key-elements of Mozart’s opera, one of them being, quite naturally, the famous A-major duet.

I am attaching the entire Adagio for you to contemplate this suggestion. I hope to present my own thoughts on this matter on January 5th at the Chopin Symposium, where Chopin’s letter shall be cited in a different context.

Two enigmas concerning Beethoven

Tamara — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 06:33:31 +0000

Two enigmas concerning Beethoven

I have two tiny enigmas (or puzzles if you will) that I’ve tried deciphering in the past 3 years or so and couldn’t find a satisfying answer. Perhaps you have any insights regarding these?

Beethoven rarely wrote multi-movement pieces in E Major and there are very few works in E minor. In the few works he chose that tonality, he seemed to stick to it all through. For instance, his piano sonata Op. 14, No. 1 (which also has a string quartet version in F) is in E Major. Its second movement is in E minor, and the finale is in E major. Same with his late piano sonata, Op. 109–all movements share the same tonality, E. Among the pieces in E minor, there is the String Quartet Op. 59, No. 2 (“Rasumovsky”), in which all four movements share the same tonality. In the two-movement piano sonata Op. 90 the first movement is in E minor and the second in E major. Did I forget to mention any other multi-movement work in E? Do you have any guess why that is so? Perhaps there are other peculiar things Beethoven does when he chooses to stay in E for an entire piece?

We just mentioned the piano sonata in E minor, Op. 90. Have you ever tried to play its second movement and then directly continue to the following sonata in your score, the one in A major? One of the most significant things about the Op. 101 sonata is that it starts off-tonic, on a dominant chord (E major), and there is no authentic cadence in the tonic until late in the first movement. Notice that the very location (on the keyboard) of that opening E major chord is the same as the opening of the previous, Op. 90 sonata (second movement). Could it be that Beethoven started the lyric and nostalgic Op. 101 sonata with the same E major sonority to hint that its dedication to Baroness Dorothea von Ertmann (a brilliant pianist and an “immortal beloved” candidate) is due to her marvelous performance of his Op. 90 sonata (Beethoven is known to have told her that he liked the way she performed his music)?

Welcome to Form Informed!

Lea Agmon — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 22:38:31 +0000

Dear student, teacher, friend of the Edward Aldwell Center,

We are launching this blog to help us stay in touch, share our EAC experiences with each other, circulate our ideas, expand our reach, and draw into the EAC orbit musicians who share our ideas and aspirations but may not be able to participate directly in our program. Check out the About page for a brief statement of purpose and intentions.

I hope you will feel at home at Form Informed and join our discussion freely, in English, Hebrew, or any other language of your choice.

Lea Agmon