Page:Pratt - The history of music (1907).djvu/539

 CHAPTER XXXII

NEW LIGHTS UPON PIANISM

198. Chopin as a Tone-Poet.—During almost precisely the same years as Mendelssohn lived the Polish pianist and composer Chopin, contributing to musical art an influence that has been singularly potent and persistent. Representing a different racial stock and moved by a peculiar national spirit, Chopin gave voice to an intense and poignant strain of poetic romanticism that was eminently original and fresh. His genius was matured before the world at large knew much about it, but, when he stepped forth into publicity, his captivating qualities as a virtuoso made his style instantly famous. His choice of Paris as a residence introduced him to a society specially sensitive to his artistic type. But the sentiments and the forms that he loved lay so close to the modern spirit generally that he stands out as an artist, not merely of a nation or a social class, but at least of a period, if not of a constant aspect of experience. Accordingly, his works, though relatively few and almost wholly confined to a single field, have become standard everywhere in both public and private use.

Emotionally, Chopin presents many contradictions, from languorous dreaminess and voluptuousness to fiery and heroic ardor, from a sentimentality that verges upon the morbid to noble virility. But this mixture of qualities is not unusual, and in his case the directness with which they were revealed and the consummate art with which they were embodied give his works an extraordinary appeal. His passionateness and pathos may well be traced to the tragic national history into which he was born, but his symmetry of form, his exquisite feeling for tonal beauty, his delicacy of detail, his finesse in planning his effects—all these recall rather the Gallic element in his blood. In the perfect unity and balance between conception and form, his style resembles Mendelssohn's, but the difference in materials and impulses was extreme.