Chopin: The Man and His MusicC. Scribner's Sons, 1908 - 415 pages |
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Common terms and phrases
accent admired arpeggio artistic Bach Ballade bass beautiful Beethoven Bülow called charming chords chromatic coda color composer composition concert critic dance dedicated double notes dramatic edition Ehlert étude F minor F sharp figure fingering flat major flat minor Frédéric Frédéric Chopin friends G flat genius George Sand gives grace Gutmann harmonies Impromptu Karasowski Kleczynski Klindworth Kullak left hand Lenz Liszt Madame Majorca Mazurka melody metronome Mikuli minor Concerto minor Nocturne minor Scherzo minor Sonata minor study mood morbid movement never Niecks nocturne Nohant octaves opus orchestral Paris passage passion pedal Père la Chaise phrasing pianist piano piece Pleyel poet poetic Poland Polish Polonaise prelude published pupil rhythm rhythmical Riemann Robert Schumann rubato Rubinstein Scherzo Schumann sentiment sharp minor song soul Stephen Heller style Tausig technical theme Theodor Kullak third tion tone trio triplets Valse virtuoso Wagner Warsaw Willeby writes wrote
Popular passages
Page 116 - mid the tide of all emergency Now notes my separate wave, and to what sea Its difficult eddies labour in the ground? Oh! what is this that knows the road I came, The flame turned cloud, the cloud returned to flame, The lifted shifted steeps and all the way?
Page 133 - O strong-winged soul with prophetic Lips hot with the bloodbeats of song, With tremor of heartstrings magnetic, With thoughts as thunders in throng...
Page 110 - Technically, a decadent style is only such in relation to a classic style. It is simply a further development of a classic style, a further specialisation, the homogeneous, in Spencerian phraseology, having become heterogeneous. The first is beautiful because the parts are subordinated to the whole ; the second is beautiful because the whole is subordinated to the parts.
Page 116 - In music the most indefinite and profound mysteries are revealed and placed outside us as a gracious, marvelous globe ; the very secret of the soul is brought forth and set in the audible world. That is why no other art smites us with so powerfully religious an appeal as music; no other art tells us such old forgotten secrets about ourselves. It is in the mightiest of all instincts, the primitive sexual traditions of the races before man was, that music is rooted. . . . The sexual instinct is more...
Page 273 - Ballade" belongs to him exclusively. Of these, he has also written four. Each one differs entirely from the 279 others, and they have but one thing in common — their romantic working-out, and the nobility of their motives. Chopin relates in them, not like one who communicates something really experienced; it is as though he told what never took place, but what has sprung up in his inmost soul, the anticipation of something longed-for.
Page 271 - In structure he is a child, playing with a few simple types, and almost helpless as soon as he advances beyond them; in phraseology he is a master whose felicitous perfection of style is one of the abiding treasures of the art.
Page 345 - Chopin was in his treatment of the right hand in melody or arabesque, the left kept strict time. . . . Chopin was a very martinet with his pupils if too much license of tempo was taken. His music needs the greatest lucidity in presentation, and naturally a certain elasticity of phrasing. Rhythms need not be distorted, nor need there be absurd and vulgar haltings, silly and explosive dynamics. Chopin sentimentalized is Chopin butchered. He loathed false sentiment, and a man whose taste was formed...
Page 120 - Christian-Catholic theories of the universe are at an end ; for every epoch is a sphinx which plunges into the abyss as soon as its problem is solved.
Page 84 - A slim frame of middle height; fragile but wonderfully flexible limbs; delicately-formed hands; very small feet; an oval, softly- outlined head; a pale, transparent complexion; long silken hair of a light chestnut colour, parted on one side; tender brown eyes, intelligent rather than dreamy; a finely-curved aquiline nose; a sweet subtle smile; graceful and varied gestures: such was the outward presence of Chopin.
Page 348 - Je vous prie de vous asseoir," he said on such an occasion with gentle mockery. And it is just in this respect that people make such terrible mistakes in the execution of his works. In the use of the pedal he had likewise attained the greatest mastery, was uncommonly strict regarding the misuse of it, and said repeatedly to the pupil : " The correct employment of it remains a study for life.