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Home , Allan Arthur Willman, Henri Herz, Lord Byron, Scherzos (Chopin)

“ in : The 1830s”, Session: “The New Chopin”; Dział Naukowy i Wydawniczy Narodowy Instytut Fryderyka Chopina, Warsaw Nov. 30–Dec. 2 2006.

“Katechismus” or ‘transcendante’? Reconsidering Chopin’s Études opus 10 and opus 25 as a document of an era with a special emphasis on the of Friedrich Wieck

Tomi Mäkelä (Magdeburg)

1. The years in question The “Parisian” 1830s began for Chopin in Warsaw 1829 with the composition of the in f minor opus 21. It belongs, even for Friedrich Wieck, guardian of old- Italian values, to the greatest contemporary pieces for modern piano. In “Grobe Briefe. IX” Wieck mentions Chopin’s Concerto in f minor, dedicated to Delfina Potocka, as the last stage of schooling the fine art of piano playing.1 In the same context he also names Beethoven’s late but rather small (perhaps even “feminine”) Sonata opus 109 in E major, dedicated to Maximiliane Brentano. To consider these two compositions – instead of the straight forward, more “masculine” Concerto in e minor opus 11 (consequently dedicated to Frédéric Kalkbrenner) and Beethoven’s Sonata für das Hammer-Klavier opus 106, dedicated to Erzherzog Rudolph – as high-end piano repertory was not only typical of Wieck but of the 1830s’ and 1840s’ aesthetics.2 Already in G. W. F. Hegel’s Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik (first published 1835 but based on University lectures given in Heidelberg and during the 1820s) music was given a high esteem not as “Werk” but as an event, “Lebendigkeit”.3

1 Signale für die musikalische Welt, 6, 50 (Dec. 1848). Also published as “Viel Clavierlernende und keine Spieler” in Clavier und Gesang. Didaktisches und Polemisches (1853); cf. Friedrich Wiecks Clavier und Gesang und andere musikpädagogische Schriften, Tomi Mäkelä and Christoph Kammertöns (Eds.), Hamburg, von Bockel 1998, 85–90. 2 To this topic cf. Mäkelä “’Dieser geniale, geschmackvolle, feinfühlende Componist und Virtuos möge Ihnen auch hier zum Muster dienen.’ Das Chopin-Bild von Friedrich Wieck”, In Chopin and his Work in the Context of Culture, Irena Poniatowska (Ed.), vol. 2, Polska Akademia Chopinowska et al., Warschau 2003, 106–113. Also cf. Mäkelä, “Zwei Pädagogen, zwei Jahrhunderte: Heinrich Neuhaus und die deutsche Klavierpädagogik des 19. Jahrhunderts unter besonderer Berücksichtigung von Friedrich Wieck”, In Heinrich Neuhaus (1888–1964) zum 110. Geburtsjahr. Aspekte interkultureller Beziehung in Pianistik und Musikgeschichte zwischen dem östlichen Europa und Deutschland, Klaus Wolfgang Niemöller and Klaus-Peter Koch (Eds.), Sinzig, Studio 2000, 153–160; and “Musik als unterhaltsamer Genuß in deutschen Salons. Friedrich Wieck und das ‘halböffentliche’ Musikleben im frühen 19. Jahrhundert”, In Von delectatio bis entertainment. Das Phänomen der Unterhaltung in der Musik, Christian Kaden and Volker Kalisch (Eds.), Essen, Blaue Eule 2000, 69–84. 3 ”Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik III”, In Werke in zwanzig Bänden 15, Eva Moldenhauer and Karl Markus Michel (Eds.), am Main, Suhrkamp 1970, 131–221.

1 The 1830s were shockingly poor in symphonic and operatic masterpieces of “canonic” weight. This increases the relevance of the Concerto as a typical major genre of the decade, including Chopin’s opp. 11 and 21 as well as Bartholdy’s opp. 25 (1831), 40 (1837) and many less well-known contributions for piano and other instruments. Other forms of demonstrations of instrumental virtuosity, too, like Études for concert or salon performance, get a higher status as documents of the era simply due to the lack of more grand achievements. During this period that (in spite or just because of Louis Philippe’s “enrichez vous”) was not at all rich in symphonic quality in music, not much indeed entered the “canon” between Berlioz’s Symphonie phantastique (1830) and Schumann’s Symphony in B flat major opus 38 (1841) or Rossini’s Guillaume Tell (1829) and Wagner’s Der fliegende Holländer (1841). The 1830s was not a period of “symphonic” minds but rather like an application of Hegel’s aesthetics of music.4 Beside the “virtuoso” repertory of composers like Henri Herz, Frédéric Kalkbrenner, and others, even Chopin’s “canonized” compositions, and by no means only his and Ètudes, reserve to be analyzed as documents of this “Parisian” era, politically and economically shaped by the post-revolutionary monarchy of Louis Philippe Ier: the rapid commercialisation of the musical life and media, new kind of and commercial ethics, industrialisation and deterioration of classical values. Due to the sudden acceleration of historical time this decade is indeed a challenge for the scholarship of the history of styles as well as for the cultural history.5 Is it possible to grasp the significance of such a decade and to give it a little more “Gestalt” instead of “Lebendigkeit”? If yes, is it possible, even if the focus is supposed to be on music only, after the death of J. W. von Goethe (cf. ’s critical essay Die romantische Schule, 1832) to call these years for instance “romantic”? If yes, how can one take into account the confusion and “Zerrissenheit” (cf. Alexander von Ungern-Sternberg’s Die Zerrissenen, 1832) of the era of Les Jeunes- and others? * In Wieck’s essays the simultaneity and dynamic parallelism (or sort of “dialectics”) rather than contradiction of romantic creation of individual works of art and visible as well as audible presence of a virtuoso in the musical life of the 1830s are repeatedly articulated. Even more clearly than the Concerto in f minor, Chopin’s Études

4 ’s solution was to compose not only Studien nach Capricen von Paganini für das Pianoforte opus 3 (1832) and Sechs Konzertetüden nach Capricen von Paganini opus 10 (1833) but Zwölf Symphonische Etüden opus 13 (1834/1835) – and last but not least a Concert sans orchestre in f minor opus 14 (1833/1836) whereas his Konzert für das Pianoforte mit Begleitung des Orchesters opus 54 (1841/1845) already marks the beginning of a new era, closely linked with the late Beethoven’s overall “symphonic” ethics. 5 In the recent literature as well as art and music criticism (Jauß, Dahlhaus etc.) the tendency to combine Classicism (Viennese and other) with (Berlin and other), based mostly on similarities in construction (in music the lack of significantly new genres and harmonic innovation), is dominant. This essay argues that from a point of view that underlines the history of musical life and the performing arts in their variety (rather than composition) the 1830s is to be seen as a major turning point and crossroads of tendencies. To acceleration cf. Olivier Remaud, “Petite philosophie de l’accélération de l’Histoire“(Texte à paraître dans la revue Esprit).

2 opp. 10 and 25 represent the dynamics between virtuosity and “Werkcharakter”. Simultaneously, the Études document the overall transformation of Chopin’s style(s) after opus 21 and before Quatre à Etienne Witwicki opus 41 (1839). Mieczyslaw Tomaszewski considers the Études opus 10 as typical of the “” as well as “comeback of the virtuosity”, whereas many of opus 25 belong to the “synthesis” (1835–1840). The 1830s Tomaszewski describes as a sequence of Chopin’s “Sturm und Drang” period and the explosion of the “Romantic” after youthful sentimentality and “brilliant” virtuosity (e.g. in opp. 4, 5 and 14), the “comeback” of virtuosity and brilliance (as Chopin had finally settled in Paris, 1831– 1835) and the first half of a decade of a “dynamic synthesis” (1835–1840).6 Considering the as the key genre in defining the periods of art history in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the “Sturm und Drang” (originally the title of Friedrich Maximilian Klinger’s , 1776) should be associated with dramatic art with intimate and moralist goals whereas Romanticism was dominated by short stories and fairy tales; Classicism by magnificent verse forms; and Realism by complex narrative processes. In this respect the Etude opus 10 no. 12 is an ideal “Sturm und Drang” candidate. The four (1835–1843), (1834–1843) and the Fantasia in f minor (1841) could be seen representing the Romantic trends. Quite a challenge would be to locate stylistically the genres Impromptu (1837–1842), Prélude (1838–1839), Sonata (1827–1833), Nocturne (1830– 1846), Mazurka (1824–1849), Polonaise (1817–1846) and Waltz (1829–1849) as well as the Concertos in e and f minor (1829–1830). A “genre” in the nineteenth century was a “result of historical processes in which certain social developments lead to creation of characteristic compositions and groups of art works”.7 Therefore it is not helpful to call Mazurka and Waltz “dances”.8 Particularly Mazurka but also Waltz (sometimes called “der Deutsche”, e.g. by , opposing the dominance of the French and post- Roman cultures) had strong national(istic) implications. This background fits with the “Sturm und Drang” tendency to look at (“national” or other) folklore as a vehicle of moral ideas (particularly in poetry), simultaneously emphasising the most expressive authentic power of individual utterance and therefore (optionally) authorial presence. Also Chopin’s Polonaise could be mentioned here – but certainly not as a genre that should have reflected “extreme masculine virility”.9 Particularly in the case of Goethe and Schiller, “Classicism” means the turn off “Sturm und Drang” in regard of its relation to folklore, triviality and pure authorial

6 Concerning the “periods” cf. Tomaszewsky, Frédéric Chopin und seine Zeit, Laaber, Laaber 1999 [orig. Chopin. Czlowiek, dzielo, rezonans, Poznan 1992], 174 ad passim. For a different view see Serge Gut, “Les impulsions artistiques du Paris romantique sur l’oeuvre de Chopin (1831–1838)”, In Chopin and his Work, vol. 1, 120–129. 7 Cf. Arnfried Edler, “Aspekte der Gattungsgeschichte in Chopins Klaviermusik”, In Chopin and His Work, vol. 1, 256–272, here 256. 8 Ibid., 267. 9 Cf. Eero Tarasti’s reading in “Chopin and the Transcendental Subject: Body and Transcendence in Chopinian Aesthetics”, In Chopin and His Work, vol. 1, 195–214, here 195. It is not necessary to associate national pride and even armed efforts to defend one’s own country with men’s behaviour in the early nineteenth century; at least it would not help to understand such destinies as Eleonora Prochaska (just to name the most famous), one of Lützow’s “Jägers” who fall as “August Renz” 1813.

3 expression. Instead of folklore, ancient principles and the nature served now as models. This helps to look at Chopin’s Sonatas as representatives of “Classicism” (1827–1833). “Romanticism” can, of course, be added to Classicism as a movement, based on Wilhelm and ’s as well as ’s and Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg’s (’s) innovation. This movement underlined the emotion, individuality, fantasy, introvert reflection, ‘otherworldness’ and intimate relation to the nature. A lot of this (including the fundamental if not always explicit respect for classical principles of unified configuration and symmetry) could be applied to Chopin’s Préludes, Impromptus and (1837–1846). Similar to the representatives of “Sturm und Drang” these genres demonstrate the presence of the author’s (Chopin’s) subjectivity, his “voice” as a composer and virtuoso. * Jaroslaw Iwaszkiewicz realised “[…] how far away Chopin was from all that we call Romanticism in music. Chopin’s music is romantic thanks to the elements that it has absorbed from the atmosphere of the era. Chopin wanted quite consciously to write ‘classical’ music with roots in the national productivity of the people.”10 This is one way of emphasizing the synthetic and heterogeneous quality of Chopin’s music in the 1830s and beyond. Here it is useful to quote the playwright and novelist Karl Leberecht Immermann’s (*1796, †1840) late Die Jugend vor fünfundzwanzig Jahren (1839) that documents the ideological context of the author’s novel Die Epigonen (1836). Even though Immermann was 14 years senior of Chopin, some of his notions of the “feeling” of the 1830s indeed help to understand Chopin better during these peculiar years. Immermann uses the metaphor of a sick person: “Die Natur kann sich in einem solchen Fall durch ein Fieber helfen, welches den gröbsten Krankheitsstoff auswirft, aber die Nachwehen des Fiebers bleiben lange: das Zittern der Nerven, die Schwäche, die Unsicherheit des ganzen Befindens; und in diesen Nachwehen schleichen doch noch die Reste des Übels umher. Die Nachwehen unserer Krankheit und des kritischen Fiebers sind nun in der hier bezeichneten Richtung eine gewisse Halbheit, ein Gespaltenes und Doppeltes im Bewußtsein von den öffentlichen Dingen, in denen Begriffen von Recht, Eigentum und Besitz. […] Der Hauptgrund des geistigen und gemütlichen Schwankens bleibt das Bewußtsein von der Größe der vergangenen Arbeit und von der scheinbaren Kleinheit oder unreinen Natur der Ausbeute.” The same kind of modesty is omnipresent in Chopin’s oeuvre. He does not introduce new genres (beside the Ballade for piano as a new form of “Fantasia”) and techniques but rather refines the tradition to such a degree that hardly any contemporary critic got the impression of eclecticism of the detail – reaching a level that inspired Schumann’s lines of 1835: “Er spielt genauso, wie er komponiert, d.h. auf seine eigene Weise.”11 Immermann’s artists cannot be criticised for “anxiety of influence” and aggression towards the previous generations.12 They behaved themselves at least seemingly like the brave students and extended the innovation of the teachers’ generations and in many cases (also Chopin’s) consequently avoided the genres of the predecessors’ monumental achievements.

10 Fryderyk Chopin, Leipzig, Reclam 1985, 105. 11 NZfM, 6.10.1835. 12 Harold C. Bloom, The anxiety of Influence: a theory of poetry, New York, OUP 1973; A map of misreading, New York, OUP 1975.

4 What about the “new” Chopin of the 1830s in the context of eclecticism? One of the tasks of the present chapter will be to look for the “newness” despite all the “scheinbare Kleinheit” (Immermann) in comparison with the revolutionary originality and power in the output of the previous as well as the next generation. The innovations and events of epochal significance were, according to the present paper, closely linked with the history of virtuosity and the social and aesthetic roles of musicians (the whole matter of the “Lebendigkeit”) rather than composition. Chopin was one of the central agents of the reconfiguration that is also demonstrated by Mendelssohn revitalizing J. S. Bach’s Matthäus Passion in Berlin 1829 (an important media event considering the fact that Bach had been performed continuously in Leipzig) and organising “Historical Concerts” in 1838–1839, presenting Domenico Scarlatti on a harpsichord by Scudi.13 All this belongs to an overall change in attitudes, expectations, norms and ideals, and will be studied here mainly in relation to Chopin’s Études.

2. Friedrich Wieck’s views on Chopin’s “romantic” virtuosity Like Immermann, Wieck belonged to the established “teachers’ generation” (rather than the avant-garde), but still capable of critical reflection. Wieck had a lot to say about Chopin’s role in the shift of the dominance of free performance towards a more work oriented musical culture. Wieck, a citizen of Dresden and Leipzig, was a prominent witness of Chopin’s development on his path from Poland to France, highly relevant in his parallel appreciation of Chopin the composer as well as the “virtuoso”.14 Even though Wieck’s portrait is a variation of Heine’s frequently quoted position of 1836 (representing the high level of positive attention Chopin was given in German magazines)15 it is shaped by the fact that Wieck was a music teacher and ’s father. In Wieck’s earliest essay on Chopin there is first of all an exited, phenomenological survey of impressions on “Là ci darem la mano” after W. A. Mozart’s Don Giovanni, the variations in B flat major opus 2 (1827). Wieck published this review in 1832 only after Robert Schumann had published his own debut essay “Ein Werk II”.16 Wieck’s

13 Cf. most recently Tuija Hakkila-Helasvuo, Pompeijin aarteita tuhkasta. Ignaz Moschelesin historialliset konsertit Lontoossa 1837–1839, Sibelius Academy, Helsinki 2005 (a Doctor of Music thesis), and Mäkelä, “Ignaz Moscheles, musiikinhistoria ja tieteen tasoristekset”, In Musiikki 35, 4 (2005), 125–142. 14 In line with my dissertation Virtuosität und Werkcharakter. Eine analytische und theoretische Untersuchung zur Virtuosität in den Klavierkonzerten der Hochromantik, München und Salzburg, Katzbichler 1989 (TU Berlin 1988), virtuosity does not mean the mainly technical (artistic) aspect of performance here but (as a whole) the fine art of interpreting and performing music with respect to historical changes in the emphasis of different qualities of virtuosity as it was taught, written about by professional musicians like Czerny and Kullak and expected by critics like Schumann and Schilling. 15 “Ja, dem Chopin muß man Genie zusprechen, in der vollen Bedeutung des Worts; er ist nicht bloß Virtuose, er ist auch [...].” In “Vertraute Briefe über die Französische Bühne”, originally in Allgemeine Theaterrevue, later edited as: Heinrich Heine, Sämtliche Schriften in 12 Bänden, vol. 5, Karl Pörnbacher (Ed.), Berlin etc., Ullstein 1981, 353. 16 Caecilia. Eine Zeitschrift für die musikalische Welt, 14, 55, 1832; Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung, 33, 49, 1831.

5 essay has – without evidence – been called “imitation”.17 This is an example of Wieck being a persona non grata:18 Wieck had without a doubt written his article before Schumann or at least without knowing about Schumann’s project. Only that would explain his announcement of an “experimental” approach in describing the program of opus 2; it would (considering that Wieck respected Schumann’s professional competences) be ridiculous if Wieck had had Schumann’s piece with similar programmatic associations on his desk. Wieck had serious difficulties in getting his text published. Chopin himself who had the opportunity to read Wieck’s essay in November 1831 as Wieck had asked Eduard Fechner give it to him was irritated by Wieck’s programmatic notes: “one could die confronted with this imagination of the German”.19 Additionally Chopin even avoided contact with Wieck and his daughter,20 two admirers and representatives of a fairly similar artistic tradition based on Bach and Belcanto – and (unlike Schumann) even Bellini.21 Instead of correcting mistakes as Wieck had desired22 Chopin asked Fétis through Fechner not to publish the article in Revue Musicale; it would be “very stupid”, Chopin pointed out. Chopin’s hostility shows that there was something very sensitive about the matter – like the fact that even though “Là ci darem la mano” is just an aria in an opera, the very opera could be seen as a key in understanding the mentality of the era. Long before ’s Le de Mozart (1890), Don Juan as a literary figure was frequently linked with other male myths like Casanova, Hamlet and Doctor Faustus (for example 1829 by Christian Dietrich Grabbe in Don Juan und Faust). Since Tirso de Molina’s Le Burlador de Sévilla y convidado de piedra alias Tan largo me Lo fiais? (1630), Molière’s Dom Juan, ou le Festin de Pierre (1665) and Carlo Goldoni’s Don Giovanni (1730) there had been quite a few important ”Juanists” before Chopin: Schiller (1797), Hoffmann (1813), Lord (1819–1824) and Puschkin (1830). Kierkegaard (1843), Lenau (1844), Baudelaire (1846) and Flaubert (1851) soon followed.

17 Cf. Désirée Wittkowski, “Clara Wiecks erster Parisaufenthalt 1832”, In Clara Schumann. Komponistin, Interpretin, Unternehmerin, Ikone, Peter Ackermann and Herbert Schneider (Eds.), Hildesheim etc., Olms 1999, 243–257, here p. 248. 18 More light has been shed on this musician and by Cathleen Köckritz, Friedrich Wieck. Studien zur Biographie und zur Klavierpädagogik, Hildesheim, Olms 2006. 19 Peter Rummenhöller (Romantik in der Musik, München & Kassel, dtv & Bärenreiter 1989, 116) refers to Chopin’s negative comment as if it would concern Schumann’s article. This should be a misunderstanding, and as Chopin mentiones the authors “brother-in-law” (Fechner) as a link to Fétis and Revue Musicale it must be Wieck. 20 Wittkowski, “Clara Wiecks”, 248; Chopin to Tytus Woyciechowski, Dec. 12 1832 (##IS THIS DATE OK??##). Cf. Fryderyk Chopin. Briefe, Krystyna Kobylanska (Ed.), Berlin (DDR), Henschel 1983, 128. 21 Clara: “Was würdest Du nun wohl sagen, wenn ich Dich endlich überzeugte, daß doch Bellini ein talentvoller Componist ist?” – Robert: “Bellini mag Talent haben als Italiäner, aber ehe Du mich dazu bringst, daß solche Musik mich beglückt, eher siehst Du mich durch eine Nähnadel krauchen.” Cf. Clara und Robert Schumann. Briefwechsel. Kritische Gesamtausgabe, Eva Weißweiler (Ed.), Frankfurt/Basel, Stroemfeld 1984, 418 und 442. 22 Wieck to Eduard Fechner Nov. 11 1831; Wittkowski, “Clara Wiecks” 248 and Clara Wieck’s unpublished Diary (Robert-Schumann-Haus Zwickau), Nov. 15 1831.

6 Even in his first public concert in Paris (February 26 [or 25?] 1832) Chopin once again performed the Don Juan Variations. Five years after its creation this fairly simple piece was not yet replaced by more refined works. Did the cultural importance of the topic encourage Chopin so frequently perform the Variations opus 2 in public even after having composed more serious masterpieces? As a performer of variations on Mozart’s composition Chopin even emphasized lack of authorial authority and his role as a virtuoso musician. Wieck and his daughter Clara (only nine, but at that time crucial years, younger than Chopin) were in Paris and she had studied Chopin’s Variations before leaving home.23 Wieck wrote to his wife on February 16 1832: “Morgen gehe ich zu Chopin – er wohnt in der Nähe, schon haben wir 1 Hut für mich gekauft, eben werden Visitenkarten gestochen, morgen früh kommen Schneider und Schumacher, um einen Franzosen aus mir zu machen – der leider aber nicht französische sprechen kann. […] Gestern waren wir bei Kalkbrenner, Herz pp. Chopins Concert war den 15. Januar angekündigt und ist wieder verschoben.”24 Clara and her father must have been in the audience as Chopin performed; unfortunately Wieck’s reaction to is not documented. Chopin had previously (1829 and 1830) visited Dresden, the city of Wieck’s later home and not far away of Leipzig, but it is unlikely that Wieck had had opportunity to hear him before Paris - they actually met in Leipzig only in September 1835. * Wieck begins his early essay on Chopin’s opus 2 with the imposing passage: “Herr Chopin, Pianist aus Warschau, welcher gegenwärtig in Paris als Stern erster Größe glänzt, hat unter obigem bescheidenen Titel ein großes Bravourstück mit Orchester geliefert, das der Beachtung aller Virtuosen, denen die großartige Field’sche Schule nicht unbekannt ist und die in der praktischen Darstellung etwas Höheres suchen als die Darlegung blos mechanischer Fertigkeit, um so mehr werth sein dürfte als diese Composition zugleich dem Gebildeten verständlich und faßlich und in harmonischer Hinsicht bedeutend und höchst interessant genannt werden kann.”25 The emphasis is on Chopin as virtuoso, “star” and performer (not composer) whose qualities match with Wieck’s ideals. In his other writings Wieck frequently repeated his “drei Kleinigkeiten” – “feiner Geschmack, tiefes Gefühl, zartes Gehör” – an aesthetic portrait of Chopin. The phrase “etwas Höheres suchen” refers as a theological metaphor beyond the aesthetics, “beyond all we can see” (“oculos non vidit…”) and hear. At least in Wieck’s program this indeed belongs to the responsibilities of an ideal virtuoso. As late as 1832, Wieck locates Chopin culturally as a performer, coming from Warsaw but having already established himself in Paris. The French influence is just one of many: “Ich weiß nicht, ob Chopin unmittelbar Schüler von Field ist; aber aus der ganzen Anlage des Stückes, dessen schwärmerischer Charakter auf jeder Seite unsere Empfindung in Anspruch nimmt, aus der Art der Passagen, die oft überraschend und ganz neu und dabei mit einer gewissen Solidität dargestellt schon an sich selbst einen Kunstgenuß gewähren, aus seiner Applicatur, die er gewagten und ganz ungewöhnlichen Wendungen sehr zweckmäßig beigefügt – und aus seiner vortrefflich meisterhaften Bezeichnung oder Andeutung des Vortrags, erhellt deutlich, daß er mit

23 Wittkowski, “Clara Wiecks “, 248. 24 Cf. Beatrix Borchard, Clara Schumann. Ihr Leben, Frankfurt am Main & Berlin, Ullstein 1991, 46–50. 25 “Là ci darem la mano varié pour le pianoforte, avec accompagnement d’Orchestre, par Frédéric Chopin”, In Friedrich Wiecks Clavier und Gesang und andere musikpädagogische Schriften, 227.

7 Field’s seelenvoller musikalischer Sprache ganz vertraut sein und dessen Spielart sich praktisch angeeignet hat.”26 In Wieck’s imagination and not an unknown Polish master is the fundament of Chopin’s sentimentality (“schwärmerischer Character”, “seelenvolle musikalishe Sprache”), “Sturm und Drang” effects (“unsere Empfindung in Anspruch nimmt”) and the novelty (“oft ganz neu”, “gewagt und ganz ungewöhnlich”) – all this by no means self-evident in the 1830s. Consequently, Wieck describes Chopin as a composer who is competent first and foremost as a pianist (“Applicatur” etc.). Much later, when Chopin was already “a composer and virtuoso” and not a “star” pianist anymore, Wieck still praises Chopin’s pedal markings as original but plausible: “Chopin, dieser geniale, geschmackvolle, feinfühlende Componist und Virtuos möge Ihnen auch hier zum Muster diesenen […] untersuchen und beaobachten Sie seine sorgfältige und delicate Bezeichnung in seinen Compositionen, so werden Sie sich über richtigen und schönen Gebrauch des Pedals vollständig unterrichten können.”27 This position is anything but obvious; more than often editors have changed Chopin’s unconventional markings. This sort of professional details are lacking in Schumann’s and Heine’s more famous portraits of Chopin. Wieck in his 1832 essay continues to elaborate his appraisal of Chopin as a synthesis of (1) Field’s virtues, (2) the “Wiener Spielart” and (3) the “Französische Schule”: “Hieraus möge aber das Publikum nicht folgern, als sei hier von einer Nachahmung Field’s die Rede. Nein! Das Werk steht in jeder Hinsicht ganz selbständig da und verräth eben so sehr die genaueste Bekanntschaft mit der leichten, graziösen, aber rein mechanischen Wiener Spielart, mit welcher viele Virtuosen (in Ermanglung Field’-scher Schüler, welche Rußland meist für sich behalten zu haben scheint) bis in die neuere Zeit so viele Namen erzeugten, als die Kenntniß der neuesten, pikanten, vielleicht frivolen, aber eleganten und sehr geschmackvollen französischen Schule, die H. Herz und andere mit so viel Glück ausgebildet hat und in der unter andern Pixis sein geistreiches und originelles Concert, Op. 100 und Kalbrenner und Moscheles mehrere allgemein bekannte und beliebte Concert-Stücke geschrieben haben, ohne weiter bei denselben den Einfluß der Field’schen und Wiener Spielart verkennen zu wollen.”28 Wieck describes Chopin’ style in general in relation to Field who is otherwise often mentioned only as the main influence of Chopin’s Nocturnes – a genre that was only about to become important for Chopin in the early 1830s.29 Wieck does not mention this genre in his essay on opus 2.30

26 Ibid. 27 “Ueber’s Pedal”/”Grobe Briefe. II”, In Signale für die Musikalische Welt, 6, 37, Sept. 1848/Clavier und Gesang, 76. 28 Clavier und Gesang, 228. 29 Cf. Tomaszewski, Frédéric Chopin und seine Zeit, 86, 105 ad passim. 30 This happens in later “letters”, e.g. (in general terms) in Sept. 1848 in “Grobe Briefe. IV”, and in Oct. 1848 in “Grobe Briefe. VI” (he mentions Nocturne “in E flat major”, most likely opus 9 no. 2), and in Jan. 1850 in “Über Clavier-Studium. Eine Vorlesung, gehalten vor einem Kreis clavierspielender Damen” (NZfM, 32, 9) and in Sept. 1850 in “Gesang und Clavierunfug. Eine scherzhafte dramatische Szene, von Das” (NZfM, 33, 23). Nocturnes are also mentioned in Clavier und Gesang in the new chapters “Aphorismen über Clavierspiel” and “Frau Grund und vier Lectionen”. However, Wieck must have taken notice of the Trois Nocturnes à Marie Camille Pleyel (1832) and Trois Nocturnes à Ferdinand Hiller (1833) earlier – at the latest 1835 as Chopin performed in Leipzig. The genre as such could hardly affect his comment on Chopin’s opus 2 in 1832, even though both Pleyel

8 Not much has been written on Field’s students in Russia and this early era of Russian piano school, respectfully mentioned by Wieck in his first analysis of Chopin’s style. Wieck implicates that Chopin was one of the few who were closely related to Field and who imported his art of piano playing and composing for the piano in an exiting, sentimental manner to West- from Imperial Russia. Wieck has a high opinion of the early Russian piano school. For Wieck Chopin was a rare bird, the magical nightingale that had flown against the wind towards the West. For Wieck Chopin introduced in Paris a modification of the Otherness of the East.31

3. The transcendence of opp. 10 and 25 In his essays32 Wieck mentions Chopin’s Sonata opus 35 as well as the and the Ballade opus 47 a few times but writes more on Chopin’s Nocturnes and Mazurkas (a remarkable emphasis as the Mazurkas still remain the “jardin secret”). Only once does he list Chopin’s “Etüden” en passant alongside Johann Babtist Cramer and Ignaz Moscheles whose Études Characteristiques (1836) may well, in canon as well as repertory,33 belong to the most neglected grand piano compositions of the early nineteenth century – and at the same time to the monuments of the 1830s. But it seems that Wieck neither realises the didactic and pianistic value nor the aesthetic peculiarity of Chopin’s Études in particular as he writes: “Welche Wege hat ein Kind durchzumachen, ehe es bei den Etuden von Cramer, Moscheles, Chopin, ehe es bei dem temperirten Clavier von Bach ankommt, ehe es nur die Sonate pathetique von Beethoven studiren soll und kann.”34

and Hiller belonged to his favoured musicians and friends of the family. Particularly in Leipzig Wieck must have been informed about new music very soon after it was published if not earlier. 31 Wieck’s vision is plausible in the era of the enlightened Tsars Alexander I and Nikolai I of the Empire that had become a Super Power after the defeat of Sweden. As to the late nineteenth century and the impressionism (partly already exoticism of Field’s student Glinka) it is not any more original to point out that many music history books (even Dahlhaus’s Nineteenth Century music, Berkeley/London, University of California Press 1989) underestimate the role of Russia in the nineteenth-century cultural history, transporting the image of provinciality. Pushkin wrote in St. Petersburg Eugene Onegin and Boris Godunov around 1825 as well as Pique Dame 1834. These pieces demonstrate (even as exceptional peaks) the standards of the Russian culture of the 1830s. Field was 17 years older than Pushkin but died in Moskow the same year as Pushkin in St. Petersburg: 1837. Glinka was born 1804. Besides the original production of poetry and other arts, Russia and above all its immensely rich court was an important goal for travelling artists based in Paris and elsewhere. A vague link between Chopin and Field would be Maria Szymanowska-Wolowsky (*1789, †1831), J. K. Elsner’s student who studied with Field in Moskow and lived permanently in St. Petersburg since 1828. There seems to be no record of Chopin getting in touch with her. [???] A Polish pianist directly associated with Chopin and studying with Field is however nots a condition of the influence Wieck assumes. 32 Most of them are collected with some, often politically marked modifications in Clavier and Gesang. In our recent edition we try to inform the reader on most significant changes between the original essays and the ‘Fassung letzter Hand’ in Clavier und Gesang of 1853. 33 Cf. Joseph Kerman’s distinction in A Few Canonic Variations, In Write All These Down. Essays on Music. Berkeley, Los Angeles & London, University of California Press 1994, 33–50 34 Clavier und Gesang, 60; orig. “Über Clavier-Studium” (1850).

9 Opus 10, dedicated to “mon ami” , was published 1833 soon after Wieck had written on opus 2. Opus 25 “à Maria d’Agoult” followed 1837. The Trois Nouvelles Études, composed 1839 and 1840 for François-Joseph Fétis’s and Ignaz Moscheles’s Méthode des Méthodes, and the Trois Eccossaises for Emilia Elsner (1829– 1830), edited by Julian Fontana as opus 72 no. 3–5, only increase the significance of the Études as genre typical of the 1830s – and Chopin as well Opus 10 already goes beyond the boundaries of a sophisticated exercise35 and builds a solid bridge between the studios of ambitious students and the stages of the best performers. Of anything that can be called “pedagogical” the Études enjoy the highest esteem. But it was only Liszt who used the philosophically loaded pseudo-Kantian term “transcendence” for his own compositions. He tried to stress the special quality of his Études d’exécution transcendante and to explain the “Beyondness” so typical (also) of Chopin’s music and also indicated by Schumann in the Symphonische Etüden. The term “transcendante” came up only in the final 1851-edition of Liszt but the process of composing “transcendental” or rather “transcendent” studies for piano started in the late 1820s and 1830s with the Étude pour le pianoforte en 48 exercices dans tous les tons majeurs et mineurs (1826) and 24 grandes études pour le piano (1837). The shadow of Bach’s Wohltemperiertes Clavier – certainly not only Niccolò Paganini’s (24 Capricci)!36 – lays over these projects and gives them (quite like Chopin’s Études) the aura of something more important than just another collection of technical demonstrations or exercises that had been common in the first decades of ambitious piano playing in bourgeois homes. The idea of a marvellous “transcendence” rather than metamorphosis of a child who is playing the piano to a young artist is vital in Wieck’s description on Chopin’s Études. In later literature it has become more common to consider Chopin’s Études as art works rather than pedagogical vehicles. The capability of being simultaneously both is a guarantee for the crucial position of these Études in the classic piano repertory. These “mutig”, “mächtig” and “ergreifend” pieces37 are not only about transcending mediocre pianists to great “romantic” artists (this process could almost be called transfiguration) or technical skills to integral compositional quality – even if this also belonged to their possible effects. They are (in Schumann’s words) “wahrhafte Dichtergebilde”.38 *

35 To the general idea of Chopin confusing our sense of the boundaries of gender cf. Jeffrey Kallberg, Chopin at the Boundaries. Sex, History and Musical Genre, London & Cambridge (Mass.), Harvard UP 1996. 36 Paganini may have been a significant inspiration for Chopin in Warsaw in 1829, but also an essentially different artistic nature. More emphasis to similarities was, however, given by Krystyna Wilkowska-Chominska in “Chopin et Paganini”, In Annales Chopin 6 (1961), 104–111. In the Chopin literature of the last decades there is a tendency to emphasize French and Italian rather than German influence (above all Bach) – after some publications by German authors given (too) much emphasis to the German connection, including genealogy. 37 Schumann, “12 Etüden für Pianoforte, von Friedrich Chopin. Werk 25 – Zwei Hefte” (1837), ders., Gesammelte Schriften über Musik und Musiker, Martin Kreisig (Ed.), I, Leipzig, Breitkopf & Härtel 1914 (5. ed.), 254–255. 38 Ibid.

10 This “going beyond” of the Études – or in Immanuel Kant’s and Friedrich Schelling’s words “flying beyond” (“überfliegend”) – is of comparable nature as the mathematic transcendence of non-algebraic, triconometrical functions and uncounted endless quantities beyond the “empirical” logic of algebra; or it should be compared with the idea of an entity that goes beyond the giving limits of the positive configurations and “real” forms of existence; or beyond the limits of consciousness, for example being the “Ding an sich”, transcendental and invisible, supernatural and supersensual. Transcendental idealism (a contemporary concept also related to the idea of transcendence in the early nineteenth century) holds as a doctrine that our experience of things is about how they appear to us, not about those things as they are in and of themselves. Transcendental Realists on the other hand hold that demonstrating the reality of material objects outside of us is impossible.39 Transcendental Realism is the view that space and time are something given in themselves and so spatial objects in time are things-in-themselves.40 In Arthur Schopenhauer’s critical words: “Transcendental is the philosophy that makes us aware of the fact that the first and essential laws of this world that are presented to us are rooted in our brain and are therefore known a priori. It is called transcendental because it goes beyond the whole given phantasmagoria to the origin thereof. Therefore, as I have said, only the Critique of Pure Reason and generally the critical (that is to say, Kantian) philosophy are transcendental.”41 Schopenhauer opposed Kant’s transcendental critical philosophy to Leibniz’s dogmatic philosophy. And at another occasion: “Now because the critical philosophy, in order to reach this result, had to go beyond the eternal truths, on which all the previous dogmatism was based, so as to make these truths themselves the subject of investigation, it became transcendental philosophy. From this it follows also that the objective world as we know it does not belong to the true being of things-in-themselves, but is its mere phenomenon, conditioned by those very forms that lie a priori in the human intellect (i.e., the brain); hence the world cannot contain anything but phenomena.”42 In the arts, therefore, if an object is referred to as representing “transcendence” (like Liszt’s Études) it points out the transcendence of aesthetic experience and/or the effect of such. The aesthetic object is a vehicle of transcendental insight and knowledge of invisible relations. “Transcendent” could mean simply the fact of being more than the genre that the individual feature is supposed to belong to. This word can mean the plain “universality” of a given feature. But beside this, “transcendental” means something fundamentally essential, the transcendental being the “Ur-Apriori”. In the philosophical tradition (particularly in Kant’s writings) the words “transcendent” and “transcendental” indeed have different meanings, but it is unlikely that this difference would have influenced Liszt in his thinking. Indeed, the word “transcendental” has not only the philosophical dimension (transcending, or reaching beyond, the limits of human knowledge; applied to

39 Critique of Pure Reason, Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood (Ed. and transl), Cambridge, CUP 1998, B274. 40 Ibid. A369. 41 Parerga and Paralipomena, ###. I, “Fragments for the History of Philosophy” § 13. 42 The World as Will and Representation, ###. I, Appendix: “Criticism of the Kantian Philosophy”.

11 affirmations and speculations concerning what lies beyond the reach of the human intellect), but a more common meaning: very excellent; superior or supreme in excellence; surpassing others; as, transcendent worth; transcendent valour. In Milton’s words: “Clothed with transcendent brightness.” Milton’s definition is a fascinating extension as Kant only talks about scientific positions that “fly beyond” empiricism and cannot be “proven”. They are rooted in our mind even though we cannot evaluate their validity. Transcendent is not empirically immanent, not seen nor heard but “felt” (a priori, as given). When an aesthetic object reaches this it is magic and certainly “great”. For some it may be common to associate Emerson, Thoreau and Sarah Margaret Fuller and the social utopia of the of Concord Massachutes with the 1830s and 1840s, but in the continental philosophy and theory of arts the reference to Kant, Friedrich Wilhelm Schelling and the romantic Fichte and Coleridge as prominent contemporaries of Chopin is to be taken for granted. Following the line of Kant and assuming the option of direct and indirect influence of his writings in the 1820s and 1830s (remembering that Warsaw’s Main School of Music was still a division of the University in Chopin’s days and not a separate body), we assume transcendental a priori conditions of all understanding that “flies beyond” the categories of plain thought. In the ancient Scholastic tradition the transcendentals and transcendents are the most universal concepts beyond all categories that are used as instruments of human reason and that define the unity, truth, goodness and even the pure beauty, common without limitations to everything that exists. In more popular terms, the transcendentals represent the essence of being. * Applied to Chopin’s Études (and respecting the original function of “the Studies”), this reading explains the opp. 10 and 25 no. 1 (C and A flat major) and their broken chords as well as the chromatic lines of no. 2 (a and f minor). Walter Wiora postulates a “Klanguniversum”43 that for some reason could not be realised.44 Tomaszewsky lists “twelve different Klangwelten of unrepeatable expression and simultaneously twelve pianistically extraordinarily tricky tasks” alone in opus 10.45 Who dares to say how many would be enough to represent the “Klanguniversum”? Also the cyclical logic of keys could be interpreted as something more sophisticated and modern than the simple order in Wohltemperiertes Klavier. In opus 10 we have the fairly plausible order: C major – a minor / E major – c harp minor (= d flat minor), G flat major – e flat minor, C major / F major, f minor – A flat major / E flat major – c minor. In opus 25 however (not in opus 10) Tomaszewsky finds “a sequence of not closely related keys beside each other”: A flat major – f minor, F major – a minor / e minor,

43 “Über den geistigen Zusammenhang der Praeludien und Etüden Chopins”, In Musik des Ostens 1, Fritz Feldmann (Ed.), Kassel etc., Bärenreiter, 1962 76 ad passim. 44 Cf. Tomaszewsky, Frédéric Chopin und seine Zeit, 131. 45 Ibid., 133.

12 g sharp minor / c sharp minor, D flat major / G flat major, b minor; a minor; c minor. In both cases there could be some sort of secret key order, more or less obvious and certainly worthwhile further reflection. In both cycles there is only one change of the main key where the new “tonic” does not have a single common tone with the previous one: e flat minor – C major in opus 10 and b minor – a minor in opus 25. Some keys exist in both collections, some common keys like D major and d minor or B flat major are absent. C major is important in opus 10, a minor is heard twice in opus 25. The most common key is a minor (3). Quite a few other keys appear twice: C major, c minor, F major, f minor, A flat major, c sharp minor and G flat major. Also the traditional eighteenth century key characteristics (Mattheson et alia) should certainly be taken into account as well as the keys in the Trois Nouvelles Études: f minor, D flat major and A flat major. Therefore, it is unnecessary to stress the difference between the two collections. It is possible that Chopin followed an architectural master plan that still has to be reconstructed. Or if there is indeed no such plan this very fact could be a symbol of the “transcendence” in mathematical, “triconometrical” sense. The “Klanguniversum” of “Klangwelten” does not mainly consist of different keys; otherwise repetition of a key would not be possible. As to the different characters one should remember Tomaszewsky’s insightful characterisation of each Etude.46 Opus 25 he does not describe as a closed cycle but a “collection of individual pieces”. But even there is not a repetition of a single character – and not even of a key. Beside the key and the general character of expression, all parameters of music should be taken into account, including the rhythmic phrasing, density and facture as well as the tactile pianism and instrumental idiosyncrasy, as facets of the musical elementariness that Chopin might have had in mind as he constructed the two cycles of Études. * The opposite of transcendent is “immanent”. In the terminology of the Transcendental Idealism of the 1830s and 1840s “immanent” is all that is within the frames of the conscience. The “Immanence” of the God in particular is the key concept of Pantheism. In the Études the greatness and significance of music is clearly not immanent and apparent as it “flies” far beyond the noticeable and empirical. If Schumann, for instance, hears the aelosharp in opus 25 no. 1 and many piano teachers would consider the piece as a suitable training for the fifth finger, it is obvious that we are still looking for the proper manner of grasping the essential and elementary presence of the composition as a part of a microcosmos of musicality. The trend towards musical elementariness that only partly deals with pianistical tasks and reacts to immanence explains why narrativity, the immanence in sequence, and programmatic features do not essentially belong to Chopin’s Études. Programmatic illusions have been found by many (“Revolution”, “Butterfly”, Maria Wodzinska etc.), whereas a narrative and melancholic changes of topos with reflective configuration do not belong to the Études; and – in comparison even to

46 Ibid., 133–136.

13 earlier compositions of Chopin – the Études do not impress by new kind of passages (cf. Wieck on Field and opus 2) but rather by the timeless quality of almost old- fashioned, basic figuration. Even though the Études are fairly short it would be unnatural to call them “small forms”.47 The transcendence supports the feeling of greatness and sublime out of size. The elemental power of the essential aspects of musicality does not invite to any sort of measuring. Comparing the collections with the 24 Préludes opus 28 (Mallorca, 1838) their classical clarity becomes clear. The Préludes are a catalogue of romantic expression with links to poetic lyricism, as Liszt in Revue et Gazette Musicale de Paris of 1841 already noted.48 The “voice” of the composer is loosely connected with the performance practice of the day: the introductions before the actual piece. As Schumann used the word “Ruinen”49 he referred to a truly romantic genre as well as to the bypassing atmosphere. The personal expression was strongly underlined by him as he wrote: “Auch Krankhaftes, Fieberhaftes, Abstoßendes enthält das Heft; da suche jeder, was ihm frommt, und beibe nur der Philister weg.”50 Even though he asked every listener to look at what he wants, there was indeed something immanent to pay attention to. A high degree of immanence is typical of the Préludes, and this inspired even to programmatic titles.51 Indeed the timeless elementarity of the Études is not at all common to the Préludes. On the other hand, in the Impromptus, Ballades, Scherzi and Fantasia the same immanence is composed as a sequence that often creates a melancholy atmosphere or becomes even a fragment of a narration. “Romantic” in Tomaszewski’s words are the Ballades, Nocturnes and Impromptus.52 The “classical” quality of the Études is not due to any formal strategies like in the Sonatas or even in cyclic Variations but the fundamental elementarity that is used in the connection of transcendentality.

4. Virtuosity “as such” and the gender of the Études It is feasible to ask the gender question, related to the common cliché of the nineteenth century (prominently exposed by Liszt in his articles on Clara and Robert Schumann53): the performing art as such is told to be feminine and composition fundamentally masculine activity. Despite the historic idiosyncrasy of such a model, it helps to elaborate different aspects of pianism and to understand how Chopin’s highly sophisticated virtuosity can be transfigured into a composition like opus 10 and 25. The Préludes are linked with Chopin’s role as a pianist by referring to the tradition of introduction and improvisation whereas the Études are fundamentally pianistic in a “sporty” meaning. However, as Chopin was not at all famous for exposing technical artistry in his performance similar to some his contemporaries (and if ever, certainly

47 To the idea of “small forms” cf. Kallberg, Chopin at the Boundaries. 48 Cf. Tomaszewksi, Frédéric Chopin und seine Zeit, 138. 49 Ibid., 139. 50 Ibid. 51 Ibid. 52 Ibid., 185. 53 Gesammelte Schriften Band ##.

14 not by 1830 anymore) Chopin remains in our imagination as the composer of the Études rather than their ideal performer. The first collection links the Études with Liszt and his role as a great performer. The dedication of opus 25 to Marie d’Agoult heads indirectly in the same direction even though she is not only to be associated with Liszt but is also, fair enough, an embodiment of the female. In her influential study on Gender and the Musical Canon Marcia J. Citron explored Chopin as a typical case of nineteenth century “feminine” aesthetics.54 Fascination with open processes, intuition, fantasy, experimentation, lyricism, salon connotations, long melodic lines, horizontal syntax etc. – Citron’s characteristics of “the Feminine” in musical texture – are lucid in the Ballades, Impromptus, Nocturnes and Préludes, but not in the Études. In Chopin’s Études the degree of independence of the technical virtuosity with a fairly clear gender connotation is of particular interest. Chopin is wrote Études in the tradition of Cramer and but simultaneously found a way to go (or “fly”) beyond the technical (pianistical). In his Études it is still possible to isolate the basic problems of each study (and each of them is indeed quite surprisingly fundamental and homogenous in comparison with Liszt, , and others who tend to mix technical features) but unlike Czerny and Cramer the reason for this is not only the character of the compositions as exercise. There is no doubt about the suitability of the Chopin Études as concert pieces. It would be trivial to refer to the Études as sets of “Spielfiguren” as Eero Tarasti does in “Chopin and the Transcendental Subject”, particularly as he defines “Spielfiguren” (with reference to Heinrich Besseler but unfortunately misunderstanding him) as “didactic figures”.55 Tarasti also writes, following closely a passage in the present author’s dissertation Virtuosität und Werkcharakter: “Many of Chopin’s Études also have this quality, in which merely passing through a Spielfigur constitutes the main idea of the piece.”56 However, even though the technical tasks are impressing they do not appear particularly severe for a listener who is not familiar with pianistic difficulties. This if why Chopin’s Études rather than Liszt and Rachmaninoff made an artist like Leopold Godowsky increase the difficulties in his 53 Studies after Chopin (1893–1914) in such a manner that no one can possibly oversee them. At the same time Godowsky produced Études that are impossible to perform with elegant ease and with greatest delicacy in phrasing – referring to Wieck’s “drei Kleinigkeiten”. * However, it is perhaps not fair to compare Chopin with later masters of Étude- composition and unnecessary to follow Tomaszewski in calling Chopin’s Études the

54 Cambridge, CUP 1993, 163 ad passim. 55 In Chopin and His Work in the Context of Culture, 1, 195–214, here 198. Cf. also Mäkelä, Über die Kategorie der „Spielfiguren“ in den Solokonzerten Schönbergs und Bergs (M.A.-Thesis University of Helsinki 1985) and Mäkelä, “Instrumental Figures as Iconic Signs”, In The Semiotic Web '86, Thomas Sebeok and Jean Umiker-Sebeok (Eds.), Berlin, Mouton de Gruyter 1987, 571–575, and Mäkelä, “Essai sur l’instrumentivité: les notations musicales comme signes iconiques”, In Degrés 53 (printemps 1988), g1– 25; Mäkelä, “Die geheime Logik der Figuren. Von der Idiomatik zur spielerischen Redundanz”, In Die Musiktheorie 1993, 3, 217–240. 56 Virtuosität und Werkcharakter, 42–45.

15 “unübertroffener Gipfel” of the genre.57 Some pianists no doubt admire Rachmaninoff’s Études-Tableaux opp. 33 and 39 (1914 resp. 1920). They would argue that also these early twentieth-century collections, similar to Chopin’s opp. 10 and 25, not only “fly beyond” the boundaries of the genre as exercise; they also make it impossible to tell whether they are primarily studies of execution or composition, virtuosity or elements of musical structure. Rachmaninoff’s unique title actually refers to a conscious mixture of character painting and study. After all, there is no doubt that Chopin’s Études are “études d’execution” (either transcendent or transcendental) – but that each of them simultaneously represents (as a compositional study) an elementary musical matter. These compositions cannot be meant as August Kahlert in 1835 writes on “Die Genrebilder in der modernen Musik”: “The catalogues swarm with Sketches, Eclogues, Impromptus, Bagatelles, Rhapsodies, Etudes, etc. One wants as much variety as is possible, however nothing but the small. Because however the newer art works are too weak to represent themselves, a content is therefore pressed upon them, and thus arise instrumental pieces with literary titles.”58 As Arnfried Edler has pointed out “Gattungsstrukturen” represent the result of historical processes and social developments that build art works and groups of works, but in regard to these conventions of his youth Chopin was soon (perhaps as a result of his Parisian exile as Jim Samson argues59) able to produce works of the highest individuality known to the contemporaries.60 Schumann emphasized the intimate lyricism and uncanny (“merkwürdig”), deeply romantic appearance of the Préludes. As he compared them with the Études he indirectly and therefore most convincingly confirmed the anti-lyrical “greatness” and transcending super-humanity of the latter: “Gesteh’ ich, daß ich mir sie [the Préludes] anders dachte und wie seine Etüden im größten Stil geführt. Beinahe das Gegenteil; es sind Skizzen, Etüdenanfänge, oder, will man, Ruinen, einzelne Adlerfittiche, alles bunt und durcheinander. Aber mit seiner perlenschrift steht in jedem der Stücke ‘Friedrich Chopin schrieb’s’; man erkennt ihn in den Pausen am heftigsten. Er ist und bleibt der kühnste und stolzeste Dichtergeist der Zeit.”61 For Schumann Chopin’s Études were – now in comparison with other composers’ Études – “phantastic” and in this respect similar to the Préludes.62 Chopin’s Études, “great” despite their shortness, create a new kind of greatness by (1) analytical reflection on Bach’s small forms and short compositions (Wohltemperiertes Klavier) already as a piano student but simultaneously as a young composer talent and (2) the late eighteenth-century theory of the sublime with a huge potential for misunderstanding (as Adorno later has shown63) but also the key to the greatness in art regardless of its size and length. Much of the romantic genre painting (e.g. Caspar

57 Tomaszewski, Frédéric Chopin und seine Zeit,180. 58 NZfM, 12.6.1935; quoted in translation according to Kallberg, Chopin at the Boundaries, 144. 59 “Extended forms. The ballads, scherzos and fantasies”, In The Cambridge Companion to Chopin, Ed. Jim Samson, Cambridge, CUP 1992, 101. 60 Edler, “Aspekte der Gattungsgeschichte”, 256. 61 NZfM, 19.11.1839. 62 “12 Etüden”, 255. 63 Cf. Wolfgang Welsch, Ästhetisches Denken, Stuttgart, Reclam 1990, and already Unsere postmoderne Moderne, Weinheim, Acta Humaniora 1988.

16 David Friedrich) has needed almost 200 years to become widely appreciated in its true (sublime and beautiful) value and, in Friedrich’s case in particular, to get the status of forerunners of the modernity (e.g. Arnold Böcklin’s ). Friedrich was misinterpreted by Goethe like Chopin was by Kahlert who (as Jeffrey Kallberg has convincingly pointed out64) in his 1835 article listed Chopin beside Paganini as a “pathological” case in his use of the concept of “musical genre picture”. Unlike the Nocturnes that as a genre might be considered “feminine” (Kallberg), the Études woke “masculine” and sporty associations. * Quite a few useful and rarely quoted hints that make this suggestion historically plausible can be found in Wieck’s parodies, particularly as Wieck portraits a male youngster who is studying piano: Herr Stock Zach in the “Abendunterhaltung und Speisung bei Herrn Zach”. This chapter in Clavier und Gesang has manifold relevance for the present topic: “Das (resigniert und Unglück ahnend). Ich habe viel Schönes von dem Fleiße Ihres Sohnes gehört! – Was studieren Sie jetzt, Herr Stock? Stock (in stolzem Selbstbewußtsein und etwas flegelhaft). Ich spiele jeden Tag sechs Stunden – zwei Stunden Tonleitern mit beiden Händen zusammen und vier Stunden Etuden. Den ersten Heft von Clementi und vier Hefte von Cramer habe ich schon durch. Jetzt bin ich be idem Gradus ad Parnassum [Clementi, 1817]. – Die rechte Fingersetzung dazu habe ich auch schon studiert. Das. Ach! – Sie nehmen es sehr ernstlich – das ist schön von Ihnen und – von Herrn Büffel. – Aber – welche Tonstücke studieren Sie daneben? Von Hummel, Mendelssohn, Chopin oder Schumann? Stock (mit Verachtung). Chopin und Schumann kann Herr Büffel gar nicht leiden. Neulich spielte Herr Büffel die “Kinderscenen von Schumann” durch, von denen man so viel Geschrei macht. Meine Mama, die auch musikalisch ist und früher gesungen hat, als der Papa noch Flöte blies, sagte: “Was ist das füt winziges Zeug?” Sollen das Walzer für Kinder sein? – Und die kindischen Ueberschriften? – So was kann er wohl seiner Frau vormachen, aber nicht uns!” Das. Ja, diese Kinderscenen für ausgewachsene Männerhände [cf. Träumerei, bar 22!] sind curiose Bißchen! Ihre Mam hat Recht, sie sind zu kurz, es sollten mehrere sein. – Aber Walzer sin des nicht! Stock. Nun! Walzer darf ich auch gar nicht spielen. Herr Büffel geht ganz sold: erst muß ich den Gradus ad Parnassum noch ganz durchackern, dann erst will er ein Concert von Beethoven mit mir vornehmen und die gehörige Applikatur darüber schreiben. Das werde ich dann öffentlich spielen und dann – hat er und die Tante gesagt – werde ich Alles todt machen. Büffel. […] Die 96 Etuden von Cramer hat er alle nach der Reihe herunter gearbeitet, ohne nur zu mucksen. Er wurde ordentlich elend dabei. Da hat ihm aber Papa ein Reitpferd gekauft, worauf er alle Tage eine Stunde lang herumreitet und sich in der freien Luft erholt.”65 In Wieck’s description Maestro Büffel’s piano studio becomes a “gym” – or a Waffen-SS training camp: “und dann werde ich Alles todt machen”; the Études in question take over the function of Men’s Health. It is not without significance that the vehicle of “Alles todt machen” is a Beethoven Concerto, this composer being a common symbol for male gender orientation in the nineteenth-century criticism as Citron has demonstrated.66 The quantity of serious practising as mentioned was

64 Kallberg Chopin at the Boundaries, 40. 65 Clavier und Gesang, 41–43; orig. “Grobe Briefe. IV”, In Signale für die musikalische Welt, 6, 39, Sept. 1848. The underlining is not original. 66 Citron, Gender, 163 ad passim.

17 common to the nineteenth century as it is today: Already Johann Peter Milchmeyer in his Die wahre Art das Pianoforte zu spielen, known as the “source” of Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart as a source of ’s Die Forelle, recommends eight hours as a good average67 – but not only for piano sports! On another occasion Wieck seems to think in categories of gender – in his parody of an improvised prelude before the performance of Chopin’s Mazurka in B major (opus 7 no. 1 or 17 no. 1): “Das (zu seiner Tochter [Emma alias Marie Wieck]. Wenn der [the male pianist Forte] in dem Style fortspielt, wie er Das wahre Glück [Charles Voss, Das wahre Glück ist nur bei mir, opus 48a] accompagnirt hat, so wirst Du hören, wie man diese Mazurka nicht spielen soll, die gar nicht rührend ist, sondern keck nur den polnischen Tanzryhthmus, wie er von den dortigen Bauern improvisirt wird, wiedergibt, jedoch nach Chopin’scher Weise idealisirt. Forte macht mehrere gefährliche Läufer hinaus und hinunter und viele Octavpassagen fortissimo mit aufgehobenem Pedal – und verbindet damit sogleich – ohne abzusetzen – die Mazurka, die presto angefangen wird. […] Das. Frau Gold, Sie möchten wohl zum Stimmer schicken, daß er die fehlende Saite auf dem B wieder aufziehe. […] Forte (triumphirend). Lassen wir das! – Das passirt mir öfters und hat nichts zu sagen. Das Clavier ist ein Kampfplatz, wo Opfer fallen müssen.”68 Here again, a male performer is associated with a soldier. Even though Wieck’s “dramatic scenes” are “scherzhaft” as the original second title “Gesangs- und Clavierunfug” tells, they are always serious in criticism of contemporary habits and historically plausible in musical and pedagogic detail. * As Chopin’s Études “fly beyond” gender boarders, they do not become androgynous but superhuman. They do not represent a “transcendental subject”.69 The transcendence does not lead to a twilight of mixed sexual identities and flexible authorial subjectivity but more in the contemporary historical meaning (e.g. metaphysically) beyond the personality as such. Not only the corporeality of each sex – indexical, iconical (or for Kant “immanent”) or symbolic, or simply as a common connotation in criticism and reception – (or, as far as Chopin before 1830 is concerned, a sexuality that is not yet fully developed rather than “androgynous” or bisexual) but the corporeality in itself is (paradoxically indeed) exceeded in these Études – powerfully so as it happens against the expectation. Chopin’s Études more than any other compositions are a monument, a provocative demonstration of the transcendence of virtuosity into “Werkcharakter” whereas in Rachmaninoff’s case the term “tableau” already makes the ideal spectator expect something more than an artistic virtuosity. In terms of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason all this is “transcendental” as there can hardly be an empirical evidence of more or less “Werkcharakter” but only the mental

67 Dresden 1797, 71 ad passim. Cf. Edler, “Aspekte der Gattungsgeschichte”, 261. 68 “Gesang- und Clavierunfug. Soirée bei dem Banquier Gold” (orig. in NZfM, 33, 23, Sept. 1850). 69 Cf. on the other hand Tarasti, “Chopin and the Transcendental Subject”, 203: “behind the various types of Chopinian bodies mentioned above, stands a transcendental subject which makes it possible for the same subject to express him or herself in what may sometimes be contradictory ways, both with the estrangements of romantic irony, and as a positive agent expressing his or her own message”.

18 reflection upon possibilities, mental constitution and our readiness to conceive objects, experiences and knowledge as transempirical. The theological and metaphysical dimension of reasoning is missing in Kant’s concept of “transcendentality”. The truly romantic individuals, of course, believed in “transcendent” entities beyond the reason and human consciousness. Therefore it is reasonable to suppose that also the “beyondness” in Chopin’s Études is a “transcendent” in scholastic categories: something we cannot hear and see but that nevertheless exists. Chopin’s Études indeed transcend the problematic aspects of the musical life of the 1830s to essential musicality. Not the market place, or a circus, but the divine dimension of all romantic arts, its res as the thing itself (“Ding”), ens as the existence (“das Seiende”), verum as the trueness (“das Wahre”), bonum as das the goodness (“das Gute”) and aliquid as the something (“das Etwas”), and of course pulchrum as the fundamentally beautiful, become evident – if not for every ear and eye then at least for those who are able to receive “aesthetic” qualities beyond the aesthetic interface. This might be the reason why Albert Maeclenburg called the Études the “Katechismus der Klaviersprache” and Zdzislaw Jachimecki the “Evangelium of piano music”.70

5. Conclusion Chopin’s Études belong to Classicism rather than “Sturm und Drang” and “Romanticism”. Like Goethe’s and Schiller’s “Studies” they deal with a great variety of essentials,71 and according to the idea of “classical”, they set models. Similar to Kant’s concept of transcendentality, it is the human mind only that can create such models and achieve knowledge of “transcendentals”, including the fundamental categories of truth and correctness (including a context of concentrated improvement and the invitation to judge between good and worse performance that makes Chopin’s Études the fundament of piano exams and competitions) that so essentially belong to the Études. A performer of the Études should not forget Schiller’s Äesthetische Erziehung (15th Letter): “der Mensch spielt nur, wo er in voller Bedeutung des Wortes Mensch ist, und er ist nur da ganz Mensch, wo er spielt”.72 And Goethe (Das Göttliche, 1780; The Godlike):

“Nur allein der Mensch / vermag das Unmögliche: Er unterscheidet, / Wählet und richtet; Er kann dem Augenblick / Dauer verleihen.

70 Maeclenburg, “Die Klavieretüden Chopins. Eine Studie”, In Die Musik 1909, 10, 214–226; Jachimecki, Fryderyk Chopin. Rys zycia i twórczoésci, Krakow, Nakl. i Czcionkami Drukami Narodowej 1927. 71 E.g. Goethe’s Einfache Nachahmung der Natur, Manier und Stil, 1789 und Zur Farbenlehre, 1810; Schiller’s Über Anmut und Würde, 1793, Über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen in einer Reihe von Briefen, 1795, Über naïve und sentimentale Dichtung, 1795/1796 und Über das Pathetische, 1801, etc. 72 Über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen in einer Reihe von Briefen, Karl Goedeke (Ed.), Stuttgart, Cotta 1883. Cf. On the Aesthetic Education of Man in a Series of Letters, Elisabeth M. Wilkinsond and Leonard A Willoughby (Ed. and transl.), Oxford, OUP 1967.

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Er allein darf / Den Guten lohnen, Den Bösen strafen, / Heilen und retten, Alles Irrende, Schweifende / Nützlich verbinden.”73

73 Johann Wolfgang Goethe. Sämtliche Werke, Briefe, Tagebücher und Gespräche, Karl Eibl (Ed.), Vol 1. Klassiker-Verlag–Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1987, 332–333; Johann Wolfgang Goethe. Selected Poems, Christopher Middleton (Ed. and transl. [with others]), , Suhrkamp–Insel 1983, 78–82.

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