Chopin's Introvert Paradox: Ambiguous Topics, Liminal

Chopin’s Introvert Paradox: Ambiguous Topics, Liminal Liveliness, and Contested Subjectivity

A thesis submitted to

The Graduate School of the University of Cincinnati

in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

MASTER OF MUSIC

in Music History

in the Division of Composition, Musicology, and Theory of the College-Conservatory of Music

Summer 2019

Sean Gower

BA, University of Cincinnati, 2016

359 Ludlow Ave, Apt. 6, Cincinnati, OH 45220 [email protected]

Committee Chair: Jonathan Kregor, Ph.D.

Abstract

This thesis examines ambiguous musical topics in Chopin’s music and explores their role in the communal artistic culture of 1830s and 1840s Paris. The first chapter analyzes Chopin’s

Polonaise-Fantasy to show how topics are evocative but elusive, always (or never quite) emergent. The second chapter seeks a context for ambiguous topics within the intellectual milieu of Chopin’s salon circle. Balzac’s novel Le Chef d’oeuvre inconnu (written from 1831–46) displays a specific connection between the literary topos of a painting studio and the sonic, aural ambiguity sounded by its artists. The final chapter reflects on ambiguous topics in performance by examining Richter’s 1977 recording of Chopin’s Third Scherzo, chosen because of the way that Richter utilizes ambiguous topics in the piece to create a particular impression of aesthetic liveliness. Chopin’s topics suggest an emergent, but contested, virtual subjectivity that has enlivened groups of performers and critics ranging from the 1840s salon to twentieth-century communities around radio and recorded media.

iii

Table of Contents

Abstract ii

Table of Contents iv

Musical Examples v

Introduction 1

Chapter 1. First Soirée: Chopin’s Symbolic Mode 15

Chapter 2. Second Soirée: Balzac’s Atelier and the Clair-Obscur 27

Chapter 3. Third Soirée: Richter’s Emergent Voice 60

References 71

Musical Examples

Ex. 1 Chopin, Prelude in A minor, Op. 28, no. 2, mm. 123 2

Ex. 2 Chopin, Polonaise-Fantasy, Op. 61, mm. 1–12, annotated 16

Ex. 3 Signature rhythm of Chopin’s Polonaise genre. 19

a) Chopin, Op. 26, no. 2, mm. 9–11

b) Chopin, Op. 44, mm. 9–10

Ex. 4 Second-level default rhythm of Chopin’s Polonaise genre 19

a) Chopin, Op. 40, no. 1, mm. 1–3

b) Chopin, Op. 40, no. 2, mm. 3–5

Ex. 5 Inverted Polonaise rhythm in Chopin’s Op. 26, no. 1, mm. 1–3 20

Ex. 6 Chopin, Polonaise-Fantasy, Op. 61, mm. 13–31, annotated 21

Ex. 7 Chopin, Scherzo no. 3, Op. 39, mm. 1–16 62

Ex. 8 Chopin, Scherzo no. 3, Op. 39, mm. 59–77 63

Ex. 9 Chopin, Scherzo no. 3, Op. 39, mm. 155–171 63

Ex. 10 Chopin, Scherzo no. 3, Op. 39, mm. 493–509 65

Introduction

Throughout the tenebrous two minutes and thirty seconds of Chopin’s A minor Prelude,

Op. 28, no. 2, the listener encounters musical gestures that provoke images and simultaneously puzzle the imagination. The right-hand melody in m. 3 is ponderous and declamatory; its dotted rhythms add a tone of deliberation (see Ex. 1, below). Similar figures appear in Chopin’s ballades, and the listener might hear an oratory, poetic speaker entering the soundscape. The left- hand ostinato provides its own orientations: a Dies irae-like chant line occurs in the low baritone voice. The pedal E tolls in the bass like a death knell. An A# and G clash on the offbeat. These dyads evoke a plucked accompaniment for the bard, which verges on the grotesque. When the ostinato cuts out (m. 17), the recitative-like melody represents a parlando, improvisatory flourish that marks Chopin’s poetry.1 The final measures signal closure to the monologue with a change in texture and a cadence in homophonic, chorale style. When the Prelude is read or heard from a bird’s eye view, such an image as this might emerge.

And yet, when one listens closely to all of the particulars, the image seems to run amok.

The layered musical gestures of the piece seem to emerge laboriously, oppose one another, and recede without explanation. The critical listener might question what these gestures ever were, and if they were ever there. For example, if one follows the Dies irae-like motif, differences and departures from the chant appear as often as similarities. The line in the middle voice begins with pitches B-A#-B-G, and thus augments the chant’s characteristic minor third (normally F-E-

F-D in the Dorian mode) to a major third. In addition, beginning from m. 1, the E pedal point

1 In the parlance of topic theory, Janice Dickensheets refers to this topic as the Declamatory Style. It often begins after a fermata, and features an unmeasured solo voice that resembles the declamation of recitative. A closely related topic is the Bardic Style. See “The Topical Vocabulary of the Nineteenth Century,” Journal of Musicological Research 31, no. 2–3 (2012): 113–114 and 126–128.

suggests a key area of E minor. Thus, the chant’s usual scale degrees (3-2-3-1 in the Dorian mode) are distorted to 5-#4-5-3: the inflection of E minor retains the dark tone of the Dies irae, but the differences in scale degree make Chopin’s figure unique. As the ostinato continues, its affinity with the chant becomes further stretched. In mm. 4–7, the harmony shifts to a major mode and cadences in G major, straying further away from the chant’s mode. At this point, the scale degrees of the would-be chant line become further and further distorted: in m. 5, the chant’s final interval (a third leap) is replaced by a descending second (A-G#-A-G♮). In mm. 6–7, with

Ex. 1. Chopin, Prelude in A minor, Op. 28, no. 2, mm. 1–23

the change of mode, the motif inverts to ascending intervals (D-E-D-E♭); in mm. 8–14, the ostinato resets, but quickly fixates on the scale degree patterns of 5-#4-5-♮4 over the bass (m.

101-2), then on the yet more distant #4-##3-#4-#3 (mm. 11–12), and finally on 6-#5-6-♮5.

Analysts have continually highlighted this passage for its harmonic ambiguity, but its figural identity has just as much discontinuity.2 If the listener attempts to hear the Dies Irae chant, it is identifiable only as an increasingly distant echo of a former gestural identity, one which was ambiguous from the start.

Furthermore, the initial image of the “poetic speaker” is complicated by the interaction between the right-hand melody and the ostinato. If this is the declamatory style of a bard—the mythic Greek speaker whose heroism and eloquence fascinated romantic musicians—the bard appears to fade into silence and nonexistence. For the first overarching phrase (mm. 3–7), the ostinato provides a coherent two-measure introduction to the singer, and the melodic line’s punctuated ending with rhythmic motion (m. 6) corresponds to the left-hand’s cadence. But the right hand and the ostinato become increasingly out of synch: the melody’s second phrase (m. 8) begins off-kilter in the middle of the ostinato pattern. In m. 11, the right hand’s melodic and rhythmic closure coincides with an avoided cadence, increased harmonic tension, and further distortion of the chant in the left hand. Most strangely, the third melodic phrase (m. 14) begins on the second beat over an augmented sixth chord, where the ostinato becomes even more harmonically unstable. The melodic agent continues to repeat the same melody verbatim and seems totally unaware of the proceedings in the accompaniment; the melody does not change its

2For example, see Leonard B. Meyer, Emotion and Meaning in Music (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956), 93–97; and Lawrence Kramer, “Romantic Meaning in Chopin's Prelude in A Minor.” 19th-Century Music 9, no. 2 (Autumn 1985): 145–155.

expression to match developments in the ostinato, and is unable to line up vertically in an intelligible manner. What type of subjective bard could be so unmoved?

The Prelude features—perhaps?—a brief glimmer of clarity in its musical gestures. In m.

15, the ostinato’s augmented sixth chord resolves to an A minor 6/4 chord, offering a promise of the tonic that has been either missing or prone to deceive thus far. For the first and only time in the piece, the exact pitches of the Dies irae chant sound undistorted in the Aeolian mode. But the figure disappears after two measures. When it returns after one and a half measure rest, the two hands are unable to play again simultaneously. The texture, marked diminuendo and slentando, becomes increasingly fragmented. The ever-present ostinato halts and then disappears, and the last measures offer the most puzzling gesture thus far: the texture changes abruptly to that of a chorale in five voices, producing a perfect authentic cadence in E major, thus aligning with the E minor area that began the piece. But this conclusion cedes to another, in A minor. Kofi Agawu describes the ambivalence of the ending, where “local closure is maximized, but global is treated as an imposition from without, a sort of dissonant appendage to the prelude.”3 The ending might be heard in two ways: as an affirmation of clarity after obscurity, or as a further obscuring gesture. The suddenness of the ending isolates the final cadence, making it a figure in relief, a nonsensical topic, a reference to a style foreign to the piece’s previous twenty measures. The final cadence appears ironic, anachronistic, false, a final hint at the lack of topical clarity throughout the piece. A feeling of harmonic closure is as elusive as an understanding of the piece’s musical figures.

3 Kofi V. Agawu, “Concepts of Closure and Chopin’s Opus 28,” Music Theory Spectrum 9 (Spring 1987): 14–15.

Chopin’s opaque style of writing in this piece raises more questions than answers.4

Chopin’s musical figures offer the sound equivalent of masks that form and dissolve in time, rarely offering a clear glimpse of identity. They are like colors that congeal and run together.

While one listener might experience some sort of clear image or narrative, another might just as well hear nothing of the sort. An analytical, score-driven approach might find a piece laden with the Dies irae motif; but an aural, phenomenological encounter yields only emergence and dissolution. Moreover, these tensions expand all the more when the Preludes are performed and heard altogether. For example, the first Prelude can be heard “purely” in the key of C major, a sign of Chopin’s allegiance to Bach, coupled with the ubiquitous romantic “sigh” motif: two relatively stable signifiers. But the second Prelude seems to dash the expectations created by the first: veiled or fleeting significations abound. To take a firm position on signified meaning in is to minimize the music’s expressive tension: tensions between signification and ambiguity, repetition and improvisation, order and disorder, the visual and the aural. How can a critical listening develop or defend the identity of signifying figures in Chopin’s music?

This thesis examines ambiguous musical topics in Chopin’s music and explores their role in a shared artistic culture in 1830s Paris. Musical topics can be defined as short figures or styles that carry stable cultural signification, identifiable by certain musical parameters (such as characteristic rhythms, meters, harmonies, etc.).5 However, I argue that Chopin’s topics often provoke the listener’s interpretation but escape concrete description in many of the usual terms

4 It might be said that the A minor Prelude and the Polonaise-Fantasy, which is the focus of Chapter 1, are exceptional cases of the phenomenon described. A systematic analysis of the degree to which such ambiguity pervades Chopin’s music extends beyond the scope of this thesis; however, the thesis does argue that these cases are emblematic enough within Chopin’s oeuvre to significantly affect perceptions of the composer. 5 The field of topics subsumes many different types, such as dance music (like the minuet, possibly evoking the aristocracy), styles (military and hunt music), and pictorialism (drum rolls). Raymond Monelle develops these categories, following off of Leonard Ratner. See The Musical Topic: Hunt, Military and Pastoral (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2006), 3–4.

of topic theory. The listener is drawn by suggestive figures and yet cannot take away a precise meaning or value. As the A minor Prelude shows, topics flash for moments before escaping: this heightens the sense of the live, ephemeral moment of signification and of listening, thus amplifying process over product. Thus, such an approach to topics results in an aesthetic effect of “liveliness.” This style functioned in intimate communal ways within Chopin’s intellectual milieu, and not only as a musical practice. Perhaps counterintuitively, ambiguous topics integrated Chopin into a network of shared aesthetic values and aural procedures rather than isolating him as a composer of unapproachable music.

Discourses on Chopin: Ambiguity and Liveliness, 1836 and the Present

The topical ambiguity of Chopin’s music can be approached from another angle: from ways of speaking about him that emphasized ambiguity. A number of discourses attached to

Chopin stress a liminal, emergent quality, extending from his personality and playing style to his music. Acquaintances and critics connect Chopin’s music to contested qualities of body and presence, locating musical notes within a tense field of ambiguity and liveliness. Consider the following scene: The virtuoso composer is seated at the piano; the salon audience stills suddenly, and the hands rise slowly for the first sounding strike. In this moment, is the living, “lively” quality of the virtuoso not self-evident? Would the presence of the virtuoso in this moment not be so obvious as to be taken for granted by listeners?

In the case of Frédéric Chopin, the response to these questions is counterintuitive.

Beginning in the late 1830s, listeners to Chopin both accentuate the liveliness of the composer’s music and suggest that it is a contested property. Writers frame the phenomenon as if Chopin’s playing caused a spirit to enter an inanimate or unlikely medium. In his novel Ursule Mirouët,

Honoré de Balzac describes Chopin: “This great genius is not so much a musician as a soul, which becomes incarnate, and which could express itself in any form of music, even in simple chords.”6 George Sand added that Chopin “made a single instrument speak a language of infinity.”7 Both writers emphasize the disproportion between a medium and its vibrancy. Solange

Clésinger-Sand wrote that:

In the willowy and nervous fingers of Chopin, in his small, pale, and fragile hand, the piano could become an archangel’s voice, an orchestra, an army, an ocean in fury, a universal creation, an end of the world.8

Jean Jacques Eigeldinger describes this discourse as “le topos de l’âme,” and shows how this way of characterizing Chopin developed among the composer’s salon acquaintances around

1836.9 However, I aim to approach these accounts from a different angle: not only as a fixed, figurative representation, but as a description of the temporal and the transitive way that

Chopin’s identity moves through his musical composition. The composer’s acquaintances call attention to a transitive property of his music, where varying degrees of liveliness emanate from a frail body, a reserved persona, or a simply-played wooden instrument. Tension results from a paradoxical disproportion: on the one hand, Chopin’s fragile, diminutive physique, and on the other, a powerful evocation at the intersection of life and death. Chopin’s aesthetic force is unexpected liveliness. He comes through unexpected media with haunting ease. Why has this image been so persistent? How might it bear on an analytical grasp of Chopin’s music?

In addition to nineteenth-century descriptions that both characterize and problematize

Chopin’s liveliness in terms of an aesthetic experience, a more contemporary line of debate asks

6 Honoré de Balzac, Ursule Mirouët and Other Stories, trans. Clara Bell (Philadelphia: Avil Publishing Company, 1901), 135. 7 George Sand, Story of My Life: The Autobiography of George Sand: A Group Translation, edited by and with a critical introduction by Thelma Jurgrau (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991), 1092. 8 Solange Clésinger, “Frédérick [sic] Chopin,” in Les Amis de George Sand. Bicentenaire de Frédéric Chopin 1810– 2010, edited by Jean Jacques Eigeldinger (2010), 55–56. My translation. 9 See Chopin: âme des salons parisiens, 1830–1848 (Paris: Librairie Arthème Fayard, 2013), 283–288.

what that liveliness signifies, what narrative it discloses, and what position different pieces take within the generic spheres of program music and absolute music. While pieces such as the

Ballades and the Preludes contain music suggestive of a narrative plot,10 Chopin was famously silent on the potential meanings of his work. He gave no programmatic explanations, and many of his piece’s descriptive titles were created against his will by publishers.11 Much criticism has sought to answer these questions without wondering why the questions themselves resist resolution.

The ambivalence is complicated, too, by a circle of acquaintances and a public who were keen to unveil hidden meanings in Chopin’s music. The metaphor of “Chopin as poet” was used by composers such as Liszt and also appeared extensively in Parisian journals, aligning the composer with words and the programmatic sphere.12 Chopin was exalted as a “poet” yet didn’t provide programmatic readings like Liszt, Berlioz, or Schumann. He was beloved within his circle, but his silence towards literature and meaning made him somewhat of an anomaly within it. Do compositional and performative qualities of Chopin’s style also provoke this tension in signification? How can music simultaneously evoke and yet resist signified meaning? To explore such questions, I connect aesthetic descriptions of liveliness to the area of topic theory. My approach suggests that liminality exists at the level of musical topics, and such an aesthetic relates to the peculiar discourse network surrounding Chopin. Building on thinkers such as

Umberto Eco and Friedrich Kittler, I situate musical strategies towards topics within a

10 Jonathan D. Bellman, Chopin’s Polish Ballade: Op. 38 as Narrative of National Martyrdom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). 11 William Smialek and Maja Trochimczyk, Frédéric Chopin: A Research and Information Guide, second ed. (New York and London: Routledge, 2015), 138. 12 In addition, one of the composer’s first French biographies was published under the title, Chopin ou le poète. See Jim Samson, “Chopin Reception: Theory, History, and Analysis,” in Chopin Studies 2, ed. John Rink and Jim Samson (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 3.

nineteenth-century artistic culture that emphasized aurality and prized the communal, conversational possibilities of aural ambiguity.

Thus, the connection I make—between ambiguous topics and liveliness—expands on a variety of hermeneutic studies of Chopin’s music that emphasize ambiguous meaning and communicative gaps. In a recent case study, Jeffrey Kallberg underlines the coexistent magnetism and trouble of finding meaning in Chopin’s music. Kallberg wonders whether the trope of Jewish music, or “the noise libel,” might eerily or vaguely lie in the dissonant space of

Chopin’s A minor Prelude. While appealing, certainty on this account is elusive: “Chopin’s world,” Kallberg admits, “is a place of allusion, oblique reference, and shaded meaning.”13

Placed in the language of topic theory, it might be said that the A minor Prelude features Jewish music as a proto-topic, a possible or unmaterialized topic, but only that: Chopin creates characteristic musical figures that elude a signified in Ratner’s traditional meaning of topics.

Other writers to consider ambiguity in Chopin’s music include Roger Moseley and

Lawrence Kramer. Moseley has recently compared the signification of Chopin’s music to the gaps of information that occur in the transduction of analog and digital signals.14 Similar to the idea of ambiguity and liveliness, Lawrence Kramer has claimed that the “transitivity” of identity in the Preludes creates such energy that the music “often gives a special impression of white heat.”15 Ambiguity generates life on the precipice. This thesis situates the problem of ambiguous meaning within topic theory, offering insight into the specific strategies Chopin uses to create equivocation.

13 Jeffrey Kallberg, “Chopin and Jews,” in Chopin and his World, edited by Jonathan D. Bellman and Halina Goldberg (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017), 140. 14 Roger Moseley, “Chopin’s Aliases,” 19th-Century Music 42, no. 1 (2018): 3–29. 15 Lawrence Kramer, Music and Poetry: The Nineteenth Century and After (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1984), 97.

In the area of topic theory, there is little research on how ambiguous topics—particularly in nineteenth-century music as opposed to eighteenth-century music—affect the reading of musical works. Most commonly, writers have noted isolated cases of ambiguous topics without theorizing their importance or fully exploring their implications. For example, Kofi Agawu observes that “when a composer prefers ambiguously defined topics to precisely defined ones— such as dances—the romantic tendency becomes quite pronounced.”16 Do the tools of topic theory still work in these cases? Can topic theory apply to ambiguous cases, and what are its limits? Theorists have shown varying degrees of zeal for codifying topics in the nineteenth century. On the one hand, Janice Dickensheets writes that “the identification and codification of nineteenth-century topoi is vital.”17 On the other hand, Julian Horton cautions that at the turn of

“the nineteenth century, classical topics had themselves become historicized, and were thus received less as markers of social meaning, and more as conventions defining an emerging tradition.” Thus, the credentials of topic theory are “as problematic as they are advantageous.”18

Nicholas McKay adds that, generally, “there remains much detailed semiotic work to be done in evaluating the varying prototypicality ratings of topical references.”19

One of the few sources to reflect specifically on ambiguous topics is Holger M. Stuwe’s

“Musical Topics and Ambiguity in Nineteenth-Century Music,”20 which expands on the idea that nineteenth-century composers take a “decidedly reflective approach” to topics.21 While studies of

16 V. Kofi Agawu, Playing with Signs: A Semiotic Interpretation of Classic Music (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1991), 44. 17 Janice Dickensheets, “The Topical Vocabulary of the Nineteenth Century,” Journal of Musicological Research 31, no. 2–3 (2012): 99. 18 Julian Horton, “Listening to Topics in the Nineteenth Century,” in The Oxford Handbook of Topic Theory, ed. Danuta Mirka (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 642–643. 19 Nicholas McKay, “On Topics Today,” Zeitschrift de Gesselschaft für Musiktheorie 4, no. 1–2 (2007): 177. 20 Holger M. Stuwe, “Musical Topics and Ambiguity in Nineteenth-Century Music,” The Musicology Review 6 (2008): 57–84. 21 Stuwe, “Musical Topics and Ambiguity,” 28.

nonstandard topics have usually focused on instances of irony or parody,22 Stuwe aims to show that “the strategies employed by composers to generate ambiguity are more complex and involve more contextual factors than traditional topic theory would suggest.”23 Stuwe notes a range of techniques that can cause ambiguity: the dissolution of a topic; the arguable presence/absence of a topic; the integration of a topic into a context that confuses its meaning. (In my reading, the A minor Prelude includes all three types.) Most specifically, he focuses on how the chorale topic has a type of metaphysical dimension within nineteenth-century topics: the signifier is present, but representation often breaks down as the signified (chorale) is fleeting, distant, or impossible to reach. The chorale refers aesthetically to a “lost” type of music; it stages the “impossibility of its existence.”24 Overall, Stuwe’s analysis opens a door for the analysis of topical ambiguity; however, there are many questions left to answer. While his analyses of ambiguity in chorales by

Brahms and Mahler ultimately find interpretive resolutions, this thesis highlights examples of ambiguous topics that are more difficult to resolve. Rather than seeking a new interpretation, this thesis asks, what hermeneutic issues are raised by ambiguous topics? What does it mean when there are equally valid, but opposing, interpretations that arise?

Robust studies in the area of tonal ambiguity also illustrate the importance of an analytical and interpretive approach to ambiguity in Chopin’s music.25 However, often written

22 Ironic topics are instances where the distortion or exaggeration of one musical element within a topic can challenge its associated values. For example, a rhythmic distortion of the march might parody those marching, or suggest a degree of irony towards the institution represented by marching. See, for example, Esti Sheinberg, Irony, Satire, Parody, and the Grotesque in the Music of Shostakovich: A Theory of Musical Incongruities (New York: Routledge, 2016). 23 Stuwe, “Musical Topics and Ambiguity,” 29. 24 Stuwe, “Musical Topics and Ambiguity,” 11. 25 For example, see Alison Hood, “Ambiguity of Tonal Meaning in Chopin’s Prelude Op. 28, no. 22,” Music Theory Online 18, no. 3 (September 2012): 1–9; Kofi Agawu, “Ambiguity in Tonal Music: A Preliminary Study,” in Theory, Analysis, and Meaning in Music, edited by Anthony Pople (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 86–107; Kenneth Delong, “Roads Taken and Retaken: Foreground Ambiguity in Chopin's Prelude in A-flat Op. 28, No. 17,” Canadian University Music Review 11, n. 1 (1991): 34–49.

from a Schenkerian perspective, these sources point to musical evidence beyond the capacities of most listeners. Musical topics are a more immediate place to turn for investigating the phenomenology of Chopin’s ambiguity.26 Cognitively, musical topics are like memorable turns of phrase in literary writing, and one can see why they would dominate the collective memory of

Chopin’s music and affect popular discourse around the composer.

In order to evoke the atmosphere of “liveliness” with which Chopin’s music has been associated, the temporal progression of this thesis, too, proceeds with a touch of fantasy: each of the three proceeding chapters are titled as a soirée in an imagined artistic life. Each features the hearing and reading of a different artistic work. The chapter titles are fictive, of course, but they serve a heuristic purpose: the interest is to draw attention from three separate case studies to how the aesthetics of ambiguity and liveliness can resonate through the hearing of successive works.

The first soirée provides an analysis of ambiguous topics in Chopin’s Polonaise-Fantasy. The analysis engages with three writers who have analyzed topics in the piece (Klein 2018; Walker

2016; Tarasti 1994), highlighting both the perceptive aspects of their analyses and the disagreements that arise between them. Yet, the chapter argues that none of these sources fully explore the implications of ambiguity within Chopin’s topics. The semiotician Umberto Eco’s notion of the “symbolic mode” in literature provides a new angle for reading ambiguous topics without losing the sense (through analysis) of ambiguity. Counterintuitively, topical ambiguity in

Chopin’s music can be heard as provoking a particular experience of liveliness—a connection that was also in vogue in mid-nineteenth-century French literature.

26 In an interesting study that bridges musicology with experimental psychology, Elizabeth Helmuth Margulis shows that a majority of her test subjects notice and respond to changes in musical topic. Many of the subjects had no special training in classical music. See “Expectation, Musical Topics, and the Problem of Affective Differentiation,” in The Oxford Handbook of Topic Theory, edited by Danuta Mirka (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014): 629–641.

In the second soirée, attendees hear a literary reading of Balzac’s novel Le chef d’oeuvre inconnu (1831–1837), a French take on the Künstlerroman that presents a conception of ambiguous art in 1830s Paris. By turning to a literary context, this chapter takes up Raymond

Monelle’s call to investigate the musical topic “in global terms, showing how it reflects culture and society, not to focus on music alone.”27 Similar to debates about Chopin’s music, the artistic ideals presented by this story have drawn much dispute since the nineteenth century—from artists such as Paul Cézanne to today’s literary critics—with little resolution. I offer a new reading of the story that focuses on the value of ambiguity: Eco’s symbolic mode and the aesthetic effect of liveliness together play a central role. The chapter also examines the relationship between Balzac and Chopin. Finally, the story shows how ambiguous signification styles in France were inspired by German idealism, but France diverges from Germany by emphasizing both the contested subjectivity of the author and inter-artistic conversation. Overall,

Le chef d’oeuvre inconnu provides a context for Chopin’s aesthetics and for characteristic discourses surrounding the composer.

The third soirée combines a topical analysis of Chopin’s Third Scherzo with an analysis of Richter’s celebrated 1977 recording of the piece. I have chosen this recording to show how

Richter exploits the semantic openness of Chopin’s topics. The recording appears brought alive as a consequence. The chapter draws on performance studies as well as on studies of virtual agency and subjective emergence in music. The three chapters or soirées, together, will suggest that we understand Chopin’s music as a necessarily performed and interpreted style, a play where ambiguity is as prevalent as signification. Chopin’s topics suggest an emergent, but contested virtual subjectivity that has enlivened groups of performers and critics ranging from

27 Monelle, The Musical Topic, 10.

the 1840s salon to twentieth-century communities around radio and recorded media. Viewing

Chopin through the lens of ambiguity and liveliness sheds light on a powerful quality of the composer’s compositional style and persona, which I refer to as Chopin’s “introvert paradox”:

Chopin as both a reclusive introvert and the universal orator of a group of artistic creators.

Chapter 1. First Soirée: Chopin’s Symbolic Mode

How clearly can we discern and understand topics in Chopin’s music? Some topic analysts have suggested that nineteenth-century music simply requires an amended vocabulary that works, for the most part, with the theory.28 But topic analysis is not a “neutral” analytic device. Instead, it mediates certain cultural attitudes and assumptions developed in large part for eighteenth-century music. Leonard Ratner, a founder of topic theory, writes:

[Topics] represented the eighteenth-century trend toward codification, towards the ordering of materials and processes, putting them into clear and accessible arrangements for ready use and immediate understanding.29

But what about music—that of the nineteenth-century, for example—that sought to break away from established codes? How does the analyst account for a musical language that aims to resist codification?30 Kofi Agawu comments that “when a composer prefers ambiguously defined topics to precisely defined ones—such as dances—the romantic tendency becomes quite pronounced.”31 My interest is to press this claim further. What happens when we question the efficacy of the tool itself with regard to Chopin’s ambiguity?

28 For example, Janice Dickensheets writes that “the identification and codification of nineteenth-century topoi is vital.” See “The Topical Vocabulary of the Nineteenth Century,” Journal of Musicological Research 31, no. 2–3 (2012): 99. On the other hand, Nicholas McKay states that “there remains much detailed semiotic work to be done in evaluating the varying prototypicality ratings of topical references.” See “On Topics Today,” Zeitschrift de Gesselschaft für Musiktheorie 4, no. 1–2 (2007): 177. Julian Horton adds that nineteenth-century topics are “as problematic as they are advantageous.” See “Listening to Topics in the Nineteenth Century,” in The Oxford Handbook of Topic Theory, ed. Danuta Mirka (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 642. 29 Leonard G. Ratner, “Topical Content in Mozart’s Keyboard Sonatas,” Early Music 19, no. 4 (1991): 615. 30 In semiotic terms, the difference between coded norms and neologism is described as ratio facilis vs. ratio difficilis. On these concepts as related to musical topic theory, see Raymond Monelle, The Sense of Music: Semiotic Essays, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 2000), 15–16. 31 V. Kofi Agawu, Playing with Signs: A Semiotic Interpretation of Classic Music (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1991), 44.

Ex. 2. Chopin, Polonaise-Fantasy, Op. 61, mm. 1–12, annotated

In the opening forty-three measures of the Polonaise-Fantasy, Julie Walker and Michael

Klein identify four musical topics.32 (See Ex. 2 for an annotated score.) Walker describes the chordal opening as an instance of the majestic (maestoso) style, signaled by a dotted rhythm and a forte harmonic sequence that create a “solemn and majestic atmosphere.”33 Walker links the majestic style to the Polonaise genre. Klein suggests that these chords be heard as a Polonaise reference following from the title as a paratext. The second topic occurs immediately, labeled as improvised style by Walker and similarly as a fantasy topic by Klein. The two topics alternate, leading at m. 9 to what Walker calls a combination of majestic style and learned style (the latter signified by imitation and counterpoint between the hands). Often considered an introduction, this section leads to the third topic in m. 22, which Walker and Klein agree is the main

“polonaise theme.” Klein hints at some ambiguity: he refers to the first topic as only a shadow of polonaise and he suggests the first two topics create a confusing blend.34 But neither writer really disputes the identity of the topics as they occur throughout the piece.

However, the most interesting and immediate feature of these topics is their ambiguity.

Right from the start, the figures defy stable properties, resist categorization, and arrest the listener’s imagination. The initial gesture (m. 11-2)—a forte proclamation with upward mediant motion in the bass—might initiate movement and growth. But the subsequent fermatas (m. 12-3), enclosing a piano ascent, prompt only dying sound.35 In addition, Eero Tarasti points out that the

32 See Julie Walker, “Le dernier style de Chopin: Contexte, analyse et stratégies narratives des oeuvres tardives” (PhD diss., University of Strasbourg, 2016); and Michael L. Klein, “A Narrative of Dreams: Chopin’s Polonaise- Fantaisie,” Musica Theorica 11 (2017): 1–18.” 33 Walker, “Le dernier style,” 394. For example, the link is also found at the beginning of the Op. 53, A flat major Polonaise. 34 “The work is somehow not a polonaise, and not a fantasy, but both at the same time. The sudden affective swerve in the first measure is like the hyphen in the title. It is not that this is a polonaise in the form of a fantasy, or a fantasy with some polonaise rhythms. Instead, the two genres stand in opposition to each other while flowing from each other at the same time.” See Klein, “A Narrative of Dreams,” 4. 35 In his chapter “Schumann’s Distance,” Berthold Hoeckner speaks extensively about “dying sound” as a characteristic of Schumann’s romantic aesthetic. The poetic concept is found in German writers such as Jean Paul,

first chord inverts the dotted polonaise rhythm.36 To elaborate, we can examine the thematic rhythms that characterize Chopin’s Polonaise genre: the signature rhythm is a stately repetition of an eighth note and two sixteenth notes, as in Op. 26, no. 2 and Op. 44 (see Ex. 3). A second- level default rhythm is a dotted eighth note and sixteenth note, as in Op. 40, no. 1, and in Op. 40, no. 2 (see Ex. 4). The exception is Op. 26, no. 1, which begins with the inverted rhythm in diminution (a thirty-second note and double-dotted eighth note) associated with an Allegro appassionato marking (see Ex. 5). In the Polonaise-Fantasy, this rhythmic inversion invites a number of interpretations: might it signify an appassionata gesture, like Op. 26, no. 1, albeit undercut? Or perhaps more antiquated, is it a Lombard rhythm (a Scottish snap) drawn from the

Baroque keyboard? Or—as an inversion—is it simply the antithesis of Polonaise? Rhetorically, the fantasy topic helps us ponder the question.

Topics continue to confound. Measure 3 hints slightly at the learned style, with contrapuntal interplay between hands, but the tritone clash of m. 4 flips the signifier on its head.

In m. 5, an arrival on the dominant of A flat major and correction of the polonaise rhythm suggest a call to order, but the opposite occurs: in m. 7, the majestic chords are subdued by fantasy, played pianissimo, the second chord now possessed by an improvisatory roll in m. 7.

Even when fantasy is an obvious reference (in the unmeasured arpeggio), subsequent elements undermine a straightforward hearing: the repetition of the initial gesture, harmonic motion to the

Novalis, and Schlegel, and it is developed by Schumann in his criticism. For example, Hoeckner describes how Schumann hears a fading horn call in the second movement of Schubert’s C Major Symphony, D. 944: “The gestural and harmonic in-between state suspends time and space and expands—as the horn call is dying away—into a small eternity” (68). Similarly, Chopin’s topics seem to generate a “small eternity” in the dialectic between aliveness and dying sound. See Programming the Absolute: Nineteenth-Century German Music and the Hermeneutics of the Moment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), 51–114. 36 Eero Tarasti, A Theory of Musical Semiotics (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1994), 141.

Ex. 3. Signature rhythm of Chopin’s Polonaise genre. a) Op. 26, no. 2, mm. 9–11; b) Op. 44, mm. 9–10

Ex. 4. Second-level default rhythm of Chopin’s Polonaise genre. a) Op. 40, no. 1, mm. 1–3; b) Op. 40, no. 2, mm. 3–5

Ex. 5. Inverted Polonaise rhythm in Chopin’s Op. 26, no. 1, mm. 1–3

dominant, and hints at the learned style suggest a drama where the marginal fantasy topic is being pushed away. To use Eco’s words, fantasy becomes contested, an “object [that] should not have been introduced in the discourse or at least [should] not have acquired such importance.”37

At this point, can any topic be defined by clear parameters or clear signifying value?

The next twenty measures continue in the same fashion, with topics present in potentia

(see Ex. 6). In mm. 10–21, dotted rhythms give a slight signal of a polonaise topic in imitative voicing. A melody emerges but lacks tonal stability, played over an ambiguous B dominant pedal that leads to a cadence in G sharp minor. In mm. 22 and 23, we finally hear a clear signaling of polonaise. However, the story remains the same. The expected forte dynamic recedes to mezzo voce. Walker labels the following section as the singing style. To Tarasti, the polonaise becomes

“cantabile in nature, not dancelike.”38 Klein finds that “there is something wrong with this polonaise theme.”39 Indeed, the polonaise has receded to only the most background of topics, with a polonaise rhythm that echoes twice in an inner voice (mm. 25 and 29). With a lyrical octave leap in m. 30, and the emergence of three- and then two-voice textures in mm. 34–37, a nocturne topic is suggested. octave leap in m. 30, and the emergence of three- and then two- voice textures in mm. 34–37, a nocturne topic is suggested. But this also quickly evaporates

37 Umberto Eco, Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), 158. 38 Tarasti, A Theory of Musical Semiotics, 145. 39 Klein, “A Narrative of Dreams,” 8.

Ex. 6. Chopin, Polonaise-Fantasy, Op. 61, mm. 13–31, annotated

when an evaded cadence in m. 38 prompts the agitato style. When the singing style theme returns in m. 44, the dynamic is piano and reference to a heroic dance is yet farther away.

Throughout this passage, the musical parameters (such as harmony and rhythm) that might congeal to signify a topic seem only to dissolve.

Such limitations with topical analysis call attention to a property that stretches outside of topic theory: the piece does not aim towards the eighteenth-century codified ideals of order, clarity, and accessible signification. In this context, Eco’s notion of the symbolic mode offers a compelling perspective. Eco’s term “symbol” designates a sign that resists clear and absolute signification, and “does not attempt to get immediate concrete results.”40 The “symbolic mode” refers to a literary passage as a whole that is marked by aspects of the symbol.

Eco offers several defining features that mark the symbolic mode in a literary passage.

First, the text is expressly ambiguous, calls for multiple interpretations, and displays what can be described as “nebulous content.” Second, Eco insists that the symbolic mode displays specific textual and semiotic strategies. These signal to the reader that more interpretation is needed outside of the usual coded norms. The symbolic mode enlivens the reader’s response. The reader is called to offer interpretation and to find a personal level of significance.41

This concept brings the signification of Chopin’s topics into relief. As the opening section progresses, a listener is faced with nebulous content created, in part, by a strategy toward topics. There are juxtapositions that undermine the identity of both topics, because the signs coalesce and alternate in unconventional ways. There are dissolutions where a topic is suggested,

40 Eco, Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language, 132. Eco argues that his definition of symbol corresponds better to what is meant by “symbolic,” although the term drifts through different meanings in everyday usage, literary scholarship, and semiotics. For Saussure and Hjelmslev, the symbol is an iconic sign. For Peirce, symbol denotes a conventional sign. 41 Eco provides an example from Nerval’s 1853 novel, Sylvie, where a strange reflection on a Renaissance clock evokes interpretations about the passage’s symbolic meaning.

only to evaporate into a mysterious variant. These strategies toward topics are coordinated with tonal instability, melodic discontinuity, and genre uncertainty. While we hear topics come momentarily alive, the “strategy” of Chopin’s text leads us to listen for how any topic will be undermined and to question what significance we, the listeners, might bring to the process.

Might this process be described simply as a troping, a meaningful combination, of topics?

Robert Hatten describes a trope as “the often unpredictable and even extra-logical process by which new meaning emerges from atypical or even contradictory associations between more established meanings.”42 Hatten underlines that a trope may not be an immediately recognizable sign: “[l]ike a metaphor in literary language, a trope is sparked from the collision or fusion of two already established meanings, and its interpretation is emergent.”43 In many ways, the trope that begins the Polonaise-Fantasy is unpredictable, extra-logical, and emergent. However,

Hatten’s idea of a trope suggests a process that is generative and purposeful. Like a metaphor, its two parts may be surprising or unusual, but their combination is ultimately sense-making.

Chopin’s juxtaposition is more resistant: are there established topics to begin with? And what actually emerges?

The idea that topics “dissolve” or “evade capture” is further strengthened by details surrounding the genesis of the piece. Jeffrey Kallberg shows that both the Polonaise, Op. 44, and the Polonaise-Fantasy were marked by ambiguities in their compositional process and generic titles. Kallberg contends that Chopin first thought of applying fantasy elements to the Polonaise,

Op. 44, as a way of making the ternary form more fluid and ambiguous. Chopin wrote to the

Viennese publisher Mechetti: “It is a sort of fantasy in the form of a polonaise, and I will call it a

42 Robert S. Hatten, Interpreting Musical Gestures, Topics, and Tropes: Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004), 2. 43 Hatten, Interpreting Musical Gestures, 15.

Polonaise.” But the next day, Chopin penned his colleague Julian Fontana: “I offered him a new manuscript (a sort of polonaise, but more a fantasy).”44 This back and forth in terms suggests that neither descriptor really fit: the musical material—its balance and meaning within the piece— were a tale of “sort-ofs” and “slightlys.” We might think of those figures as cases of Eco’s

“symbol” rather than as conventional signs.

While Op. 44 ended up with the title “Polonaise,” the case for Op. 61 would be more complex. Again, Kallberg notices a letter where Chopin, describing several compositions, refers to the soon-to-be-completed Polonaise-Fantasy as “something else that I do not know how to name.”45 Regarding the sketches for the piece, Kallberg notes the strange fact that “nowhere in any original layer in the sketches does the characteristic polonaise rhythmic figure occur; its rare appearances are always as additions or revisions to first thoughts.”46 The striking feature of the

Polonaise-Fantasy is the inability of either topic to take the reins or achieve a reconciled balance.

On the one hand, the polonaise topic seems to have been added as a fleeting referential touch rather than an inherent element of the piece. On the other hand, the Polonaise inverted rhythm is heard first and becomes the point of reference for (temporary?) fantasy interruptions. So, does the piece begin with a juxtaposition of two dialogical topics? Or is the tropological title

“Polonaise-Fantasy” just an analytical slippage required by the need to name, speak of, and market the piece? How sure are we of the presence and signification of either of the two topics?

Are they always somewhat enigmatic? Does the fascination and liveliness of the piece lie in

Chopin’s unnamable “something else”?

44 Kallberg, Chopin at the Boundaries, 93. Hoeckner also notes that Schumann’s Fantasie went through different titles and features dying sound. See Hoeckner, Programming the Absolute, 106. The connection between generic uncertainty and aliveness/fading sound might be further explored as a characteristic of the romantic idea of fantasia: the fantasy not only as thematically and harmonically unstable, but metaphysically ungrounded. 45 Kallberg, Chopin at the Boundaries, 92. 46 Kallberg, Chopin at the Boundaries, 101.

These questions play out continually and return potently at the piece’s ending. In the stirring A flat major coda, critics such as Walker, Tomaszewski, Grabosz, and Tarasti read a narrative—perhaps a Polish—triumph.47 However, Klein and Newcomb both draw attention to ambiguous aspects of the heroism. Klein describes the final chord as “much too high to mark the heroic end of a conventional polonaise.” He suggests that unsatisfying performances inadvertently expose the ruse: “most pianists simply ramp up the final chord with a percussive jab that announces a victorious end.”48 Newcomb reads back further than the coda and finds a

“hollow triumph.” From the awkward voice-leading and registral preparation for the cadence to

A flat major in m. 245, to the weak iii6-I cadences that precede the final chord, Newcomb hears

“an intentional backing away from, and consequent ironisation of, the final ‘apotheosis.’”49 The same questions that I raised about the A minor Prelude’s confident, or ironic ending apply here.

What is the listener to believe? Aside from individual interpretations, the ambiguity of topics is a built-in factor of Chopin’s style. Even in the most sonorous moments of a heroic topic, one can question what lies underneath. The piece foregrounds a musical type of symbolic mode, which asks the spellbound listener to “listen, and listen again.”

Can a return to the start provide any context for hearing the ending? Newcomb offers a compelling interpretation where the opening measures imitate the literary ballad. A frame or introductory stanza given by a narrator is heard in “the bard’s preludial strumming as the singer- improviser descends into his material.”50 The fantasy topic, specifically, is a setting for subjectivity to emerge. This account is perceptive; however, the topical analysis undertaken

47 For a summary reading of this narrative line of thought, see Walker, “Le dernier style de Chopin,” 67–88. 48 Klein, “A Narrative of Dreams,” 2. 49 Anthony Newcomb, “The Polonaise-Fantasy and Issues of Musical Narrative,” in Chopin Studies 2, ed. John Rink and Jim Samson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 100–101. 50 Newcomb, The Polonaise-Fantasy,” 90.

above would seem to undercut it in a curious way. The most obvious signifier for a bard would be the use of declamatory style—the romantic recitative topic that evokes words of the poet.51

But except in the most fleeting of solo-voice writing, found in the left hand of mm. 192–203, declamation never occurs. There is essentially no recitative or parlando writing in the section.

And given the early to mid-nineteenth-century fascination with “ghostly” instruments such as the wind-blown aeolian harp, perhaps the initial strummed ascent is played by no subject at all.52

Romantic subjectivity never quite emerges, and the introduction is given by a type of half- embodied narrator characterized by liminality. What type of bard would say so little?

51 See footnote 1 of this thesis. 52 See Carmel Raz, “‘The Expressive Organ within Us’: Ether, Ethereality, and Early Romantic Ideas about Music and the Nerves,” Nineteenth-Century Music 38, no. 2 (Fall 2014): 115–144.

Chapter 2. Second Soirée: Balzac’s Atelier and the Clair-Obscur

The noble question τι είναι (“what is it?”), asked of the cosmos by the Greeks and of God by the

monks, was asked in German Idealism of the author.53

“Context is all; or is it ripeness? One or the other,” proclaims the main character Offred in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.54 This adage could have been pronounced by a music listener of the early nineteenth century, perhaps grasping at the new meanings of different musical styles. Signs that seemed stable and straightforward in the eighteenth century acquired vastly new connotations in later contexts. For example, Julian Horton observes that “a march written in 1770 carries very different connotations than one written after the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars.”55 Thus, today’s listener cannot begin to grasp musical topics—their denotations, or more complexly, their connotations—without attending to the historical and contingent moment of the sign.

As Raymond Monelle shows in great detail, musical topics have cultural origins and are inflected by both specific and broad social contexts. One of Monelle’s quintessential examples is the “galloping horse” topic, which features fast movement in compound time and is epitomized by Schubert’s “Erlkönig.” Unlike many musical topics that developed in the eighteenth century, this one arose in the nineteenth century in response to broad cultural phenomena: a revival of interest in the Middle Ages, but also the fact that warhorses were again being used for galloping

53 Friedrich A. Kittler, Discourse Networks 1800/1900, translated by Michael Metteer, with Chris Cullens (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1990), 162. 54 Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale (New York: O.W. Toad, 1986), 192. 55 55 Julian Horton, “Listening to Topics in the Nineteenth Century,” 643.

charges after “two centuries of choreographic dressing.”56 Monelle observes that music also drew from specific literary contexts, for example, from anapestic poetic meters (two short syllables and one long syllable) that imitate the sound of horse hooves (as in the Goethe text of

“Erlkönig”). Moreover, the galloping horse in music kindles an entire context, and can allude to nineteenth-century imaginings of nobility, chivalry, youth, travel, and the outdoors. The horse is but a part of the whole: in other cases, “[t]he beauty and strength of the horse become metonymic of the virtues of the rider.”57 Thus, even when topics are directly iconic or indexical of an object

(i.e. horse, or battle drum), they do not merely signify that referent, but evoke a sphere of cultural associations.

From a different perspective, Elizabeth Helmuth Margulis writes about the psychological function of topics for triggering an immediate knowledge of context. When considering how musical affect is generated, scholars often point to “expectation” and “surprise” as key features of musical syntax. However, Margulis notes that this leaves a question unanswered: how do musical surprises generate such a diversity of affects? Margulis proposes that musical topics work as a cultural filter, a cue, for the many affects associated with surprise. “The idea is that syntax determines the surprise, but topic determines the way that surprise is felt and experienced.”58 Thus, topics work as a contact point between cultural context and musical structure, in a relationship that is rather immediate and subliminal.

Given the importance of context to the understanding of musical topics, the questions raised in the previous chapter about Chopin’s topics lead necessarily to the composer’s historical

56 Raymond Monelle, The Sense of Music: Semiotic Essays (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 2000), 54. 57 Monelle, The Sense of Music, 51. 58 Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis, “Expectation, Musical Topics, and the Problem of Affective Differentiation,” in The Oxford Handbook of Topic Theory, edited by Danuta Mirka, 629–641 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014): 631.

and artistic milieu. I would like to suggest that Chopin’s illusive signifiers would have been heard in light of contemporary artistic conversations about ambiguity, especially among

Chopin’s acquaintances. How was artistic ambiguity being valorized at that time? What did ambiguity mean within Chopin’s artistic salon circle? Is there a larger point—philosophical, artistic, or otherwise—being made by the always-but-never-quite emergent signs of Chopin’s music? In a word, what sense can be made of the quasi-sensical?

This chapter turns to Balzac’s novel Le Chef-d’oeuvre inconnu (1831–1837) as a context for artistic ambiguity in 1830s and 1840s Paris. In my view, Balzac’s story goes beyond a mere argument about painting styles, or about literary realism (as the two dominant readings in literary scholarship would have it). More than that, Balzac uses the scenery and vocabulary of a painting studio as a metonym to present ideas about ambiguity. Through Balzac’s many hints at interdisciplinarity, these ideas concern the arts and music as a whole. The story tells of a controversial painter, Frenhofer, who weighs the aesthetic styles of others as he tries to finish his own masterpiece. In a number of evocative speeches, he contrasts “le charme sévère de la sécheresse” with his esteem for “les décevantes magies du clair-obscur.”59 It is this latter aesthetic that is his undoing: he finishes his masterpiece, but it is incomprehensible to his colleagues. The defeat kills the disappointed master. Frenhofer disappears after burning all of his paintings, and the magic of his artistic studio appears as captivating as it is evanescent.

In Balzac’s novel, the “clair-obscur” is a style of ambiguity that pervades the literary topoi of the artistic studio, the person of the artist, and the artwork.60 The word “clair-obscur”

59 Honoré de Balzac, Le Chef-d’œuvre inconnu (Paris: Édition Mille et Une Nuits, 1993), 14. “The stern charm of dryness” and “the deceptive magic of Chiaroscuro.” My translation. It should be noted that the word “décevant” means “disappointing” in today’s usage, but in the nineteenth century it meant “deceiving” or “deceptive.” See Le Dictionnaire de l'Académie française, Sixième Édition. T.1, s.v. “décévant,” accessed July 10, 2019, https://artflsrv03.uchicago.edu/philologic4/publicdicos/query?report=bibliography&head=decevant. 60 By drawing attention to literary topoi, this chapter recalls the fact that musical topics had their analytic origin in literary criticism. (To differentiate, I will refer to musical topics with the English word “topic,” and to literary topoi

can, of course, be translated as the historical style of Chiaroscuro, but in the context of this story, it appears elevated to an ambiguous theoretical concept that might be read more literally as clear- obscure. By creating a work that privileges ambiguity, the novel correlates—across media—with the signifying style of Chopin’s Polonaise-Fantasy. Like Chopin, the symbolic mode marks passages where signification is obscured and multiple readings proliferate. Like Chopin’s

Polonaise-Fantasy, there is an ending that some describe as triumphant, and others as a hollow triumph.61 Like Chopin (with musical signs), juxtaposed literary images undermine the signification of either image. Altogether, Balzac’s emphasis on opaque signification makes the atelier glimmer with intrigue; the artistic work belongs to a place that both attracts and eludes.

This chapter proceeds in four sections. First, a synopsis underlines the story’s many open questions, and shows how Balzac’s topoi of the artistic studio, the person of the artist, and the artwork each accent ambiguity. A literature review further illustrates how open the story is for interpretation. Second, I provide my own reading of the story. Balzac’s novel foregrounds a combination of the symbolic mode and the effect of “liveliness,” leading to a new aesthetic style of “clair-obscur.” My description of the story’s aesthetics represents a stepping back, a kind of meta-perspective, on many previous scholarly readings. While some analysts try to find the aesthetic that the story valorizes (romanticism, realism, etc.), I suggest that Balzac employs a

with the Greek topos and topoi (pl.), as it is commonly seen in literary scholarship.) The word topos extends back to classical Greece. Meaning “place,” topos refers in Aristotle’s thought to the practice of associating good rhetorical formulas with physical or mental places. Following E.R. Curtius’ 1948 European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, literary studies broadened the definition of topos to include not only rhetoric, but a wide variety of commonplace images, archetypes, or clichés that carry cultural weight and link ideology to place. Such topoi could involve physical places such as “the garden” or “the Gothic house,” or a mental place such as “romantic love.” In returning to literary studies, and investigating the link between ambiguity and interaction in the artistic studio, this chapter reemphasizes the original connection between cultural tropes and place. See Glenn W. Most and Gian Biagio Conte, “Topos,” in Oxford Classical Dictionary (March 2016), accessed June 30, 2019, https://oxfordre.com/classics/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199381135.001.0001/acrefore-9780199381135- e-6508; and “Topos,” The Literary Encyclopedia (November 1, 2001), accessed June 30, 2019, https://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=1126. 61 See page 24 of this thesis.

synthetic approach in order to create an overarching suggestive, ambiguous style. This second section focuses on the “what” of the novel, while the third part pivots to one aspect of the “who.”

The story’s notion of “artistic genius” connects in several notable ways to the discourse surrounding Chopin. Thus, the story can be read as a context for Chopin’s aesthetics; in turn, a knowledge of discourse around Chopin informs a reading of Balzac’s novel. Finally, I turn to the

“why” and “where from” of ambiguous aesthetics in 1830s Paris. The Unknown Masterpiece reveals how the interest in ambiguity drew from German idealism, but took on a new aura in the salon community of France: artistic ambiguity has powerful effects on authorship, interdisciplinarity, and communal interaction.

A Proliferation of Readings

Le Chef-d’oeuvre inconnu centers on the interaction of three painters in an artistic studio setting. Nicolas Poussin is young and promising, but unproven. François Porbus is middle-aged and famous, formerly the court painter for Marie de Médicis, but now out of favor and left behind for Rubens. Frenhofer is an “old master” who provocatively critiques the weaknesses of the other painters. He is presented as a genius in both artistic philosophy and technique, and is seen by the young Poussin to embody “art with its secrets, its passions, its dreams.”62 However, he is unknown to the public and has been struggling to finish his masterpiece painting for a decade.63

62 “Ainsi, pour l’enthousiaste Poussin, ce vieillard était devenu, par une transfiguration subite, l’Art lui-même, l’art avec ses secrets, ses fougues et ses rêveries.” See Balzac, Le Chef-d’œuvre inconnu, 32. 63 As described by Wayne Connor, the three painters derive from historical sources. François Porbus (1570–1622) and Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665) were both historical painters. Frenhofer’s late teacher Mabuse (Jan Gossaert, c. 1478–c. 1532) is also described in the story. Frenhofer is the only character who is fictional, but Connor suggests an etymology for his name. The painter Mabuse had a rich benefactor, the Marquis of Veren, and “Fren” is a phonetic transcription from the Flemish “Veren.” “Hof” (Frenhofer) reflects the indebtedness of Balzac’s plot to E.T.A. Hoffmann’s short story Der Baron von B. The final “er” comes from a German optician and physicist, Fraunhofer

The story is set in the winter of 1612, and begins when the young Poussin approaches the door of the famous Porbus in the hope of receiving a painting lesson. The nerve-wracked Poussin gets a stroke of luck: as he paces outside the door, a third character arrives who is a friend of

Porbus. Thinking they came together, Porbus admits both of them into his studio. This third, mysterious character (Frenhofer) is left unnamed until more than halfway through the story, instead referred to imprecisely as a “singular creature” and a “peculiar fellow.” The reader is left to discover anxiously, little by little, his identity. From this point, Frenhofer’s mystique and aura grow tremendously—although whether this mystique should to be read literally or with shades of sarcasm constitutes a timeless theme of the novel.

From the moment Poussin gains access into the famed Porbus’ studio, the atelier is thematized as a topos with both material and metaphysical qualities: upon entry, “the neophyte remained under the spell that must beguile any born painter at the sight of his first real studio, in which are revealed some of the art’s material operations.”64 The interior quality of the studio captivates Poussin, with its readiness to stimulate the imagination. Accordingly, the attention of the three painters falls on a famous painting by Porbus, a Mary of Egypt. The central action of the novel follows, where the still unnamed figure (Frenhofer) avidly critiques the painting and a detailed conversation about art ensues.

Following Frenhofer’s explanation, the painter puts his words into practice and astonishingly (or comically?) offers a lesson: he paints over Porbus’ canvas, and perfects the picture in just a series of strokes. Poussin and Porbus are enraptured by Frenhofer’s

(1787–1826), who interested Balzac and perhaps evokes the dichotomy in the story between art as science and inspiration. See Wayne Connor, “Balzac's Frenhofer,” in Modern Language Notes 69, no. 5 (May 1954): 335–338. 64 Honoré de Balzac, The Unknown Masterpiece, translated by Richard Howard (New York: New York Review Books, 2001), 10.

artistry. They leave the studio and move to the master Frenhofer’s house for lunch while

“conversing about the arts.”65 During lunch, conversation falls on a masterwork by Frenhofer that he has been struggling to finish for ten years, titled La belle noiseuse (‘The Querulous

Beauty’). The two younger painters beg to see the work. Frenhofer denies them the opportunity, not only because the painting is unfinished, but because he sees it as a real woman, his mistress.

The second part of the story focuses on Frenhofer’s struggle to finish La belle noiseuse.

First, he resolves to go to Turkey and Greece, in hopes of finding a foreign model who might inspire the final touches. But a simpler solution arises. Aspiring to move up in the art world,

Poussin has convinced his mistress Gillette to pose for Frenhofer.66 In exchange, Poussin and

Porbus will be allowed to view the finished painting. At first Frenhofer passionately rejects the trade, but seeing Gillette, he is stunned by her beauty and accepts her offer to model. Frenhofer finishes his painting with raptured excitement. However, in Balzac’s splendidly ambiguous ending, not only does narrative problem unravel—the dénouement unties its knot—but the core of the novel seems to vanish completely: Poussin and Porbus enter, but they fail to find any masterpiece painting. Frenhofer has to point out the painting, on which the others find no form of visual representation: “All I see are colors daubed one on top of the other and contained by a mass of strange lines forming a wall of paint,” says Poussin. “We must be missing something,” adds Porbus.67

Comically, they draw closer and find a glimmer of representation: there is a single foot

“emerging from this chaos of colors, shapes, and vague shadings, a kind of incoherent mist; but a

65 Balzac, The Unknown Masterpiece, 20. 66 These gender politics are an extremely complex layer of the story, and unfortunately extend beyond the scope of this analysis. For a reading that focuses on Balzac’s portrayal of gender and prostitution within the art world, see Diana Knight, Balzac and the Model of Painting: Artist Stories in ‘La Comedie Humaine’ (New York: Legenda, 2007), 8–26. 67 Balzac, The Unknown Masterpiece, 40.

delightful foot, a living foot!”68 The young Poussin insults the old master, sarcastically calling him “even more a poet than a painter.”69 At first, Frenhofer is persuaded by his failure and bursts into tears. Moments later, he recovers his strength, asserts his artistic belief in the painting, and kicks the others out. Frenhofer is found dead the next day, having burned all of his paintings.

Balzac’s feat is that the masterpiece truly remains unknown—both to Frenhofer’s public and to

Balzac’s reader. Was the painting a visionary triumph, a proto-Impressionist or modernist innovation? Or was it a misguided flop? The contradiction in terms (or paradox?) of a masterpiece that remains completely unknown provides an inviting puzzle for the reader.

The story has indeed inspired waves of debate from the nineteenth century through today’s literary criticism. The debate primarily concerns what style of painting Frenhofer was using, what real and fictional sources the story drew from, and whether the novel supports or critiques a post-representational style of art. Artists such as Paul Cézanne, Pablo Picasso, and

William de Kooning famously championed the story as an emblem for their respective modernist ideals. Cézanne reportedly kept a copy of the book by his bedside, and tearfully declared himself the misjudged protagonist of the novel.70 According to Jon Kear, Cézanne even imitated what he believed to be Frenhofer’s style as he developed his technique for nude painting. In 1886, Emile

Zola wrote L’oeuvre, a re-telling of Balzac’s story that more directly aligned Cézanne with the protagonist. Contemporaries made the same association in a more derogatory manner: exhibitions of his work in the 1890s were compared to Balzac’s novel and were said to contain the same downfalls as Frenhofer’s painting.71 Altogether, the image of Frenhofer as either heroic

68 Balzac, The Unknown Masterpiece, 40–41. 69 Balzac, The Unknown Masterpiece, 42. 70 Christopher Prendergast, The Triangle of Representation (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 122. 71 Jon Kear, “‘Frenhofer, c’est moi’: Cézanne’s Nudes and Balzac’s ‘Le Chef-d’oeuvre inconnu,’” in The Cambridge Quarterly 35, no. 4 (2006): 345–346.

or deluded illustrates one of the rich interpretive fulcrums of the story. The dilemma continued to play out in real French artistic debates.

In more recent literary scholarship, critics have also taken an especially wide array of approaches to the story. One grouping of writers regards Frenhofer as a talented, but failed painter, whose excessive idealism led to a break with his work and with his peers. Christopher

Prendergast reads the story as an allegory for realism and argues that, for Balzac, it was

“emphatically not a case of ‘Frenhofer, c’est moi.”’ In the aesthetic debate over neoclassical versus romantic painting, Frenhofer represents the latter position, which Balzac learned about from his acquaintances Delacroix and Gautier. The novel instead shows support for a bourgeois, work-oriented, and “roughly commonsensical approach” to creating art.72 However, Prendergast adds that to simply regard Frenhofer as a failure “edits out all manner of ambiguity and complexity.” Joyce O. Lowrie also reads Frenhofer as a romantic artist, who Balzac created by expanding on romantic aspects of Diderot’s writings about art. But Frenhofer fails by taking those ideals too far: better to remain in the stable signifying context of the eighteenth century.73

Sandy Petry, on the other hand, argues that Frenhofer’s aesthetics are grounded in realism and representation, but the painter destroys himself by contradicting his own code.

Petrey’s interesting historical and political reading compares contradictions in Frenhofer’s artistry to popular criticisms of France’s July Monarchy. King Louis-Philippe was said to have built a kingship on the rebellion against the monarchy and was called “King of the Barricades”

72 Prendergast, The Triangle of Representation, 123. 73 Joyce O. Lowry, “The Artist, Real and Imagined: Diderot’s Quentin de la Tour and Balzac’s Frenhofer,” in Romance Notes 31, no. 3 (Spring 1991): 267–273.

by his detractors. In Frenhofer, the artist who dies after realizing his “folly of misapprehension,”74 Petrey finds a not-so-subtle dig at the monarchy.

Wendy Nolan offers yet another aesthetic reading, suggesting that Frenhofer and the two other painters are not meant to be militant partisans of one painting school or another. Nolan too highlights inconsistencies in their artistic philosophies, but argues that these are representative of the juste milieu, a middle ground that rejected the exclusivism of both the classical or romantic school and sought an eclectic synthesis of the two. This position was popular during the July

Monarchy and was supported by official government policy. In addition, Nolan submits that the final version of Frenhofer (1837) drew off of the real painter Antoine le Gros. This juste milieu artist was a student of the neoclassical David and was praised for his use of color by Delacroix.

However, afflicted by depression and doubt over his work, he committed suicide in 1835 after harsh criticism from the public (and even his own students) at a Salon showing. For Nolan,

Frenhofer too is a “transitional master”75 whose fatal flaws lie not so much in his aesthetics, but in his self-doubt, his idle procrastination, and his final reduction of art to exchange and commerce.76 Even among the above critics who emphasize Frenhofer’s failure, there is a wide variety of opinion on why he foundered, what role his aesthetics played, and what those aesthetics actually signify in the real world.

A smaller cast of critics reads Frenhofer à la Cézanne, viewing the painter in a positively romantic or modernist way. Kevin Bongiorni argues that the story’s debate is not merely about classical and romantic styles of painting, but more specifically between mimetic and poetic

74 Sandy Petrey, “Catherine Lescault and Louis-Philippe: Performative Representation in and around Balzac,” in The French Review 65, no. 5 (April 1992): 744. 75 Wendy Nolan, “Frenhofer's Suicide and the Downfall of le Baron Gros,” in Symposium: A Quarterly Journal in Modern Literatures 54, no. 2 (2000): 97. 76 See Nolan, “Frenhofer's Suicide and the Downfall of le Baron Gros,” 97 and 102–105.

conceptions of art. Frenhofer is a poet for whom the act of representing “is not one of simple visual correspondence and resemblance.”77 The confusion at the end of the novel is not due to

Frenhofer’s failure, but instead occurs because of differing assumptions among the artists: an aesthetic miscommunication. Frenhofer’s short-sighted colleagues “simply do not know how to look at the painting.”78 Paul Barolsky likewise finds a heroic Frenhofer by comparing him to another of Balzac’s fictional painters. In the story Les Employés, Fougères is a mediocre portrait painter who becomes rich by copying famous paintings. Barolsky argues that Balzac differentiates economic and public success from true talent, and criticizes a lacking bourgeois taste in art. The mediocrity of Fougères reads like a negative image of Frenhofer’s ambition and idealism.79

Yet another group of critics, arising from post-structuralist literary theory, argues that the story advances neither an aesthetic position nor offers any real signification. Following Roland

Barthes’ groundbreaking S/Z, Diana Knight writes that the artistic stories of Balzac, including

Sarrasine and Le Chef-d’oeuvre inconnu, “have become virtual emblems—within and beyond

Balzac studies—of the notion that secrets of art are ultimately empty, contentless secrets.”80

The breadth of the above interpretations shows that the story is highly inviting, and yet seems to withhold any definitive answer. Frenhofer might be a realist, a romantic, an eclecticist, or a modernist; a directed critique of the July Monarchy or a devotee; a triumph or a failure; a sign of Balzac’s aesthetic preference or a sign of nothing at all. Indeed, while crafting their specific interpretations, most scholars do not steer clear of the story’s ambiguity. Prendergast

77 Kevin Bongiorni, “Balzac, Frenhofer, Le chef-d’œuvre inconnu: Ut poesis pictura,” in Mosaic: a Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature 32, no. 2 (June 2000): 91. 78 Bongiorni, “Balzac, Frenhofer, Le chef-d’œuvre inconnu,” 97. 79 Paul Barolsky, “Frenhofer and the Triumph of Fougères.” In Notes in the History of Art, 23, no. 4 (Summer 2004): 49–51. 80 See Diana Knight, Balzac and the Model of Painting, 8.

points out that “[t]he story thus simultaneously hints at and withholds what we want to know or alternatively implies—in a perspective of parodic demystification—that perhaps there is nothing to know.”81 Nolan notes that there is something strangely inconsistent in Frenhofer’s aesthestics and what they signify: “Frenhofer requires that art transcend reality. Yet at the same time, as we have seen, he also requires that the human figure appear as naturalistic as possible. In other words, he wants an art that is both real and ideal.”82 Petrey notices that the closing scenes send conflicting messages with regard to Frenhofer: “the scene revealing Catherine Lescaut [the subject of the masterpiece] to be a figment of his imagination has as context a series of scenes in which this same imagination grounds dazzling artistic talent.”83 So, why does Balzac create such a riddle? The peculiar fact is that the story invites the reader to take a stance (and to fully believe in the rightness of that stance), despite there being millions of other possible readings. Despite the large amount of scholarship on this small novel, no commentators, to my knowledge, have prioritized the question of why ambiguity is so prominent in the story to begin with. My goal is to take a step back: why does the story admit such ambiguity? What is the purpose? Is the

“secret” of the novel’s fascination not in the very fact that it eludes?

Frenhofer’s Symbolic Mode and the Dynamics of Liveliness

Before answering questions about why the story privileges ambiguity, it is constructive to examine how ambiguity becomes so prominent and what experience it fosters. Thus, this section provides my own aesthetic reading of the story: a type of meta-perspective where none of the

81 Prendergast, The Triangle of Representation, 126. 82 Nolan, “Frenhofer's Suicide and the Downfall of le Baron Gros,” 105. 83 Petrey, “Catherine Lescault and Louis-Philippe,” 735.

previous readings are invalid per se. Rather, stepping back, we find that passages in the symbolic mode invite multiple readings and accent artistic ambiguity.

As described in the previous chapter on Chopin, Umberto Eco’s notion of the “symbolic mode” concerns a literary passage that displays a “content nebula,” calls for multiple readings, and uses specific textual and semiotic strategies to achieve such a style. It is in part due to this story that I have come to consider the symbolic mode not only as a literary style, but as an artistic phenomena that captivated a group of artists during the July Monarchy period. What if we regard Balzac’s story not as the preference for one or another painterly style exclusively, but rather as the use of style—painterly, literary etc.—to create ambiguity: this is the story’s especially modernist feature. Furthermore, accompanying the symbolic mode in the story is the aesthetic of liveliness: paintings are said to come to life, as does the elderly Frenhofer, but their presence is at the same time ephemeral and threatens to disappear.

Kevin Bongiorni perceptively observes that Le Chef-d’oeuvre inconnu can be seen as a case of mise-en-abîme, a formal technique where a representation appears within a representation.84 Just as Frenhofer advances a creative conception of painting, so Balzac takes up a world-building mission with his story (and with La Comédie humaine at large).85 However, in my reading, the mise-en-abîme applies even more directly to signifying styles. Just as Frenhofer is not a realist or a romantic, Balzac cannot be categorized by one writing style.86 Both artists

84 This occurs in visual imagery, for example, when a coat of arms contains a smaller coat of arms appears within it; or, in literature, when a play occurs within a play. 85 Bongiorni, “Balzac, Frenhofer, Le chef-d’œuvre inconnu,” 99. 86 Maurice Beebe argues that because Balzac’s fiction occupies a “middle area” in terms of genre, “realists and romantics both claim Balzac as one of their own.” Instead Beebe suggests that Balzac was “both a realist and a romantic, an observer and a visionary.” In his artist stories, Balzac is “much concerned with the conflict between objective observation and visionary insight.” See Maurice Beebe, “The Lesson of Balzac’s Artists,” in Criticism 2, no. 3 (Summer 1960): 221–222.

subsume multiple styles in the service of a symbolic mode. The conversation and debate that occurs among the painters within the novel mirrors its unabated discussion in the real world.

One textual strategy that sutures the mise-en-abîme between the novel’s symbolic mode and that of Frenhofer is the voice of the narrator. The narrator—a first person objective narrator—is unnamed and remains subtly in the background while recounting the story.87

However, there are passages where the story-teller betrays a fascination for ambiguity, underlining that “imperfect images” make for compelling art. For example, the narrator comes alive when describing Nicolas Poussin’s first sight of Frenhofer:

Set such a head upon a weak and puny body, swathe it in extravagant curlicues of immaculate lace [une dentelle étincelante], drape a heavy gold chain over the black doublet beneath, and you will have an imperfect image of this personage to whom the dim light of the staircase lent a further tinge of the fantastic: as if a canvas by Rembrandt were walking, silent and unframed, through the tenebrous atmosphere that the great painter has made his own.88

The narrator seems to revel at creating an “imperfect image,” and speaks as if in the very act of painting Frenhofer. By building the mysterious body of Frenhofer little by little, and emphasizing his ornate exterior, the narrator creates a signifying gap where the reader wonders who Frenhofer actually is internally, deep down. When using this symbolic mode, the narrator appears to come alive, emerging slightly from behind the screen. Unlike most of the story, which is told in the more distant past tense, this passage occurs in the present: the narrator is taken by the way that Frenhofer becomes the half-light of Rembrandt’s famous chiaroscuro technique.

Within the image, the sensations of movement, weight, and touch (“drape a heavy gold chain”) lend a lively quality to the image, but such liveliness is tenebrous and tenuous. Like Chopin in the act of creation (see the introduction to this thesis), the narrator highlights the paradox of a

87 The narrator uses the first person pronoun, “je,” only once, at the beginning of the story. 88 Balzac, The Unknown Masterpiece, 9. My emphasis.

weak body coming to powerful life. Frenhofer too controls a “silent” soundscape, and his identity is aesthetically unclear, “unframed.” The narrator sketches color and light only to emphasize the image’s shadows. Realism, while present to a certain extent, is not the point: the text signals that it should be read in the symbolic mode, and that the reader too should delight in its ambiguities.

The narrator encourages the same fascination from the reader through the attention and anticipation circling around Frenhofer’s withheld name. The painter’s identity is not revealed until more than half way through the story, underlining again that Frenhofer is a fascinating enigma, an embodiment of the clair-obscur. The three painters dine at Frenofer’s for lunch, and the young Poussin is curious to know the name of the “old man”:

Poussin glanced back and forth between the old man and Porbus with anxious curiosity. He moved closer to Porbus to ask the old man’s name; but the painter put a finger to his lips with a mysterious expression, and the youth, though fascinated, held his tongue, hoping that sooner or later some chance word would allow him to guess the name of their host...89

In effect, the subtle narrator stands behind the feelings of Nicolas Poussin, who also functions as a surrogate for the similar thoughts of the reader: who on earth is the old, masterly painter?

While the narrator speaks through the feelings of Poussin, a close reading finds the narrator also involved in clair-obscur aesthetics: there are lively glances back and forth, and an invitation for further knowledge. But this is met only with “a mysterious expression.” Poussin holds his tongue in a silence that is nearly musical. The reader must hang on the words of the narrator for “some chance word” to allow the enigma to be named. Like Chopin’s topics, Frenhofer evokes fascination and yet eludes the ability to be named.

89 Balzac, The Unknown Masterpiece, 21.

Furthermore, by standing behind the young, fervent Nicolas Poussin, the narrator heightens ambiguity as to whether or not those feelings are endorsed. Part of the narrator’s first description of Frenhofer takes place through the eyes of Poussin: “il aperçut quelque chose de diabolique dans cette figure, et surtout ce je ne sais quoi qui affriande les artistes.”90 The diabolical aspect of Frenhofer is something happily undescribable, a “je ne sais quoi” that attracts artists. While these are the feelings of Poussin, the use of italics (“je ne sais quoi”) calls attention to the subjective presence of the narrator, who provides a certain inflection while speaking the ambiguous words. Later in the story, Frenhofer too uses these words. In his critique of Porbus’ Marie egyptienne, Frenhofer claims that the painting lacks “ce je ne sais quoi qui est l’âme peut-être et qui flotte nuageusement sur l’enveloppe; enfin cette fleur de vie que Titien et

Raphaël ont surprise.”91 Spoken by Frenhofer, the words “je ne sais quoi” fit into an aesthetic of inexact signification. The symbolic mode is underlined by the fact that Frenhofer doesn’t even know what should be illustrated. The picture should represent something intangible (l’âme peut-

être), that floats “like a cloud” around its ultimate significance. The liveliness of Frenhofer’s aesthetic is also apparent: the ambiguous signification provides a “blossom of life” that painters

Titian and Raphael could only catch in the moment, “by surprise.” Overall, the reader is led to wonder if the narrator and Frenhofer overlap in their aesthetic interests. At a deep level of the text, this convergence of words aligns the narrator ever so subtly with Frenhofer. But in this case, the screen of narratorial description leaves an unknown: does the speaker have a hand in the clair-obscur aesthetics of Frenhofer?

90 Balzac, Le Chef-d’œuvre inconnu, 8. Italics in the original. He “perceived instead something diabolical in the man, that je ne sais quoi so attractive to artists.” See Balzac, The Unknown Masterpiece, 9. 91 Balzac, Le Chef-d’œuvre inconnu, 18–19. The painting lacks “that je ne sais quoi, which might be the soul and which floats like a cloud around the body’s exterior. You know, that blossom of life that Titian and Raphael caught by surprise.” My translation.

One of the masterly strokes of the novel is that the fascination for Frenhofer is equivocal: there are moments where Frenhofer’s aura appears ready to crack at the seams. It is placed sarcastically in perspective as fantasy. This occurs several times when impressive descriptions of

Frenhofer blend subtly into sarcasm towards him. At the end of the story’s Part I, Poussin returns home so inspired by meeting Frenhofer and assured of his future as a painter that he declares,

“There’s gold in these brushes!”92 But Poussin argues with his mistress, Gillette, about how his career will affect their relationship. This provokes an about-face on his career. Poussin decides not to be a painter, and quite readily denies Frenhofer, declaring that, “he’s just an old man.”93

Poussin and Gillette rekindle their artistic ambitions in Part II, but the former undermines

Frenhofer at the end of the story. These moments illustrate that the fantasy is captivating, but it is also fragile and not totalizing. While Frenhofer fascinates, it is also quite easy to renounce him.

In other more subtle ways, the narrator offers less spellbound descriptions of Frenhofer.

While in some passages, the narrator’s view of Frenhofer gleams and fascinates, at other points the painter is described with a hint of irony. As Frenhofer struggles to finish his masterpiece and prepares to travel to Turkey, the narrator approaches parody of the opulent, melancholic artist:

“He appeared to have collapsed on an enormous throne of carved oak upholstered in black leather, and without altering his melancholy pose, he stared at Porbus with the expression of a man not to be argued out of his distress.”94 The register is no longer fantasy; the bubble seems to burst.

92 Balzac, The Unknown Masterpiece, 28. The exclamation is a play on the word “gold,” as Poussin suggests he will be a great painter and will be rich. Other commentators have pointed out the Balzacian theme and fatal flaw of seeking wealth at all costs, and this line reflects such a theme. 93 Balzac, The Unknown Masterpiece, 31. 94 Balzac, The Unknown Masterpiece, 32.

As the fascination and sarcasm send the reader in different, contradictory directions, the text signals that the usual coded norms will not suffice for an interpretation. These are symbols that “do not attempt to get immediate concrete results.”95 The effect of overlapping fascination and sarcasm in the story is that it only heightens the clear-obscure style. This effect only further increases the enigma of Frenhofer. It fosters a paradox surrounding him: what is fragile and fleeting captivates the imagination with great power. The body that is “weak and puny” also contains the most liveliness.

Selective Affinities and the Raphael Archetype

If Chopin’s Polonaise-Fantasy and Balzac’s story display a similar aesthetic emphasis on ambiguity (across media), then what was the relationship between the two Parisian figures? Does the story provide a context for the aesthetics of Chopin’s music?

While Balzac has not traditionally been considered a close acquaintance of Chopin’s, there are reasons for renewed consideration of their artistic and personal relationship. First,

Chopin figures as a particularly stimulating, if peripheral, image in Balzac’s literary writing. The writer refers directly to Chopin five times in the collection of the Comédie humaine.96 The references are metaphors that compare Balzac’s fictional artists to the mesmerizing, mysterious artistry of Chopin (for example, see the quote from Le Cousin Pons on page 46-47, below). Such allusions to Chopin show that Balzac was intrigued by Chopin as an archetype for the “creative genius.”

95 Eco, Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language, 132. 96 The references occur in Ursule Miröuet, Le cousin Pons, Un homme d’affaires, and L’Envers de l’histoire contemporaine (twice). See Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger, Chopin: âme des salons parisiens, 1830–1848 (Paris: Librairie Arthème Fayard, 2013), 289.

Furthermore, a handful of artistic and philosophical affinities link the two figures.

Despite noting the “temperamental differences” between Chopin and Balzac, Jean-Pierre

Barricelli describes their similar musical and aesthetic inclinations: a preference for Bach and

Mozart, admiration for the Italian opera of Rossini and Bellini, fascination with vocal ornamentation, and interest in Meyerbeer’s Robert le diable. Both seemed apathetic towards

Berlioz, Halévy, Auber, and other contemporaries.97 Chopin and Balzac shared a similar aesthetic persona: both were self-proclaimed classicists with a (perhaps underplayed?) knack for the romantic held in reserve.

In Paris and in social circles, Chopin and Balzac lived in close proximity to each other: if the two were not close friends, they lingered at one or two degrees of separation through salons and through their mutual friends. Most obvious was George Sand, whose salon in the Quartier

Saint-Georges was attended by both men in the early 1840s.98 Balzac was later a frequent visitor at the famous Square d’Orléans where Sand and Chopin lived. While Balzac and Chopin did not write to one another, it seemed that Sand worked as an intermediary between them: for example,

Balzac inquired of Sand, “Has Chopin read what I wrote about him in Ursule Miröuet?”99 Other possible intermediaries and artistic liaisons exist among their mutual friends, such as Eugène

Delacroix, a close friend of Chopin and also a frequent visitor at the Square d’Orleans. (Balzac’s

Le Chef-d’oeuvre inconnu and La Rabouilleuse both have clear associations with Delacroix and his aesthetic thinking.)

More broadly, Balzac and Chopin both attended salons that were known for their interdisciplinary and inter-artistic interests. Astolphe de Custine’s salon was one of the most

97 Jean-Pierre Barricelli, Balzac and Music: Its Place and Meaning in His Life and Work (London: Routledge, 2017 [1990]), 66. 98 Alan Walker, Fryderyk Chopin: A Life and Times (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018), 432–433. 99 Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger, Chopin: âme des salons parisiens, 265.

respected during the July Monarchy for the combined interests of arts and literature.100 As noted in the introduction,101 Custine was probably the originator of writings with the Chopin “soul” trope following salon events one night in 1836.102 The salon of Delphine de Girardin also featured an interdisciplinary group of writers including Balzac, painters such as Delacroix, and musicians including Chopin.103 Considering their salon encounters, and the intermediaries between them, Balzac and Chopin knew each other well. A significant amount of intellectual and artistic cross-pollination would occur between the two artists, regardless of their amiability.

Le Chef-d’oeuvre inconnu contains no direct references to Chopin, but there are passages that strongly resemble images and descriptions of the composer. Based on similar portrayals of

Chopin elsewhere—by Balzac and others—these passages may have evoked such an association in Parisian social circles.

For example, during one of Frenhofer’s most inspired moments, Poussin watches as the painter becomes transfigured like

a kind of genie inhabiting an unknown sphere, rousing a thousand vague ideas in his soul. The moral phenomenon of such fascination can no more be defined than we can translate into words the emotion produced by a song reminding an exile of his homeland.104

The emphasis on a symbolic phenomenon that can scarcely be defined in words recalls the aesthetic and signifying style of Chopin. Given Balzac’s other known descriptions of Chopin’s spellbinding inspiration, and the composer’s image in their group as the exiled Pole longing for

100 Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger, Chopin: âme des salons parisiens, 290. 101 See pages 6–7. 102 Balzac was not in attendance that night, but his own taking up of the trope shortly thereafter shows the circulation of ideas in the group. 103 Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger, Chopin: âme des salons parisiens, 42. 104 Balzac, The Unknown Masterpiece, 25.

home, it is difficult to imagine that Chopin would not cross the minds of Balzac and his acquainted readers.

Another echo of “Chopinesque discourse” lies in the story via references to the painter

Raphael. Chopin was popularly known in his salon group as “the Raphael of the pianoforte,”105 and Balzac too built on this association. In his novel Le cousin Pons, a fictional pianist sits down at the piano: “[w]onderful themes came to him, and on them he embroidered cappricios, now rendered with the pathos and the Raphaelesque perfection of Chopin.”106 The simile with Chopin is used to describe an impeccably nuanced balance between two expressive poles: a theme and its embroidery, passion and a certain “Raphaelesque quality.” More specifically, what is meant by the reference to Raphael? Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger has written of the comparison of Chopin with Raphael, suggesting that the image represents the composer’s balance of normally quarrelsome poles. Chopin’s style poises romantic pathos and Mozartean grace. It evokes a

“sublime harmony between inspiration and practice.”107 Overall, Balzac’s reference to Raphael shades over an artistic aesthetic with which Chopin was intimately associated.

In Le Chef-d’oeuvre inconnu, Frenhofer refers several times to Raphael as an artistic model. Frenhofer alludes to Raphael as a lively, divine figure lost in the past:

“That was Raphael’s way,” the old man said, removing his black velvet cap to express respect for this monarch of art. “His supremacy’s due to that intimate sense which apparently seeks to break Form. In Raphael’s figures, Form is what it is in all of us: an intermediary for the communication of ideas and sensations, a vast poetry! Each figure is a world, a portrait whose model has appeared in a sublime vision, colored by light, drawn by an inner voice, examined by a celestial hand which has revealed the sources of expression in an entire existence.108

105 Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger, Chopin: âme des salons parisiens, 287. 106 Honoré de Balzac, Cousin Pons (New York: Penguin, 1968), 265. 107 Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger, Chopin: âme des salons parisiens, 269. 108 Balzac, The Unknown Masterpiece, 15.

Those familiar with this trope might have heard broader associative connections, echoes of the type of artistry for which Chopin was also celebrated. A close reading of these lines provides a context for exactly what that ambiguous type of artistry entails. The idea of “Raphael’s way” signals that sensible form—the phenomenological experience of art—is an intermediary, a conduit for the un-transcribable: a sublime vision, an inner voice. However, across the many emphases on inexactness, by Frenhofer and by the narrator, the reader can start to piece together the puzzle. In order to hint at transcendent “sources of expression,” a symbolic style of signification is necessary: transcendent sources cannot be depicted merely as clear, tangible objects; at the same time, artistic form must signify clearly enough to hint at what it represents.

Thus, by connecting Balzac’s known association of Chopin with Raphael to the Raphael image of the The Unknown Masterpiece, the reader arrives at emerging artistic theory. The Raphael image suggests the perfect synthesis of various artistic poles: of pathos and lucidity, of color and line, of real and ideal, of comprehensible and incomprehensible. In a word, the clair-obscur.

In Le Chef-d’oeuvre inconnu, Frenhofer was unable to create such a form with a perfect synthesis of comprehensibility and incomprehensibility. Following his death, the text provokes the reader to wonder whether a more perfect artist—in any artistic medium—could achieve such a feat. Raphael is clearly offered as a historical exemplar. In the more contemporary context of

1830s Paris, what about the withdrawn but evocative, wordless but poetic, sublime yet controlled

“Raphael of the pianoforte”?

German Idealism and the New French Chiaroscuro

The above passage on “Raphael’s way” calls attention to a philosophy of art, seen in

Frenhofer’s aesthetics and in Balzac’s style of writing the story (mise-en-abîme): art is a

translation of some non-representable phenomenon. This theme discloses the relation between

Balzac’s story and the ideology of German idealism.109 The latter serves as a springboard for interests in the symbolic mode in France. Thus, this final section of the chapter turns to the

“why” and “where from” of ambiguous signification, providing a philosophical background to the symbolic mode in Paris.

In his encompassing critique of idealism, Friedrich Kittler argues that hermeneutics—a culture of interpreting rather than a culture of copying—begins with the idea of writing as translation.110 This constitutes the fundamental break between intellectual communities before

1800 (such as the group called the Republic of Letters, who focus on circulating and copying texts) and German intellectual culture around 1800. The German “Poet” of 1800 does not copy, but creates by using previous text as an inspirational voice and translating that voice into new words. Kittler’s prototypical examples come from Goethe’s Faust: Part I and from the stories of

E.T.A. Hoffman. In Faust’s “experiments” on the book, which set his story in motion, the text that Faust studies is seen as a voice of nature. As an element before or beyond discourse, it inspires him to translate the originary text into his own words. This occurs as Faust looks at the

Gospel of John, and after several failed attempts, he translates “In the beginning was the Word” to “In the beginning was the Act.” Exemplified by Faust, German idealism marks an epistemological break: knowledge is acquired not by copying, but by interpreting.111

109 Several commentators have written about the influence of E.T.A. Hoffman on Balzac, but none, to my knowledge, have more broadly explored the relation between this novel and German idealism. For sources relating Hoffman and Balzac, see Bernard Franco, “L'Illusion de L’Art: ‘Über das Marionettentheater,’ ‘Sarrasine,’” in L’Année balzacienne 1, no. 11 (2010): 291–312; Patrick Née, “Le Chef-d’oeuvre trop connu (Frenhofer et nous),” Le Genre humain 1 no. 47 (2008): 57–76; and Wayne Connor, “Balzac's Frenhofer,” 335–338. 110 See especially Friedrich A. Kittler, Discourse Networks 1800/1900, translated by Michael Metteer, with Chris Cullens (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1990), 3–25. 111 Kittler, Discourse Networks, 7–10.

The idea of (all) art as translation pervades Balzac’s Le Chef-d’oeuvre inconnu. When describing “Raphael’s way” (cited above), Frenhofer describes artistic form as an

“intermediary,” a translation from un-writable beauty, a signifier in-between the imaginary and the real. And, of course, Raphael’s work is described anachronistically as “a vast poetry!” The narrator too emphasizes translation, saying that the phenomenon of artistic fascination “can no more be defined than we can translate into words the emotion produced by a song reminding an exile of his homeland.”112 A signifying gap, indeed! Inspiration and interpretation are both implicated, as mere copying across media would be impossible. When Frenhofer most directly reveals his theory of painting, his emphasis also falls on intermodal translation as opposed to copying:

‘It’s not the mission of art to copy nature, but to express it! Remember, artists aren’t mere imitators, they’re poets!’ the old man exclaimed, interrupting Porbus with a despotic gesture. ‘Otherwise a sculptor would be set free from all his labors by taking a cast of his model! Well, just try casting your mistress’s hand and setting it down in front of you: you’ll see a horrible corpse utterly unlike the original, and you’ll be forced to rely on the chisel of a man who, without copying it exactly, can represent its movement and its life. It’s our task to seize the physiognomy, the spirit, the soul of our models, whether objects or living beings.113 How can an exact copy be “utterly unlike the original?” The reason is that “art as inspiration” requires translating between modal forms: a sculptor does not begin from sculpture, but is inspired by an ideal beyond that cannot be replicated in sculpted form. Frenhofer suggests that to create poetry, one must conceive of the object as un-representable, and translate into the artistic medium. Several specific calling cards of German idealism also jump out in this passage.

Frenhofer describes artists anachronistically as “poets” (recall that the story takes place in 1612).

112 Balzac, The Unknown Masterpiece, 25. My emphasis. “Le phénomène moral de cette espèce de fascination ne peut pas plus se définir qu’on ne peut traduire l’émotion excitée par un chant qui rappelle la patrie au coeur de l’exilé.” Balzac, Le Chef-d’œuvre inconnu, 31. 113 Balzac, The Unknown Masterpiece, 13–14.

The sculptor is not meant to be “set free from all his labors,” but must, like Faust, exert effort and conduct experiments. Like a good German poet, Frenhofer signifies the ideal beyond by speaking of “the spirit, the soul of our models.”

All the same, Frenhofer shows signs of distilling German idealism in a French context.

His theory discloses a mechanism through which translation applies to all of art: the primary means for creating “expression,” instead of a false mimetic copy, is to use the symbolic mode. If no semiotic slippage occurs, there is no sign that the original model was ideal and thus un- transcribable. A prominent aesthetic effect is the art form’s liveliness—its “movement” and

“life”—which also shows that the symbolic mode is working.114 Overall, the aesthetics of the symbolic mode and of liveliness serve to place all the arts—visual, musical, etc.—together under the umbrella of the same ideals.

In his analysis of the turning point around 1800, Kittler offers another hypothesis that is important for reading/hearing the symbolic mode in France: the centrality of translation was established by a cultural shift toward the phoneticization of language, an emphasis on sound and aurality in language learning. This transition shaped the entire discourse network of Germany around 1800, from intellectual culture to the structures of bureaucracy and education.115 In this regard, Kittler describes a robust pedagogical movement that made elementary instruction the role of mothers, driven in particular by the mother’s sonorous voice. This pedagogy replaced previous methods that entrusted teaching to fathers and emphasized writing by rote learning and copying. By contrast, the mother instructs not only by repetition. The mother’s voice provokes

114 In contrast to German idealists, Frenhofer’s painting theory also contains a heavy dose of realism. This may have arisen from Balzac’s interest in early realist painting styles in the 1830s. For this reason, it is more productive to read Frenhofer as a “French take” on German idealism rather than trying to fit him into the categories of realist or romantic. 115 See Kittler, Discourse Networks, 25–70.

new thoughts and poetic expression through the diffusion and semiotic slippage of sound.

Through her voice as sound, the mother becomes a stand-in for Nature, a pre-discursive beyond which inspires learning as translation.

Furthermore, there was a specific method through which mothers were instructed to teach. A large pedagogical literature suggested that mothers teach language by speaking a variety of sounds, on a spectrum from the “pure sounds” of Nature to intelligible words. For example, the mother would begin with sounds closer on the spectrum to Nature, such as “ma” and “ach,” and move gradually towards “mama” and “sprache.” Kittler refers to these minimal units of meaning, which approach the beyond of Nature, as minimal signifieds. In contrast to the grind of rote learning, teaching through sound accomplishes the ““the effortless glide from ma to Mama,

Nature to culture, sound to language.”116

In German literature, the idea of translating from the sounds of Nature becomes a tenet of the new concept of Poetry. Because translation moves from pre-discursive inspiration towards discourse, German poets seek to underline the process by using signifiers that “move between” nature and completed discourse, like the teaching method of mothers. These are the minimal signifieds (vocables or sighs) such as “ach!” or “oh!” Kittler observes the fascination provoked by these signifiers, located in-between Nature and discourse, a mixture of clear and obscure:

“Meanings come into being on the border between sound and word through the augmentation of minimal signifieds.”117 This liminal moment of sound becomes the primary interest of poetry.

The use of vocables and sighs are central to the text of Le Chef-d’oeuvre inconnu, and most notably to the speech of Frenhofer. For example, Frenhofer describes what he needs to finish his masterpiece:

116 Kittler, Discourse Networks, 51. 117 Kittler, Discourse Networks, 78.

Oh! I would give all I possess if just once, for a single moment, I could gaze upon that complete, that divine nature; if I could meet that ideal heavenly beauty, I would search for her in limbo itself! Like Orpheus, I would descend into the Hades of art to bring her back to life!118

Again, the signs of German idealism are apparent: Frenhofer has a Faustian longing, ready to descend into Hades. He must translate from inspiration. The origin of that inspiration is ideal

Woman. While, at first glance, the passage’s imagery is mainly visual, there is a significant sonic component. The vision is evoked by sound: the sigh “Oh!” It signifies, in a word—before discourse—all that is to come in following. In addition, in speaking about his unfinished painting, this “oh!” is a sonic moment that highlights the border between his unfinished painting and a finished version. What Kittler says of the German sigh applies perfectly here to Frenhofer:

“This ‘oh!’ is at once a word and not a word; it speaks and contradicts language; it constitutes the beginning of language yet is subsequently betrayed by all speaking.”119

Orpheus, both a musician and a poet, also evokes a lively play of sounds that exist between comprehensibility and the beyond. Recall the sonic component of other parts of the story as well: “Raphael’s way” is “drawn by an inner voice.” Painterly fascination is compared to translating words from the song of an exile. The component of sound, again, is an emphasis that moves across media and disciplines, and calls the poet towards an ambiguous mode of discourse.

How else could an art form translate something non-representable except with some ambiguity?

What medium is more symbolic120 than sound?

In Frenhofer’s final self-critique of his finished masterpiece—undoubtedly the climax of the story—the painter’s sound borders on a resonant musicality.

118 Balzac, The Unknown Masterpiece, 26. 119 Kittler, Discourse Networks, 41. 120 As noted in the previous chapter, Eco’s term “symbol” designates a sign that resists clear signification, and “does not attempt to get immediate concrete results.” See Eco, Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language, 132.

Ah ! ah ! s’écria-t-il, vous ne vous attendiez pas à tant de perfection! Vous êtes devant une femme et vous cherchez un tableau. Il y a tant de profondeur sur cette toile, l’air y est si vrai, que vous ne pouvez plus le distinguer de l’air qui nous environne. Où est l’art? perdu, disparu! Voilà les formes mêmes d’une jeune fille. N’ai-je pas bien saisi la couleur, le vif de la ligne qui paraît terminer le corps? N’est-ce pas le même phénomène que nous présentent les objets qui sont dans l’atmosphère comme les poissons dans l’eau? Admirez comme les contours se détachent du fond? Ne semble-t-il pas que vous puissiez passer la main sur ce dos? Aussi, pendant sept années, ai-je étudié les effets de l’accouplement du jour et des objets. Et ces cheveux, la lumière ne les inonde-t-elle pas?... Mais elle a respiré, je crois!... Ce sein, voyez? Ah! qui ne voudrait l’adorer à genoux? Les chairs palpitent. Elle va se lever, attendez. – Apercevez-vous quelque chose ? demanda Poussin à Porbus. – Non. Et vous ? – Rien.121

[“Aha! You weren’t expecting such perfection, were you? You’re in the presence of a woman, and you’re still looking for a picture. There’s such depth on this canvas, the air is so real you can no longer distinguish it from the air around yourselves. Where’s the art? Gone, vanished! Here’s true form—the very form of a girl. Haven’t I captured the color, the energy of the line that seems to bound her body? Isn’t this just the phenomenon presented by objects that live in air as fish live in water? Notice how the contours are silhouetted against the background! That back! Doesn’t it look as if you could run your hand down that? It took me seven years’ study to achieve such effects, the conjugation of objects with daylight! And that hair! You see how the light glows through it … But I do believe she’s breathing … You see that breast? Ah! Who could fail to worship her on his knees? The flesh throbs, she’s about to stand up, wait a moment …” “Do you see anything?” Poussin whispered to Porbus. “No. Do you?” “Nothing.”122]

Among all of Frenhofer’s monologues, this one most accents sound as an artistic element. As

Alix Mazuet notes, a literary emphasis on aurality is characteristic of the fantastic genre, which sometimes heightens aurality further by obscuring vision.123 This is exactly what happens:

Poussin and Porbus (and the reader, most literally) can’t see the painting. Frenhofer describes a

121 Balzac, Le Chef-d’œuvre inconnu, 53–54. I have provided the original French here, because the English translation—beginning with a single “Aha” in place of “Ah! Ah!”—does not stress the use of Frenhofer’s minimal signifieds in the same way. 122 Balzac, The Unknown Masterpiece, 39–40. 123 See Mazuet’s analysis of Barbey D’Aurevilly’s L’ensorcelée (1852), 245–249. Alix Mazuet, “The Murmur of Books and the Writing of Sounds: Erudition, Aurality, and Sonorous Palimpsest in Nineteenth-Century French Literature,” Phd diss., Duke University, Durham, 2006.

tangle of images—aurally—and Poussin, Porbus, and the reader attend only to the sonic play of his voice. Frenhofer’s speech begins with the “Ah!” of the German idealists.124 The following phrases display the musicality and orality of a poetic orator. For example, note the flowing euphony of the first phrase, with its play of “ou” and “en” sounds. Its syllabic structure of 8-7 resembles the forme-fixe of the Quadrille: “v-ous ne v-ous atten-diez pas / à tant de perfec-tion.

Beginning from Frenhofer’s first exlamation, each sentence grows in length (his first three sentences are nine, ten, and twenty-six words, respectively). The reader can almost hear the sound growing as Frenhofer becomes more impassioned. This leads to a sudden drop off with the words, “Où est l’art? perdu, disparu!” This sudden drop in speech seems to be a sonic representation of what Frenhofer is describing in his art work: the art has vanished!

The middle part of the speech crescendos again with a series of interrogative questions:

“N’ai-je pas bien saisi la couleur…? N’est-ce pas le même phénomène…? Admirez comme les contours se détachent du fond? Ne semble-t-il pas que…?” Like in a musical work, this series of questions—half cadences—becomes more emphatic with each additional open ending. In the final part of the speech, the sound world again evaporates with a lively play of shorter phrases.

Frenhofer’s speech pattern fragments into shorter exclamations and questions (“Mais elle a respiré, je crois!... Ce sein, voyez? Ah!”). Two ellipses also signal that his declamation is slowing. Frenhofer’s solo finishes off like a concerto, where the other voices slip smoothly back into the texture following the cadenza. However, the words of Poussin and Porbus finish off the descent into silence with a literal “rien.”

124 There are three different minimal signifieds that appear in Le Chef-d’oeuvre inconnu: “Eh!” “Oh!,” and “Ah!” They appear always as an independent exclamation, which accents the resonant quality of their sound. The minimal signifieds are pronounced mostly, but not exclusively, by Frenhofer. They also tend to fall into different categories of meaning: “Eh!” is an exclamation associated with action. “Oh!” associates with pain or misfortune. “Ah!” evokes wonder and inspiration, often in refering to art.

Frenhofer’s speech thus constitutes a sonic build up that decrescendos into silence at the end. The passage can be heard almost like a musical composition. Frenhofer’s “conjugation of objects with daylight”—a wash of colors that run together in temptingly pre-impressionistic style—is analogous to the way that sounds run together in his speech. Furthermore, the climax of the story shows that Frenhofer’s painting is not just a representation, nor is it just about painting: it is a translation that includes sonic elements and carries interdisciplinary connotations.

Frenhofer’s masterpiece, The Querulous Beauty, seems to include its own sound world and naturally invites further interpretations. While Frenhofer is a painter, his triumph or tragedy comes more through the aural, poetic dimension of Balzac’s writing. The success of the clair- obscur happens through fragmenting sound.125

To conclude, we return to the reductionist question: was the painting a masterpiece? We are completely unable to know this, yet we find a wealth of reasons to argue either yes or no.

Throughout the story, Frenhofer is grounded on the rich soil of idealism, but his aesthetics blend also into realism and pre-impressionistic styles. His register of fantasy evokes utmost fascination, and yet a slight sarcasm nearly begins to parody his world as fantasy. These dichotomies show how the novel as a whole functions in the symbolic mode, and leaves the reader stumped at the end of story. Again, has Frenhofer failed or succeeded? Literally speaking, it is impossible to know: it is more productive to notice and enjoy what the text does.

The key characteristic of Frenhofer’s signifying style is to be highly present—like resonant sound—and then to disappear in a flash. (This is true of Frenhofer, but also of the very experience of reading of Balzac’s novel.) We find the artistic outcome of what Foucault

125 While I have avoided referring to Balzac as “symbolist” in the above analyses, the importance of Balzac and his circle for conceiving aesthetic precursors to symbolism might be further explored.

describes, again in German literature, as a reconfiguration of language towards the phonetic flash:

With Rask, Grimm, and Bopp, language is treated for the first time […] as a totality of phonetic elements. […] A whole mystique is being born: that of the verb, of the pure poetic flash that disappears without trace, leaving nothing behind it but a vibration suspended in the air for one brief moment. […] It has acquired a vibratory nature which has separated it from the visible sign and made it more nearly proximate to the note in music.126

Frenhofer reconceives the phonetic flash into an artistic technique, so much so that he appears to vanish with it. It is here that Balzac’s French artistic conception departs from the ideology of

German idealism as described by Kittler. In his reading of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit,

Kittler analyses Hegel’s concentration on the phrase, “Now is Night.” Kittler argues that with this phrase, Hegel shows that knowledge is sensual and temporal (i.e. phenomenological), and thus requires multiple readings: “What is true can no longer be read in a single reading.”127 The strategic result of this, for Kittler, is that philosophy must be read and re-read, which serves to reify the position of the author. For Hegel, and for idealist literature and philosophy in general, the result of multiple readings is authorship.

However, in Balzac’s world two different results occur. The predominant focus on ambiguity causes, first, an ambiguous, contested authorship. The novel displays a simultaneously sarcastic and fascinated take on idealism. Balzac’s realism comes in and paints idealism for what it is: fantasy. And yet, the text betrays a fascination for idealism, a new type of clair-obscur where all aesthetics function towards the symbolic mode. The tension in signification marks the downfall of Frenhofer. In this artistic fantasy, the means (ambiguity) overtake the ends (solid authorship). Moreover, the narrator who tells the story in the past tense remains unknown to the

126 Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (London: Routledge, 2004 [1966]), 311–312. 127 Kittler, Discourse Networks, 167.

reader: is the narrator trustworthy? Has the story been told objectively, or is the narration itself a form of fantasy? Balzac also left the dedicatee unnamed: the dedication is addressed simply “to a

Lord.”128 Even the concept of Balzac as a unified subject, an intending author is contested.

Critics have been completely unable to determine a coherent set of intentions or author-subject position from the story: critics describe many different Balzacs.

The second result is that the story gives way to considerable artistic conversation and debate. Balzac wrote a story where the reader can (in fact, is invited to) take a position and fully believe in its veracity. The communal effect of this style is powerful: the artistic work (both within the story and in the real world) generates a community that talks about it. In a social setting such as the salon, such aesthetics inspire conversation. A significant parallel is also found in the way that Chopin inspires communal conversation: as Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger says of the discourse around the composer, “the Poetry of musical inspiration gives way to the prose of conversation.”129 Balzac’s topos of the atelier might be read as a stand-in for the salon, where good conversation about an artwork—endless reading—is the sign par excellence of the great work.

In response to the Polonaise-Fantasy, a composer as unconventional as Liszt spoke in exactly the same terms of the debate over Balzac’s novel. In his 1849 biography of Chopin, Liszt interprets Chopin as a type of failed Frenhofer: the Polonaise-Fantasy “brings the mind to a pitch of irritability bordering on delirium… pitiable manifestations that the artist can usefully incorporate in his work only with extreme caution.”130 Later, in 1876, Liszt noted his changed

128 Balzac, Le Chef-d’œuvre inconnu, 5. 129 Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger, Chopin: âme des salons parisiens, 47–48. “[L]a Poésie de l’invention musicale succède enfin à la prose des conversations.” 130 Franz Liszt quoted in Newcomb, “The Polonaise-Fantasy and Issues of Musical Narrative,” 86.

interpretation in a letter: “In 1849, I had not yet understood the intimate beauty of Chopin’s last works: the Polonaise-Fantaisie…”131 Even once Chopin has passed, the interpretive conundrum he gave rise to seems—when engaged—to bring back the dead. Reinterpreted, Frenhofer rises…

131 Newcomb, 86, fn 6.

Chapter 3. Third Soirée: Richter’s Emergent Voice

Is the “liveliness” of a long-deceased composer or performer a moot point, a dead question? If we are to believe nuances in the way that Chopin’s music has been written about, the response to that question remains counterintuitive. Not only in the mid-nineteenth century, but also in the context of the late twentieth century, the “liveliness” of Chopin’s music is described as somehow contested, a transitory property that escapes the death of composer and performer.

In a 1999 Gramophone article, critic Stephen Plaistow memorializes a Chopin recording by

Sviatoslav Richter:

By the summer of 1977 studio recordings by Sviatoslav Richter were rare events. The Four Scherzos were a joint production by Melodiya and RCA Victor Japan. The recording shows Richter at the height of his powers. I never heard him play Chopin better than here. The impression is of an artist passing through the studio and setting down a performance. A current of communicativeness and illumination shows through. He is on top form, taking risks other artists would rarely dare to in the studio, but the great joy derives from what I can only describe as a dialectic of tumult and order…The performances glow and blaze but what emerges is the great strength of these pieces, in which Chopin’s balance of the ardent and the mercurial, the masculine and feminine, the fundamental and the ornamental, is perfectly understood and projected.132

Clearly, Plaistow’s writing mimics earlier ways of speaking about Chopin, where the “great strength of these pieces” results from a lively tension between opposed characteristics, a synthesis of expressive poles. What is added here is the implication for the aura of the performer, in the context of the LP era. Plaistow suggests that liveliness results from Richter’s play on this particular aesthetic property of Chopin’s music. Liveliness “reaches through” the medium of

Richter’s recording. By extension, the aesthetic I have described as “liveliness” might be compared to the scholarly concept of “liveness,” which examines the ideologies and technologies

132 Stephen Plaistow, “The 10 greatest Chopin pianists,” Gramophone, June 1999. My emphases. https://www.gramophone.co.uk/feature/the-10-greatest-chopin-pianists.

behind what is considered “live” in the recording era.133 Seminal writings on liveness by Jane

Feuer and Peggy Phelan emphasize that immediacy, flexibility, impulsivity, and ephemerality are critical traits of what is “live.”134 All of these arise in Plaistow’s description: rarity and risk, current and energy are shadows of Richter’s presence just beyond the record player.

So far, this thesis has examined Chopin’s symbolic use of topics135 and has suggested that this style plays into a tangle of discourses that emphasize ambiguity and liveliness. The introduction and second chapter focused on ways of speaking about Chopin, and about the

Parisian arts in general, that celebrate a liminal, emergent quality. As seen in the topos of

Chopin’s soul, and in the aesthetics of Balzac’s Le Chef-d’oeuvre inconnu, such ways of speaking entangle musical or artistic production with the subjectivity of its creator. This chapter turns to Richter’s recording of Chopin’s Third Scherzo to reflect on the relationship between ambiguous topics and performance. I focus specifically on Richter’s interpretive decisions, and how they influence the hearing of ambiguous topics in the Third Scherzo.136 The performer is indeed central to how topics are heard, and Richter’s interpretation brings the piece’s topical ambiguity to the fore.

As Example 7 shows, the Third Scherzo opens with a series of five notes that appear unanchored harmonically, unattached to melody, a sort of sphinx.137 Played with a big crescendo

133 Research on the concept of “liveness” encompasses performance studies, media studies, and music studies. For a summary, see Suk-Young Kim, “Liveness: Performance of Ideology and Technology in the Changing Media Environment,” in Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature, accessed July 1, 2019. https://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190201098.013.76. 134 See Jane Feuer, “The Concept of Live Television: Ontology as Ideology,” In Regarding Television: Critical Approaches—An Anthology, ed. E. Ann Kaplan, 12–22 (Los Angeles: The American Film Institute, 1983); and Peggy Phelan, Unmarked: The Politics of Performance (London: Routledge, 1993). 135 As previously stated, I am using Umberto Eco’s definition of “symbol.” See especially pages 21–22 of this thesis. 136 Unfortunately, a more expansive study of the late twentieth-century context of sound recordings, of Richter’s discographic practices, and their connection to discourses about ambiguity will remain beyond the scope of this chapter. Specifically, I am focused on how performance decisions impact ambiguous topics and their description. 137 This opening bears some melodic and rhythmic semblance to the opening of the Polonaise Op. 44. That piece begins with a confounding triplet motif, played piano, that crescendos and becomes a sixteenth note figure. Later,

Ex. 7. Chopin, Scherzo no. 3, Op. 39, mm. 1–16

up to the chords, the cluster might appear majestic or agitato. Instead, Richter slurs the notes and crescendos slightly, but suddenly decrescendos on the large chord, suggesting a semantic fading where clarity was expected.138 The following section features a clear march topic (see Ex. 8).

Richter drives the march forward at a pace that would become rushed for many pianists, yet he maintains an almost robotic control (especially from m. 57). Richter’s dynamics are held back, his playing controlled. If we were to think of a spectrum of Chopin specialists, from those who are especially romantic and lyrical to those who are more rigid, Richter’s march falls on the latter side.

The next section features a chorale topic in D flat major (see Ex. 9). However, the chorale is broken into fragments and glossed several times by a falling cascade. Dickensheets would distinguish the latter as the romantic virtuosic style. What does this trope mean? A similar

the motif takes on the military connotation drum rolls. In this way, we might hear the Third Scherzo opening as a distant echo of a military topic. For information on the military topic in Op. 44, see Julie Walker, “Le dernier style de Chopin: Contexte, analyse et stratégies narratives des oeuvres tardives” (PhD diss., University of Strasbourg, 2016), 149–151 and 391–393. 138 Richter’s recording can be heard at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNyY6IywXRY.

Ex. 8. Chopin, Scherzo no. 3, Op. 39, mm. 59–77

Ex. 9. Chopin, Scherzo no. 3, Op. 39, mm. 155–171

move occurs in Schumann’s piano piece “Der Dichter spricht,” where Berthold Hoeckner notes that the poet’s musical language “dies away” as a chorale topic fades into the absolute music of free melody.139 Does Chopin’s chorale topic fade into absolute music? Does the virtuosic style imply the subjectivity of the performer, or a lack of subjectivity through hollow virtuosic filler?

139 Hoeckner, Programming the Absolute, 113.

Much depends on the performer’s interpretation. In any case, like the opening of the Polonaise-

Fantasy, the signifying value of either of the topics is muddled by their juxtaposition.

In the section, Richter’s melodic line is stately but reserved, the cascades accelerated like a mechanism, without any affective swell. When the chorale is repeated in a higher register in mm. 200–235, Richter brings out the melody slightly more, giving the impression of an emergent lyricism. But in m. 236, the lyric prospect dissipates: a repeated D flat in octaves dissolves the theme as an indistinct, open sign that could lead anywhere. Richter pauses on the uncomfortable tritone in m. 242, calling attention to a moment of topical openness that leads away from the emergent chorale to a full passage in the virtuosic style. In Richter’s hands, the shades of emergent lyricism fade before any definitive arrival.

The moment where liveliness becomes most apparent occurs after another driving march section. When the chorale returns for the fourth time in mm. 448–485, the listener might feel teased by the constant dissolution of lyricism into virtuosic fill and militant march. At first, it seems we have settled back into the familiar pattern: the chorale and virtuosic style alternate, now in E major. However, as Example 10 demonstrates, the chilling event of liveliness occurs when the pattern breaks and the chorale is played in E minor. Richter takes a radical approach to the più lento marking, risking a slowness that loses all momentum. He also dramatically accentuates the baritone melody.140 This creates the strongest suggestion of an individual voice that has been absent or partial throughout the piece. The interpretive moment creates a sudden overage of Richter’s own presence. We feel what Plaistow refers to as a “current of communicativeness,” a “taking [of] risks” that other pianists would avoid in a performance that

140 As Robert Hatten and others have pointed out, a musical ascent, against “gravity,” is a gesture associated with human agency as opposed to the unmarked descent with gravity. See Robert S. Hatten, A Theory of Virtual Agency for Western Art Music (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2018), 244. Here, Richter foregrounds the human agency as a slow and laboring rise.

Ex. 10. Chopin, Scherzo no. 3, Op. 39, mm. 493–509

is recorded and subject to closer scrutiny. Richter uses the play of ambiguity in Chopin’s topics to manage a dialectic between semantic reserve and emergence. However, even with the emergence of voice, signification remains murky: the primary signifier for voice—a face, a body as sound source—is missing. The absence of Richter’s physical body in front of us serves only to heighten the play between absence and presence, semantic ambiguity and subjective voice.

After hearing a striking piece in a salon setting, listeners might converse and try to find a musical comparison as an aid for interpretation. There are, in fact, precedents for this type of subjective emergence in keyboard music. In his chapter “Performing Agency,” Robert Hatten discusses “subjectivizing moments” where a new individual agent emerges (virtually) within the music.141 In Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 5, the harpsichord emerges from its role in the continuo section to become a virtuosic, individual agent. (Indeed, in a live performance, we can imagine how that moment of subjective entry would generate an exciting, “extra” quality of liveness for the audience.) Hatten notes that the emergence of solo and tutti textures also occurs

141 Hatten, A Theory of Virtual Agency, 225.

in Bach’s solo keyboard works.142 At the beginning of Beethoven’s “Tempest” Piano Sonata,

Hatten finds a dialogical interaction between a recitative topic—an arpeggiated chord that ends with a lyric turn and a pause for reflection—and an agitato passage. Hatten interprets this trope of disparate topics as a struggle between a protagonist and Fate. Over the course of the piece, the two topics emerge as “parts of a conflicted but singular subjectivity.”143

However, the way that virtual subjectivity takes shape (or not) is inflected considerably by the performer. Hatten observes:

The performer, however, has the option of promoting a sense of discursive continuity across the discontinuities of sound, thereby embracing the various contrasts as complex nuances within an overarching subjectivity. The immediate echo-effects (whether of the same idea or of a dialogically contrasting response) are markers of distance, both spatial and temporal. To the extent that temporal distance implies memory or reflection, these echoes may in turn suggest self- reflectivity—and hence virtual subjectivity. Thus, a multidimensional subjectivity emerges that can encompass not merely the dialogue between individual and collective agencies but a degree of reflectivity in their interaction.144

What sense of overarching subjectivity does Richter create, and how does the “subjectivizing moment” of the E minor chorale moment fit in to the musical discourse? Instead of nuancing the disparate topics of march and chorale across a broad spectrum of expressivity—a move that would imply an overarching subjectivity—Richter consistently holds back the expressive side of

Chopin’s topics. Richter’s nuance takes place within a narrow expressive range, a general void of clear signification that downplays human agency. Even the chorale topic, in the echoes of its first four repetitions, lacks personal distance and suggests lyricism only vaguely. For most of the piece, Richter seems to work against the grain of an emergent lyricism, holding back to create a strong underlying tension.

142 Hatten, A Theory of Virtual Agency, 237. 143 Hatten, A Theory of Virtual Agency, 225. 144 Hatten, A Theory of Virtual Agency, 237.

Much like the Polonaise-Fantasy, the Third Scherzo concludes with an ambiguous heroic- style that stimulates memory. After the antecedent phrase of the E minor chorale, the consequent fails to complete the chorale melody and close in E minor: the haunting moment remains an

“incomplete passage” in the score (mm. 510–539). The listener is left to remember the previous completions of the phrase that lacked the same subjective intensity.

Instead, the fourth scale degree (A) pivots to a pedal point on G# in m. 540. The chorale melody rises, now cloaked by a heroic topic that builds towards an impending C# major triumph.

Perplexity ensues several times more: an A natural octave (the flat-6 scale degree) in m. 566 unpins the C# major section. Then, an agitato coda solidifies C# minor over seventy measures and confirms the minor key with a perfect authentic cadence in m. 637. In this section, Richter again takes remarkable license with the score: despite a plethora of dynamic markings (f, più f, ff, and fff), crescendo markings of varying lengths, and accents, Richter drives a metronomic control of tempo and maintains a near-constant dynamic level, only pulling back slightly on the G# bass trill in m. 599. The music’s final turn—a sudden Picardy third in mm. 644–645—rings all too hollow, as Newcomb tells us for the Polonaise-Fantasy. Are we truly to accept an unprepared heroic ending? Richter provides no indication behind the virtuosic mask.

Like the Polonaise-Fantasy, Chopin uses a weaker first-inversion chord in the upper register as the last sounding harmonic chord. A unison C# octave ends the piece. Is this another open sign? If C# major is heard as an unconvincing turn, then lack prevails again: the self- reflective, virtual subjectivity of the minor mode is all but absent. The moment of romantic distance and memory, of emergent voice and subjectivity, is heard only in the “incomplete” E minor chorale passage. The listener is left with the memory of that reflexivity, a eureka moment, that now recedes into the past. Richter’s Scherzo is not the drama of a protagonist’s fate, but

rather of the existence (or not) of subjectivity itself. And the recording medium, too, is a marker of distance. The listener clings to a sonic memory; or to the twelve-inch width of a vinyl record.

Reflections

Following these three preceding salon “evenings,” how might the attendee perceive and connect the music, literature, and overall artistic experience? How does this aggregate shed light on the hermeneutic dilemma of Chopin’s music?

Despite the plethora of convincing accounts of Chopin’s music, few have accounted for a quite paradoxical question: if there is so much to say about the composer’s music, why was

Chopin himself so silent on the meanings of his work? Among acquaintances fascinated by literary explanations and extra-musical echoes, was Chopin’s silence merely that of a composer of absolute music? How could a composer so-exalted as a “poet” by his acquaintances eschew all words, programs, and descriptions? Further study of Chopin’s topics might show the importance of ambiguity and of a symbolic style of signification. Chopin creates the expectation of characteristic figures, but has these figures evade capture. Chopin’s signifiers can be spoken about, but not without a constant recognition of moves made to undermine them.145 Chopin’s silence about possible meanings has a strategic, creative effect: it augments the suggestive value of his topics; it leaves these topics within reach and beyond our grasp.

The mid-nineteenth-century philosophical context also contributes to Chopin’s

“liveliness.” Writing on the interest in the symbolic mode among Romantic authors and philosophers, Eco notes that for these artists the symbolic mode was equated with mere aesthetic

145 Evaluating the effectiveness of topic theory as a tool becomes an important part of its use.

enjoyment.146 For Hegel, this equation represented an intellectual shortcoming on the part of the

Romantics that led him to distinguish between two types of artistic experience. The symbolic experience is only a first-stage of artistic creativity—a primitive antecedent—where slippage remains between the artistic expression (the signifier) and its significance (the signified). Eco reads Hegel as follows: “in ‘genuine symbolism,’ the forms do not signify themselves; rather, they ‘allude to,’ hint at a wider meaning.”147 Hegel sees this as a weakness of the symbolic artwork, while the complete aesthetic work would overcome this ambiguity to become absolute and self-referential.

If, as Hoeckner notes, Schumann remained ambivalent about extra-musical meaning while still crafting an intimately dialogic aesthetic—“a world beyond the piece, a fading horizon, and a vanishing point”148—Chopin took the tension even further. By maintaining a nearly total silence—written, spoken, programmatic silence—and by writing music with simultaneously suggestive and illusive topics, Chopin seems to hit the romantic nerve and avoid it entirely.

Hegel is accepted but also refuted. Beyond one or another possible meaning, the music becomes about listening, about talking, about subjectivity. Chopin places the game itself precariously on the edge: a world beyond the piece (?), a fading horizon (?), a vanishing point (?). The tension between the symbolic mode and the complete aesthetic artwork is the paradox of Chopin’s

(silent) liveliness.

Seen in this light, Chopin’s “silence” can be reinterpreted. In his time, writing topics in a symbolic mode would increase the openness of musical works, facilitating intermedial

146 Eco, Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language, 142. Hoeckner’s observation comes to mind that Schumann created poetic distance in his writing by moving away from formal analysis towards poetic moments of hermeneutic criticism. See Programming the Absolute, 63–71. 147 Eco, Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language, 142. 148 Hoeckner, Programming the Absolute, 87. See also 71–79.

comparison. Works such as the Polonaise-Fantasy and Third Scherzo resonate with ideas circulating in Chopin’s salon circle, provoking debates that can be framed similarly to those surrounding Balzac’s character Frenhofer. And the conversation around Chopin would allow his compositional style and persona—of semantic silence—to become yet more suggestive. This is not music for a concert hall, where listeners arrive, look across a barrier, and return home.

Rather, it is a salon aesthetic that promotes lively, intimate conversation between listeners, performers, and composer. The result is music that seems immensely hinged on the present moment and in immediate danger of being lost. An answer to Chopin’s signifiers hovers indefinitely in the air, ready to evaporate instantly and yet still remaining. Chopin’s music remains a “contingent mystery.”

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Sound Recording

Chopin, Frédéric. Chopin: 4 Scherzi & 13 Preludes from Op. 28. With Sviatoslav Richter

(piano). Regis, Audio CD, 2006.