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Chopin's Introvert Paradox: Ambiguous Topics, Liminal

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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 by 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. ii 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 iv 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 v 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. 1 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 2 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. 3 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.
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