Rubinstein calls
Chopin the exhalation of the third epoch in art. He certainly
closed one. With a less strong rhythmic impulse and formal sense
Chopin's music would have degenerated into mere overperfumed
impressionism. The French piano school of his day, indeed of
today, is entirely drowned by its devotion to cold decoration, to
unemotional ornamentation. Mannerisms he had--what great artist
has not?--but the Greek in him, as in Heine, kept him from
formlessness. He is seldom a landscapist, but he can handle his
brush deftly before nature if he must. He paints atmosphere, the
open air at eventide, with consummate skill, and for playing
fantastic tricks on your nerves in the depiction of the
superhuman he has a peculiar faculty. Remember that in Chopin's
early days the Byronic pose, the grandiose and the horrible
prevailed--witness the pictures of Ingres and Delacroix--and
Richter wrote with his heart-strings saturated in moonshine and
tears. Chopin did not altogether escape the artistic vices of his
generation. As a man he was a bit of poseur--the little whisker
grown on one side of his face, the side which he turned to his
audience, is a note of foppery--but was ever a detester of the
sham-artistic.
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