Children, of
course, do not know this. And Chopin himself would have been
much too noble ever to lay bare his mental sickness to the
world. And his greatness lies precisely in this: that he
preserves the mean between immaturity and decay. His greatness
is his aristocracy. He stands among musicians in his faultless
vesture, a noble from head to foot. The sublimest emotions
toward whose refinement whole genrations had tended, the last
things in our soul, whose foreboding is interwoven with the
mystery of Judgment Day, have in his music found their form.
Further on I shall attempt--I write the word with a patibulary
gesture--in a sort of a Chopin variorum, to analyze the salient
aspects, technical and aesthetic, of his music. To translate into
prose, into any language no matter how poetical, the images
aroused by his music, is impossible. I am forced to employ the
technical terminology of other arts, but against my judgment.
Read Mr. W. F. Apthorp's disheartening dictum in "By the Way."
"The entrancing phantasmagoria of picture and incident which we
think we see rising from the billowing sea of music is in reality
nothing more than an enchanting fata morgana, visible at no other
angle than that of our own eye.
Pages:
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134