It is also the
last phrase. But what of that? I, too, can build you a programme
as lofty or lowly as you please, but it will not be Chopin's.
Niecks, for example, finds this very dance bleak and joyless, of
intimate emotional experience, and with "jarring tones that
strike in and pitilessly wake the dreamer." So there is no
predicating the content of music except in a general way; the
mood key may be struck, but in Chopin's case this is by no means
infallible. If I write with confidence it is that begot of
desperation, for I know full well that my version of the story
will not be yours. The A minor Mazurka for me is full of hectic
despair, whatever that may mean, and its serpentining chromatics
and apparently suspended close--on the chord of the sixth--gives
an impression of morbid irresolution modulating into a sort of
desperate gayety. Its tonality accounts for the moods evoked,
being indeterminate and restless.
Opus 24 begins with the G minor Mazurka, a favorite because of
its comparative freedom from technical difficulties. Although in
the minor mode there is mental strength in the piece, with its
exotic scale of the augmented second, and its trio is hearty.
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