A gentle tolling, six steady-paced silken G's - mere octaves - almost anchorless, glide from out a pearly stillness to open the narrative, a tale of three brothers - "The Three Budrys" - who are sent to distant lands in search of treasures both rich and rare, but to return admidst "whiling snowstorms", each with a bride.
Every aspect of technique explored and developed by Chopin in his two sets of etudes makes for this music's measures.
The actual "interior" melody of this Ballade is propelled by a disonance - that of held notes against subtle and changing harmonies.
It is a melody which has, as James Huneker wrote, "the elusive charm of a slow mournful waltz", but what follows is an eruption of almost fiery residue, which leads us to a contrapuntal section incorporating the principle melody with other voices in threnodic vitality beneath it. Such a delineation as this would surely affirm that Chopin's development came about not through an expansion of his ideas, but moreso through the refinement of his craft, and such refinement can only come about through an inward journey - that certain aloneness so evident within these pages - that private pleasure, as was experienced by Chopin.
For James Huneker, the Ballade in F minor was something of a haven. It is for me too. He ranked it with some of the greatest works of art and literature: "Its inaccessible position preserves it from rude and irreverent treatment; it is a masterpiece in piano literature, as the Mona Lisa and Madame Bovary are masterpieces in painting and prose."
What if she, the Mona Lisa had, actually lived in the nineteenth century, and heard our composer perform his Ballade in F minor!Perhaps her smile - that centuries old enigma, would not be quite the mystery it has become.
PHILLIP WILCHER
April 2002
(Article originally published by Music Teacher Magazine)
