By this time, Chopin's relationship with Madame George Sand had begun to deteriorate. Her new novel had appeared - 'Lucrezia Floriani', in which her character, Prince Karol de Roswald, morbidly Chopinesque, is nursed back to health by the actess Floriani, but love proves merely an illusion.
Allart to Saint-Beuve, May 16, 1847:
'I am indignant about Lucrezia...Sand...shows us a Chopin in most ignoble details, undressed as it were, and, with a coldness which nothing can justify.'
The year 1846 would also see Chopin's last summer at Nohant - the Summer during which he composed the three mazurkas comprising his Op. 59, the Polonaise-Fantasie in Ab, the two Nocturnes Op. 62 and the Barcarolle in F# major Op.60, this latter work dedicated to Mme.La Baronne de Stockhausen.
What is a barcarolle? It is a type of boatsong derived from the songs of the Venetian Gondoliers - barca -boat; barcaremi - rowboat; barcaiola - boatmen.
Here we have Chopin in Italy, assuaged by the radiant tides of some strange, mysterious happiness. The ripple of blue-green water as boats move across the canals - an island in the distance, perhaps Santa Elena - a shadowy facade extending, brick towers noble beyond a draw-bridge. This is the very essence of Canaletto, luminous and real.
Maurice Ravel has approached the question of Chopin's Italianism,(even as evident as early as the E minor concerto), in the Barcarolle:
"This lyrical outpourring appears rather like a melodic amplification similar to the lyrical outbursts which exalt the vocal phrase at certain moments of passion in operatic scenes - a magnificent lyricism, entirely Italian."
One could certainly say that the theme immediately following the opening measures was conceived vocally - a melody which Kullak says should be 'graceful and fragrant in delivery.' Alan Walker says much the same: 'one feels through the piece that vocal music is its basis.'
'A work steeped in joy' wrote Andre Gide, in whose journal can be found the following entry dated June 3rd, 1921:
'Returned to Chopin's Barcarolle which is not so difficult to play more quickly as I had thought and I'm getting there ( I let myself be far too intimidated by the character, all emtoion, all languor; and that above all is what is expressed in this admirable work: the languor in excessive joy.)"
Eighteen years after the composition of the Barcarolle, the English poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins penned the following lines in a small poem entitled Heaven-Haven:
"....and I have asked to be
where no storms comes,
Where the green swell is in the haven's dumb,
And out of the swing of the sea."
Fitting words to be sure! Throughout his journals, Hopkins frequently wrote of what he called 'inscape':
"All the world is inscape. I thought how sadly the beauty of inscape was unknown and buried away from simple people and yet how near at hand it was if they had eyes to see it."
Hopkins eventually applied the term to works of art in general, believing inscape to be 'the very soul of art.'
Of his own poetry he wrote:
"As air, melody is what strikes me most of all in music and design in painting, so design, pattern, or what I am in the habit of calling 'inscape' is what I above all aim at in poetry."
Sir Charles Halle once heard Chopin play his Barcarolle in Paris. This was at the composer's last public appearance, when his energies through illness wrre waning:
"He played it from the point where it demands the utmost energy, in the opposite style "pianissimo", but with such wonderful nuances that one remained in doubt if this new rendering were not preferable to the accustomed one."
...."with such wonderful nuances"....and I too now think how sadly the beauty of inscape is unknown and buried away from simple people but yet how near at hand it is if only they have ears to hear it.
PHILLIP WILCHER
