The great Anton Rubinstein saw within the swarthy majesty of this dispirited and troubled Allegro, the funereal spectres of a martyred race, downfallen and fretful.
"He seems to review the different aspects of his country's unhappy state" wrote Niecks, who saw in the shadows of this sullen-strung effigy the mind of its composer flailed by one depressing thought - a la mort - after another, perhaps a rendering, if you will, of words penned seven years earlier by the then twenty-one year old Chopin.
"The bed I go to - perhaps corpses have lain on it, lain long - yet today that does not sicken me. Is a corpse any worse than I? A corpse knows nothing of father, of mother, or sisters, of Titus; a corpse has no beloved, its tongue can hold no converse with those who surround it - a corpse is as colourless as I, as cold, as I am cold to everything now..."
It begins with a stifled pulse - a throb of evenly spaced chords, poignantly expressive, at first heard sotto voce 'neath which an enigmaticly legato phrase canvasses the composer's deep resounding dole.
"The clocks in the towers of Stuttgart strike the hours of night. How many new corpses is this minute making in the world?"
The distress of it all is no maore tautly articulated than at bar 7 and thereafter, where the inner notes of the chords of the right hand - as if of that region where one's soul is not quite in tune with itself - wind searchingly through the mortally melodic fears of the left:
"Father! Mother! Where are you? Corpses? Perhaps some Russian has played tricks - of wait - wait - but tears - they have not yet flowed for so long - oh, so long, so long I could not weep - how gald - how wretched - glad and wretched - if I'm wretched I can't be glad - and yet it is sweet - this is a strange state - but that is so with a corpse: it's well and not well at the same moment.It is transferred to a happier life and is glad, it regrets the life it is leaving and is sad. It must feel as I felt when I left off weeping."
"A noble, troubled composition, large in accents and deeply felt" wrote James Huneker. "The trio in Ab with its kaleidoscopic modulations produces an impression of vague unrest and suppressed sorrow. There is loftiness of spirit and daring in it."
From the outset, the polonaise was of cardinal importance in Chopin's formative years as a composer, and together with the mazurkas, hallmark the exclusivity and pivotal urgings of his creative life.
To Liszt, the polonaise was a dance designed to "draw attention to the men and gain admiration for their beauty, their fine arts, their martial and courteous appearance." Indeed, the seven more mature examples of polonaise penned during the composer's Paris years have almost canonized his crest-fallen country, ranking them amongst the most galvanic examples of Chopin's valiancy and nerve.
PHILLIP WILCHER
September 2002
(Article published by Music Teacher Magazine)
