two late forms of chopin

[pianonut]

does anyone know more about the polonaise-fantasy and the last mazurka that chopin wrote?  ie. has anyone played it, or analyzed it?  the reason i am asking is (yes, i was in the library again) i found a journal article but i didn't have change to copy the article and (if no-one volunteers), i'll go back and copy the article and post a few things about these newer forms.

[Ziggy]

I've played the polonaise. What do you want to know about it? I have a recording I can post if I'm not too lazy...

[pianonut]

what is the form of a polonaise-fantasy?  how would you describe the combination.  and what makes chopin's last mazurka different than the ones that came before?

[jas]

What was the article and what journal was it in? I might be able to get my sticky hands on an online copy.

Jas

[pianonut]

i think it was journal of music and musicians (or something like that)

[jas]

That's not one of the ones I have access to. Sorry! And I couldn't offer anything useful on the two pieces you're asking about. (Just to be even more useful!)

Jas

[pianonut]

was wrong about the journal.  it is 'journal of the american musicological society' summer 1985, #2

"chopin's first published piece was a polonaise...(ternary form: polonaise-trio-polonaise)...toward the end of the middle years of his maturity, however, chopin began to probe for ways to modify both the simple ternary design of the genre and the functional qualities."  he first had the idea of a polonaise-fantasy with op.44, but it was later dropped.  (the trio contains two distinct parts) in the op.53 the middle section divides into three distinct segments. 

in the op. 61, chopin took deliberate steps to blur any sense of ternary design in the whole of the piece.  chopin was prolonging and enhancing instability in the phrase design, harmony, and form.  that's what i found out.

then there was another of the same journal with an article about linear analysis (taking schenker a step farther).  it looked good to analyze pieces like this polonaise-fantasy.  other analysis seem so laborious - and linear is sometimes easier understood.

[pianonut]

whew!  classes are over and i am reorganizing my xeroxed papers.  i happened to come across this one again and it is very interesting in light of a sort of comparison between the last years of beethoven's composition and the last years of chopin's.  ok.  here is a bit more (in my words and quoted) from the article above:

a number of stylistic features became apparent in chopin's late style.  one was his interest in counterpoint.  "he began exploring elementary counterpoint treatises by cherubini and kastner. stylistic elements present since his early maturity took on different significance.  ornamentation, always central to chopin's melodic style, was applied with greater restraint, often to articulate moments of structural importance."  this was one of the changes he made.  another was:  aesthetic renewal.

aesthetic renewal meant 'new artistic methods' (like beethoven's 'new way' after discovering he was going deaf and had no cure in sight).  the artistic methods were a contrast of vision and revision.  he hit upon the title 'polonaise-fantasy.'  the fantasy (free fantasy) "had long been marked by its deviations from ordinary conventions of composition...chopin clearly meant to invoke the free kind, not the species based on a tune borrowed from an opera ..."  chopin wrote only one fantasy (Op. 49 in f minor) and since that does not constitute a 'tradition' we can look at the genre as a whole. 

as with beethoven, he starts adding lengthy introductions using melodic motives found later in the piece in the op. 49.  this is "forged more patently in op. 61."  the structural elements seem to now be (in op. 61) a lengthy intro. that shows subtle connections to the following material and a section placed near the middle of the piece that contrasts sharply in key, tempo, and mood with the surrounding music.   

chopin started creating 'generic hybrids.'  he did not call it a mazurka-fantasy, nocturne-fantasy, or waltz-fantasy, though.  "none of these genres shares these two formal attributes with the fantasy.  he chose instead to graft together two genres with significant archetypal similarities; it is as though, by analogy to the biological process, he felt that this kind of fundamental link was necessary for the graft to take."

[pianonut]

ps  i have not played this piece, but am gradually coming to appreciate chopin more (used to only focus on beethoven).  feel free to add anything you wish to these observations.

some more similarities between beethoven and chopin's late styles is that they both explored tonality without losing it.  "chopin tends to explore many keys in each formal unit, yet the overall impression is of relative harmonic stability...in both genres, he had struggled with ways of shaping larger units of unstable and stable material into a coherent whole.  although he clearly wished instability to play a more significant part in his last two polonaises and the fantasy than it had in his earlier works, he did not yet allow it a governing formal role (which he did in the op. 61)."  this reminds me of the late beethoven sonatas (and the other thread about what makes them unique or deep). 

also, with chopin and beethoven, they started sketching a lot more!  it is as if they wanted people to see the process of composition.  how very cool.  we can now go and look at the sketchbooks of beethoven and chopin and see what is actually included in the music and what has been left out.

[ted]

That's interesting, Pianonut. The more I read posts on forums the less I seem to know about piano music. I never realised those people thought that deeply about what they were doing.

[pianonut]

yes.  i sort of thought the same of chopin especially.  i thought music just flowed out of him, and he wrote it down.  now, i see that he did think deeply about the growth process and not being 'stagnant' and doing the same things over and over.  haydn stretched his composition techniques with the oratorio this way.  the princes of the time determined that symphonies, quartets, masses, church music, etc. were what they needed, so he was never asked (commissioned) to write an oratorio.  so, at the end of his life, when he had more free time (and after a trip to london) he took as much time as he needed (2 years) to write something in a new style (oratorio) which ended up being 'the creation.'  similarly, beethoven came up with his 9th symphony combining the symphony with large choral at the end.  this combination of forms seems to be a pattern for these composers.