Dreams and Intertextuality in Chopin’s A-Minor Prelude

ABSTRACTThis article focuses on a unique relationship that Chopin’s Prelude in A Minor, Op. 28, No. 2 shares with the Lieder of Franz Schubert. Proceeding from the topical analysis of the Prelude, I examine the role of the Parisian salon and the little-known influence of Schubert’s music on Chopin. I then present two songs by Schubert that, I will claim, function as hitherto unnoticed models for his prelude, and demonstrate how Chopin used the “cut and paste” technique to create a representation of a dream. This analytical reading is supported with concepts borrowed from narrativity, performativity, and Romantic interiority. Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 Stanisław Tarnowski, Chopin i Grottger: Dwa szkice [Chopin and Grottger: Two Sketches] (Kraków: Księgarnia Spółki Wydawniczej Polskiej, 1892). Chopin’s experiences are recounted in his so-called Stuttgart diary.2 This dating is not definite. It is based on an interpretation of a date written on the back of a Chopin manuscript that contains a sketch of Prelude in A Minor. See Ludwik Bronarski, Etudes sur Chopin (Lausanne: Editions de la Concorde, 1944); Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger, “Twenty-Four Preludes, Op. 28: Genre, Structure, Significance,” in Chopin Studies, ed. Jim Samson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 167–94; Eigeldinger, “L’achèvement des Préludes, Op. 28 de Chopin: Documents autographes,” Revue de musicologie 75, no. 2 (1989): 229–42; Eigeldinger, Autour des 24 Préludes de Frédéric Chopin (Majorque: Museo Frédéric Chopin y George Sand, Real Cartuja de Valldemossa, 2019), 22; Bengt Edlund, Chopin: The Preludes and Beyond (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2013).3 James Huneker, Chopin: The Man and His Music (New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1900); “Chopin’s Préludes, Op. 28, Analyzed by von Bülow,” trans. Frederick S. Law, The Musician 16 (1911): 88, 137–38; André Gide, Notes on Chopin (New York: Philosophical Library, 1949); Lawrence Kramer, Music as Cultural Practice, 1800–1900 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990), 72–101; Bengt Edlund, Chopin: The Preludes and Beyond (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2013); Robert S. Hatten, “Performing Expressive Closure in Structurally Open Contexts: Chopin’s Prelude in a Minor and the Last Two Dances of Schumann’s Davidsbündlertänze,” Music Theory Online 20, no. 4 (2014), http://www.mtosmt.org/issues/mto.14.20.4/mto.14.20.4.hatten.html; Anatole Leikin, The Mystery of Chopin’s Préludes (Farnham and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2015).4 See Jean Kleczyński, Chopin’s Greater Works (Preludes, Ballads, Nocturnes, Polonaises, Mazurkas): How They Should Be Understood, trans. Natalie Janotha (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, c. 1895), 48; Gide, Notes on Chopin, 46.5 Tarnowski, Chopin i Grottger, 25.6 Law, “Chopin’s Préludes, Op. 28, Analyzed by von Bülow,” 88; Hatten, “Performing Expressive Closure.”7 See Leikin, The Mystery of Chopin’s Préludes; Edlund, Chopin: The Preludes and Beyond. I find the claims about the presence of the Dies Irae in all preludes far-fetched and incongruous with the expressive content of the entire cycle. Nevertheless, Edlund’s book contains an informative critique of various analytical approaches to the Prelude.8 Huneker, Chopin: The Man and His Music, 222.9 Kramer also offers an extensive formal analysis of the Prelude’s syntax. See Kramer, Music as Cultural Practice, 72–101. Ralph Locke has suggested that the Prelude actually constitutes a “possible object”—in other words, one that is “anti-virtuosic” in terms of piano technique employed therein, but also experimental and capable of evoking “complex feelings” and “philosophical depth.” See Locke, “Anti-Virtuosity and Musical Experimentalism: Liszt, Marie Jaëll, Debussy, and Others,” in Liszt and Virtuosity, ed. Robert Doran (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2020), 346–86.10 Rose Rosengard Subotnik, “Romantic Music as Post-Kantian Critique: Classicism, Romanticism, and the Concept of the Semiotic Universe,” in On Criticizing Music: Five Philosophical Perspectives, ed. Kingsley Price (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981), 74–98; Reed J. Hoyt, “Chopin’s Prelude in A Minor Revisited: The Issue of Tonality,” In Theory Only 8, no. 6 (1985): 7–16; Marianne Kielian-Gilbert, “Motive Transfer in Chopin’s A-Minor Prelude,” In Theory Only 9, no. 1 (1986): 21–32; Charles Rosen, The Romantic Generation (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995), 84–86; Leonard B. Meyer, Emotion and Meaning in Music (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956), 76–77; Michael R. Rogers, “Chopin, Prelude in A Minor, Op. 28, No. 2,” 19th Century Music 4, no. 3 (1998): 245–50; Johannes Quint, “Klang in Chopins Prélude Op. 28, Nr. 2,” Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Musiktheorie 3, no. 2 (2006): 209–22.11 Rose Rosengard Subotnik, “On Grounding Chopin,” in Music and Society: The Politics of Composition, Performance, and Reception (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 114.12 Zbigniew Granat, “Chopin and Intertextuality,” in Music: Function and Value: Proceedings of the 11th International Congress on Musical Signification, ed. Teresa Malecka and Małgorzata Pawłowska (Kraków: Akademia Muzyczna, 2013), 2:310–19; Granat, “Chopin the Postmodernist: Redefining Narrativity in Selected Piano Compositions,” in Chopin 1810–2010: Ideas—Interpretations—Influence, ed. Irena Poniatowska and Zofia Chechlińska (Warsaw: The Fryderyk Chopin Institute, 2017), 1:449–58.13 Zbigniew Granat, “Chopin’s Tones, Schubert’s Words: The Secret Program of the A Minor Prelude,” in The Lyric and the Vocal Element in Instrumental Music of the Nineteenth Century, ed. Kamila Stępień-Kutera (Warsaw: The Fryderyk Chopin Institute, 2017), 139–53.14 Robert Schumann, Gesammelte Schriften über Musik und Musiker (Leipzig: Georg Wigand’s Verlag, 1854), vol. 1, https://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Gesammelte_Schriften_über_Musik_und_Musiker (accessed June 9, 2021).15 Carl Czerny, School of Practical Composition, Op. 600, trans. John Bishop (London: Robert Cocks, 1849), 1:99.16 See Małgorzata Grajter, “From Transcription to Topos: ‘Wordless Song’ in the Piano Works of Ludwig van Beethoven and Early Romantics,” 14, https://www.academia.edu/37140686/ (accessed June 14, 2021).17 Numerous writers recognized the song-like features of the A-minor Prelude: Gide, though critical of the work, identified a singing voice in the Prelude’s melody (Notes on Chopin, 46). Rosen heard in the piece “melodic phrases” framed with “interruptions of the accompaniment—traits similar to those found in the Lieder of Chopin’s contemporaries,” including songs by Schubert (The Romantic Generation, 85, 276–78). Hatten associated Chopin’s melody with a “lament” (Hatten, “Performing Expressive Closure”); similarly, Tomaszewski classified the piece as representing the “elegy genre” (Chopin: Człowiek—Dzieło—Rezonans [Chopin: The Man, Work, Impact] [Kraków: Podsiedlik-Ranowski, 2005], 639).18 Carolyn Abbate, Unsung Voices: Opera and Musical Narrative in the Nineteenth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 1–29.19 Example 1 is based on Chopin’s autograph manuscript, reproduced in Fryderyk Chopin, Preludes, Op. 28: Facsimile (Warsaw: The Fryderyk Chopin Institute, 2009). All examples in this article from the Prelude are based on this version of the score.20 Edward T. Cone, The Composer’s Voice (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974).21 John L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962).22 See Margaret Kartomi, “Concepts, Terminology and Methodology in Music Performativity Research,” Musicology Australia 36, no. 2 (2014): 189–208. According to Kartomi, performativity “refers to all the describable and analysable aspects of a performer’s or group’s competence or accomplishment while performing, including the sounds, movements, and gestures that the artist(s) produce.” Kartomi, “Concepts,” 190.23 See, for instance, Arved Ashby, “Tonality as Law, Contravention, Performativity,” TRANS-Revista Transcultural de Música 13 (2009), http://www.sibetrans.com/trans/articulo/46/tonality-as-law-contravention-performativity.24 Ute Berns, “Performativity,” in The Living Handbook of Narratology, ed. Peter Hühn et al. (Hamburg: Hamburg University, created December 19, 2012; revised April 22, 2014), https://www.lhn.uni-hamburg.de/node/31.html.25 J. Peter Burkholder, “Rule-Breaking as a Rhetorical Sign,” in Festa Musicologica: Essays in Honor of George J. Buelow, ed. Thomas J. Mathiesen and Benito V. Rivera (Stuyvesant, NY: Pendragon Press, 1995), 369–89.26 Burkholder borrows this example from Susan McClary, “The Blasphemy of Talking Politics during Bach Year,” in Music and Society: The Politics of Composition, Performance and Reception, ed. Richard Leppert and Susan McClary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 13–62; See also Michael Marissen, The Social and Religious Designs of J. S. Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995).27 Christopher Gibbs, “Beyond Song: Instrumental Transformations and Adaptations of the Lied from Schubert to Mahler,” in The Cambridge Companion to Lied, ed. James Parsons (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 224–28.28 Some notable studies on intertextuality in music include: Robert Hatten, “The Place of Intertextuality in Music Studies,” American Journal of Semiotics 3, no. 4 (1985): 69–70; Raymond Monelle, The Sense of Music: Semiotic Essays (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000); Christopher Alan Reynolds, Motives for Allusion: Context and Content in Nineteenth-Century Music (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003); Michael L. Klein, Intertextuality in Western Art Music (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005); and Ralph P. Locke, Musical Exoticism: Images and Reflections (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).29 Janita R. Hall-Swadley, ed. and trans., The Collected Writings of Franz Liszt (Lanham and Toronto: Scarecrow Press, 2011), 1:130.30 Katharine Ellis, Music Criticism in Nineteenth-Century France: La Revue et Gazette musicale de Paris, 1934–80 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 131–34; David Tunley, Salons, Singers and Songs: A Background to Romantic French Song (Burlington, VT: 2002), 89–101; Xavier Hascher, “Schubert’s Reception in France: A Chronology (1828–1928),” in The Cambridge Companion to Schubert, ed. Christopher Gibbs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 263–66.31 For details, see Peter Clive, Schubert and His World: A Biographical Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 144; also Hascher, “Schubert’s Reception in France,” 264. Each gives a different date for this event.32 Quoted in Frits Noske, French Song from Berlioz to Duparc: The Origin and Development of the Mélodie, 2nd ed. (New York: Dover, 1970), 28.33 J. G. Prod’homme and Frederick H. Martens, “Schubert’s Works in France,” The Musical Quarterly 14, no. 4 (1928): 495–514.34 See Tunley, Salons, Singers and Songs, 92–96, according to whom, Bélanger’s first name is unknown. More information about early translations of Schubert can be found in Edmond Duméril, Lieds et ballades germaniques traduits en vers français: Essai de bibliographie critique (Paris: H. Champion, 1934).35 Helena Hryszczyńska, “Schubert—Nourrit—Chopin,” in Chopin and His Work in the Context of Culture, ed. Irena Poniatowska (Kraków: Polska Akademia Chopinowska, 2003), 1:496–505. The author posited multiple connections between selected works by both composers, such as Schubert’s “Die Post” from Winterreise, D. 911 and Chopin’s song “Wojak” (Soldier); Schubert’s Ave Maria, D. 839 and Chopin’s Prelude in A-flat Major; and Schubert’s the “Wanderer” Fantasy in C Major, D. 760 and the Finale of Chopin’s Sonata No. 1 in C Minor, Op. 4. Other stylistic allusions to Schubert were identified in Chopin’s impromptus, nocturnes, waltzes, and ballades.36 Rita Steblin and Frederick Stocken, “Studying with Sechter: Newly Recovered Reminiscences about Schubert by His Forgotten Friend, the Composer Joseph Lanz,” Music and Letters 88, no. 2 (2007): 226–65; see esp. p. 232.37 This implies that Chopin would bring the scores of Schubert with him. See Michael Short, ed. and trans., The Liszt-D’Agoult Correspondence: English Translations and Commentaries (Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon Press, 2013), 5.38 This was the Grande marche funèbre for piano, four hands in C Minor (on the death of Alexander I of Russia), D. 859 (Op. 55). This account comes from Wenzel, as reported by Niecks. See Frederick Niecks, Frederick Chopin as Man and Musician (London and New York: Novello, Ewer, and Co., 1888), 1:290.39 Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger, Chopin: Pianist and Teacher as Seen by His Pupils (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986).40 Hascher, “Schubert’s Reception in France,” 264.41 Hall-Swadley, The Collected Writings of Franz Liszt, 137.42 Quoted in Chopin’s Polish Letters, trans. David Frick (Warsaw: The Fryderyk Chopin Institute, 2016), 269.43 Józef Brzowski, Z dziennika [From a Diary], quoted in Adam Czartkowski and Zofia Jeżewska, Fryderyk Chopin (Warszawa: Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy and Narodowy Instytut Fryderyka Chopina, 2013), 180.44 Quoted in Niecks, Frederick Chopin as Man and Musician, 2:290.45 This, and all other translations in this article, are my own unless otherwise indicated. For details regarding Schubert’s alterations to the poetic text, see Susan Youens, Schubert’s Late Lieder: Beyond the Song-Cycles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 83–92.46 My discussion of the French version of Nacht und Träume is based on the following edition: 40 Mélodies de Fr. Schubert Avec accompag.t de Piano, Paroles françaises de Belanger. Extraites de la Collection complete (Paris: S. Richault, [18–]). For details on Richault’s publications of Schubert’s songs see Tunley, Salons, Singers and Songs, 93–96, 231; also Prod'homme and Martens, “Schubert's Works in France,” 495-514.47 Quoted after Tunley, Salons, Singers and Songs, 89.48 My choice to rely on the original German songs will be made clear in the section devoted to “Der Wanderer” below.49 James Porter defines the lullaby as a “vocal piece designed to lull a child to sleep with repeated formulae.” Porter, “Lullaby,” Grove Music Online, 2001, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic (accessed March 1, 2022). A rocking and repetitive accompaniment, harmonic stasis, and soothing, often formulaic melodic phrases are common traits of both vocal and instrumental lullabies. Well-known Lieder representing the genre include Schubert’s “Des Baches Wiegenlied” from Die schöne Müllerin, D. 795 and “Wiegenlied,” D. 867 (Op. 105, No. 2) as well as Brahms’s “Wiegenlied” Op. 49, No. 4. Character pieces belonging to this category include Chopin’s own Berceuse in D flat Major, Op. 57, which, with its 6/8 meter, alludes to the pastoral topic, and Liszt’s Berceuse, S. 174.50 Gibbs, “Beyond Song,” 228.51 Gide, Notes on Chopin, 43.52 Ibid., 44.53 Edouard Ganche, letter to André Gide, printed in Gide, Notes on Chopin, 124.54 Law, “Chopin’s Préludes, Op. 28, Analyzed by von Bülow,” 88. Similarly, Vladimir Stasow wrote that “Preludes 2 and 15, with their ringing of bells, portray a Spanish monastery, with its cloister garden and a procession of monks.” See Stasov, Iskusstvo XIX veka [Nineteenth-Century Art] (Moscow: Muzyka, 1980); quoted in Chopin and His Critics: An Anthology (up to World War I), ed. Irena Poniatowska (Warsaw: The Fryderyk Chopin Institute, 2011), 184. Raul Koczalski heard the piece as “a lament imbued with resignation, echoed by the sullen tones of the mourning bell.” See Koczalski, Fryderyk Chopin: Wskazówki Interpretacyjne [Fryderyk Chopin: Suggestions for Interpretation] (Warsaw: The Fryderyk Chopin Institute, 2020), 167. Leikin endorsed the same reading in his The Mystery of Chopin’s Préludes, 77–78. It is important to add that Chopin most likely composed his Prelude on a Pleyel piano, which the composer once described as having a tone that carries “like little bells on a giraffe.” The latter term refers to a type of vertical piano that frequently had a register of bells attached to it. See Eigeldinger, “Chopin and Pleyel,” Early Music 29, no. 3 (2001): 388–96; esp. 289–390.55 For a detailed study of bell sounds in nineteenth-century France, see Alain Corbin, Village Bells: Sound and Meaning in the 19th Century French Countryside, trans. Martin Thom (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998).56 See Gibbs, “Introduction: The Elusive Schubert,” in The Cambridge Companion to Schubert, 10. Also, John Reed, The Schubert Song Companion (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997), 138.57 Le voyageur appeared in 40 Mélodies de Fr. Schubert (see footnote 46). Nacht und Träume and Der Wanderer had consecutive numbers in Richault’s catalog: 3322 and 3323, respectively. See Tunley, Salons, Singers and Songs, 89–101 and 230–31.58 Francois Schubert. Le voyageur. Collection des Lieder de Schubert, Traduction nouvelle par M. Emile Deschamps (Paris: Maurice Schlesinger, [18–]).59 Numerous writers recognized the funeral march motive in this Prelude. See, for instance, Jim Samson, “Chopin Reception: Theory, History, Analysis,” in John Rink and Jim Samson, Chopin Studies 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 14; Hatten, “Performing Expressive Closure”; Leikin, The Mystery of Chopin’s Préludes, 75–77. Chopin’s recasting of an upbeat march as a funeral march may remind us of his powerful transformation of Schubert’s Die Gestirne, which he played at Nourrit’s funeral.60 Cone, The Composer’s Voice, 12–19.61 Halina Goldberg, “Chopin’s Oneiric Soundscapes and the Role of Dreams in Romantic Culture,” in Chopin and His World, ed. Jonathan Bellman and Halina Goldberg (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017), 16–42.62 Ibid., 20–21.63 The chain-like linking of the two motives has been noted by Charles Rosen. See Rosen, The Romantic Generation, 85–86.64 Schumann’s song “Ich hab’ im Traum geweinet” from his song cycle Dichterliebe parallels in many ways Chopin’s strategies for dream depiction. The poignancy of three nightmares experienced by Schumann’s protagonist depends in a large measure on the juxtaposition of motives and gestures borrowed from two earlier songs in the cycle: “Aus meinen Tränen sprießen” and “Wenn ich in deine Augen seh.” It appears that for both composers, mixing at least two existing songs is key to creating a convincing representation of a dream state.65 Cone, The Composer’s Voice, 84–94. In Seth Monahan’s revision of Cone’s model, the “complete persona” became the “fictional composer.” See Monahan, “Action and Agency Revisited,” Journal of Music Theory 57, no. 2 (2013): 321–71.66 Examples of dream representations in the music from Chopin’s time include, besides Schubert’s Nacht und Träume, his “Frühlingstraum” from Winterreise; Schumann’s “Ich hab’ im Traum geweinet” from Dichterliebe and his “Träumerei” from Kinderszenen; Liszt’s Liebesträume; and Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique. One twentieth-century piece—George Crumb’s Dream Images (Love-Death Music) from Chopin’s in Op. to a See for Richard and in The Living Handbook of Narratology, Abbate, Unsung analytical a between the and the to the of other potential In Monahan’s of and for instance, two be to persona” and but he also to Cone’s “complete is from This is are that the in to often with critical or In this Cone’s model, in which the between the composer and the In be to remind the that was the first to the as the voice of the or his or to a See Cone, The Composer’s Voice, 3, My of the is designed to that analytical works well in with Cone’s in to which is the author to Prelude in A is a which Chopin wrote in the of According to an Chopin to de his to a See of John Chopin: The Piano Concertos in Polish Music Journal 3, no. 1 (accessed April 15, Polish composer to recognized Chopin’s of A and to in his No. 3 of See (Oxford: University Press, 1997), this be in I will a study of Chopin’s in a Susan offers a analytical reading of Nacht und the harmonic as based on two which as the and and which with the (see Youens, Schubert’s Late In my reading of the Schubert’s features three that of the poetic in which the first is to the and In the the to the in their the harmonic and and C the The that from an a of to the of the and the to the of is not a representation of the as but of the to the for the and to In the the between and on to the is the between and the in the Schubert gives the a of the while of the of The the the with the which back to the of the of the the original motive in Schubert’s Nacht und See Hatten, “Performing Expressive a similar in a section of Chopin’s in Minor, Op. 15, No. 3, which he in the of Polish Romantic See “The of Chopin’s in Music no. 3 The is the C in Chopin, which the C in Burkholder, 19th Music Online, March Edward Cone, of instrumental of vocal the song is a its melody is clear to and can the with an See Cone, The Composer’s Voice, “The of See Hascher, “Schubert’s Reception in France,”

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