With a violent age’s countless murky distractions, This vivid contrast of emotions at the root of Chopin’s scherzos seems to be reflected in the schizoid universe of Paul Verlaine’s prologue to his Saturnine Poems:Īnd some have, found it dire, this divorceĪction, which once tuned lyres to their songs, In repeating this carol six times, against the background of a virtually motionless bass, Chopin indulges in nostalgic reverie and goes some way towards exorcising the spectres of madness which haunt the opening.
Then, in the second section, the composer takes comfort in recalling the feast of Christmas, when the the birth of the Nazarene exile in Bethlehem is celebrated: one can hear the evocation, in B major, of a Polish carol, the lullaby “Sleep little Jesus, sleep little one, sleep”. The first scherzo opens with two held chords whose contrasting registers set up an acute tension, the prelude to a mad dash towards the abyss: impossible not to sense here the rebellious fury of the powerless exile imagining his family and his beloved Constance victims of the military terror. According to the biographer Tadeusz Zielinski, it is these sorrowful circumstances that kindled the spark of the Scherzo in B minor, as well as inspiring the two other minor-key scherzos. Parted from his family from the age of twenty, Chopin, however, has greater reason than the poet for suffering in the grip of desperate loneliness in a conservative Vienna, where the aristocracy knows nothing of him and shamelessly applauds Tsarist Russia’s brutal repression of his unfortunate, rebellious homeland, Poland. The need which at my birth a Demon imparted –įor Pain, to create true voluptuousness, to drawīlood from one’s suffering and scratch the sore. In this letter written from Vienna, Chopin recounts how he spent Christmas night of 1830 to his close relations, of whom he has no news does it not foreshadow the frame of mind of Charles Baudelaire 15 years later?Īnd facing the mirror I have practised the savage art, A doleful harmony arose within me… I felt my solitude more acutely than ever – I quenched my thirst rapturously of the spring of feelings that welled up for me from that imposing sight. The only thing lacking was one above my head. Not out of devoutness, but in order to contemplate that huge nave at such a time of night, I stood still at the foot of a Gothic pillar in the darkest spot… The silence was intense Behind me, a tomb underfoot, a tomb. When I reached it, there was no one still about. I went alone at midnight, walking slowly, to St Stephen’s cathedral.
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