Frédéric Chopin (1810–1849)
Nocturne in C minor, Op. 48, No. 1 (1841)

He might seem like the ur-Romantic composer, but Frédéric Chopin didn’t like Romanticism. He thought of himself as an heir to the Classical tradition and shunned the extra-musical associations so popular with his contemporaries. You will look in vain for a Chopin composition titled “In the garden” or “By a mountain brook.”

Even the label “nocturne” is misleading, and only jejeune populist commentary associates it exclusively with the night. Romantic titles such as “nocturne,” “prelude,” “album leaf,” or “impromptu” mean very little in and of themselves and serve mostly as flavorful stand-ins for the bland Klavierstücke, or “piano piece.” Irish pianist-composer John Field is generally credited with the origination of the term “nocturne,” via eponymous pieces that were celebrated for their evocation of mood without recourse to a specific program. Inspired by Field, Chopin created an epochal series of nocturnes that offer a wide spectrum of affects and moods, from blazing heroism to, yes, night-like shades.

Nowhere is Chopin’s startling harmonic originality in greater relief than in the Nocturne in C minor, Op. 48, No. 1. It’s sobering to consider that 1841, the year of its composition, is a mere 14 years after Beethoven’s death, but what a world of difference distinguishes the evolved homophonic grammar of the late Viennese Classical from the sonic polychromaticism of this, in turn, operatic, dramatic, rhapsodic, and ecstatic composition. Grown from the seed of a deceptively modest syncopated melody—it is said that Chopin once spent an hour coaching a student to play the first phrase—it progresses on to a liquescent middle section in major mode before restating its opening materials in a richly consummated peroration.

Robert Schumann (1810–1856)
Waldszenen, Op. 82 (1849)

Into the woods: since antiquity European culture has maintained a strong connection to the forest as an idealized realm and a primal source of spiritual essence. Consider Shakespeare’s forest of Arden in As You Like It or its cousins in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Two Gentlemen of Verona. The Germans, ever partial to forest idylls, refer to Waldeinsamkeit, alone time in the woods. It’s not a coincidence that the first Ger­man Romantic opera, Carl Maria von Weber’s Der Freischütz, takes place in a forest with all its allure, magic, and dark mystery.

Robert Schumann was at his best when channeling his surging emotional currents through his compositions, and nowhere does he do that more than in his works for solo piano. Personal, intimate, and confessional, they can seem well-nigh autobiographical or even psychotherapeutic. In the Waldszenen of 1849, Schumann allowed his imagination free rein in a series of contemplations about the woods as metaphor for our internal selves and our relationship with the larger world. The individual pieces may be short and made up of thematic fragments, but they pack a bevy of associations and resonances. This is no humdrum foray into the woods, in other words: it is a journey into the psyche, comforting and beautiful on the one hand, unknowable and mysterious on the other.

The nine Waldszenen, written over a mere three days, explore Romantic forest symbolism at its most evocative while often edging into chaotic disruptions, formal ambiguities, and seeming non-sequiturs. At first, all is peaceful with “Eintritt” (“Entry”), our first steps into the wood characterized by soothing harmonies and engaging melodies. But we’re not alone: “Jäger auf der Lauer” (“Hunters Lying in Wait”) pursue their prey with noisy enthusiasm. After all that excitement, a pair of flower pieces: “Einsame Blumen” (“Lonely Flowers”), disarmingly simple and yet occasionally jarred by fleeting wrong-note dissonances, followed by “Verrufene Stelle” (“Haunted Places”), in which we enter the realm of the Gothic via a poem by Friedrich Hebbel describing a dark red flower that takes its color not from the sun, but from the earth “which drank human blood.” Nota bene: Clara Schumann refused to play “Verrufene Stelle” in public, finding it just too grim.

The darkness is dispelled soon in “Freund­liche Landschaft” (“Friendly Landscape”), chummy and roly-poly, its aura of well-being only intensified by the well-cushioned coziness of “Herberge” (“Wayside Inn”).

“Vogel als Prophet” (“Bird as Prophet”) encapsulates the essence of Schumann’s thoughts. To describe it as a mere imitation of birdsong (although Schumann does a pretty good job with that) is to ignore the apparent discongruity of the middle section, a gravely lovely chorale-like affair reminiscent of the lyric musings of Dichterliebe. Thus human consciousness is juxtaposed with a flittering aural fantasy, shunning both explanation and justification.

Apparently those hunters from the second piece had a good day, given their hunting song “Jagdlied,” all hail-fellow-well-met jollity and ruddy good cheer. Then it’s time to say farewell (“Abschied”) to the woods, hopefully renewed and reinvigorated by the experience, but perhaps a bit reluctant to return to the “real” world after the woodland realm’s enchantment.

Johannes Brahms
Theme and Variations in D minor, Op. 18b

Unlike most late Romantic composers, Johan­nes Brahms sustained a lifelong connection to his musical heritage. Thoroughly versed in the achievements of his predecessors, Brahms strove to cultivate a contemporary musical language while basing his practices on the solid foundation established by composers such as Palestrina, Bach, and—needless to say—that Titan of the immediate past, Beethoven.

Thus it makes sense that Brahms would ponder the nature and role of variations, not only in his own output but also in works by his colleagues. He had nothing but scorn for the facile embellishment practiced by fashionable salon pianist-composers such as Henri Herz or Sigis­mond Thalberg, whose variations were little more than sprayed-on musical glitter. After intensive study of such momentous works as Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations, Brahms wrote his close friend Joseph Joachim that “From time to time I reflect on variation form and find that it should be kept stricter, purer…With Bee­thoven the melody, harmony, and rhythm are so beautifully varied. I sometimes find, however, that the Moderns (both of us!) more often…worry the theme. We anxiously retain the entire melody, but we don’t manipulate it freely. We don’t really create anything new out of it; on the contrary, we only burden it.”

Variations, or variation movements, feature in Brahms’ output from his earliest piano sonatas to the autumnal clarinet works of the 1890s. Following a period of evolution and growth during the 1850s, the second movement of the String Sextet in B-flat major, Op. 18 of 1860 marks Brahms’ coming of age as a variation writer. A solemn nobility characterizes the theme and its subsequent treatment that scrupulously retains the overall architecture of the melody, including its repeats. Such superficial rigidity can, in lesser hands, result in tedium, but the sheer richness of Brahms’ transformations and the rhetorical arc of their placement—the most dynamic variations come in the middle—transcend any such concerns.

Brahms’ friend-muse-interpreter Clara Schu­mann loved the Sextet and requested a transcription of the variation movement for solo piano. Brahms came through with the Theme and Variations in D minor, Op. 18b for her birthday on September 13, 1860. Brahms remained faithful to his original, adjusting what had to be adjusted to conform to a pianist’s anatomy, but nevertheless creating a fully effective piano composition and not a mere “short score” of the Sextet. For whatever reason, Brahms did not publish the transcription during his lifetime, although he thought quite highly of it. The Variations had to wait until 1927 to reach print, and even today the work dwells in the corners of Brahms’ catalog, overshadowed by its chamber original.

Franz Schubert (1797–1828)
Piano Sonata in A major, D. 959 (1828)

On the face of it, Franz Schubert’s letter to the publisher Probst on October 2, 1828 reads as a humdrum business proposal from a composer seeking a sale: “I have composed, among other things, 3 sonatas for Pf. Solo, which I should like to dedicate to Hummel…I have played the sonatas in several places with much applause.…If any of these compositions would perhaps suit you, let me know.” But read in context, the letter is shattering. Not only did Schubert have only six weeks left to live, but he was offering Probst three supreme masterpieces of piano literature, no doubt for whatever modest fee might be offered. Schubert’s sales pitch got him nowhere, and the three sonatas languished in manuscript until 1838, when Dia­belli (whose little waltz tune had been the basis for Beethoven’s eponymous variations) brought them out with a dedication to Robert Schumann.

That was 10 years after Schubert’s death at the tender age of 31. He might have been infected with what was probably syphilis as early as November 1822, and despite occasional modest improvements, his health declined inexorably as the disease ran its terrible course. By the summer of 1828 he was desperately ill. The end came on November 19.

Yet up until the very final stages he was ablaze with creative energy. As astounding as it seems, the last three piano sonatas are products of that disease-wracked summer of 1828. All three carry a date of September 1828, although he had probably begun sketches several months earlier.

Each sonata is a world unto itself. While the first, in C minor, is turbulent and the third, in B-flat major, is magisterial, the middle Piano Sonata in A major, D. 959, is spun of warm lyricism and engaging charm. That isn’t perhaps immediately apparent at the onset, given the declamatory nature of the primary theme, its stentorian repeated A-naturals in the soprano given rich life by inner voices imparting constant harmonic variety. The secondary theme partakes of that same tendency to glue itself to a single soprano note, albeit with less tenacity. There is no clear-cut closing theme; instead a modified statement of the secondary theme brings the exposition to a serene close.

The development presents a marvelous aural illusion: it might sound entirely new, but its materials had already appeared as a brief throwaway variation on the secondary theme. Now that throwaway variation steals the show as the most immediately recognizable of the development’s melodic materials. The reprise arrives with a brilliant fortissimo statement of the primary theme, and after a fairly straightforward recapitulation the coda first liquifies the primary theme then evaporates it, ending the movement in a shimmering haze of A-major arpeggios.

The Andantino second movement’s main theme could easily pass as one of Mendelssohn’s signature Venetian gondola songs, so strongly does it partake of the rocking rhythm of the barcarolle. The third-place Scherzo is whimsical, jolly, effervescent, and insouciant. That sort of thing can turn saccharine in a heartbeat, but Schubert sidesteps kitsch via bracing flashes of irritability. The Trio, marked Un poco più lento (a little bit slower), just might refer slyly back to the primary theme of the first movement.

Schubert biographer Brian Newbould claims that “the bald facts about Schubert’s finale read like a recipe for third-rate art.” He points out that Schubert borrowed the theme from an earlier work and modeled his layout on the finale of a Beethoven piano sonata. But Schubert’s inexhaustible invention easily surmounts such puny concerns: “The musical impression is, on the contrary, of fresh-minted inspiration carving out its own natural path as it goes.” The Allegretto is an altogether entrancing creation that flows along with gracious amiability. It could have simply burbled itself away to a peaceful conclusion, but a sudden fortissimo reference back to the sonata’s very beginning makes for an ending that blends surprise with radiance.

—Scott Foglesong