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Genres.
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From 1839 until the break with George Sand, Chopin composed mainly during the summer months at Nohant. Much of the music from this period was produced in the tranquility of this setting, and it is no doubt significant that for the one year he stayed in Paris (1840) his output was exiguous – really only the Waltz op.42 and the Trois nouvelles é tudes, commissioned by Moscheles for the second volume of his (and Fé tis's) Mé thode des mé thodes. In general Chopin worked more slowly during these years, a measure of his growing self-doubt and increasingly self-critical approach to composition. The early 1840s have often been described as a turning-point in his creative evolution, marked by a renewed interest in counterpoint, by a more sparing and structurally focussed ornamentation and by a strengthening command of structure. This is apparent in the very much more expansive and ambitious mazurkas dating from this period (opp.50 and 56), as well as in the nocturnes (opp.48 and 55). The last of the op.50 mazurkas, for example, is a powerful rhapsody whose contrapuntal intricacy and intensity of expression are only lightly earthed by folkloristic elements. This is a very considerable distance from the tone of the early mazurkas composed in Warsaw and Vienna. Likewise the ‘dissonant counterpoint’ in the second of the op.55 nocturnes (ex.9) places the familiar melody and accompaniment layout of the nocturne style in a quite new light, characterized by a stratification of rhythmically differentiated lines which is far removed from the relative textural simplicity of the early nocturnes.
A similar ambition attends the major extended works composed during these Nohant years. They include two polonaises (opp.44 and 53), two ballades (opp.47 and 52) and a scherzo op.54, as well as the second and third piano sonatas (opp.35 and 58), the Fantasy (op.49) and the Berceuse (op.57). The B 
minor Sonata op.35 was completed during that first summer in Nohant (the slow movement had been drafted at least two years earlier). Here Chopin effectively used the sonata genre as a framework within which the achievements of his earlier music – the figurative patterns of the é tudes and preludes, the cantilenas of the nocturnes, and even the periodicity of the dance pieces – might be drawn together. In this sense the work might be seen as a kind of dialogue between the public pianism of the brilliant style and the German sonata principle, though it should be noted that, as in his earlier essays in sonata form, the first movement's reprise is distinctly unorthodox. The later B minor Sonata op.58 takes a step closer to the German tradition, achieving in its first movement in particular a process of continuous development and transformation of motifs, a close integration of melody and accompaniment, and a density of contrapuntal working which are in every way worthy of Brahms. Here Chopin tackled the historical archetype of the most celebrated and prestigious of classical forms on its own terms, so to speak, and emerged victorious.
Significantly the earlier sets of two polonaises (opp.26 and 40) were replaced at this time by single, more extended works (opp.44 and 53), in which Chopin achieved an epic quality through a kind of essentialism, an elemental reduction of the musical materials to dance archetypes – rhythmic and melodic – stripped of all ‘inessentials’. The op.53 Polonaise is one of a group of three major works dating from 1842–3, all of them sharply contrasted in character. Thus the fourth scherzo (op.54) is as calm, benign and untroubled as the Polonaise is fierce and heroic. In particular it is concerned with balance and proportion, laying out spacious, relatively self-contained paragraphs which maintain interest over a lengthy time span through a delicate juxtaposition of contrasts. Different again is the fourth Ballade (op.52), by common consent one of Chopin's masterpieces, and one of the masterpieces of 19th-century piano music in general. Few of his other extended works can match it in formal sophistication and in the powerful goal-directed sweep of its musical ideas. Here Chopin brought to summation the narrative techniques associated above all with the ballades, involving an interplay of strongly characterized generic themes, a transformation of conventional (sonata-based) formal successions and a powerful drama of large-scale tonal relationships.
These were seminal, culminating compositions in Chopin's development, triumphantly confirming the essential elements of their respective genres, as he understood and (re)defined them. In each case his transformation of the existing generic associations was radical, though it still retained some contact with original meanings. At the same time the transformation resulted in new, relatively clearly defined and consistent generic definitions. Thus at the heart of all four Chopin scherzos lies a reinterpretation of the element of contrast essential to the conventional genre, such that the central formal contrast is built into the detailed substance of the work. Likewise all four ballades transform the sonata-form archetype in such a way that the resolution of tonal tension is delayed until the latest possible moment. This in turn helps to condition the larger ‘plots’ of these works, which may well have been inspired by the tradition of the literary ballad. In a word, the ballades take on the character of a story by invoking and then modifying conventional schemata, and by focussing the events through a distinctive (generic) characterization of themes, the ‘personae’ of the drama. And in most cases the story culminates in that ‘whirlwind of musical reckoning’ so characteristic of the poetic ballad. Even miniatures such as the four impromptus exhibit a measure of generic stability, reinforced by obvious commonalities in their musical material.
A comparable stability might be demonstrated for the other Chopin genres, and again the connotative values of the titles echo themes in the wider repertory: improvisation in the prelude and fantasy, vocal transcription and imitation in the nocturne. In short, Chopin's achievement was to give generic authority to the free-ranging devices of an emergent, early 19th-century piano repertory, and that at a time of considerable permissiveness, when titles were used casually and interchangeably, and often emanated from the publisher rather than the composer. Where such stability exists, genre can take on a powerfully communicative role, functioning somewhat as a contract between composer and listener, a contract which may be purposefully broken. Genres ‘consist of orienting frameworks, interpretive procedures, and sets of expectations’, as William Hanks has argued, and as such they may be manipulated for a wide variety of communicative ends (‘Discourse Genres in a Theory of Practice’, American Ethnologist, xiv, 1987, pp.666–92). One of the ways in which Chopin commonly activated this communicative code was through allusions to genres other than the main controlling genre of a piece. Thus his music draws frequently upon vocal genres, especially from opera, and upon such popular genres as march, funeral march, waltz, mazurka, barcarolle and chorale. Of these, the most common referent is the waltz, which constantly slides in and out of more ambitious contexts, as in the first ballade (bar 138ff) or the second scherzo (bar 334ff).
There is often a similar role for the mazurka, the nocturne and even the prelude. Thus the A minor Mazurka op.17 no.4 plays host to the nocturne, while the G minor Nocturne op.15 no.3 plays host to the mazurka – and also to the chorale. Perhaps it is not far-fetched to claim that in this sense the first of the 24 Preludes plays host to the prelude. It was partly through such generic referents that 19th-century critics arrived at the descriptive and programmatic interpretations which we tend to dismiss today. A comparison between the central march of the F 
major Impromptu op.36 and contemporary operatic choruses, for instance, would provide some rationale for Niecks’s description of a ‘procession’ (3/1902, ii, p.260), and even for Huneker's reference to a ‘cavalcade’ (1900, p.134). Viewed in this way, genre allows us to cut across the boundaries of individual works, forging links with other moments in Chopin and beyond. The infusion of popular genres into the introduction of the Fantasy op.49, for instance, enables us to make connections with the march from op.36 as well as with the improvisatory prelude of op.28 no.3 (ex.10). These connections would in turn lead us beyond Chopin to (respectively) the choruses of grand opé ra and the common practice of contemporary improvisation. And it is from this base that an additional layer of meaning – one which involves some reference to extra-musical designates – might be adduced in an interpretation of the Fantasy.
Chopin, Fryderyk Franciszek
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