# chopin's chromaticism



## Devon8822 (May 12, 2008)

I am not a pianist nor do I have any Chopin sheet music. I don't really want to go into depth right now and study his music, but can someone give me a little bit of info on the style of his chromatic playing? How did he use chromatics effectively, how would he use them, etc...

thanks


----------



## YsayeOp.27#6 (Dec 7, 2007)

It smells like homework...


----------



## nickgray (Sep 28, 2008)

Listen to Nocturne, Op.9, first movement.


----------



## Edward Elgar (Mar 22, 2006)

The late nocturnes. Had he kept living, he would have sounded like Szymanowsky. Have a listen.


----------



## Herzeleide (Feb 25, 2008)

If you want to listen to the most advanced chromaticism of any Romantic composer, try Liszt.


----------



## Bach (Jun 2, 2008)

Surely Wagner's is more advanced and early Schoenberg more advanced still!


----------



## Herzeleide (Feb 25, 2008)

Bach said:


> Surely Wagner's is more advanced and early Schoenberg more advanced still!


I don't really class Schoenberg as a Romantic; most his works would be considered modernist.

And Wagner pretty much learnt almost all his chromatic harmony from Liszt. Liszt foreshadowed most harmonic developments that would occur at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth. Some his pieces around 1850 sound like Debussy or Satie, not to mention Ravel. Just compare the ending of _Sposalizio_ from the second book of the _Années de Pèlerinage_ with Debussy's first Arabesque, _Waldesrauschen_ with Ravel's _Gaspard de la Nuit_ and _Les Jeux d'Eaux à la Villa d'Este_ with Ravel's own water music.

Some of Liszt's last works are very dissonant. In _Nuages Gris_ the augmented triad functions (if it can be said to function at all!) like a tonic triad. Listen to these late piano pieces and then Schoenberg's op. 11 - it's a smooth transition.

The Tristan chord Wagner stole from a song by Liszt, _Ich mochte hingehn_, which was written in 1845. The Faust Symphony opens with descending augmented triads, down to the point that all twelve tones are stated. Wagner was well aware of the debt he owed to Liszt - Liszt's presence is felt throughout the Ring and after.

Liszt made repeated use of the symmetrical division of the octave, adumbrating the octatonic practice of people like Debussy and Stravinsky (and other Russians) and in a piece like _Bénédiction de Dieu dans la solitude_ from _Harmonies Poétiques et Religieuses_ the large-scale tonal scheme is that of descending major-thirds, thus the augmented triad asserts itself at a fundamental structural level. The piece is also littered with unresolved dissonances where the dominant seventh seems to act as the tonic, and chromatic mediant crops up at a local level as well. It also features constant added note harmony which frequently suggests anhemitonic pentatonicism, which, juxtaposed with a mood which smoothly switches between the beatific, agonised and ecstatic, finds no equivalent until something like _Der Abschied_ from Mahler's _Das Lied von der Erde_, or even some Messiaen.


----------



## Bach (Jun 2, 2008)

Wow, it seems I have been severely underestimating Liszt! I've always admired his piano writing, but his orchestral works have never interested me. His songs I must discover too..


----------



## Herzeleide (Feb 25, 2008)

The orchestral pieces, as with most of Liszt, are of varying quality. The Faust and Dante symphonies are very good, as is the symphonic poem Hamlet.


----------



## Bach (Jun 2, 2008)

I have a recording of the Faust symphony somewhere - I don't remember being particularly struck by it but I suppose I can give it another listen..


----------

