# Was Chopin ahead of his time?



## beetzart (Dec 30, 2009)

So to speak. His music is powerful and romantic but he still kept to classical traditions with regard to form etc. Yet plenty of his music can reduce people to blubbering wrecks. When you consider he was a contemporary of Beethoven and Schubert it still amazes me how fresh and original his compositions are. I think had he lived longer his music may well have morphed into a similar style of that of Alkan's. 

Just curious.


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## arnerich (Aug 19, 2016)

I'd say this, for having composed just piano music his influence on the next generation of composers was remarkably broad and diverse.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Ahead of his time? Well, it was a revolutionary time, a time for spreading your wings and doing your own thing. Music was full of fresh, highly individual voices; Beethoven, Schubert, Weber, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Berlioz...


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

“Ahead of his time sounds” like someone underappreciated in his own time, but acknowledged afterwards with reverence. He was pretty popular and appreciated in his own time, and still relevant today.


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## chrish (Aug 21, 2016)

With the exception of Beethoven, I don't think anyone understood the piano instrument as good as Chopin.


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## Gaspard de la Nuit (Oct 20, 2014)

His fairly heavy use of chromatic voice leading and breaking up of chords into their component parts rather than being homophonic or overtly polyphonic really makes me think of Wagner, but he was doing it before Wagner.


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## Sol Invictus (Sep 17, 2016)




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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Gaspard de la Nuit said:


> His fairly heavy use of chromatic voice leading and breaking up of chords into their component parts rather than being homophonic or overtly polyphonic really makes me think of Wagner, but he was doing it before Wagner.


Weber was also playing with chromaticism in _Euryanthe_. It was in the air, waiting for someone to employ it on a large scale. I theorize that Liszt, who knew Chopin and must have played his music for Wagner, was a bridge between the two composers. It's easy to hear Wagner in Chopin's Prelude in E-minor:


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

"It's easy to hear Wagner in Chopin's Prelude in E-minor"

I would be more inclined to say it's easy to hear the likely _Chopin_ in _Wagner_-not the other way around-in what may sound like Wagnerian harmonies today... The chromaticisms of the _Preludes_ were written between 1835-39. While Liszt was certainly familiar with them, he and Wagner met for the first time in Paris in 1840 when the former was at the top of his career as an international pianist, and the latter still totally unknown. Born three years earlier than Wagner, Chopin was well ahead of both Liszt and Wagner in his harmonic development, and consequently because he was first, Chopin could not have possibly sounded like Wagner but only the other way around.


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## BabyGiraffe (Feb 24, 2017)

Larkenfield said:


> "It's easy to hear Wagner in Chopin's Prelude in E-minor"
> 
> well ahead of both Liszt and Wagner in his harmonic development


Are you thinking about exploring the new possibilities in the piano tunings? In the early decades of 19th century such compositional moves would be permitted by the tuning. " Tuning without beat rates but employing several checks, achieving virtually modern accuracy, was already done in the first decades of the 19th century" 
Moody, Richard. "Early Equal Temperament, An Aural Perspective: Claude Montal 1836" in Piano Technicians Journal. Kansas City, USA, Feb. 2003.

People like Vicentino and Gesualdo were way ahead than Chopin and Wagner in inventing this type of sound...

I doubt that there is any harmonic "development" possible at all. The "emancipation of dissonance" is just an excuse for making unconformist music.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

BabyGiraffe said:


> Are you thinking about exploring the new possibilities in the piano tunings? In the early decades of 19th century such compositional moves would be permitted by the tuning. " Tuning without beat rates but employing several checks, achieving virtually modern accuracy, was already done in the first decades of the 19th century"
> Moody, Richard. "Early Equal Temperament, An Aural Perspective: Claude Montal 1836" in Piano Technicians Journal. Kansas City, USA, Feb. 2003.
> 
> People like Vicentino and Gesualdo were way ahead than Chopin and Wagner in inventing this type of sound...
> ...


I've never heard about Vicentino, could you suggest me some work of him in this direction?


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Larkenfield said:


> "It's easy to hear Wagner in Chopin's Prelude in E-minor"
> 
> I would be more inclined to say it's easy to hear the likely _Chopin_ in _Wagner_-not the other way around-in what may sound like Wagnerian harmonies today... The chromaticisms of the _Preludes_ were written between 1835-39. While Liszt was certainly familiar with them, he and Wagner met for the first time in Paris in 1840 when the former was at the top of his career as an international pianist, and the latter still totally unknown. Born three years earlier than Wagner, Chopin was well ahead of both Liszt and Wagner in his harmonic development, and consequently because he was first, Chopin could not have possibly sounded like Wagner but only the other way around.


You're either making weird assumptions or quibbling over wording. I didn't say that Chopin Was influenced by Wagner. Who would be ignorant enough to say that (well, maybe someone would)? The third sentence of my post of my post makes the direction of influence clear: Liszt very likely played Chopin's music for Wagner. It's as accurate to say that we can hear Wagner in Chopin as to say that we can hear Chopin in Wagner. Neither is literally true.

My explanation is finished. But you didn't really need it, did you?


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## OperaChic (Aug 26, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> You're either making weird assumptions or quibbling over wording. I didn't say that Chopin Was influenced by Wagner. Who would be ignorant enough to say that (well, maybe someone would)? The third sentence of my post of my post makes the direction of influence clear: Liszt very likely played Chopin's music for Wagner. It's as accurate to say that we can hear Wagner in Chopin as to say that we can hear Chopin in Wagner. Neither is literally true.
> 
> My explanation is finished. But you didn't really need it, did you?


Your meaning was obvious to me, and I'm willing to bet for the majority of readers. But literalism has a tendency to run amuck on these forums.


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## BabyGiraffe (Feb 24, 2017)

norman bates said:


> I've never heard about Vicentino, could you suggest me some work of him in this direction?


Well, try youtube.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicola_Vicentino

There are some music examples in this article too.
http://www.mtosmt.org/issues/mto.14.20.2/mto.14.20.2.wild.php

Basically microtonal chromatic writing for voices. Unfortunately, most of his stuff is in private collections or is lost, so only few compositions are avaliable. After his death people decided that such scales are too hard to play and forgot about him.


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## Star (May 27, 2017)

I'd sat Chopin forged a pretty unique style for the piano. His mysic fits the hand perhaps better than any other romantic composer.


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## jdec (Mar 23, 2013)

chrish said:


> With the exception of Beethoven, I don't think anyone understood the piano instrument as good as Chopin.


Cough*Liszt*Cough


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

Chopin wrote some works which were less famous or overplayed that I thought are surprising for his time which I rediscovered recently.


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## pcnog11 (Nov 14, 2016)

beetzart said:


> So to speak. His music is powerful and romantic but he still kept to classical traditions with regard to form etc. Yet plenty of his music can reduce people to blubbering wrecks. When you consider he was a contemporary of Beethoven and Schubert it still amazes me how fresh and original his compositions are. I think had he lived longer his music may well have morphed into a similar style of that of Alkan's.
> 
> Just curious.


Chopin is not just ahead of his time. He was ahead of our time.....the emotional tension and complexity yet simple to ears! Not many composer can do that!


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## zdzislaw.meglicki (4 mo ago)

Wagner wrote and staged The Flying Dutchman and Tannhäuser in the 1840s when Chopin was still alive, though I don't know if they were staged in Paris at the time. In any case Chopin may have read comments on these two operas by his contemporary colleague—Wagner was mere 3 years younger than Chopin.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Woodduck said:


> It's easy to hear Wagner in Chopin's Prelude in E-minor:


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## zdzislaw.meglicki (4 mo ago)

hammeredklavier said:


>


Reading some more on this topic, I think it's unlikely that Chopin was familiar with Wagner's two operas. They didn't make their way to Paris until... WWII. On the other hand we know that Wagner was familiar with Chopin's music, at least some, from his unflattering comment about it (excessive use of the right hand). It may well be that Wagner was influenced by some more adventurous Chopin's harmonies and harmonic progressions, not the other way round.


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## Luchesi (Mar 15, 2013)

hammeredklavier said:


>


from YouTube;

The Mazurka in F minor -- known as the 'last', as it remained unfinished -- has its story and its question marks. It was found among the composer's notes and sketches by Jane Stirling. Auguste Franchomme was the first to attempt to read and decipher the barely legible manuscript, which is currently held in Warsaw, at the NIFC Museum. After Franchomme, the next to try was Fontana, who published the work, though without those bars which he was unable to read. 
In our times, a number of scholars have attempted to read the parts which Fontana could not understand: Arthur Hedley, Ludwik Bronarski, Jan Ekier, Miłosz Magin and Wojciech Nowik. 
The part of the work that proceeds in the relative key of F major had to be reconstructed. It would seem that we have before us a notation that is merely stenographic, sketched, but not a full, final realization.


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## premont (May 7, 2015)

Whether Chopin was ahead of his time or not seems to me to be a strange question, because every great artist is usually ahead of his time in the sense that he usually is instrumental in shaping the future development within his art form.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

zdzislaw.meglicki said:


> It may well be that Wagner was influenced by some more adventurous Chopin's harmonies and harmonic progressions, not the other way round.


It seems there's some study done on this topic (although its copies are hard to obtain)-








Richard Wagner: A Research and Information Guide · Michael Saffle · 2010 (P. 235)​

Personally, I find that the passages leading to the climax at about 2/3 of the way into Ballade in G minor are reminiscent of those (the passages leading to the climax at about 2/3 of the way) into the Tristan und Isolde prelude:


hammeredklavier said:


> the same famous 4 note grouping is used in the same ordering. Although the way the voices move and the overall expression don't quite anticipate the "Tristan Chord", nevertheless the dramatic use of the half-diminished seventh chord is reminiscent of the "climax" of the Wagner prelude:
> www.youtube.com/watch?v=nW5po_Z7YEs&t=6m


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