Chopin's Polish ballade : op. 38 as narrative of national martyrdom

Chopin's Second Ballade, Op. 38 is frequently performed, and takes only seven or so minutes to play. Yet the work remains very poorly understood - disagreement prevails on issues from its tonic and two-key structure to its posited relationship with the poems of Adam Mickiewicz. Chopin's Polish Ballade is a reexamination and close analysis of this famous work, revealing the Ballade as a piece with a powerful political story to tell. Through the general musical styles and specific references in the Ballade, which use both operatic strategies and approaches developed in programmatic piano pieces for amateurs, author Jonathan Bellman traces a clear narrative thread to contemporary French operas. His careful historical exegesis of previously ignored musical and cultural contexts brings to light a host of new insights about this remarkable piece, which, as Bellman shows, reflects the cultural preoccupations of the Polish émigrés in mid-1830s Paris, pining with bitter nostalgia for a homeland now under Russian domination. This vital connection to the extramusical culture of its day forms the basis for a plausible relationship with the nationalistic poetry of Mickiewicz. Chopin's Polish Ballade also solves the long-standing conundrum of the two extant versions of the Ballade, making an important point about the flexible notion of "work" that Chopin embraced.

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Ever since Frederic Chopin told Robert Schumann that "certain poems of [Adam] Mickiewicz had suggested" his ballades, devotees of Chopin have attempted to match ballade to poem. After a discussion of Chopin's Ballade No. 1 (in which he considers listeners' associations with a performance), Bellman focuses on the structurally innovative second ballade, op. 38, which Chopin performed in two versions--the second (published) version begins in F major and concludes in A minor. Bellman posits that this "harmonic journey ... might have an analog in tragedy ... where all things do not come out all right at the end." He points out that by Chopin's era, "narrative hearing was not exceptional" and that "music in a ... nonassociative sense may not even have been imaginable...." Indeed, Bellman stresses that an "association with narrative poetry" (a process) is implied by the generic title ballade. He therefore regards Ballade No. 2 as Chopin's communicating the "martyrdom of Poland and ensuing Great Migration," thus accounting for the two-key structure. Despite some errors in the examples (e.g., in ex. 4.1, flats should be inserted before the first left-hand "e" in measures 56 and 58), this is a solid study. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals. J. Behrens The Pennsylvania Academy of Music

List of Musical Examples	p. xv
1 Two Versions, Two Keys, and "Certain Poems of Mickiewicz"	p. 3
Two Versions	p. 6
Two Keys	p. 14
"Certain Poems of Mickiewicz"	p. 19
2 Genesis of a Narrative Process	p. 35
Stories in Tones	p. 35
Amateur Program Music	p. 40
Ballad Poetry and Musical Form	p. 50
3 Hearing Konrad Wallenrod: The First Ballade, Op. 23	p. 55
Overview and Stylistic Summary of the First Ballade	p. 55
Konrad Wallenrod: Plot and Structure	p. 67
Konrad Wallenrod as Ballade Scenario	p. 72
The Lay of Aldona's Fate	p. 78
4 Op. 38 and the Genre Issue	p. 86
A Formal Overview of Chopin's Second Ballade	p. 86
The Second Ballade and the Sonata Problem	p. 90
Ballade as Genre	p. 94
The Operatic Ballade to 1831	p. 97
5 The Polish Pilgrims and the Operatic Imperative	p. 111
A Pilgrims' Ballade; a Polish Ballade	p. 111
The Great Migration and Polish Culture in Exile	p. 114
Personal Anguish and Literary Apotheosis	p. 123
Sapienti Pauca	p. 132
6 Martyrdom and Exile: The Narrative of Chopin's F Major Ballade	p. 145
Internal Evidence I-the A Material: Siciliano	p. 145
Internal Evidence II-the B Material: Storm	p. 152
Internal Evidence III-the C Theme	p. 156
Chopin's Second Ballade as Narrative of National Martyrdom	p. 160
Versions, Tonic Keys, and Mickiewicz Revisited	p. 170
The Forest and the Trees	p. 173
Appendix: "A M. F. Chopin, sur sa Ballade polonaise, "by Félicien Mallefille	p. 185
Bibliography	p. 185
Index	p. 193

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