first is very expressive, and the second has in
the C sharp minor portion the peculiar Chopinesque flebile dolcezza.
In playing these nocturnes there occurred to me a remark of Schumann's,
made when he reviewed some nocturnes by Count Wielhorski. He said, on
that occasion, that the quicker middle movements which Chopin
frequently introduces into his nocturnes are often weaker than his first
conceptions, meaning the first portions of the nocturnes. Now, although
the middle parts in the present instances are, on the contrary, slower
movements, yet the judgment holds good; at least, with respect to the
first nocturne, the middle part of which has nothing to recommend it but
the effective use of a full and sonorous instrumentation, if I may use
this word in speaking of one instrument. The middle part of the second
(f, D flat, Molto piu lento), however, is much finer; in it we meet
again, as we did in some other nocturnes, with soothing, simple chord
progressions. When Gutmann studied the C sharp minor nocturne with
Chopin, the master told him that the middle section (the Molto piu
lento, in D flat major) should be played as a recitative: "A tyrant
commands" (the first two chords), he said, "and the other asks for
mercy." Regarding the first nocturne (in F minor) of Op. 55, we will
note only the flebile dolcezza of the first and the last section, and
the inferiority of the more impassioned middle section. The second
nocturne (in E flat major) differs in form from the other nocturnes
in this, that it has no contrasting second section, the melody flowing
onward from begining to end in a uniform manner. The monotony of the
unrelieved sentimentality does not fail to make itself felt. One is
seized by an ever-increasing longing to get out of this oppressive
atmosphere, to feel the fresh breezes and warm sunshine, to see smiling
faces and the many-coloured dress of Nature, to hear the rustling of
leaves, the murmuring of streams, and voices which have not yet lost
the clear, sonorous ring that joy in the present and hope in the future
impart. The two nocturnes, Op. 62, seem to owe their existence rather to
the sweet habit of activity than to inspiration. At any rate, the tender
flutings, trills, roulades, syncopations, &c., of the first nocturne
(in B major), and the sentimental declarations and confused, monotonous
agitation of the second (in E major), do not interest me sufficiently to
induce me to discuss their merits and demeri