Chopin, the king of the waltz

Chopin's opinion

When a young Frédéric Chopin left Poland to try and become a professional composer, he did not go to Paris directly. First, he spent many months in Vienna. I am not a music historian; a few years ago I was surprised by a letter, written during his stay in Vienna (1830-31), in which he wrote:

Here waltzes are called 'works'! and Strauss and Lanner, who play for them to dance, are called Kappelmeisters. It is, however, not the case that everyone here thinks that way; on the contrary, almost everyone laughs at it, but that is why they print only waltzes. (...)

(Fragment of a letter written by Chopin in Vienna on January 26th, 1831 to his teacher Józef Elsner in Warsaw.)

A great recording of Chopin's waltzes

Functional music

The distinction between absolute music and functional music has always been important.

Waltzes are functional music, they are for dancing. Marches are for processions, lullabies serve to soothe or lull, and modern film scores often refuse to say anything more than a very dispensable atmosphere setting. Since the era of the radio, music is everywhere, filling the silence, but that's only a function – music can be more important than that.

In contrast, absolute music is for pure listening, without another external practical function. It is in the foreground of one's attention. Examples are fugues, sonatas, quartets, symphonies etc.

Children of the menuet

In the classical period, inside a sonata or symphony, usually the second movement was a menuet. Its function was to balance the seriousness of the dissertation in the first movement with a little dance, relaxing the mind. Inside the symphony, the menuet was replaced with the scherzo, and thus the symphony was no longer for the aristocracy, but for the burgeoisie. This was done by Beethoven and after that, the next notable symphony that contained an aristocratic dance was Prokofiev's first, when again something political is happening to the burgeoisie.

That was in absolute music. In functional music, the menuet became the waltz.

Chronology

When I read the letter fragment, I was a little shocked that Chopin would have such a poor opinion of an important dance form. Indeed, he thought the public had a "corrupt taste" and he claimed to be unable to play those waltzes.

But my historic understanding was lacking. I had to realize that, today, when we think of waltzes, we think of Johann Strauss Jr, with his Blue Danube and hundreds of pearls like that – but Strauss is the next generation, he lived later than Chopin!

The Strauss mentioned in Chopin's letter has to be Senior, not the Junior:

• Chopin lived from 1810 to 1849.
  • His first waltz, op.18, was published in 1834.
  • His 3 waltzes op.34 were published in 1838.
  • His waltz op.42 was published in 1840.
• Johann Strauss I lived 1804-1849.
• Johann Strauss II lived from 1825 to 1899.
  • His opus 1 was composed in 1844.
  • The Radetzky March op.228 was premiered in 1848.
  • The Blue Danube, op. 314, was composed in 1866.
  • The Emperor Waltz (Kaiser-Walzer) op.437 was composed in 1889.

Before Chopin, I can remember little else in the genre besides some Schubert, whose waltzes are miniatures, and nowhere near the complexity of Chopin's.

The waltzes Chopin knew were functional music, waltzes we don't hear anymore, music that didn't become immortal. And then Chopin's editors wanted him to write waltzes, because that's what was selling. Especially in Vienna. And for sure he felt frustrated with the genre of the waltz until then – he wanted to write opuses. So he did.

Chopin's waltzes

Everyone knows Chopin's waltzes are more for listening than for dancing, because of the pull and push necessary in the tempo. But Chopin's waltzes also have these characteristics that turn them into important absolute music:

• Counterpoint. Although the waltz traditionally is just a melody over a very straight and boring oom-pah-pah harmonic accompaniment, Chopin's accompaniment is so rich it becomes something else. There are secondary melodies and counterpoints in this accompaniment, the voicing and arrangement receives a lot of thought and experimentation. This is the main way in which he was able to turn a waltz into something worth listening to. Because in music, simultaneity is what makes something interesting.
• Chopin's harmonies are much more sophisticated than your popular tonic-dominant-tonic waltz. Chopin's chords are often more complex, more dissonant, and he knows how to create that nostalgia from a tonic pedal near the end.
• The forms of these waltzes are often simple but very well calculated, they never last longer than they are welcome, repetition is at the optimal point.
• The expression is wider and more profound. You get a couple very sad waltzes, such as the op.34 n.2 in A minor. Some sections within a waltz can be slower or faster.
• There are sometimes musical experiments in Chopin's waltzes.
  • In waltz n.5 (op.42), the 1st section has a melody in 2 against the accompaniment in 3.
  • In waltz n.4 (op.34 n.3), the main section has a dizzying stream of 8th notes instead of what the common man calls a melody.
  • In op. 70 n.3, the main section has a Bachian quality in the way a single melody really contains 2 melodies on 2 separate instruments. Another section has 2 melodies in a different way.

The melodies are always incredible, but melodies in waltzes are commonly pretty. What sets Chopin's waltzes apart isn't the extraordinary quality of the melodies, I don't think. It's the quality of the overall composition – he had to forget the function, in order to create immortal music.

In short, Chopin's waltzes are Chopin.

The king

When Strauss Jr. was composing his great waltzes, he already had the example of Chopin. I think it is arguable that Chopin was the real king of the waltz in his time, because he was really the first composer to push the functional genre well into the realm of immortal absolute music.