by Fung Wai Man Eric. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1995. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 114-119). / Chapter 1 --- INTRODUCTION --- p.1 / Chapter 2 --- SCHENKER'S VIEWS ON PERFORMANCE --- p.9 / Chapter 3 --- SCHENKERIAN ANALYSIS APPLIED TO PERFORMANCE --- p.32 / Chapter 4 --- THE FIRST MOVEMENT OF CHOPIN'S B MINOR SONATA --- p.70 / CONCLUSION --- p.109 / BIBLIOGRAPHY --- p.114 / APPENDIXES --- p.120

Frederic Chopin's contemporaries took note of his preference for a piano with a light escapement. They commented that his method of playing was light in touch, and that his demeanor on stage contrasted strongly with that of other performers who were outwardly expressive. Although his performances enjoyed support from some members of his society, most contemporary commentators viewed his performances negatively. His performances were seen as deficient when they were contrasted with those of others, and especially those of Franz Liszt. Some of Chopin's contemporaries saw his playing as feminine and contrasted his works with those of Beethoven, whose works seemed to them to express masculinity. Negative assessments of Chopin's works also appear in later critical and musicological literature. In 1889, the music critic Henry T. Finck suggested that the desire of French, Polish, German and Viennese audiences for what he called "aesthetic jumboism" was detrimental to Chopin's popularity. It is my thesis that smallness has been, and often still is, associated with femininity and that those pianists and authors who advocated largeness - however defined (be it 'grand,' 'healthy,' 'forte,' or 'masculine') - were afraid that Chopin's refined pianism and the "small" aspects of his compositions might be used as evidence that Chopin was not strictly heterosexual. Largeness seems to have been linked in a number of ways to heroism, and it seems that smallness was seen consequently as lacking in heroism. Thus, musicians and musicologists have criticized his works for their lack of complexity and length and for the nature of their melodies, characteristics that I show to have been associated with both size and masculinity. For example, in 1986, Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger analyzed Chopin's compositions in a way that seems to me to reveal Eigeldinger's own search for complex underlying forms. This search appears to be an attempt to illustrate that Chopin was intellectually 'heroic' because he could match the organic unification that some musicologists find in the works of other great composers. While the nineteenth-century development of the piano into a powerful concert instrument undoubtedly reflected the changing nature of concert venues and audiences, since recitals moved from the salon to the concert hall, the changes in design could also been seen as reflecting an ever-increasing desire for largeness. The forcefulness and consequent loudness with which Chopin's music was played on these larger pianos might well have caused (and could still be causing) some pianists' physical problems. Jeffrey Kallberg has analyzed an array of gender-oriented metaphors in relation to Chopin's possible gender-ambiguity, wishing to remove the veil of suspicion that surrounds smallness. It is my argument that a veil of suspicion is indispensable when analyzing the language that people have used to describe their experiences with music, because they have used language to express their preferences for certain kinds of experiences. Thus I attempt to show that during the hundred and fifty years since Chopin's death, both pianists' performance practices and musicological discourse have attempted to cleanse Chopin's music from its associations with smallness and, consequently, with femininity. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Natal, Durban, 2004.

John Field (1782-1837), an Irishman, was the first composer to use the French term "nocturne," and was the inventor of the nocturne for piano. It can be seen with a glance at the scores that the orchestral notturni by the eighteenth century composers were very different than what is generally thought of today as a nocturne. Field introduced the idea of the nocturne that has remained much the same since. Frederic Chopin enlarged and improved the genre invented by Field, but it was Field's originality that brought this type of piece to piano literature. Indeed, John Field is hardly remembered today except as the inventor of the nocturne for the piano and for his influence on Chopin's Nocturnes. For that alone musicians will remain indebted to him.

This dissertation consists of four programs: one lecture- recital, two recitals for piano solo, and one (the Schubert program) in combination with other instruments. The repertoire of the complete series of concerts was chosen with the intention of demonstrating the ability of the performer to project music of various types and composed in different periods.

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The late chromatic music of Chopin is often difficult to analyze, particularly with a system of Roman numerals. The study examines Schoenberg's Grundgestalt concept as a strategy for explaining Chopin's chromatic musical style. Two short Chopin works, Nocturne in E-flat major. Op. 9, No. 2, and Etude in E major, Op. 10, No. 3, serve as models in which the analytic method is formulated. Root analysis, in the manner of eighteenth-century theorist Simon Sechter, is utilized to facilitate harmonic analysis of chromatic passages. Based upon the analytic method developed, the study analyzes the last three polonaises of Chopin: Polonaise in F-sharp minor, Op. 44, Polonaise in A-flat major, Op. 53, and Polonaise-Fantasie in A-flat major, Op. 61. The Grundgestalt-based analysis shows harmonic, melodic and rhythmic connections in order to view Chopin's chromaticism and formal structure from a new perspective. With this approach, the chromaticism is viewed as essential to the larger form.

Music scholars have long been trying to determine the major influences on the Ballades of Fryderyk Chopin. Some, like Karol Berger, have pointed to ideological influences of the Polish emigration in Paris, while others, like James Parakilas, have given credit to the generic characteristics of the European literary ballad. In my own view, however, the most salient extra-musical factor in the background to Chopin's Ballades are Ballady, a series of poems by the 19th century Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz. / After Chopin's death, Mickiewicz's Ballady were frequently associated with Chopin's Ballades, and in the first chapter I demonstrate this by examining the reception history of these works. In the next chapter I analyze the ideology of the Polish emigration in Paris, including prominent themes of alienation, powerlessness, morbid anxiety, pilgrimage, and nostalgia, which were used by that expatriate society to identify itself. Finally, in the third chapter, I trace analogies between these themes and their manifestations in Mickiewicz's Ballady. This analysis of Mickiewicz's poems forms the basis of my interpretation of Chopin's Second Ballade, where I discuss how certain textual and thematic features of the poems taken as a group can be mapped onto the form and musical discourse of the piano piece. / In sum, although the associations between specific poems and Chopin's Ballades have been made by many authors, no one has distilled a single narrative archetype from the group of Mickiewicz's Ballady to apply to Chopin's works.

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The term ballade is the French and German spelling of the English word "ballad" and the Italian ballata. Although each of these terms is derived from the Latin ballare, meaning "to dance," each denotes an entirely different meaning. The synonomous usage of these terms is definitely misleading (1,p. 67), Frederic Chopin, 1810-1849, was first to use this term as a title for piano compositions. The purpose of this study is to reveal the formal characteristics of each of the four ballades that Chopin wrote for solo piano and to determine,through a comparison of the similarities and differences, some identifying characteristics of a ballade. These characteristics will be illustrated through a formal analysis of each ballade.

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