Monday, July 26, 2021

Chopin's Nocturnes in Poetry: Stillness, Nostalgia and Moonlight (Vol. 12, No. 4)



After a day trip to see the ocean, I drove back home in the metallic daze of the full moon.  I remembered the Nocturnes, and the many poets that wrote about the moon and Chopin's Nocturnes.  I listened to my double CD by Elizabeth Leonskaya. Lovely, except for harshness of notes in some "sublime" flights of fancy.  

The Chopin with Cherries anthology I edited in 2010 has a whole section on this topic.  Here is a sample of poems about Chopin's Nocturnes.  While reaching out to understand and convey the marvel of Chopin's music and his brief life, each poet hears in Chopin's music the melody of their own soul. 

Listen to Chopin's Nocturne Op. 9 No. 2 played by Artur Rubinstein:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGRO05WcNDk

Mazovian Willows
Chopin’s Nocturne, Opus 9

Linda Nemec Foster

 

                        What has happened to my heart? I can

               hardly remember how they sing at home.

                                                     ~ Chopin


Did the strain of a mazurka

split you in two? Don’t

tell me lightning, wind,

harsh betrayal of nature –

anything that has logic. 

As much logic as a Polish

composer with a French name

who wrote scores of music

for a single instrument;

who was in love with a strong

woman who adopted a man’s 

name because she liked

simplicity. No logic there,

old tree, stark willow.

You probably gave Frédéric

his inspiration: one

note at a time drowning out

the sky, changing your life

from a single vision

to a double one. A split

trunk resembling a pair

of hands in prayer, bruised

fingers of the émigré. Your

country not even listed

on the map. Perhaps it wasn’t

a mazurka that cut your 

heart in two: one side

listing to the West, the other

firmly planted in Mazovia,

despite itself. 

Perhaps it was a simple

nocturne, the last fading

light before night comes

and eyes close. Music

of good-bye, farewell;

the knowledge of never

going home again. Music

of exile that almost forgets

the language of the earth.





Nocturne: Chopin in Vienna


Elisabeth Murawski



Drawn to the cathedral’s 

darkest corner, its mournful 

harmony of stone, young Chopin 


stands beside a Gothic pillar, 

tombs behind him and beneath.

I’m only lacking one above. Soon 


the nave will blaze with lights 

for midnight Mass, the first 

worshipers drift in. Their joy 


will only fuel his melancholy.

Turning up the collar of his cloak, 

he steals from the cathedral


for music at the palace. To be 

distracted. To stop hearing

in his head sierota, the Polish word 


for orphan. Afterwards, he paces 

in his room without a view.

I’ve never felt so clearly 


my loneliness. What to do? 

Stay here in Vienna? Paris 

tempts him. Warsaw’s home. Broods 


in his dressing gown. Yesterday 

he stumbled on the funeral

of a stranger, coffin bobbing 


through a crowd of mourners. 

He tried not to stare

at their faces slack with grief. 


The gleam of the highly polished 

wood courted his eyes 

like an impossible lover.


Listen: Chopin's Nocturne Op. 9 No. 1 in B-flat, played by Artur Rubinstein:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnFs85pLmj4





Chopin

William Pillin

 

Gautier wrote: “His soul weeps and hovers.”

I prefer Nietzsche’s “in him joy is ascendant.”

It is easy to spit clichés at him:

effeminate, tearful, sylph-like . . .

 

“Sick-room poet” hissed envious Field,

ignoring the tough musical sinews,

the brooding rebellious rages

and the political passions.

 

True, his wit was exquisite and birdlike

but he knew how to summon the Furies

and spoke for his ravaged nation

in accents as daring as any.

 

He was elegant and consumptive.

He was successful in the world

and rejoiced over his triumphs.

He loved pretty women — and was loved by them.

 

*

 

White and wasting he dotted

with splashes of blood his lunar pages,

carrying death like a singing bird

in his chest, his tissue held together

 

by dreams and bacilli.  “I used to find him,”

wrote George Sand, “late at night at his piano,

pale, with haggard eyes, his hair almost standing,

and it was some minutes before he knew me.”

In Majorca, the doctors 
shuddered at his blood-flecked mouth,
burned his belongings, compelled him
to take refuge in a former monastery. 

“My stone cell is shaped like a coffin.

You can roar — but always in silence.”

When it stormed he wrote the ‘raindrop’ prelude

and from the thunder he fashioned an étude.

 

*

 

“I work a lot,” he wrote to his sister,

“I cross out all the time, I cough without measure.”

With death’s hand on his slender shoulder

he created ballades, études, nocturnes.

 

                                    Who wrested

so much from torment?  Fading swiftly

he continued to color his silences,

a condemned man refusing a blindfold.

 

If he sometimes wept — it was from love, not weakness.

He felt all his life the wing of death’s angel

brushing in their sleep the embracing lovers.

Can one truly sing without this terrible knowledge?

 

*

 

Of the many men who were haunted

by the night, its gardens and fountains,

who fathomed it as truly as this Ariel of preludes?

The piano shakes like a leaf in the darkness.

 

The night breathes and triumphs.

Stars and sea-winds

drift through the open window.  

The ineffable nocturnes

float away like farewell whispers.



Listen: Chopin's Nocturne op. 27 no. 2 by Artur Rubinstein.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJ8RVjm49hE






The Scarlet Hour


Kerri Buckley



                        —Chopin plays. 



In red, beaded dress I

wander beaches of garnet sands


Beneath a golden sunset-drizzled 

sky of painted scarlet watercolor streaks.


Holding red shoes and 

Cabernet, pulling swirls of skirt to my knees

          

Bare feet crushing ruby grapes into rich 

blood of the vine — it becomes my blood


If you were here I’d explore the

softness of your mouth, ravage its


Sweetness like a gypsy pirate alone 

with her captive, your absence a sharp


Thorn piercing your tender mouth where 

keening rivers run crimson


Restless seas scanned for sails on the horizon,

stretch of rubato in the Nocturnes arcs 


Above the crashing surf and rushing spray.

Gulls grieve with me, overhead cries spiraling.


We wait, the foamy sea and I, for your return



Eternal Nocturne


Russell Salamon



For Frédéric Chopin


 

He sees the eternal nocturne. 

All day he has been feeling 

the cool of it in willow trees 

on the road past golden 

wheat fields. Now at the piano 

light scuttles under his fingers. 

 

He wants tones that leak life—

harvested wheat, fresh bread, 

to the woman who said no. And 

black butterflies whose shadowy 

rhythms weep for a form that finds 

fragments of perfect being—night 

music where lost lovers find light.




Listen to all Chopin's Nocturnes without ads, played by Francois Chaplin

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gDinVAmtA0
1. 0:00 Op. 9, No. 1 in B flat minor. Larghetto
2. 6:23 Op. 9, No. 2 in E flat major. Andante
3. 10:38 Op. 9, No. 3 in B major. Allegretto
4. 17:16 Op. 15, No. 1 in F major. Andante cantabile
5. 21:48 Op. 15, No. 2 in F sharp major. Larghetto
6. 25:08 Op. 15, No. 3 in G minor. Lento
7. 29:54 Op. 27, No. 1 in C sharp minor. Larghetto
8. 35:07 Op. 27, No. 2 in D flat major. Lento sostenuto
9. 41:15 Op. 32, No. 1 in B major. Andante sostenuto
10. 46:12 Op. 32, No. 2 in A flat major. Lento
11. 52:03 Op. 37, No. 1 in G minor. Lento
12. 57:47 Op. 37, No. 2 in G major. Andante
13. 1:03:15 Op. 48, No. 1 in C minor. Lento
14. 1:09:28 Op. 48, No. 2 in F sharp minor. Andantino
15. 1:16:00 Op. 55, No. 1 in F minor. Andante
16. 1:20:42 Op. 55, No. 2 in E flat major. Lento sostenuto
17. 1:25:40 Op. 62, No. 1 in B major. Andante
18. 1:33:17 Op. 62, No. 2 in E major. Lento
19. 1:39:16 Op. 72, No. 1 in E minor. Andante
20. 1:43:55 Op. posth in C sharp minor. Lento con gran espressione
21. 1:48:04 Op. posth in C minor. Andante sostenuto




And listen again, Chopin's Nocturne Op. 62 No. 1 in B major, played by Janusz Olejniczak













1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Gorgeous...
moi, aussi:
☆ AbstractVocabulary.blogspot.com ☆
GBY