In a well-known journal entry, Delacroix relates a conversation with Chopin that contains the composers artistic credo: [Lart]

est la raison elle-mme orne par le genie, mais suivant une marche ncessaire et contenue par des lois suprieures. [Art] is reason itself, adorned by genius, but following a necessary path and contained by higher laws. i Obeying those higher laws did not prevent him from writing music that observers from the early 19th century to the present consider quintessentially Romantic. This paradox is at the heart of Chopins aesthetic. As Chopin developed his own modern voice on the foundation of his idols, Bach and Mozart, he had a sympathetic model in Louis Spohr. His music, like Chopins, owes a great debt to the classical style. Spohr also looks daringly forward, with program music, leitmotifs and harmonies that may have inspired Wagner.ii Recent accounts of Chopins compositional development have tended to explain the influence of canonical composers, opera and contemporary piano music.iii Spohrs music lies outside these categories but shows an intriguing point of contact with Chopin at the cusp of his mature style. Chopins letter of September 18th, 1830, to Tytus Woyciechowski contains the following: Graem Quintetto Spohra na fortep., clar., fag., waltorni i flet. Przeliczny. Ale strasznie nie w palec. Wszystko, co chcia umylnie na fortepian napisa dla popisu, jest nieznonie trudnym i nie mona czsto palcw wyszuka.

I played Spohr's Quintetto for piano, clarinet, bassoon, horn and flute. Beautiful. But it fits terribly under the hands! Everything he writes for the pianist to show-off is annoyingly difficult and often you cant find a fingering.iv

Through these difficulties, several features of the work must have appealed to Chopin. Friedrich Niecks, Chopins early biographer, ruminates that the gliding cantilena in sixths and thirds of the minuet and the serpentining chromatic passages in the last movement of [Spohrs Quintet] must have flattered his inmost soul!v Chopins claim that the piece is pianistically awkwardSpohr was a violinist and conductor and this Quintet was his first piece to feature the piano in a leading rolesuggests that the young composer was inspired by more than instrumental texture. When examined against contemporary practice and Chopins own compositions, a surprising modulation on the first page of Spohrs piece seems to have provided a model for what would become a signature harmonic device.vi This device is a small-scale harmonic digression that provides a whiff of the exotic, a kind of dream-state firmly contained by traditional harmonic and formal functions. Spohrs first movement is in sonata-allegro form, with a transition that grows out of a restatement of the main theme. Example 1 includes the original version of the main theme, ex. 2 is the beginning of the transition. The passage starting in m. 29 has the quality of a parenthesisa dream-like world not participating in, but placed alongside of the main argument of the movement. Spohr creates this impression through a combination of technical means. The passage is not only in a distant key, but presents a melody previously heard in a normal key. The tonic-dominant relationship is stable and, at 8 measures in length, not fleeting. Equally important is the way that Spohr achieves the modulation. The key change is motivated by a half-step shift in the main themethe Bnatural in m. 4 becomes B-flat in m. 24. The harmony is subsidiary to the melodic change. The G-flat major chord in m. 24 is nonsensical in the key of C minor; it supports

a melodic variant. The key change is not the goal of a modulatory process. It is an abrupt shift that happens within a phrase, rather than at the joint between phrases. The turn towards G-flat minor in m. 28 creates an even more rarefied atmosphere. The modal mixture is particularly effective because the G-flat major passage is stable and diatonic. A classically standard transition resumes in m. 33. The G-flat major passage stands out as a rarity within a harmonically conservativethat is, congruent with late-18th-century Viennese practicemovement. To recap, the compositional elements in Spohrs Quintet that create the sense of parenthesis are the following: 1. Incorporation of a distant key area. 2. Appearance within a phrase (as defined by cadences). 3. Motivation by a stepwise melodic variance. 4. Restatement of a theme heard previously in a normal key. 5. Abruptness of harmony changelack of a pivot chord. In less technical terms, the feeling of being through-the-looking-glass is created by the passages harmonic strangeness and stability and the sense of abrupt disconnection with the surrounding music. The idea that a parenthesis appears within a phrase is essential for making the specific connection between Spohrs Quintet and the pieces Chopin composed immediately after becoming acquainted with it. The psychological effect of parenthesis can occur at higher levels of structurepainted with broader strokesas in the fourth Mazurka from Chopins Op. 7, in which he employs a block of distant harmonic material articulated by cadences. Chopin frequently uses enharmonic respellings to justify colorful harmonic digressions. In fact, the term parenthesis has been

used before, by Gerald Abraham, to describe similarities between Spohr and Chopin.vii I will be looking narrowly at the construction, influence, and extra-musical resonance of the particular kind of parenthesis found in Spohrs Quintet; my examples are a more harmonically disjunctive subset of the phenomena that Abraham describes. Examples from Beethoven, Spohrs idol, will shed light on Spohrs compositional strategy. A modulation to G-flat major in a C minor piece was not unprecedented, as Bellman points out in the review quoted above. A passage similar to Spohrs Quintet from Beethovens Piano Concerto No. 3 in C Minor, Op. 37, shows that distant harmony is not a sufficient condition for the effect of parenthesis. Spohr was an active proponent of Beethovens music, both as a violinist and conductor; he frequentl y conducted Op. 37 with his wife, Dorette, as soloist. In ex. 3, a passage from the first movement, Beethoven eschews the colorful key of G-flat minor, but more important is the way he arrives at Gflat major. E-flat minor is achieved through modal mixture; the chord on the second beat of m. 190 is far less shocking than the first G-flat major chord in the Quintet because it continues the tonic harmonic function and only one of its three notes is unprepared. Unlike Spohrs example, the surprising chord is not motivated by a melodic deviation. It occurs at a cadence point, so that the surprising harmony is safely contained by grammatically appropriate punctuation. Beethovens insistent cadential progressions create a more forward-driving music than Spohrs dreamy oscillation between tonic and dominant. To continue the grammatical analogy, Beethoven crafts a complete sentence that develops and intensifies a previously expressed idea, rather than a commentary grammatically unconnected to the sentence that contains it. The G-flat major passage from Beethovens concerto is healthy, logical and direct in a way that Spohrs parenthesis

is not. The first movement of Spohrs Quintet resembles Beethovens Concerto so closely that Spohrs deviation from Beethovens model can be read as a broader commentary on generational differences. Spohrs creative misreading is not a failure to write in the heroic style of Beethoven. He uses a modified version of an identifiably Beethovenian strategy for incorporating distant key areas. The hammering on a note or chord is a specific example of what Scott Burnham, in describing Beethovens heroic style, calls the monumentalization and dramatization of classical-style morphology and syntax.viii When Spohr and others recall Beethovens harmonic digressions without the hammering, they are actively avoiding the heroic style and its concomitant psychological baggage. Spohrs passage in G-flat is dreamy and escapist. Beethovens never loses the sense of process and direction. Spohrs piece is a post-Napoleonic version of Beethovens concerto, less confident in the perfectibility of man, more indulgent and Romantic. Spohrs parenthesis originates in Beethoven and contradicts the older composers style. The modulation strategies that Beethoven often features in the return of his rondo themes will demonstrate how Spohrs Quintet diverges from established practice. The Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 61, contains a famous example. While the violin trills after a cadenza, the orchestra enters with the opening motive. First it outlines an A-major dominant-seventh chord, which would lead appropriately back to the tonic. The dominant seventh changes to a diminished seventh, which becomes an E-flat dominant seventh chord when the violin drops the lower note of its trill to E-flat. This chord leads to a return of the rondo theme in A-flat major. The coincidence of the confirmation of the distant key and return of the theme cause this example to lack the feeling of distance, the

irrationality of the parenthesis. Chopin uses a similar method to introduce the key of Eflat in the second return of the theme in his rondo from the Piano Concerto in E Minor, Op. 11. In Spohrs Quintet, the arrival of G-flat major and the thematic restatement are not synchronized. Beethoven often strives to integrate the use of distant key areas into the largescale structure of his pieces. In the Rondo from the Piano Sonata in E-flat Major, Op. 7, the final return of the theme includes a substantial passage in E-major. Measures 155-60 of ex. 4 look like a parenthesis, albeit one that comes at a natural break in phrasing. The unharmonized B-natural continues a scalar motion and is not as shocking as Spohrs Gflat major chord, but it is abrupt and irrational. The essential difference between this and the parenthesis in Spohrs Quintet is the extent to which Beethoven has prepared the disjunctive event. The sonata emphasizes the various possible directions that B-flat and the B-flat triad can move. At critical juncturesleading into the coda of the first movement, effecting a substantial passage in C-flat major in the third movement Beethoven plays with listeners expectation of dominant-tonic resolution. In the last movement, this impulse in manifest in the melodic B-flat, B-natural, C, of the main theme. The fermata on B-flat resolves differently in each cycle of the Rondo. Thus the passage in E major, though locally parenthetical, is a manifestation of a structural strategy that underpins the whole Sonata. This kind of integration is a fundamental feature of Beethovens style and one that works against the disconnected, irrational and dreamlike qualities of Spohrs parenthesis. The Rondo from Beethovens Piano Concerto in C Minor, Op. 37, creates the feeling of distance with a drawn-out common-tone modulation to E major (ex. 5). The

time-scale of the change of A-flat to G-sharp and subsequent reharmonization causes the listener to forget the C minor context and replace it with E major. A key element of parenthesis is the subordination of the parenthetical statement within the still-vivid grammatical context. In Spohrs Quintet, the stability of the prevailing C minor key area and the abruptness of the shift to G-flat major create a need for resolution which remains acute throughout the distant key area. In Beethovens Concerto, the passage closes so emphatically on a root position E-major chord that the distant key area seems retrospectively real and stable. Spohrs dreamy G-flat key area is not confirmed by cadence or texture change, but enclosed within a harmonically conventional transition. Though the E-major passage in Beethovens Rondo from Op. 37 is dream-like and highly colored, its relationship to its surroundings is not parenthetical. The etymology of parenthesis is Greek, to place alongside of. The key features in any context are subordination and grammatical disconnect. In music, the grammatical disconnect can be caused by an abrupt and irrational harmonic procedure that places the listener in a state of heightened sensitivity to the narrative process. As the reception history of pieces like the Eroica symphony and Chopins Ballade, Op. 38, shows, events in absolute music that challenge or exceed the expected logic of progression demand extra-musical explanation. The sense of subordination is related to the kind of music presented after the ruptureabsence of strongly-directed cadential progressions, oscillating harmony, distant key, changes of texture, orchestration and dynamicsafter which the normal flow of events is resumed. Subordination is also related to the moment of harmonic disjuncture. If the area of distant harmony is contained within a phrase, rather than being articulated by cadences at its endpoints, it is more

likely to sound subordinate. These technical means disrupt the listeners sense of a consistently forward-moving chronological sequence of music events, creating separate tonal streams.ix The parenthetical music describes something outside of real timea memory, aspiration, or alternative vision. The effect of parenthesis is a feature of Chopins mature style in general; Spohrs version is a feature in particular. The middle section of the Nocturne in B-flat Minor, Op. 9 No. 1 (ex. 5), contains a modulation that seems to be modeled on Spohrs Quintet. This passage features a local modulation by tritone in a restatement of a theme heard previously in a normal key. The modulation is caused by a nonsensical chord (in this case a dominant seventh chord in first inversion in the second half of m. 24). This dominantseventh chord does not continue the tonic function of harmony like the parallel chord in m. 20. The new key occurs not as the goal of modulation at a cadence point but within the phrase. Tonic and dominant oscillate in the key of G major, creating the Faustian moment (Tarry a while! You are so fair!).x The dream dissolves when the melody turns to Bflat, akin to Spohrs use of G-flat minor. In Chopins piece the key of G minor is only alluded to; a diminished seventh chord supports the flat third scale degree in the melody. Where Chopins elegance surpasses Spohr is in the melodic motivation. The enharmonic recontextualization of F-flat may be something he learned from Mozart.xi In m. 2 the Fflat is introduced in a melodic shape that drags the tenor thumb along with it. Thus Chopin only needs to change one notethe A-flat becomes A-naturalto create an extremely distant and colorful chord in m. 24. Chopin gives a Mozartian touch to Spohrs post-Beethovenian technique. Chopin performed Spohrs Quintet in September of 1830, shortly before leaving

Poland forever. He began composition of the Op. 9 nocturnes, two of which feature a version of Spohrs parenthesis, during his stay in Vienna from October 1830 to July 1831, though they were not published until 1832.xii Though many of Chopins early works feature colorful harmonic moments and daring modulation, nothing that Chopin composed before 1831 features a parenthesis of the type found in Spohrs piece. Though Chopins works from before the fall of 1830 contain many examples of colorful harmonies and daring modulations, the particular balance of exotic harmony grammatically disconnected from a simple, direct tonal planas in the Nocturne Op. 9 No. 1he seems to have learned from Spohr. The third Nocturne from Op. 9, in B major, also features this type of parenthesis. In the dramatic B minor middle section, Chopin abruptly modulates to C major in m. 89. Music heard previously in a normal key is heard in the distant key. A melodic variant is supported by a harmonically nonsensical chord. The harmonic change happens not at a cadence point, but within a phrase. The music in C major is not strongly directed harmonically. Parenthesis in later works occurs at m. 72 in the Nocturne in C-sharp Minor, Op. 27 No. 1, from 1835, and at m. 16 in the Fantasy in A-flat Major, Op. 49, from 1841. The elements of the parenthesis in Spohrs Quintet are all present restatement of material in a distant key, lack of a pivot chord, motivation by melodic variant, tonicization not confirmed by a cadence and oscillation of tonic and dominant harmonies. The parenthesis in the Fantasy creates a somewhat different effect because of its close integration to its phrase. The single line leading to C-flat is a comparatively smooth way to introduce the distant key. The feeling of grammatical disconnect is dependent on the expectation generated by the three previous, diatonic iterations of the

same material. The parenthetic dream-world of E major seems more distant because of the force with which Chopin drives the music back to the tonic. Parenthesis of this type becomes less frequent in the later works of Chopin. As his music becomes more overtly contrapuntal through the 1840s, Chopin prized more and more the subtlety of his transitions. The abruptness of the harmony change in the above examples all but disappears. The Scherzo in E Major, Op. 54, contains an extraordinary passage that sounds like the young composers idea of parenthesis tempered by the late style. In ex. 7, the abrupt, disconnecting chord is a root position dominant-seventh on D. Chopin achieves harmonic disjuncture without changing harmonies. The chordal seventh does not arrive until the second bar, making the digression even smoother. We expect to settle in the kind of oscillating-harmony dream-world of Op. 9, especially after the way D major was so tantalizingly presented in the earlier statements of this theme. The music, however, never loses its process of transition. First G major appears as a possible resting place, but the chordal seventh pushes toward C major after two bars. When Chopin avoids creating a dominant seventh out of the C major harmony, we feel a sense of arrival that is then diverted to F major. As a whole, the passage is merely a sequence of dominant chords, but Chopin controls its forward motion in a teasing way. The affect of this music is similar to that of the passages cited previously, but Chopin has added the exquisite pleasure of continuous transition. The smoothing-out of the sectional nature of parenthesis parallels on the small scale the broader change in Chopins formal methods endless melody, less sharply defined sectional boundaries, emphasis on counterpoint and transitions, less repetition.

These parentheses express a concept crucial to Romantic philosophy. They are made possible by a general classicism of harmony and phrasing. Phrase structure in both Chopin and Spohr tends toward the Mozarteanperiodic with clearly defined cadences. Surface chromaticism is related to a classical harmonic structure in the background; chords retain their late 18th century conventional functions. The parenthesis, as used by Spohr and Chopin, parallels passages by another bastion of classicism capable of describing Romanticism in the most compelling manner, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. The Sunset Speech (lines 1064-99) from Faust, Part I, follows the same structure as the musical parenthesis. The specifically parenthetical part (1070-1091) is reproduced below: Observe how in the flaming evening sun Those green-embowered cabins glitter. He yields and sinks, the day is lived and done, He hastes beyond, new life to breed and nourish. Oh, that I have no buoyant wings to flourish, To strive and follow, on and on! Id see in endless vesper rays The silent world beneath me glowing, The valleys all appeased, each hill ablaze, The silver brooks to golden rivers flowing. No more would then this rugged bluff deny With cliff and precipice the godlike motion; Already with its sun-warmed bays the ocean

Reveals itself to the astonished eye. At last, it seems, the god is downward sinking; Yet to new urge awakes the mind, I hasten on, his ceaseless radiance drinking, The day ahead of me, night left behind, Te waves below, and overhead the sky. A happy fancymeanwhile he must pass. To spirit wings will scarce be joined, alas, Corporeal wings wherewith to fly. xiii An external motivatorfor Faust, the evening light, in the Quintet, the arbitrary melodic change in m. 23creates a dream-like, self-contained and stable image. Faust imagines himself following the sun, so that day no long changes into night. He is subject no more to mortal travails, but in an infinite communion with nature and the cosmos. Spohr expresses this feelingthe absence of desire, the purely synchronic experience of time through harmony. By prolonging the distant key of G-flat major in the transition section, where the listener expects volatility, he creates a moment outside of the formal demands of the sonata genre. By avoiding a strongly-directed cadential progression, Spohr creates music free from desire. The state that Faust desires is a paradox. It is a purely fulfilling moment of the sort he wagers Mephistopheles will not be able to provide for him in which he is simultaneously striving forward towards new horizons. This idea is uniquely suited to musical expression, perhaps suggesting the reason for musics primacy in many early 19th century aesthetic hierarchies, because music necessarily moves forward in time. The chromatic inflection towards G-flat minor, the most poignant moment, perhaps

reflects Fausts painful realization that the moment cannot last. The vision ends abruptly; Faust states A happy fancymeanwhile he must pass. / To spirit wings will scarce be joined, alas, / Corporeal wings wherewith to fly. A true Romantic hero, like the speaker of Dichterliebe or Byrons Manfred, is unable to resolve the contradiction between desire and reality and often dies as a result. In contrast, Faust recognizes the impossibility of his vision. In Spohr, the prevailing conventional harmony and structure quickly resumes. The music in G flat is kept on the local scale, preserved as a fancy instead of elevated to the level of structure by cadential confirmation. Chopin knew Goethes Faust from a performance in Dresden in August of 1829. In a letter to Felix Wodzinski he states Okropna, ale wielka fantazja. W czasie antraktw grano wyjtki z opery tego imienia Spohra It is a terrible but great fantasy. For the entractes they played excerpts from Spohrs opera of the same name. xiv This link between Spohr and Goethe in Chopins mind is enticing. As evidence that Chopins use of parenthesis is related to the Sunset Speech from Faust, it is unconvincingly circumstantial. Scholars have argued for connections between Chopins absolute music and political, artistic and literary inspiration, with varying degrees of documentary support. xv The possibility exists that Chopin used a technical device learned from Spohr to depict a situation like the one in Faust. More likely, listeners of a certain sensibility may have interpreted the parenthesis in Chopins music as related somehow to the philosophy proffered by the Sunset Speech, ideas that were central to intellectual discourse in Europe in the first part of the nineteenth century. The Sunset Speech is a version of Friedrich Schlegels arabesque, a kind of digression in which the decorative becomes essential. The defining qualities of the

arabesque are movement and multiplicity, such that the human eye is ultimately unable to fix and perceive the image in its entirety, thus alluding to the aesthetic ideal of the Absolute, i.e., that which cannot, by definition, be signified or become manifest before our eyes.xvi In the same way, the infinite motion that Faust describes is ultimately striving for a synchronic experience of time. Goethelike Chopin, no indulgent Romanticregarded the arabesque as a subordinierte Kunst, subordinated form of art. xvii Thus Goethe uses the arabesque in Faust to describe Romanticism from a critical distance. Chopins arabesques are, unlike Schumanns for example, always governed by musical logic. Like Fausts Sunset Speech, the alternative experience they depict is ultimately proved impossible. Chopin would have been familiar with the philosophy of Friedrich Schlegel and the other Jena Romantics from his university education, particularly through attending lectures from Kazimierz Brodzinski. Brodzinski, a literature professor, was one of the first and the most resounding voices in the debate on Polish Romanticism.xviii The Warsaw Romantics, including figures like Mochnacki and Odyniec, eventually pinned their hopes on Chopin to articulate a uniquely Polish Romanticism. As Goldberg states: Chopin learned from salon debates on the intellectual topics occupying his Romantics peers, and his emerging compositional style was nourished by the new artistic tendencies surrounding him.xix Though Chopins use of parenthesis is probably not an active imitation of Fausts Sunset Speech, it is a demonstrably Romantic device. Chopin was both aware and in control of its philosophical ramifications. One of Chopins musical models for an essentially Romantic style was Webers opera Der Freischutz. The Warsaw Romantics saw Webers opera as a model in their

quest to create art that would satisfy the particular needs of the Polish people by its use folk mythology and vernacular language. Already familiar with the music from popular piano arrangements, Chopin saw the opera performed in Warsaw in 1826 and in Berlin in 1828. In a letter to his friend Jan Bialoblocki, Chopin admires its najzwyczaj [sic] wyszukan harmoni extremely sophisticated harmony.xx The salient feature of Webers harmony in Der Freischutz is how it represents characters and themes in the drama. Folk-inflected diatonic choruses and arias are contrasted with the supernatural elements connected to Samiel. Within the context of Der Freischutz an abrupt modulation to a distant key signifies the terrifying grasp of the spirit world. Two particular passages resonate with the concept of parenthesis as expressed in Spohr and Chopin. The dramatic situations in Webers opera show possibilities for reading similar techniques used in absolute music, making the connection between musical parenthesis and the broader literature of Romanticism more vivid. Though Der Freischutz does not contain a parenthesis that is technically like those in Spohrs Quintet and Chopins Op. 9, it occasionally presents distant harmonies in a parenthetical way. In the act 2 trio Wie? Was? Ensetzen! Weber creates a kind of parenthesis to depict moonlight. Max sings Noch trbt sich nicht die Mondenscheibe; / Noch strahlt ihr Schimmer klar und hell; / Doch bald wird sie den Schein verlieren, The moonlight is not waning yet; / Its shimmer still beams clear and bright; / But soon it will lose its gleam. This line recalls the dialogue from act 1, when Max learns that the free bullets can be forged during the lunar eclipse. Max wants to prolong the moonlight and delay his dangerous task. Like Faust, but for different reasons he might have said the swift moment I entreat: / Tarry a while! You are so fair!xxi The exotic harmony enters

smoothly; E-flat major becomes E-flat minor which moves to the submediant. C-flat major is not tonicized, increasing the sense of subordination. Webers parenthesis does not begin as abruptly as Chopins Op. 9 or Spohrs Quintet. The shattering disconnect between dream and reality comes at the end of an extreme expansion of predominant harmony. A diminished seventh chord, representing Samiel, arrives by common-tone and does not resolve, strangling the life from C-flat major. Many of the aspects of Spohrs parenthesis are present. Essential to the feeling of parenthesis and present in this example is the temporal expansion of a distant but static harmonic space which seems subordinate to the prevailing harmonic context. The distant harmony accommodates a variation of a previously heard melody. The C-flat major chord arrives in the middle of the phrase, creating the impression of subordination. The harmony within the parenthetical section oscillates between the exotic chord and a neighboring 6/4, creating the feeling of stasis. The abruptness of the diminished-seventh chord creates the sense of distance. This passage, technically similar to Spohrs Quintet and Chopins Op. 9 Nocturnes, expresses the same longing for a synchronic experience of time as Fausts Sunset Speech. Agathas Cavatina from act 3 of Der Freischutz shows the difference in meaning between parenthetical presentation and a more straight-forward modulation. Agatha sings Und wr' dies auch mein letzter Morgen, / Rief' mich sein Vaterwort als Braut (Even if this were my last morning, / His paternal word would call me as a bride) over a chord progression which strongly resembles the moonlight music in act 2. Peter Mercer-Taylor has demonstrated the parallelism of these passages, as a part of Webers strategy for unifying the music of the opera on the largest scale. xxii This parallelism encourages scrutiny of the different harmonic procedures in the two passages. The musical deviations

depict the changed dramatic situation with specificity. The techniques which made the earlier example parenthetical are now lacking. Entry and exit from C-flat major are achieved smoothly. E-flat minor serves as a pivot chord going in. The seventh between G-flat and F-flat in m. 36 is resolved to a sixth between G and E-flat at the end of m. 37, creating a dominant seventh chord in the home key of A-flat major. This return to the tonic quotes Samiels diminished seventh chord, but takes away its sting by subsuming it into a more natural harmonic progression. C-flat major does not oscillate with its dominant or neighboring 6/4 chord. The melody over the C-flat major section is new, not a variant of something that happened before. Agatha forsees the possibility of her own death, but her faith in God enables her to accept her fate. C-flat major represents here not a longing contrary to possibility as it did for Max in act 2, but a safe and vivid future. Weber represents unfulfillable, Romantic desire with parenthesis, inspired forbearance with modulation. The harmonic techniques that Weber used to dramatize his story may have been comprehensible to audiences on first hearings, or through the operas popularity they may have become part of the musical vocabulary. Webers operatic use of parenthesis either exemplified or provided an emotional, narrative interpretation of the purely musical device. Chopins parentheses appealed to listeners in the same way. Harmonic parenthesis, of the very specific type identified in this study, helps to place Chopins aesthetic within both the contemporary musical culture and the philosophy of Romanticism. Chopins conservatism, his veneration for Bach and Mozart, is sometimes difficult to resolve with the emotional content of his music. The timeline of Chopins acquaintance with Spohrs quintet and the composition of his own Op. 9

strongly suggests direct inspiration. The dissimilarities between Spohrs parenthesis and his Beethovenian models are emblematic of a shifting zeitgeist. Certain concepts of this nascent Romanticism seem intimately connected with the musical techniques of parenthesis. With its parallels to Faust, parenthesis shows Chopins interpretation of Schlegels arabesque. Like Goethe, he describes the longing for the unknowable Absolute while subordinating it to musically rational procedures. Webers Der Freischutz an important musical embodiment of Romanticism for the young Chopin, provides support for reading Chopins parentheses as Faustian moments, aspiring to the synchronic while acknowledging its impossibility. The feeling that Chopins works aspire to opera and narrative, that they express something more than the purely musical, has been an ever-present strand in the reception of his music. Wessels titles, enduring arguments about Mickiewicz and the Ballades, and fanciful concert reviews must to some extent be based on heard musical events. Study of parenthesis provides tangible links between Chopins compositional development and contemporary practice and between absolute music and the broader spirit of early nineteenth-century Romanticism.

Eugne Delacroix, Journal de Eugne Delacroix (Paris: Plon, 1932), I:365.

Translations are my own unless indicated otherwise.

ii

Clive Brown, Louis Spohr: A Critical Biography (New York: Cambridge

University Press, 1984), 199200.

iii

See, for example, Jim Samson, Chopins Alternatives to Monotonality in The

Second Practice of Nineteenth Century Tonality, ed. William Kinderman and Harald Krebs (Lincoln, Neb.: University of Nebraska Press, 1996), 34-45, Anselm Gerhard,

Ballade und Drama: Frederic Chopins Ballade opus 38 und dis franzsiche Oper um 1830, Archiv fr Musikwissenschaft 48, No. 2 (1991): 110-25, Robert Wason, Two Bach Preludes/Two Chopin Etudes, Music Theory Spectrum 24, No. 1 (Spr. 2002): 10320.
iv

The Frederic Chopin Institute, Frederic Chopin Information Center

Letters, accessed September 3, 2012, http://en.chopin.nifc.pl/chopin/letters/detail/page/3/id/676.

v

Fredericks Niecks, Frederic Chopin as Man and Musician (New York: Cooper

Square Publishers, 1973), 1:213.

vi

Jonathan Bellman, review of Music in Chopin's Warsaw by Halina Goldberg,

Journal of the American Musicological Society 62, No. 1 (Spring 2009): 229. Motivation for this paper came from this review, in which Bellman states: The first movement of Spohrs piece has an opening paragraph that is strongly influenced by Beethovens CMinor mood, even including a local modulation to G-flat major that seems almost directly lifted from the first movement of the Piano Concerto No. 3 in C Minor, Op. 37. An inflection to G-flat minor, though, instantly removes us from a Beethovenian context and puts us in a highly colored enharmonic realm of the kind later associated with Chopin himself. Were passages like this standard at the time, or did this work provide Chopin with a signature harmonic device?
vii

Gerald Abraham, Chopins Musical Style (New York: Oxford University Press,

1939), 91-92.
viii

Scott Burnham, Beethoven Hero (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995),

40.

ix

Christopher Lewis, The Minds Chronology in The Second Practice of

Nineteenth-Century Tonality, ed. William Kinderman and Harald Krebs (University of Nebraska Press, 1996): 128.
x

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust: A Tragedy, trans. Walter Arndt, ed. Cyrus

Hamlin, 2nd edn. (New York: Norton, 2001), 46.

xi

This technique appears, for example, in the retransitions of K. 331/I and K.

451/II.
xii

John Rink, Tonal Architecture in the Early Music, in The Cambridge

Companion to Chopin, ed. Jim Samson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1992), 88.
xiii

Goethe 30. The Frederic Chopin Institute,

xiv

http://en.chopin.nifc.pl/chopin/letters/detail/page/3/id/457.
xv

See, for example, Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger, Chopin and 'La Note Bleue': An

Interpretation of the Prelude Op. 45, Music & Letters 78, No. 2 (May, 1997): 233-253. Jeffrey Kallberg, The Rhetoric of Genre: Chopin's Nocturne in G Minor, 19th-Century Music 11, No. 3 (Spring, 1988): 238-261. Jonathan Bellman, Chopins Polish Ballade: Op. 38 as Narrative of National Martyrdom (New York: Oxford University Press 2009).
xvi

Carsten Strathausen, Eichendorffs Marmorbild and the Demise of

Romanticism, in Rereading Romanticism, ed. Martha Helfer (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000), 375.
xvii

Qtd. in ibid. 375.

xviii

Halina Goldberg, Music in Chopins Warsaw (New York: Oxford University

Press, 2008), 137.

xix

Ibid. 176. The Frederic Chopin Institute,

xx

http://en.chopin.nifc.pl/chopin/letters/detail/page/2/id/436.
xxi

Goethe 46. Peter Mercer-Taylor, Unification and Tonal Absolution in Der Freischutz,

xxii

Music & Letters 78, No. 2 (May, 1997): 220-232.