The dreamy nostalgia of this middle section is rudely interrupted by a return of the ominous opening chord. (As Chopin composed this music in Vienna in 1831, the November Uprising against the Russian Empire was raging in his native Poland). The middle section ( molto più lento) quotes the old Polish Christmas song, Lulajże Jezuniu. Just as suddenly, this dissolves into a quietly brooding dialogue between treble and bass. This jolting, tension-filled opening chord comes out of nowhere, unleashing a fiery torrent of virtuosic sparks which fly up and down the keyboard. The B minor Scherzo begins with a terrifying cry of anguish. How is ‘gravity’ to clothe itself if ‘jest’ goes about in dark veils? Scherzo No. 1 in B minor, Robert Schumann commented on the seeming contradiction between this dark, fiery music and its title, asking, They are filled with moments of haunting mystery, turbulence, soaring Romantic fervor, and intense drama. The dynamic, sometimes terrifying, drama unleashed in this music is anything but a joke.įryderyk Chopin’s four Scherzos for solo piano are similarly definition-shattering. These ferocious works leave behind the original lighthearted concept of the “scherzo,” which means “joke” in Italian. On Monday, we explored five monumental scherzos from nineteenth and twentieth century symphonies.
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