Chopin’s Ballades: New Music for a New Piano

• Between 1835 and 1842, Chopin composed four works he entitled

“Ballade.” They are among the longest solo piano works he ever

composed, ranging in length from between 7 and 11 minutes.

They remain among the most challenging works to play in the

standard repertoire.

• The word “ballad”—or, in French, ballade—is one of those generic

terms that has meant different things at different times. For Chopin,

a “ballade” was a lengthy poem that told a narrative story replete

with different characters and even dialogue. By entitling these four

musical works as “ballades,” Chopin ascribed to them a dramatic/

narrative character, although it is an emotional narrative that they

describe rather than a literary one.

• Chopin’s Ballades are often described as being cast in sonata form,

and they do indeed feature multiple contrasting themes that are—to

some degree—developed and recapitulated, but it would be best to

think of the Ballades as having been informed by, but not rooted in,

sonata form.

• Harmonically, formally, and expressively, these pieces go far

beyond the rituals of sonata form, particularly in their apotheosis-

like character, meaning that the first, third, and fourth ballades are

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all dramatically back weighted—in that their rate of change and

dramatic intensity accelerates until their final, glorious, apotheosis-

like conclusions.

Ballade in G Minor

• The Ballade in G Minor begins with a slow introduction consisting

of a meandering melody written in octaves. The introduction

concludes with an open cadence: a harmonic dissonance that

anticipates a resolution to the home (or tonic) key of G minor.

• In particular, you should be aware of the following two things

while listening to the introduction: Its meandering, unaccompanied

melody has a genuinely voice-like quality, and the fact that this

introductory melody is set in octaves gives it tremendous pianistic

resonance and weight.

• The introduction subtly prepares the ear for the climactic octaves

that conclude the ballade. In the explosive concluding apotheosis

of the ballade, upward-rippling scales lead to a cataclysmic inward

With the exception of two early piano concerti, a few miscellaneous works for

piano and orchestra, an early ’cello sonata, and a few songs, Frédéric Chopin’s

output consists entirely of works for solo piano.

© Schmausschmaus/Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain.

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collapse in octaves, a collapse that spans the entire seven-octave

range of Chopin’s piano.

• Chopin indicates that this closing collapse—in which both of the

pianist’s hands are playing octaves—be performed fortississimo, or

“very, very loud.” Chopin could not have conceived such a passage
had he been writing for a six-octave, wooden-harped piano, which

would have splintered into toothpicks under such an assault. But he

was composing for a 7'5"-long metal-harped Pleyel, an instrument

with thunder to spare, and Chopin spared it not.

• However, Chopin’s Pleyel was also capable of an extraordinary

degree of quiet nuance, which is put into high relief during the

first theme that follows the introduction. Despite being notated in

compound duple meter, theme 1 has a vaguely waltz-like sensibility

about it. It is a long, intensely lyric theme that starts with a whisper,

builds to a magnificent bravura (meaning “virtuosic”) climax, and

then fades away.

• The theme begins with dissonant, tightly wound melodic figures

that find resolution and release in the longer notes that follow. The

theme is “through-composed,” meaning that its constituent phrases

grow and develop continuously until a climax is reached followed

by a brief refractory period and the conclusion of the theme.

• In order to perform this theme with the lyric flexibility and sonority

it demands, a pianist—aside from playing all the right notes—

is going to have to do three things. First, in order to achieve the

rhythmic flexibility that the theme demands, a pianist will have to

employ rubato—that is, a judiciously lengthening and shortening of

the rhythms. It will not do to play this theme in strict time. In the

words of Franz Liszt, the tempo must “sway and balance.”

• The second thing that a pianist must do to perform this theme

properly is play the thematic melody legato, meaning “tied

together.” For a pianist, this means not releasing one melody note
Lecture 9: Chopin—Ballade in G

Minor, Op. 23

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until the next one has been played, with the result being a smooth,

unbroken melodic continuity.

• Finally, a pianist must use the sustain pedal in a most artful

manner, in order to draw ever-varied sonorities from the piano and,

by doing so, allow the music to breathe. On a modern piano, the

right-hand pedal is called the “sustain” or “damper” pedal. When

it is depressed, all the dampers are lifted away from all the strings,

allowing the strings to vibrate freely until the pedal is released.

• The sustain pedal has rightly been called “the soul of the piano.”

It allows pianists to smoothly connect widely spaced notes that

could not be connected through fingering. The sustain pedal allows

the sonority of a piano to blossom like a flower or explode like a

bomb. When carefully employed, the sustain pedal allows a piano

to breathe. However, when overused by a lead-footed barbarian, the

sustain pedal will occlude the music under performance.

• In traditional sonata form, theme 1 is followed by a passage called

the modulating bridge, a passage tasked with transitioning to the

second theme and to the new key area in which the second theme

will be heard. Chopin’s modulating bridge is something much more

than that; it is a piece within a piece—a fantasia—an improvisation

of melodic ideas first presented in the introduction.

• Chopin’s fabulous second theme in E-flat major would have been

instantly recognizable to his contemporaries as a barcarole, a theme

composed in the style of a folk song sung by Venetian gondoliers.

The exposition concludes with a gentle cadence theme that grows

directly out of the boatman’s song of theme 2.

• The literature refers to what follows as the development section, but

by referring to a passage of music as a sonata-form development

section, we bunch it together with a vast number of other

development sections that all do more or less the same thing—that

is, systematically fragment material presented in the exposition in an

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essentially unstable, meaning modulatory, harmonic environment.

That is most certainly not what Chopin does.

• In reality, Chopin’s erstwhile “development section” is a massive

variation or extension of the exposition. It begins with theme 1,

heard in the key of A minor, which is followed immediately by a

huge and heroic version of theme 2, heard initially in the key of E

major. When listening to this, be aware that this is modern piano

music from top to bottom—music that moves from hushed intimacy

to thunderous passion at the drop of a note.

• The remainder of this so-called development section consists

of a vastly expanded version of the so-called modulating bridge

followed by a passionate version of theme 2 followed by the

cadence theme. We heard these same events—in the same order—

in the exposition, though now they are presented in an evermore-

dramatic context.
• The recapitulation begins with theme 1 stated back in the tonic key

of G minor, which is standard sonata-form operating procedure.

From that point on, however, nothing is “standard” about the

recapitulation. Following theme 1, Chopin dispenses entirely with

the modulating bridge and theme 2 and the cadence theme and,

instead, powers directly into the ripsnorting coda that brings this

ballade to its concluding apotheosis.