The first two numbers of Op 15 (1832/33), in F major and F sharp major, neatly encapsulate the essence of the ‘Chopin’ approach to the genre. Lively ‘scherzando’ vocal and piano nocturnes were common before Chopin, however, very much in keeping with the sociable roots of the genre. Chopin would never again set the main tempo of a nocturne as fast as ‘allegretto’, and would later only occasionally and subtly instruct the pianist to perform ‘scherzando’ (‘playfully’), as he did at the start of Op 9 No 3. But while the middle section looks to the future, the tempo and character markings at the beginning gaze at the past. (The second version of the nocturne included at the end of this recording offers a number of these ornaments that Chopin wrote in students’ copies of the printed score.) In the middle section of the Nocturne in B major, we hear a first, extended example of the kind of agitated, contrasting middle section that would in Schumann’s mind define the ‘Chopin nocturne’. Not every pianist could improvise, though, and this is one reason why, in lessons devoted to this nocturne with his high-born pupils, Chopin wrote out ‘exclusive’ versions of the ornaments and the cadenza (Chopin sometimes copied the same ‘exclusive’ version in multiple students’ scores) that they could play ‘as if’ they were improvising them. Pianists in Chopin’s day would have understood these ornaments as evocations of improvisational practices in vocal nocturnes, and also as representations of how pianists could (and should) improvise in this genre. Each repetition of the main thematic phrase gains interest through the accumulation of ever more profuse ornaments, culminating in a dramatic cadenza just before the end of the work. On the other hand, the Nocturne in E flat major models all that listeners loved about the Field tradition: a beautiful, singing melody set over a simple, unchanging chordal accompaniment. But the contrast provided by its gentle and obsessive middle section pursues a different path for the genre than the one outlined by the Irish composer. The profuse decorations near the beginning of the Nocturne in B flat minor hearken back to the ornate style of the nocturnes of Field. He composed the E flat major nocturne during his stay in Vienna (1830/31), and the other two nocturnes likely date from this same period, or from his first months in Paris. These two models did not represent ‘either/or’ propositions: each opus also contains works whose experimental aspects complicate their classification.Ĭhopin included the Op 9 set among the first works he published upon his arrival in Paris. But these nocturnes also engaged keenly with Field’s pianistic vision of the genre, at times emulating it, but elsewhere staking out an alternative model-one that Robert Schumann in particular would link specifically to Chopin. Vocality stands to the fore in Chopin’s first two published sets of nocturnes, each containing three works. However immeasurably Chopin broadened the expressive purview of the genre from its origins in pleasant sociability, he never lost sight of its essential vocal qualities. Every composer and performer of piano nocturnes in the first half of the nineteenth century grasped their rootedness in song: they all strove to make the piano ‘sing’, and (aided by developments in pedal technology and technique) to distinguish a lyrical ‘voice’ from a supporting accompaniment. When the title appeared on works for solo piano (John Field, an Irish composer resident in Russia, probably started this practice around 1811), little changed generically: piano nocturnes were no less ‘songs’ for lacking words. Across Great Britain and Europe in the first half of the nineteenth century, the title ‘nocturne’ was most commonly attached to a kind of vocal piece, most often a duet, performed among family or friends to enliven an evening gathering (hence the name).
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