Berceuse (Chopin)

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Frédéric Chopin, Berceuse , beginning
Sketch sheet and first page of the Berceuse manuscript

The Berceuse D flat major op. 57 is a composition for piano solo by Frédéric Chopin . It was created in 1843 and was revised in 1844. The first print appeared in June 1845 in Germany, France and England simultaneously with a dedication for “Mademoiselle Elise Gavard”.

Origin and tradition

Elise-Thérèse Gavard (born June 19, 1824 in Zabern , † September 21, 1900 in Sains-en-Amiénois ) was a daughter of Charles Gavard (1794–1871), an engineer, art historian, engraver and publisher, who was friends with Chopin his marriage to Thérèse Gavard geb. Goetz (1804–1899), who gave Chopin piano lessons. In 1841 he dedicated the then 17-year-old waltz in F minor, Op. 70 No. 2, the autograph of which is labeled “à Mlle Elise Gavard”. It did not appear in print posthumously until 1855.

The theater critic Jules Janin , who is friends with the Gavard family, describes Elise as a very musical, highly educated young woman who, however, suffered from couperose , a vasodilatation in the face.

Why Chopin wrote a “lullaby” (French “Berceuse”) for them is not documented. The idea for the title probably came about when he was revising the work in Nohant in the summer of 1844 on the estate of his longtime partner George Sand . He stayed there with the two-year-old daughter of George Sand's friend Pauline Viardot-Garcia (1821-1910), the later singer and composer Louise Héritte-Viardot (1841-1918), whose mother was traveling at the time. The child was looked after by a friend, Elise Gavard. Pauline Viardot-Garcia had the first sketch for the piece for a long time.

Chopin then put the inscription on the cover of the autograph: "A Mademoiselle Elise Gavard / son vieux professeur et ami / Chopin." She later donated it to the Bibliothèque du Conservatoire, today it is part of the collections of the Bibliothèque nationale de France .

Elise Gavard last lived in the village of Sains-en-Amiénois, 10 km south of Amiens , where she died unmarried at the age of 76.

construction

The work, which is in 6/8 time, comprises 70 bars, with the first two bars added in the final version. In contrast to other of his works, Chopin dispenses with progressive harmony here. The entire piece is built on the organ point Db, above which only the tonic and dominant seventh chord alternate in bars 1 to 54 . In the last bars the subdominant is added as the third chord . The right hand unfolds a varied ornamentation over this extremely simple foundation. Formally, the piece resembles the “Theme and Variations” model, which is why Chopin initially named it Variations .

A friend of Chopin's, Elise Peruzzi geb. Eustaphieve, whose father Alexis Eustaphieve (1779–1857) was the Russian consul general in Boston , later told the Chopin biographer Friedrich Niecks : "I was one who helped to christen the Berceuse ."

literature

  • Paul L. Mergier-Bourdeix (Eds.), Jules Janin. 735 lettres à sa femme , Volume 1, Paris: Klincksieck, 1973
  • Krystyna Kobylańska , Frédéric Chopin. Thematic Bibliographical Catalog of Works , Munich 1979, pp. 123–125
  • Wojciech Nowik, Fryderyk Chopin's op. 57 - from Variantes to Berceuse , in: Chopin Studies , Volume 1, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988, pp. 25–40 ( digitized version )

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Genealogy and relationship to Chopin in Mergier-Bourdeix (1973), pp. 596–605
  2. ↑ Mergier-Bourdeix (1973), p. 337, letter of October 14, 1847
  3. ^ Moritz Karasowski , Friedrich Chopin. His life and his letters , 2nd edition, Dresden: Ries, New York: Schirmer, 1878, p. 338 ( digitized version )
  4. ↑ Actually Alexsej Grigoryevich Yevstaviev; see. Leo Wiener, The First Russian Consul at Boston , in: The Russian Review , Vol. 1 (April 1916), pp. 131–140 ( online )
  5. ^ Friedrich Niecks, Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician , Volume 2, London 1890, p. 339