It is a good thing to return, from time to time, to the Western music we grew familiar with before, so that we may bind the present of our taste to its past, and compare with awareness what is purely classical with what is akin to the classical. Therefore we present this evening a piece by Johann Strauss, called the King of the Waltz (he is the grandfather of the present Johann Strauss, the famous orchestra conductor), and each of the two had a share in spreading this kind of music throughout the world.
Johann Strauss was born and died in the last century. And though there are people who do not count him among the musicians of genius, like Beethoven and Brahms and Bach, or even like Richard Strauss, he was always able to possess hearts, whether by his artistry in melody, or by the tenderness of his feeling, or by the force of his rhythm. It is no small matter that millions of sweet figures today sway elegantly to his strains. It has truly been said of him that he was not merely a musician, but a solace and consolation to humanity; and no wonder, for some of the pieces he composed have faithful lovers — how not, when he is the author of Le Beau Danube Bleu and of the operetta "The Bat," whose overture we shall hear this evening, a piece enjoying a world fame that many pieces by many composers might envy.
To follow this piece, it is enough to picture the chase after a bat, and all the sounds and movements, all the earnestness and playfulness, that may surround it — all this in an atmosphere rich in variety of melody and in the invention of
strains that play upon people's feelings and almost set them moving without their intending it. Nor should we wonder at the variety it contains, for this form of music, the form of the operetta, requires that it embrace a great number of kinds.
Nor is The Bat a remnant of the old operetta form, in the days when it drew near to the comic opera of which we once presented "The Barber of Seville" as an example; the operetta in its new form began with this very piece we shall hear tonight, and we may have occasion, at some future opportunity, to listen to another piece of the same kind.
We continue our classical broadcasts at half past seven every Wednesday evening; this evening we present studies for the piano composed by the musician of Polish origin and upbringing, Frédéric Chopin, who lived in the nineteenth century. Chopin differs from many musicians in that he gives no titles to his compositions, because he counts them as pure music; and he differs also from many who have written for the piano in that he does not regard the piano as a mere auxiliary instrument to the orchestra, but as an instrument independent in itself.
And though we cannot follow any particular story in these magical, mysterious studies of Chopin's that we hear, we can, if we listen well, accompany the musician through the torments of his loves and friendships, through the echoing of daily events, through his fear of death, and through the other deep feelings that reveal themselves to us by way of his surpassing power of expression. He is a free, wondrous composer, unbound by
the familiar rules of expression in declaring feelings so difficult to define; and perhaps his power of invention has a close bond with his native homeland.
In savoring a musician as curious and mysterious as Chopin, it is fitting that we know something, however brief, of his sentimental history, which stamped all his compositions with a personal cast that is almost palpable. Perhaps the most important thing in Chopin's history from this side is the wound to his heart caused by his failed attachment to Marie Wodzinska — an attachment after which none of his other connections availed him, not even that with George Sand.
Much commentary has been written on the compositions of Chopin, which know how to reflect a whole age and a soul of deep feeling; but opinion has agreed, in the end, that the best interpreter of Chopin's music is his music itself.
• Women have instincts that endear cruelty to them. We men have done much to set them free, yet they would be nothing but our slaves — and we nothing but their masters. "Oscar Wilde"
• God did not make woman from man's head, lest she rule over him, nor from his thigh, lest he lord it over her. He made her from his side, that she might be his equal; from beneath his arm, that she might be under his protection; and from near his heart, that he might love her. "Balzac"
• If that woman were a falcon to which the strings of my heart were tied, I would set her loose and leave her beneath the storms to seek what prey she might. "Shakespeare"