cllol'IN 



CHORD 



Chopin made such rapid progress that at the age of 

 nine In- played with success in public. A- a lxv 

 ami. indeed, until his health l>n>kc down beneath 

 tin- strain of Parisian life, he possessed a great fund 

 ot hi^h spirits, and excelled in mimicry ami caiica 

 tun-. In !*_'."> lie published his first \\ <irk, and by 

 the time lie was eighteen his parent- aci|iiie-.ced in 



hta choice of music as a career. In the autumn of 

 |v_".i lie \i-ited Vienna, gave a successful public 

 ciiiicert, and was in much request in theI/0MOf 

 that city. In the following year he left Warsaw 

 f.n -good, and travelling n'n I'.re-lau, Dresden, and 

 fragile, again visited Vienn.i, where he sojourned 

 for several months, and he started for Paris in July 

 1831. Hero, after sundry vicissitudes, he took root, 

 found fame, and lost his health ; here he became 

 the idol of the salons of the Fauliourg Saint Ger- 

 main, giving lessons to a select clientele of pupils, 

 and employing his leisure in composition. Chopin 

 rar-ly performed ill public, for, as his biographer 

 remarks, ' he could only play con amore when in the 

 l>est society and among connoisseurs who knew 

 how to appreciate all the niceties of his perform- 

 ance.' But in his element Chopin, by the admis- 

 .sion of so competent a judge as Mendelssohn, was 

 4 a truly perfect virtuoso ' as well as a thorough 

 musician, with a faculty for improvisation such as 

 perhaps no other pianist ever possessed. In 1836 

 he was introduced to George Sand (Madame Du- 

 devant) by his friend Liszt. The intimacy which 

 thus began lasted for seven years, when George 

 Sand, to quote Liszt, ' gave her butterfly the conge, 

 vivisected and stuffed it, and added it to her col- 

 lection of heroes for novels.' For George Sand's 

 version of this episode, readere may be referred to 

 the fourth volume of her Histoire de ma Vie, as 

 well as to the portrait of Prince Carol in her novel 

 Lucrezia Floriani. Chopin visited England on 

 two occasions once in 1837, and again in 1848. 

 In the latter year he played at two matinees and 

 at a Polish ball in London ; twice in Manchester, 

 once in Edinburgh, and once in Glasgow. His 

 health, long enfeebled by consumption, gave way 

 rapidly on liis return to Paris, where on the 17th 

 of October 1849 he passed away tranquilly, sur- 

 rounded by a few devoted friends. 



Of all virtuosi Chopin has achieved the greatest 

 fame as a creative artist. Taking Slavonic airs and 

 rhythms, notably that of the Mazur or^Ma/urek 

 (Mazurka), for his groundwork, he raised upon this 

 basis superstructures of the most fantastic and 

 original beauty. His style is so strongly marked 

 as to amount to a mannerism, and yet lie has only 

 been successfully imitated by men of genius like 

 Schumann, who was amongst the first of the Ger- 

 man critics to recognise in his early compositions 

 gifts of the rarest order. Chopin had seldom 

 recourse to the orchestra to express himself, and 

 on these rare occasions treated it in perfunctory 

 fashion, and as a mere foil to the solo instrument. 

 But for the piano alone he wrote a great deal of 

 music superlatively artistic in form, impregnated 

 with subtle romance, and full of exuberant fancy 

 music which, though it must always primarily 

 appeal to refined and fastidious natures like his 

 own, bears on it the unmistakable stamp of spon- 

 taneous inspiration. Personally Chopin was of a 

 reserved but amiable nature, singularly modest as 

 to his merits, but unsparing in his efforts to realise 

 the high and clearly defined aims he hail set before 

 him. His compositions, the best edition of which 

 is that published by Carl Klindworth of Moscow, 

 extend to 74 works with, and 7 without ojnts num- 

 bers ; and comprise upwards of 50 mazurkas, 27 

 rhnlcs, 25 preludes, 19 nocturnes, 13 waltzes, 12 

 polonaises, 4 ballades, 4 impromptus, 3 sonatas, 2 

 -concertos for piano and orchestra, and a funeral 

 march. Besides rendering his friend the doubtful 

 118 



service mentioned above, l.\~/.i in also 

 for having given currency in hU picturesque 

 apotheosis of Chopin to a good many inaccurate 

 statements as to his education and temperament. 

 See Lives by Karasowski ( Eng. trans. 1879), 

 Niecks (a standard work, 2 voln. 1889), and 

 Willeby (1892); an essay by Finck (1889); and 

 Hadow's Studies in Modern music ( 1895). 



Chopilie (Span, chapin), a ' high patten,' intro- 

 duced into England from Venice during the reign 

 of Elizabeth. Some chonines were half a yard 

 high. See Shakespeare's Hamlet, II. ii. 447. 



ChoragUN. See CHORUS ; and for the Choragio 

 monuments, see ATHENS, Vol. I. p. 539. 



Chorale* Though the name is occasionally 

 applied to the psalm and hymn tunes of similar 

 character used in the Protestant churches of France 

 and Britain, it most properly belongs to the melodies 

 sung to the metrical nymns of the German Reformed 

 Church, and introduced by Luther, by whom and 

 his friend Walther the first collection of importance 

 was produced in 1524, arid entitled the Enchiridion. 

 The settings were in four, five, or six parts, the 

 melody, as with all the old choral hymns and 

 psalms, l>eing given to the tenor. Numerous other 

 collections appeared down to the later part of the 

 17th century, the most prolific composer of chorales 

 being Johann Criiger. Many of them were har- 

 monised in the most masterly way by Bach, and 

 were also used by him as the canto fermo, or 

 subject, of some of his great contrapuntal work*. 

 Some of them were adapted from the old hymn 

 tunes of the Roman Church, others were taken from 

 popular airs of the time, others again were original 

 compositions; among the latter the most notable is 

 Luther's ' Ein' feste Burg. ' Whatever their source, 

 they all possess in common a solemn, dignified, 

 and devotional character. In Germany they are 

 now usually sung very slowly and heavily in unison, 

 with organ accompaniment. A few of them are 

 well known in this country from their introduction 

 in various collections of hymn tunes, and also in 

 the choral works of Bach and Mendelssohn. 



Choral Service, the musical Service (q.v.) 

 celebrated by a full complement of clergymen, lay 

 clerks, and choristers, and sung or intoned as 

 ordered in the rubrics. See CHOIRS. 



Chorasmians. See KHIVA, PALESTINE. 



Chord. The chord of an arc is a straight line 

 joining its two extremities ; or, a chord, in a circle, 

 ellipse, parabola, &c. is a straight line joining any 

 two points in the curve. If we draw a series of 

 parallel chords in any conic, the line through their 

 middle points is called a diameter, and a line 

 parallel to the chords which passes through the 

 extremity of the diameter is a tangent to the 

 curve. Hence in the circle ( 1 ) a diameter is per- 

 pendicular to the chords which it bisects, and also 

 (2) to the tangent at its extremity ; (3) the three 

 chords of intersection of any three circles meet in 

 a point. In any conic the tangents at the ends 

 of any chord meet in the diameter which bisects 

 the chord. A SCALE OF CHORDS on Mathemati 

 cal Instruments is sometimes used for setting off 

 angles, but has been mostly superseded by the 

 Protractor ( q. v. ). 



Chord, in Music, is the simultaneous andhai- 

 monious union of sounds of different pitch. The 

 common chord is a note with its third and fifth 



reckoned upwards, thus : "{fa~f^: ; or in the tonic 

 sol-fa notation, m : this is the oasis of all Harmony 



(q.v.). The subject of chords will be found dis- 

 cussed under Music. 



