[Chopin] Etude Op.25 No.1 A flat major, A.K.A "Aeolian Harp"

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Valentina Lisitsa

 

Twelve Etudes, Op.25
dedicated to Madame the

Countess d'Agoult

    The Twelve Etudes, Op.25 were published in a single volume in 1837, when Chopin was 27 (although seven of them had been completed by 1834).  Here the word genius again is aptly applied, since the only precedent for etudes as original, as musical and as difficult was provided by Chopin's Op.10, written at the age of  23!  Curiously, the new set was dedicated to the Countess Marie d'Agoult, mistress of the dedicatee of the first set, Franz Liszt.  Although intensive scholarship has failed to discover the reason why, it is amusing to note that the recent motion picture Impromptu (with Bernadette Peters as Marie) implied a liaison between Chopin and the titled lady - these Etudes being her reward.

 

No.1 "Aeolian Harp" - with its murmuring arpeggios and pastoral melody - has been known variously as "The Shepherd Boy" and "The Aeolian Harp," with authentic stories to support each.  Chopin told a pupil, "imagine a little shepherd who takes refuge in a peaceful grotto from an approaching storm.  In the distance rushes the wind and the rain, while the shepherd gently plays a melody on his flute."  Schumann, who heard Chopin play the piece, wrote, "imagine that an Aeolian harp possessed all the musical scales and that the hand of an artist were to cause them to intermingle in all sorts of fantastic embellishments, yet in such a way as to leave everywhere audible a deep fundamental tone and a soft continuously singing upper voice, and you will get an Idea of Chopin's playing.  When the etude was ended, we felt as though we had seen a radiant picture in a dream which, half awake, we ached to recall."

 

 

All the following exerpts are the same