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PASCAL AMOYEL
The young Chopin – then in his early twenties – made the polonaise one of the
manifestos of his emancipation, as a creator and not only as a virtuoso. When
Julian Fontana published three early polonaises under the opus number 71 in 1855,
six years after the composer’s death, he revealed that even in his first essays in the
formChopin was already pursuing a poetic ideal that he would realise fully in what
was to become his Parisian exile: the Polonaise in D minor deploys developments,
a syntax of ornaments, dynamic contrasts that entirely divorce it fromboth its rural
roots and the salons ofWarsaw.
This preliminary was to free the polonaise of its forms and its contingencies,
at least in the creative universe of Chopin. Having left Warsaw after the success
he had enjoyed with his Concerto in E minor, he settled for a while in Vienna,
conquering the Viennese public in a pianistic duel with Thalberg that went down
in history. He achieved victory over his rival’s superior virtuosity by means of poetry
and invention: his piano was an enchantment. If he had now gained entrance
to the refined literary salons, it was also in Vienna that he decided to renounce
appearing in theatres – only a late series of concerts in London would see him
reluctantly return there under duress – and to haunt more intimate circles inwhich
his confidential tone, his profound lyricism, found an appropriate setting.