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The Depths of Self Show in the Structure of MusicAround this time, too, Chopin decided to end his career as a public virtuoso. For the rest of his life he would play almost exclusively in the intimate surroundings of the salon. During this trip away from Poland, he had an attack of influenza which Dr. Esmond R. Long, in his noted study of Chopin's medical history, writes of as the first evidence of the tuberculosis that would cause his death, 14 years later, at age 39. The opposites of confidence and unsureness, expansion and contraction, major and minor, which are so central to this waltz, were of his very life. And in his music he was able to give this pain and uncertainty beautiful form. In a class Mr. Siegel once said something I feel is so important: that Chopin's music "was less unhappy than Chopin actually felt, because in being able to make it into art, he made the unhappiness less." Though I believe the greatest section is the opening, every melody in this waltz is a study in confidence and uncertainty, expansion and contraction. Listen to the second theme: it is outspokenly major, alert, vigorous--a dramatic contrast. [Play 8 bars] Yet, we also hear in it definite melodic reminiscences of the main theme. [Demonstrate] These reminiscences relate it to the more nuanced atmosphere of the opening--and so we feel that along with outward, playful energy, there is also depth. The final contrasting episode of the waltz is a dialogue of two themes: one lilting, easy and sweetly complacent [Play lst theme, 8 bars] ; the second, sharper and more insistent. [Play 2nd theme, 8 bars.] These two themes, as you'll hear, seem to blend with each other and to ignore each other in a way that gives this episode a subtle humor. And that last theme has a very interesting relation of contraction and expansion: it is constantly rising, and yet it does so using the tightest, most contracted interval in music--the semitone, which also characterizes the main theme of the waltz. [Demonstrate] In a class he gave in l965, now published as "The Opposites Class," Mr. Siegel explained:
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