About this Piece

The nocturne is most distinctively Chopin’s own form. He composed nocturnes throughout his career; they were his most popular works with his contemporaries, and most were published in his lifetime. And although they had influential predecessors—from the Irish pianist John Field, for one—and spawned a host of imitations, it is Chopin’s nocturnes that continue to define the form. 

The two Nocturnes of Op. 27 were composed in 1835 and published the following year in Leipzig, Paris, and London, dedicated to the Countess Thérèse Apponyi, in whose salon Chopin often appeared. The expected dreamy sensitivity projected by a bel canto melody over rippling broken chords is there in abundance in both works. But so too are the sublime touches of genius with which Chopin elevated the received archetype. The very beginning of the C-sharp-minor Nocturne, for example, is in harmonic no man’s land, with no third in the arpeggio. The melody starts on E natural, giving us the C-sharp-minor home key, but immediately moves up a half step, creating a chromatic yearning in the melody as well as a modulatory restlessness in the harmony—melody, harmony, and texture are inseparable in Chopin. This nocturne includes a contrasting middle section, a feature of many of Chopin’s essays in the form. It has a dancing character midway between waltz and mazurka, and it rises to a tremendous climax before wending its chromatic way back to the home key, introduced by a little left-hand cadenza in octaves. The ensuing recollection of the opening ends with a coda in C-sharp major. —J.H.