Hoping against hope: an analysis of Opus 69 n. 1 by Chopin With an exquisite mixture of sounds of stillness and agitation, fluidity and interruption, with a splendid melody of cauta , tightly narrowing circles and sudden leaps in space, Chopin, the subtle-souled psychologist, opens his waltz. How does Chopin speak through his waltz? How does the music sound to the listener? Minds think through forms. Form follows content. The structure of the music is important. In Chopin's Opus 69 No.1, the AA'BA'BA'CCDCDA' structure of recurring themes uncomfortably prolongs the inevitable return of the tragic first theme that the audience does not want to hear but still expects to hear. Chopin opens his waltz on a troubled and inquisitive theme. Full of hesitations, sudden spurts and wavering chromaticism, the pensive melody is characterized by rhythmic and melodic fragility. As for the rhythm, the unpredictable phrasing creates a rhythmic dissonance with the constant pattern of the left hand waltz and forces the dancers into a searching posture to stay in step with the meter. As for the melody, the introspective melody centers on a restless cycle of pairs of accented and unaccented measures, similar to an iambic octometer poem. During the first and most accentuated bar of each pair, the melody impulsively climbs through several chromatic notes in search of a note to land on, almost like a game of musical chairs. Then, during the second and less accentuated measure of each pair, the melody lengthens on one or two sustained notes, almost like a sigh. As the sixteen-measure melody progresses, the accented measures become more and more desperate and throw the melody louder and louder until, finally, in a climax the melody jumps 17 half-steps only to... the middle of the card. .. ncomfortable suspicion of what is to come, yet the stalemate and finally resignation in the last melancholic measure expressly resonate with a penetrating and introspective lyricism. In this way, the AA'BA'BA'CCDCDA' structure of recurring themes in Chopin's Opus 69 No.1 uncomfortably prolongs the inevitable return of the tragic first theme. In a letter to a friend, Chopin writes: "inside something gnaws at me; some premonition, anxiety, dream - or insomnia - melancholy, indifference - desire for life, and the next moment, desire for death; a kind of sweet peace, some sort of numbness, distraction..." The structure of Opus 69 n. Chopin's No. 1 expresses hope against hope for something more, the restless longing for a kind of "sweet peace" and "numbness", and finally the feared realization that Chopin had been waiting for and suspecting all along.