29 / 80
29
PASCAL AMOYEL
Something had been irremediably broken, something
which is attested in the three portal-like, quasi-
Beethovenian chords that open the Polonaise-Fantaisie,
even softened by the magical figures that follow them.
Franz Liszt couldmake neither head nor tail of it, seeing it
as the avowal of a depression and, as a result, a disjointed
language. Whereas in fact, exactly as he was to do in his
finalmazurkas, Chopin simply casts offall constraints: his
piano is at last free, a world, a universe where indecision
is a virtue, invention a rule, breaking away a morality,
fantasy an end in itself and historical time a delusion.
Inconspicuously enough, the modern piano was born,
and Debussy had only to come on the scene.