Barcarolle in F‑Sharp Major

Composed in 1846, Chopin’s Barcarolle is one of the glories of his final years. Its familiar setting—the song of Venetian gondoliers, with its rocking accompaniment and the ebb and flow of its Italianate melody in thirds and sixths—disguises a work of enormous subtlety and refinement. Although Chopin retains the main outward features of the popular vernacular genre—not only the undulating, ostinato-like accompanying pattern and expansive lyricism, but the 12/8 meter and moderate tempo—he enriches these with some of his most sophisticated harmonies. In addition, while Chopin’s structure is essentially a three-part form, heavily weighted toward its final section, which transforms the reprise into a magisterial and extended climax, its formal complexity is far removed from the simple archetypes of Venetian song and its counterparts in opera, or from earlier piano incarnations including Mendelssohn’s Songs without Words. In this regard Barcarolle was truly groundbreaking, and cast a far-reaching influence on composers from Liszt to Fauré.