ABSTRACT
Genres might be compared with stylistic norms or formal schemata. This chapter explores a little more closely the relationship between genre, style and form, and in particular the differences in their mechanisms. Chopin wrote his first Impromptu, the C# minor, Op. 66, in 1834. The second Impromptu comprises short character pieces where the original association of the title may have been with a lack of pretension, as of a piece composed casually and spontaneously. The third and fourth Impromptus were composed at a time of imminent stylistic change in Chopin’s music, in 1839 and 1842 respectively, and offer an interesting model of the second relation between genre and style mentioned in introduction – the dialectical rather than the inclusion relation. For Chopin, then, the Impromptu was a genre, such that the individual piece exemplifies as well as making its own statement. The genre is stable enough, moreover, to accommodate and contain significant deviation.
