ABSTRACT
The Ballade in G minor Op. 23, completed in 1835, was Chopin’s first large-scale one-movement composition not based directly on classical formal models, and his most ambitious extended work to date, one in which he tried to create a new genre based on a new kind of compositional technique, arguably the first artistically significant result in a series of nineteenth-century attempts to provide a viable alternative to the classical sonata. The ideology of the Polish emigration was, of course, far from monolithic, as different factions envisaged different scenarios which would bring about the desired liberation and different political and social systems for the resurrected state. It would be good to know how Chopin himself understood the relationship between music and other expressive media, or, even more generally, between music and the world.
