Harmony and Monody in Chopin

Chopin may not have mastered every aspect of the craft of composition. His orchestration is just adequate, for example, and he seldom ventured into longer forms. But he was a master of harmony of the most subtle and original kind, and incidentally (although this is beyond the brief for this essay) of an un-academic counterpoint too, as a glance at some of the late works, such as the Nocturne Op 62 No 1, will demonstrate. His harmonic style is unique to himself and has the distinction of being not only “academically correct” when he employs familiar chord progressions-i.e. leading notes rise and 7ths fall according to the “rules” of traditional harmony, but of going beyond the norms for the early 19th century in the number of unexpected passing modulations, often to remote keys, and often employing enharmonic note-spellings; and in the dissonance level in certain examples which I will come to later.