379 E. Green: Greatness in Music, Aesthetic Realism, and Chopin’s Waltz in Ab, Op.69, #1 IRASM 41 (2010) 2: 379-388 Greatness in Music, Aesthetic Realism, and Chopin’s Waltz in Ab, Op.69, #1 Edward Green Manhattan School of Music 120 Claremont Avenue NEW YORK, NY 10002, U.S.A. E-mail: edgreenmusic@gmail.com UDC: 78.01 CHOPIN, F. Original Scientific Paper Izvorni znanstveni rad Received: June 4, 2010 Primljeno: 4. lipnja 2010. Accepted: June 8, 2010 Prihvaćeno: 8. lipnja 2010. Abstract - Résumé This essay is in honor of Chopin’s bicentennial, and explores the question of musi- cal greatness—something Chopin richly possessed. A purposefully »counterintuitive« decision was made to explore one of Chopin’s »modest« compositions: his Waltz in Ab, Op. 69, #1. Yet greatness is here; modest though it be, it nevertheless presents a true picture of what reality is in its permanent metaphysics: the oneness of opposites. It also presents a true picture of an emotional drama which is universally human—and very much also of Chopin’s own life: the drama of confidence and uncertainly. This essay is based on a core principle of Aesthetic Realism, as expres- sed by its founder, the great American philosopher Eli Siegel: »All beauty is a mak- ing one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves.« Keywords: Chopin • great- ness • waltz • Diabelli • opposites • Aesthetic Realism • Eli Siegel What is greatness in music? Why does a certain collection of notes have it, and another fall short of the mark? It has been hard to define; and the reason for the difficulty is this: before we can say a piece of music is greatly beautiful, we need to be able to say, in clear language, what beauty itself is. It is my opinion that the nature of beauty was articulated clearly for the first time by the American philosopher Eli Siegel. Himself one of the finest poets of the 20th century—(William Carlos Williams, for example, said that all the poets of our age »are compelled to follow his lead«)—Siegel he was also a path-breaking philosopher, who founded Aesthetic Realism in 1941. One of the central principles of Aesthetic Realism is his statement: »All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves.« Greatness in art, he explained in a lecture of June 20, 1975, has a relation to greatness as we think of it in ordinary terms. How big is something? How comprehensive? To see how »big« a work of art is, we need to ask: How much of what reality has in it,