Chopin Nocturne Op 48 No 1 C minor

The Chopin Nocturne Op 48 No 1 C minor has been categorized as one of Chopin's greatest emotional achievements. Theodor Kullak said of the piece, "the design and poetic contents of this nocturne make it the most important one that Chopin created; the chief subject is a masterly expression of a great powerful grief. Jan Kleczyński, Sr. calls the nocturne "broad and most imposing with its powerful intermediate movement, a thorough departure from the nocturne style. Some musical critics, including Charles Willeby and Frederick Niecks, do not think the piece deserves its fame and position; though James Huneker agrees with this assessment, he notes that the nocturne is still "the noblest nocturne of them all. James Friskin found the music to have "the most imposing instrumental effect of any of the nocturnes," calling the crescendo and octaves "almost Lisztian.

Jim Samson notes that the Chopin Nocturne Op 48 No 1 C minor intensifies "not through ornamentation, but through a new textural background. Kleczyński commented that the middle section "is the tale of a still greater grief told in an agitated recitando; celestial harps come to bring one ray of hope, which is powerless in its endeavor to calm the wounded soul, which...sends forth to heaven a cry of deepest anguish." The ending, according to Samson, is "in the nature of an elaborated 'feminine ending', articulating the reactive final beat of an amphibrach grouping.