In the notation of fingering, especially of that peculiar to himself, Chopin was not sparing. Here pianoforte-playing owes him great innovations which, on account of their expedience, were soon adopted, notwithstanding the horror with which authorities like Kalkbrenner at first regarded them. Thus, for instance, Chopin used without hesitation the thumb on the black keys, passed it even under the little finger (it is true, with a distinct inward bend of the wrist), if this could facilitate the execution and give it more repose and evenness. With one and the same finger he took often two consecutive keys (and this not only in gliding down from a black to the next white key) without the least interruption of the sequence being noticeable. The passing over each other of the longer fingers without the aid of the thumb (see Etude, No. 2, Op. 10) he frequently made use of, and not only in passages where the thumb stationary on a key made this unavoidably necessary. The fingering of the chromatic thirds based on this (as he marked it in Etude, No. 5, Op. 25) affords in a much higher degree than that customary before him the possibility of the most beautiful legato in the quickest tempo and with a perfectly quiet hand.

But if with Chopin smoothness was one of the qualities upon which he insisted strenuously in the playing of his pupils, he was by no means satisfied with a mere mechanical perfection. He advised his pupils to undertake betimes thorough theoretical studies, recommending his friend, the composer and theorist Henri Reber as a teacher. He advised them also to cultivate ensemble playing—trios, quartets, &c., if first-class partners could be had, otherwise pianoforte duets. Most urgent, however, he was in his advice to them to hear good singing, and even to learn to sing. To Madame Rubio he said: "You must sing if you wish to play"; and made her take lessons in singing and hear much Italian opera—this last, the lady remarked, Chopin regarded as positively necessary for a pianoforte-player. In this advice we recognise Chopin's ideal of execution: beauty of tone, intelligent phrasing, truthfulness and warmth of expression. The sounds which he drew from the pianoforte were pure tone without the least admixture of anything that might be called noise. "He never thumped," was Gutmann's remark to me. Chopin, according to Mikuli, repeatedly said that when he heard bad phrasing it appeared to him as if some one recited, in a language he did not know, a speech laboriously memorised, not only neglecting to observe the right quantity of the syllables, but perhaps even making full stops in the middle of words. "The badly-phrasing pseudo-musician," he thought, "showed that music was not his mother-tongue, but something foreign, unintelligible to him," and that, consequently, "like that reciter, he must altogether give up the idea of producing any effect on the auditor by his rendering." Chopin hated exaggeration and affectation. His precept was: "Play as you feel." But he hated the want of feeling as much as false feeling. To a pupil whose playing gave evidence of nothing but the possession of fingers, he said emphatically, despairingly: "METTEZ-Y DONc TOUTE VOTRE AME!" (Do put all your soul into it!)

[FOOTNOTE: "In dynamical shading [im nuanciren]," says Mikuli, "he was exceedingly particular about a gradual increase and decrease of loudness." Karasowski writes: "Exaggeration in accentuation was hateful to him, for, in his opinion, it took away the poesy from playing, and gave it a certain didactic pedantry."]

On declamation, and rendering in general [writes Mikuli], he gave his pupils invaluable and significant instructions and hints, but, no doubt, effected more certain results by repeatedly playing not only single passages, but whole pieces, and this he did with a conscientiousness and enthusiasm that perhaps he hardly gave anyone an opportunity of hearing when he played in a concert-room. Frequently the whole hour passed without the pupil having played more than a few bars, whilst Chopin, interrupting and correcting him on a Pleyel cottage piano (the pupil played always on an excellent grand piano; and it was enjoined upon him as a duty to practise only on first-class instruments), presented to him for his admiration and imitation the life-warm ideal of the highest beauty.

With regard to Chopin's playing to his pupils we must keep in mind what was said in foot-note 12 on page 184. On another point in the above quotation one of Madame Dubois's communications to me throws some welcome light:—

Chopin [she said] had always a cottage piano [pianino] by the side of the grand piano on which he gave his lessons. It was marvellous to hear him accompany, no matter what compositions, from the concertos of Hummel to those of Beethoven. He performed the role of the orchestra most wonderfully [d'une facon prodigieuse]. When I played his own concertos, he accompanied me in this way.

Judging from various reports, Chopin seems to have regarded his Polish pupils as more apt than those of other nationalities to do full justice to his compositions. Karasowski relates that when one of Chopin's French pupils played his compositions and the auditors overwhelmed the performer with their praise, the master used often to remark that his pupil had done very well, but that the Polish element and the Polish enthusiasm had been wanting. Here it is impossible not to be reminded of the contention between Chopin on the one hand and Liszt and Hiller on the other hand about the possibility of foreigners comprehending Polish national music (See Vol. 1., p. 256). After revealing the mystery of Chopin's tempo rubato, Liszt writes in his book on this master:—

All his compositions have to be played with this sort of balancement accentue et prosodie, this morbidezza, of which it was difficult to seize the secret when one had not heard him often. He seemed desirous to teach this manner to his numerous pupils, especially to his compatriots, to whom he wished, more than to others, to communicate the breath of his inspiration. These [ceux-ci, ou plutot celles-la] seized it with that aptitude which they have for all matters of sentiment and poesy. An innate comprehension of his thought permitted them to follow all the fluctuations of his azure wave.

There is one thing which is worth inquiring into before we close this chapter, for it may help us to a deeper insight into Chopin's character as a teacher—I mean his teaching repertoire. Mikuli says that, carefully arranged according to their difficulty, Chopin placed before his pupils the following compositions: the concertos and sonatas of Clementi, Mozart, Bach, Handel, Scarlatti, Dussek, Field, Hummel, Ries, Beethoven; further, Weber, Moscheles, Mendelssohn, Hiller, Schumann, and his own works. This enumeration, however, does not agree with accounts from other equally authentic sources. The pupils of Chopin I have conversed and corresponded with never studied any Schumann under their master. As to the cultivation of Beethoven, it was, no doubt, limited. M. Mathias, it is true, told me that Chopin showed a preference for Clementi (Gradus ad Parnassum), Bach, Field (of him much was played, notably his concertos), and naturally for Beethoven, Weber, &c.—Clementi, Bach, and Field being always the composers most laid under contribution in the case of debutants. Madame Rubio, on the other hand, confined herself to stating that Chopin put her through Hummel, Moscheles, and Bach; and did not mention Beethoven at all. Gutmann's statements concerning his master's teaching contain some positive evidence with regard to the Beethoven question. What he said was this: Chopin held that dementi's Gradus ad Parnassum, Bach's pianoforte fugues, and Hummel's compositions were the key to pianoforte-playing, and he considered a training in these composers a fit preparation for his own works. He was particularly fond of Hummel and his style. Beethoven he seemed to like less. He appreciated such pieces as the first movement of the Moonlight Sonata (C sharp minor, Op. 27, No. 2). Schubert was a favourite with him. This, then, is what I learned from Gutmann. In parenthesis, as it were, I may ask: Is it not strange that no pupil, with the exception of Mikuli, mentions the name of Mozart, the composer whom Chopin is said to have so much admired? Thanks to Madame Dubois, who at my request had the kindness to make out a list of the works she remembers having studied under Chopin, we shall be able to form a pretty distinct idea of the master's course of instruction, which, to be sure, would be modified according to the capacities of his pupils and the objects they had in view. Well, Madame Dubois says that Chopin made her begin with the second book of Clementi's Preludes et Exercices, and that she also studied under him the same composer's Gradus ad Parnassum and Bach's forty-eight preludes and fugues. Of his high opinion of the teaching qualities of Bach's compositions we may form an idea from the recommendation to her at their last meeting—already mentioned in an earlier chapter—to practise them constantly, "ce sera votre meilleur moyen de progresser" (this will be your best means to make progress). The pieces she studied under him included the following ones: Of Hummel, the Rondo brillant sur un theme russe (Op. 98), La Bella capricciosa, the Sonata in F sharp minor (Op. 81), the Concertos in A minor and B minor, and the Septet; of Field, several concertos (the one in E flat among others) and several nocturnes ("Field" she says, "lui etait tres sympathique"); of Beethoven, the concertos and several sonatas (the Moonlight, Op. 27, No. 2; the one with the Funeral March, Op. 26; and the Appassionata, Op. 57); of Weber, the Sonatas in C and A flat major (Chopin made his pupils play these two works with extreme care); of Schubert, the Landler and all the waltzes and some of the duets (the marches, polonaises, and the Divertissement hongrois, which last piece he admired sans reserve); of Mendelssohn, only the G minor Concerto and the Songs without Words; of Liszt, no more than La Tarantelle de Rossini and the Septet from Lucia ("mais ce genre de musique ne lui allait pas," says my informant); and of Schumann, NOTHING.

Madame Streicher's interesting reminiscences, given in Appendix III., form a supplement to this chapter.



CHAPTER XXIX.



RUPTURE OF THE SAND-CHOPIN CONNECTION.—HER OWN, LISZT'S, AND KARASOWSKI'S ACCOUNTS.-THE LUCREZIA FLORIANI INCIDENT.—FURTHER INVESTIGATION OF THE CAUSES OF THE RUPTURE BY THE LIGHT OF LETTERS AND THE INFORMATION OF GUTMANN, FRANCHOMME, AND MADAME RUBIO.—SUMMING-UP OF THE EVIDENCE.—CHOPIN'S COMPOSITIONS IN 1847.—GIVES A CONCERT, HIS LAST IN PARIS (1848): WHAT AND HOW HE PLAYED; THE CHARACTER OF THE AUDIENCE.—GEORGE SAND AND CHOPIN MEET ONCE MORE.—THE FEBRUARY REVOLUTION; CHOPIN MAKES UP HIS MIND TO VISIT ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND.



WE now come to the catastrophe of Chopin's life, the rupture of his connection with George Sand. Although there is no lack of narratives in which the causes, circumstances, and time of this rupture are set forth with absolute positiveness, it is nevertheless an undeniable fact that we are not at the present moment, nor, all things well considered, shall be even in the most distant future, in a position to speak on this subject otherwise than conjecturally.

[FOOTNOTE: Except the letter of George Sand given on p. 75, and the note of Chopin to George Sand which will be given a little farther on, nothing, I think, of their correspondence has become public. But even if their letters were forth-coming, it is more likely than not that they would fail to clear up the mystery. Here I ought, perhaps, to reproduce the somewhat improbable story told in the World of December 14, 1887, by the Paris correspondent who signs himself "Theoc." He writes as follows: "I have heard that it was by saving her letters to Chopin that M. Alexandre Dumas won the friendship of George Sand. The anecdote runs thus: When Chopin died, his sister found amongst his papers some two hundred letters of Madame Sand, which she took with her to Poland. By chance this lady had some difficulties at the frontier with the Russian custom-house officials; her trunks were seized, and the box containing the letters was mislaid and lost. A few years afterwards, one of the custom-house officials found the letters and kept them, not knowing the name and the address of the Polish lady who had lost them. M. Dumas discovered this fact, and during a journey in Russia he explained to this official how painful it would be if by some indiscretion these letters of the illustrious novelist ever got into print. 'Let me restore them to Madame Sand,' said M. Dumas. 'And my duty?' asked the customs official. 'If anybody ever claims the letters,' replied M. Dumas, 'I authorise you to say that I stole them.' On this condition M. Dumas, then a young man, obtained the letters, brought them back to Paris, and restored them to Madame Sand, whose acquaintance he thus made. Madame Sand burnt all her letters to Chopin, but she never forgot the service that M. Dumas had rendered her."]

I have done my utmost to elucidate the tragic event which it is impossible not to regard as one of the most momentous crises in Chopin's life, and have succeeded in collecting besides the material already known much that is new; but of what avail is this for coming to a final decision if we find the depositions hopelessly contradictory, and the witnesses more or less untrustworthy—self-interest makes George Sand's evidence suspicious, the instability of memory that of others. Under the circumstances it seems to me safest to place before the reader the depositions of the various witnesses—not, however, without comment—and leave him to form his own conclusions. I shall begin with the account which George Sand gives in her Ma Vie:—

After the last relapses of the invalid, his mind had become extremely gloomy, and Maurice, who had hitherto tenderly loved him, was suddenly wounded by him in an unexpected manner about a trifling subject. They embraced each other the next moment, but the grain of sand had fallen into the tranquil lake, and little by little the pebbles fell there, one after another...All this was borne; but at last, one day, Maurice, tired of the pin-pricks, spoke of giving up the game. That could not be, and should not be. Chopin would not stand my legitimate and necessary intervention. He bowed his head and said that I no longer loved him.

What blasphemy after these eight years of maternal devotion! But the poor bruised heart was not conscious of its delirium. I thought that some months passed at a distance and in silence would heal the wound, and make his friendship again calm and his memory equitable. But the revolution of February came, and Paris became momentarily hateful to this mind incapable of yielding to any commotion in the social form. Free to return to Poland, or certain to be tolerated there, he had preferred languishing ten [and some more] years far from his family, whom he adored, to the pain of seeing his country transformed and deformed [denature]. He had fled from tyranny, as now he fled from liberty.

I saw him again for an instant in March, 1848. I pressed his trembling and icy hand. I wished to speak to him, he slipped away. Now it was my turn to say that he no longer loved me. I spared him this infliction, and entrusted all to the hands of Providence and the future.

I was not to see him again. There were bad hearts between us. There were good ones too who were at a loss what to do. There were frivolous ones who preferred not to meddle with such delicate matters; Gutmann was not there.

I have been told that he had asked for me, regretted me, and loved me filially up to the very end. It was thought fit to conceal this from me till then. It was also thought fit to conceal from him that I was ready to hasten to him.

Liszt's account is noteworthy because it gives us the opinion of a man who knew the two principal actors in the drama intimately, and had good opportunities to learn what contemporary society thought about it. Direct knowledge of the facts, however, Liszt had not, for he was no longer a friend either of the one or the other of the two parties:—

These commencements, of which Madame de Stael spoke, [FOOTNOTE: He alludes to her saying: En amour, il n'y a que des commencemens.] had already for a long time been exhausted between the Polish artist and the French poet. They had only survived with the one by a violent effort of respect for the ideal which he had gilded with its fatal brilliancy; with the other by a false shame which sophisticated on the pretension to preserve constancy in fidelity. The time came when this factitious existence, which succeeded no longer in galvanising fibres dried up under the eyes of the spiritualistic artist, seemed to him to surpass what honour permitted him not to perceive. No one knew what was the cause or the pretext of the sudden rupture; one saw only that after a violent opposition to the marriage of the daughter of the house, Chopin abruptly left Nohant never to return again.

However unreliable Liszt's facts may be, the PHILOSOPHY of his account shows real insight. Karasowski, on the other hand, has neither facts nor insight. He speaks with a novelist's confidence and freedom of characters whom he in no way knows, and about whom he has nothing to tell but the vaguest and most doubtful of second-hand hearsays:—

The depressed invalid became now to her a burden. At first her at times sombre mien and her shorter visits in the sick-room showed him that her sympathy for him was on the decrease; Chopin felt this painfully, but he said nothing...The complaints of Madame Sand that the nursing of the invalid exhausted her strength, complaints which she often gave expression to in his presence, hurt him. He entreated her to leave him alone, to take walks in the fresh air; he implored her not to give up for his sake her amusements, but to frequent the theatre, to give parties, &c.; he would be contented in quietness and solitude if he only knew that she was happy. At last, when the invalid still failed to think of a separation from her, she chose a heroic means.

By this heroic means Karasowski understands the publication of George Sand's novel Lucrezia Floriani (in 1847), concerning which he says the story goes that "out of refined cruelty the proof-sheets were handed to him [Chopin] with the request to correct the misprints." Karasowski also reports as a "fact" that

the children of Madame Sand [who, by the way, were a man of twenty-three and a woman of eighteen] said to him [Chopin], pointing to the novel: "M. Chopin, do you know that you are meant by the Prince Karol?"...In spite of all this the invalid, and therefore less passionate, artist bore with the most painful feeling the mortification caused him by the novel...At the beginning of the year 1847 George Sand brought about by a violent scene, the innocent cause of which was her daughter, a complete rupture. To the unjust reproaches which she made to him, he merely replied: "I shall immediately leave your house, and wish henceforth no longer to be regarded by you as living." These words were very welcome to her; she made no objections, and the very same day the artist left for ever the house of Madame Sand. But the excitement and the mental distress connected with it threw him once more on the sick- bed, and for a long time people seriously feared that he would soon exchange it for a coffin.

George Sand's view of the Lucrezia Floriani incident must be given in full. In Ma Vie she writes as follows:—

It has been pretended that in one of my romances I have painted his [Chopin's] character with a great exactness of analysis. People were mistaken, because they thought they recognised some of his traits; and, proceeding by this system, too convenient to be sure, Liszt himself, in a Life of Chopin, a little exuberant as regards style, but nevertheless full of very good things and very beautiful pages, has gone astray in good faith. I have traced in Prince Karol the character of a man determined in his nature, exclusive in his sentiments, exclusive in his exigencies.

Chopin was not such. Nature does not design like art, however realistic it may be. She has caprices, inconsequences, probably not real, but very mysterious. Art only rectifies these inconsequences because it is too limited to reproduce them.

Chopin was a resume of these magnificent inconsequences which God alone can allow Himself to create, and which have their particular logic. He was modest on principle, gentle by habit, but he was imperious by instinct and full of a legitimate pride which was unconscious of itself. Hence sufferings which he did not reason and which did not fix themselves on a determined object.

Moreover, Prince Karol is not an artist. He is a dreamer, and nothing more; having no genius, he has not the rights of genius. He is, therefore, a personage more true than amiable, and the portrait is so little that of a great artist that Chopin, in reading the manuscript every day on my writing- desk, had not the slightest inclination to deceive himself, he who, nevertheless, was so suspicious.

And yet afterwards, by reaction, he imagined, I am told, that this was the case. Enemies, I had such about him who call themselves his friends; as if embittering a suffering heart was not murder, enemies made him believe that this romance was a revelation of his character. At that time his memory was, no doubt, enfeebled: he had forgotten the book, why did he not reread it!

This history is so little ours! It was the very reverse of it There were between us neither the same raptures [enivrements] nor the same sufferings. Our history had nothing of a romance; its foundation was too simple and too serious for us ever to have had occasion for a quarrel with each other, a propos of each other.

The arguments advanced by George Sand are anything but convincing; in fact, her defence is extremely weak. She does not even tell us that she did not make use of Chopin as a model. That she drew a caricature and not a portrait will hardly be accepted as an excuse, nay, is sure to be regarded as the very head and front of her offending. But George Sand had extraordinarily naive notions on this subject, notions which are not likely to be shared by many, at least not by many outside the fraternities of novelists and dramatists. Having mentioned, in speaking of her grand-uncle the Abbe de Beaumont, that she thought of him when sketching the portrait of a certain canon in Consuelo, and that she had very much exaggerated the resemblance to meet the requirements of the romance, she remarks that portraits traced in this way are no longer portraits, and that those who feel offended on recognising themselves do an injustice both to the author and themselves. "Caricature or idealisation," she writes, "it is no longer the original model, and this model has little judgment if it thinks it recognises itself, if it becomes angry or vain on seeing what art or imagination has been able to make of it." This is turning the tables with a vengeance; and if impudence can silence the voice of truth and humanity, George Sand has gained her case. In her account of the Lucrezia Floriani incident George Sand proceeds as usual when she is attacked and does not find it more convenient simply to declare that she will not condescend to defend herself—namely, she envelops the whole matter in a mist of beautiful words and sentiments out of which issues—and this is the only clearly-distinguishable thing—her own saintly self in celestial radiance. But notwithstanding all her arguments and explanations there remains the fact that Liszt and thousands of others, I one of them, read Lucrezia Floriani and were not a moment in doubt that Chopin was the prototype of Prince Karol. We will not charge George Sand with the atrocity of writing the novel for the purpose of getting rid of Chopin; but we cannot absolve her from the sin of being regardless of the pain she would inflict on one who once was dear to her, and who still loved her ardently. Even Miss Thomas, [FOOTNOTE: In George Sand, a volume of the "Eminent Women Series."] who generally takes George Sand at her own valuation, and in this case too tries to excuse her, admits that in Lucrezia Floriani there was enough of reality interwoven to make the world hasten to identify or confound Chopin with Prince Karol, that Chopin, the most sensitive of mortals, could not but be pained by the inferences which would be drawn, that "perhaps if only as a genius he had the right to be spared such an infliction," and that, therefore, "one must wish it could have appeared in this light to Madame Sand." This is a mild way of expressing disapproval of conduct that shows, to say the least, an inhuman callousness to the susceptibilities of a fellow-being. And to speak of the irresistible prompting of genius in connection with one who had her faculties so well under her control is downright mockery. It would, however, be foolish to expect considerateness for others in one who needlessly detailed and proclaimed to the world not only the little foibles but also the drunkenness and consequent idiocy and madness of a brother whose family was still living. Her practice was, indeed, so much at variance with her profession that it is preposterous rather to accept than to doubt her words. George Sand was certainly not the self-sacrificing woman she pretended to be; for her sacrifices never outlasted her inclinations, they were, indeed, nothing else than an abandonment to her desires. And these desires were the directors of her reason, which, aided by an exuberant imagination, was never at a loss to justify any act, be it ever so cruel and abject. In short, the chief characteristic of George Sand's moral constitution was her incapacity of regarding anything she did otherwise than as right. What I have said is fully borne out by her Ma Vie and the "Correspondance," which, of course, can be more easily and safely examined than her deeds and spoken words.

And now we will continue our investigations of the causes and circumstances of the rupture. First I shall quote some passages from letters written by George Sand, between which will be inserted a note from Chopin to her. If the reader does not see at once what several of these quotations have to do with the matter under discussion, he will do so before long.

Madame Sand to Madame Marliani; Nohant, September 1, 1846:—

It is exceedingly kind of you to offer me shelter [un gite]. We have still our apartments in the Square Saint-Lazare [Square d'Orleans], and nothing would prevent us from going there.

Chopin to Madame Sand; Tuesday 2 1/2 [Paris, December 15, 1846]

[FOOTNOTE: The date is that of the postmark. A German translation of the French original (in the Imperial Public Library at St. Petersburg) will be found in La Mara's "Musikerbriefe."]:—

Mademoiselle de Rozieres has found the piece of cloth in question (it was in the camail-carton of Mdlle. Augustine), and I sent it at once last night to Borie, [Victor Borie a publicist and friend of George Sand] who, as Peter was told, does not yet leave to-day. Here we have a little sun and Russian snow. I am glad of this weather for your sake, and imagine you walking about a great deal. Did Dib dance in last night's pantomime? May you and yours enjoy good health!

Your most devoted,

C.

For your dear children.

I am well; but I have not the courage to leave my fireside for a moment.

Madame Sand to Madame Marliani; Nohant, May 6, 1847:—

Solange marries in a fortnight Clesinger, the sculptor, a man of great talent, who is making much money, and can give her the brilliant existence which, I believe, is to her taste. He is very violently in love with her, and he pleases her much. She was this time as prompt and firm in her determination as she was hitherto capricious and irresolute. Apparently she has met with what she dreamt of. May God grant it!

As regards myself, the young man pleases me also much and Maurice likewise. He is little civilised at first sight; but he is full of sacred fire and for some time past, since I noticed him making advances, I have been studying him without having the appearance of doing so...He has other qualities which compensate for all the defects he may have and ought to have.

...Somebody told me of him all the ill that can be said of a man [on making inquiries George Sand found that Clesinger was a man "irreproachable in the best sense of the word"].

M. Dudevant, whom he has been to see, consents. We do not know yet where the marriage will take place. Perhaps at Nerac, [FOOTNOTE: Where M. Dudevant, her whilom husband, resided.] in order to prevent M. Dudevant from falling asleep in the eternal to-morrow to the province.

Madame Sand to Mazzini; Nohant, May 22, 1847:—

I have just married and, I believe, well married my daughter to an artist of powerful inspiration and will. I had for her but one ambition—namely, that she should love and be loved; my wish is realised. The future is in the hand of God, but I believe in the duration of this love and this union.

Madame Sand to Charles Poncy; Nohant, August 9, 1847:—

My good Maurice is always calm, occupied, and lively. He sustains and consoles me. Solange is in Paris with her husband; they are going to travel. Chopin is in Paris also; his health has not yet permitted him to make the journey; but he is better.

The following letter, of an earlier date than those from which my last two excerpts are taken, is more directly concerned with Chopin.

Madame Sand to Gutmann; Nohant, May 12, 1847:—

Thanks, my good Gutmann, thanks from the bottom of my heart for the admirable care which you lavish on him [Chopin]. I know well that it is for him, for yourself, and not for me, that you act thus, but I do not the less feel the need of thanking you. It is a great misfortune for me that this happens at a moment like that in which I find myself. Truly, this is too much anxiety at one time! I would have gone mad, I believe, if I had learned the gravity of his illness before hearing that the danger was past. He does not know that I know of it, and on account, especially, of the embarras in which he knows I find myself, he wishes it to be concealed from me. He wrote to me yesterday as if nothing had taken place, and I have answered him as if I suspected as yet nothing. Therefore, do not tell him that I write to you, and that for twenty-four hours I have suffered terribly. Grzymala writes about you very kindly a propos of the tenderness with which you have taken my place by the side of him, and you especially, so that I will tell you that I know it, and that my heart will keep account of it seriously and for ever...

Au revoir, then, soon, my dear child, and receive my maternal benediction. May it bring you luck as I wish!

George Sand.

[FOOTNOTE: This letter, which is not contained in the "Correspondance," was, as far as I know, first published in "Die Gegenwart" (Berlin, July 12, 1879)]

If all that George Sand here says is bona fide, the letter proves that the rupture had not yet taken place. Indeed, Gutmann was of opinion that it did not take place till 1848, shortly before Chopin's departure for England, that, in-fact, she, her daughter, and son-in-law were present at the concert he gave on February 16, 1848. That this, however, was not the case is shown both by a letter written by George Sand from Nohant on February 18, 1848, and by another statement of Gutmann's, according to which one of the causes of the rupture was the marriage of Solange with Clesinger of which Chopin (foreseeing unhappiness which did not fail to come, and led to separation) did not approve. Another cause, he thought, was Chopin's disagreements with Maurice Sand. There were hasty remarks and sharp retorts between lover and son, and scenes in consequence. Gutmann is a very unsatisfactory informant, everything he read and heard seemed to pass through the retort of his imagination and reappear transformed as his own experience.

A more reliable witness is Franchomme, who in a letter to me summed up the information which he had given me on this subject by word of mouth as follows:—

Strange to say [chose bizarre], Chopin had a horror of the figure 7; he would not have taken lodgings in a house which bore the number 7; he would not have set out on a journey on the 7th or 17th, &c. It was in 1837 that he formed the liaison with George Sand; it was in 1847 that the rupture took place; it was on the 17th October that my dear friend said farewell to us. The rupture between Chopin and Madame Sand came about in this way. In June, 1847, Chopin was making ready to start for Nohant when he received a letter from Madame Sand to the effect that she had just turned out her daughter and son-in- law, and that if he received them in his house all would be over between them [i.e., between George Sand and Chopin]. I was with Chopin at the time the letter arrived, and he said to me, "They have only me, and should I close my door upon them? No, I shall not do it!" and he did not do it, and yet he knew that this creature whom he adored would not forgive it him. Poor friend, how I have seen him suffer!

Of the quarrel at Nohant, Franchomme gave the following account:—There was staying at that time at Nohant a gentleman who treated Madame Clesinger invariably with rudeness. One day as Clesinger and his wife went downstairs the person in question passed without taking off his hat. The sculptor stopped him, and said, "Bid madam a good day"; and when the gentleman or churl, as the case may be, refused, he gave him a box on the ear. George Sand, who stood at the top of the stairs, saw it, came down, and gave in her turn Clesinger a box on the ear. After this she turned her son-in-law together with his wife out of her house, and wrote the above-mentioned letter to Chopin.

Madame Rubio had also heard of the box on the ear which George Sand gave Clesinger. According to this informant there were many quarrels between mother and daughter, the former objecting to the latter's frequent visits to Chopin, and using this as a pretext to break with him. Gutmann said to me that Chopin was fond of Solange, though not in love with her. But now we have again got into the current of gossip, and the sooner we get out of it the better.

Before I draw my conclusions from the evidence I have collected, I must find room for some extracts from two letters, respectively written on August 9, 1847, and December 14,1847, to Charles Poncy. The contents of these extracts will to a great extent be a mystery to the reader, a mystery to which I cannot furnish the key. Was Solange the chief subject of George Sand's lamentations? Had Chopin or her brother, or both, to do with this paroxysm of despair?

After saying how she has been overwhelmed by a chain of chagrins, how her purest intentions have had a fatal issue, how her best actions have been blamed by men and punished by heaven as crimes, she proceeds:—

And do you think I have reached the end? No, all I have told you hitherto is nothing, and since my last letter I have exhausted all the cup of life contains of tribulation. It is even so bitter and unprecedented that I cannot speak of it, at least I cannot write it. Even that would give me too much pain. I will tell you something about it when I see you...I hoped at least for the old age on which I was entering the recompense of great sacrifices, of much work, fatigue, and a whole life of devotion and abnegation. I asked for nothing but to render happy the objects of my affection. Well, I have been repaid with ingratitude, and evil has got the upper hand in a soul which I wished to make the sanctuary and the hearth of the beautiful and the good. At present I struggle against myself in order not to let myself die. I wish to accomplish my task unto the end. May God aid me! I believe in Him and hope!...Augustine has suffered much, but she has had great courage and a true feeling of her dignity; and her health, thank God, has not suffered.

[FOOTNOTE: Augustine Brault was according to the editor of the Correspondance a cousin of George Sand's; George Sand herself calls her in Ma Vie her parent, and tells us in a vague way how her connection with this young lady gave occasion to scandalous libels.]

The next quotation is from the letter dated Nohant, December 14, 1847. Desirez is the wife of Charles Poncy, to whom the letter is addressed.

You have understood, Desirez and you, you whose soul is delicate because it is ardent, that I passed through the gravest and most painful phase of my life. I nearly succumbed, although I had foreseen it for a long time. But you know one is not always under the pressure of a sinister foresight, however evident it may be. There are days, weeks, entire months even, when one lives on illusions, and when one flatters one's self one is turning aside the blow which threatens one. At last, the most probable misfortune always surprises us disarmed and unprepared. In addition to this development of the unhappy germ, which was going on unnoticed, there have arisen several very bitter and altogether unexpected accessory circumstances. The result is that I am broken in soul and body with chagrin. I believe that this chagrin is incurable; for the better I succeed in freeing myself from it for some hours, the more sombre and poignant does it re-enter into me in the following hours...I have undertaken a lengthy work [un ouvrage de longue haleine] entitled Histoire de ma Vie...However, I shall not reveal the whole of my life...It will be, moreover, a pretty good piece of business, which will put me on my feet again, and will relieve me of a part of my anxieties with regard to the future of Solange, which is rather compromised.

We have, then, the choice of two explanations of the rupture: George Sand's, that it was caused by the disagreement of Chopin and her son; and Franchomme's, that it was brought about by Chopin's disregard of George Sand's injunction not to receive her daughter and son-in-law. I prefer the latter version, which is reconcilable with George Sand's letters, confirmed by the testimony of several of Chopin's friends, and given by an honest, simple-minded man who may be trusted to have told a plain unvarnished tale.

[FOOTNOTE: The contradictions are merely apparent, and disappear if we consider that George Sand cannot have had any inclination to give to Gutmann and Poncy an explanation of the real state of matters. Moreover, when she wrote to the former the rupture had, according to Franchomme, not yet taken place.]

But whatever reason may have been alleged to justify, whatever circumstance may have been the ostensible cause of the rupture, in reality it was only a pretext. On this point all agree—Franchomme, Gutmann, Kwiatkowski, Madame Rubio, Liszt, &c. George Sand was tired of Chopin, and as he did not leave her voluntarily, the separation had to be forced upon him. Gutmann thought there was no rupture at all. George Sand went to Nohant without Chopin, ceased to write to him, and thus the connection came to an end. Of course, Chopin ought to have left her before she had recourse to the "heroic means" of kicking him, metaphorically speaking, out of doors. But the strength of his passion for this woman made him weak. If a tithe of what is rumoured about George Sand's amorous escapades is true, a lover who stayed with her for eight years must have found his capacity of overlooking and forgiving severely tested. We hear on all sides of the infidelities she permitted herself. A Polish friend of Chopin's informed me that one day when he was about to enter the composer's, room to pay him a visit, the married Berrichon female servant of George Sand came out of it; and Chopin, who was lying ill in bed, told him afterwards that she had been complaining of her mistress and husband. Gutmann, who said that Chopin knew of George Sand's occasional infidelities, pretended to have heard him say when she had left him behind in Paris: "I would overlook all if only she would allow me to stay with her at Nohant." I regard these and such like stories, especially the last one, with suspicion (is it probable that the reticent artist was communicative on so delicate a subject, and with Gutmann, his pupil and a much younger man?), but they cannot be ignored, as they are characteristic of how Chopin's friends viewed his position. And yet, tormented as he must have been in the days of possession, crushed as he was by the loss, tempted as he subsequently often felt to curse her and her deceitfulness, he loved and missed George Sand to the very end—even the day before his death he said to Franchomme that she had told him he would die in no other arms but hers (que je ne mourrais que dans ses bras).

If George Sand had represented her separation from Chopin as a matter of convenience, she would have got more sympathy and been able to make out a better case.

The friendship of Chopin [she writes in Ma Vie] has never been for me a refuge in sadness. He had quite enough troubles of his own to bear. Mine would have overwhelmed him; moreover, he knew them only vaguely and did not understand them at all. He would have appreciated them from a point of view very different from mine.

Besides Chopin's illnesses became more frequent, his strength diminished from day to day, and care and attendance were consequently more than ever needful. That he was a "detestable patient" has already been said. The world takes it for granted that the wife or paramour of a man of genius is in duty bound to sacrifice herself for him. But how does the matter stand when there is genius on both sides, and self-sacrifice of either party entails loss to the world? By the way, is it not very selfish and hypocritical of this world which generally does so little for men of genius to demand that women shall entirely, self-denyingly devote themselves to their gifted lovers? Well, both George Sand and Chopin had to do work worth doing, and if one of them was hampered by the other in doing it, the dissolution of the union was justified. But perhaps this was not the reason of the separation. At any rate, George Sand does not advance such a plea. Still, it would have been unfair not to discuss this possible point of view.

The passage from the letter of George Sand dated September 1, 1846, which I quoted earlier in this chapter, justifies us, I think, in assuming that, although she was still keeping on her apartments in the Square d'Orleans, the phalanstery had ceased to exist. The apartments she gave up probably sometime in 1847; at any rate, she passed the winter of 1847-8, for the most part at least, at Nohant; and when after the outbreak of the revolution of 1848 she came to Paris (between the 9th and 14th of March), she put up at a hotel garni. Chopin continued to live in his old quarters in the Square d'Orldans, and, according to Gutmann, was after the cessation of his connection with George Sand in the habit of dining either with him (Gutmann) or Grzymala, that is to say, in their company.

It is much to be regretted that no letters are forthcoming to tell us of Chopin's feelings and doings at this time. I can place before the reader no more than one note, the satisfactory nature of which makes up to some extent for its brevity. It is addressed to Franchomme; dated Friday, October 1, 1847; and contains only these few words:—

Dear friend,—I thank you for your good heart, but I am very RICH this evening. Yours with all my heart.

In this year—i.e., 1847—appeared the three last works which Chopin published, although among his posthumous compositions there are two of a later date. The Trois Mazurkas, Op. 63 (dedicated to the Comtesse L. Czosnowska), and the Trois Valses, Op. 64 (dedicated respectively to Madame la Comtesse Potocka, Madame la Baronne de Rothschild, and Madame la Baronne Bronicka), appeared in September, and the Sonata for piano and violoncello, Op. 65 (dedicated to Franchomme), in October. Now I will say of these compositions only that the mazurkas and waltzes are not inferior to his previous works of this kind, and that the sonata is one of his most strenuous efforts in the larger forms. Mr. Charles Halle remembers going one evening in 1847 with Stephen Heller to Chopin, who had invited some friends to let them hear this sonata which he had lately finished. On arriving at his house they found him rather unwell; he went about the room bent like a half-opened penknife. The visitors proposed to leave him and to postpone the performance, but Chopin would not hear of it. He said he would try. Having once begun, he soon became straight again, warming as he proceeded. As will be seen from some remarks of Madame Dubois's, which I shall quote farther on, the sonata did not make an altogether favourable impression on the auditors.

The name of Madame Dubois reminds me of the soiree immortalised by a letter of Madame Girardin (see the one of March 7, 1847, in Vol. IV. of Le Vicomte de Launay), and already several times alluded to by me in preceding chapters. At this soiree Chopin not only performed several of his pieces, but also accompanied on a second piano his E minor Concerto which was played by his pupil, the youthful and beautiful Mdlle. Camille O'Meara. But the musical event par excellence of the period of Chopin's life with which we are concerned in this chapter is his concert, the last he gave in Paris, on February 16, 1848. Before I proceed with my account of it, I must quote a note, enclosing tickets for this concert, which Chopin wrote at this time to Franchomme. It runs thus: "The best places en evidence for Madame D., but not for her cook." Madame D. was Madame Paul Delaroche, the wife of the great painter, and a friend of Franchomme's.

But here is a copy of the original programme:—

FIRST PART.

Trio by Mozart, for piano, violin, and violoncello, performed by MM. Chopin, Alard, and Franchomme.

Aria, sung by Mdlle. Antonia Molina di Mondi.

Nocturne, composed and performed by M. Chopin. Barcarole,

Air, sung by Mdlle. Antonia Molina di Mondi.

Etude, composed and performed by M. Chopin. Berceuse,

SECOND PART.

Scherzo, Adagio, and Finale of the Sonata in G minor, for piano and violoncello, composed by M. Chopin, and performed by the author and M. Franchomme.

Air nouveau from Robert le Diable, composed by M. Meyerbeer, sung by M. Roger.

Preludes, Mazurkas, composed and performed by M. Chopin. Valse,

Accompanists:—MM. Aulary and de Garaude.

The report of "M. S." in the Gazette musicale of February 20, 1848, transports us at once into the midst of the exquisite, perfume-laden atmosphere of Pleyel's rooms on February 16:—

A concert by the Ariel of pianists is a thing too rare to be given, like other concerts, by opening both wings of the doors to whomsoever wishes to enter. For this one a list had been drawn up: everyone inscribed thereon his name: but everyone was not sure of obtaining the precious ticket: patronage was required to be admitted into the holy of holies, to obtain the favour of depositing one's offering, and yet this offering amounted to a louis; but who has not a louis to spare whep Chopin may be heard?

The outcome of all this naturally was that the fine flower of the aristocracy of the most distinguished women, the most elegant toilettes, filled on Wednesday Pleyel's rooms. There was also the aristocracy of artists and amateurs, happy to seize in his flight this musical sylph who had promised to let himself once more and for a few hours be approached, seen, and heard.

The sylph kept his word, and with what success, what enthusiasm! It is easier to tell you of the reception he got, the transport he excited, than to describe, analyse, divulge, the mysteries of an execution which was nothing analogous in our terrestrial regions. If we had in our power the pen which traced the delicate marvels of Queen Mab, not bigger than an agate that glitters on the finger of an alderman, of her liny chariot, of her diaphanous team, only then should we succeed in giving an idea of a purely ideal talent into which matter enters hardly at all. Only Chopin can make Chopin understood: all those who were present at the seance of Wednesday are convinced of this as well as we.

The programme announced first a trio of Mozart, which Chopin, Alard, and Franchomme executed in such a manner that one despairs of ever hearing it again so well performed. Then Chopin played studies, preludes, mazurkas, waltzes; he performed afterwards his beautiful sonata with Franchomme. Do not ask us how all these masterpieces small and great were rendered. We said at first we would not attempt to reproduce these thousands and thousands of nuances of an exceptional genius having in his service an organisation of the same kind. We shall only say that the charm did not cease to act a single instant on the audience, and that it still lasted after the concert was ended.

Let us add that Roger, our brilliant tenor, sang with his most expressive voice the beautiful prayer intercalated in Robert le Diable by the author himself at the debut of Mario at the Opera; that Mdlle. Antonia de Mendi [a niece of Pauline Viardot's; see the spelling of her name in the programme], the young and beautiful singer, carried off her share of bravos by her talent full of hope and promise.

There is a talk of a second concert which Chopin is to give on the 10th of March, and already more than 600 names are put down on the new list. In this there is nothing astonishing; Chopin owed us this recompense, and he well deserves this eagerness.

As this report, although it enables us to realise the atmosphere, is otherwise lacking in substance, we must try to get further information elsewhere. Happily, there is plenty at our disposal.

Before playing the violoncello sonata in public [wrote Madame Dubois to me], Chopin had tried it before some artists and intimate friends; the first movement, the masterpiece, was not understood. It appeared to the hearers obscure, involved by too many ideas, in short, it had no success. At the last moment Chopin dared not play the whole sonata before so worldly and elegant an audience, but confined himself to the Scherzo, Adagio, and Finale. I shall never forget the manner in which he executed the Barcarole, that adorable composition; the Waltz in D flat (la valse au petit chien) was encored amidst the acclamations of the public. A grande dame who was present at this concert wished to know Chopin's secret of making the scales so flowing on the piano [faire les gammes si coulees stir le piano]. The expression is good, and this limpidity has never been equalled.

Stephen Heller's remark to me, that Chopin became in his last years so weak that his playing was sometimes hardly audible, I have already related in a preceding chapter. There I have also mentioned what Mr. Charles Halle' told me—namely, that in the latter part of his life Chopin often played forte passages piano and even pianissimo, that, for instance, at the concert we are speaking of he played the two forte passages towards the end of the Barcarole pianissimo and with all sorts of dynamic finesses. Mr. Otto Goldschmidt, who was present at the concert on February 16, 1848, gave some interesting recollections of it, after the reading of a paper on the subject of Chopin, by Mr. G. A. Osborne, at one of the meetings of the Musical Association (see Proceedings, of the Musical Association for the year 1879-80):—

He [Chopin] was extremely weak, but still his playing—by reason of that remarkable quality which he possessed of gradation in touch—betrayed none of the impress of weakness which some attributed to piano playing or softness of touch; and he possessed in a greater degree than any pianoforte- player he [Mr. Goldschmidt] had ever heard, the faculty of passing upwards from piano through all gradations of tone...It was extremely difficult to obtain admission, for Chopin, who had been truly described as a most sensitive man—which seemed to be pre-eminently a quality of artistic organisations—not only had a list submitted to him of those who ought to be admitted, but he sifted that list, and made a selection from the selected list; he was, therefore, surrounded by none but friends and admirers. The room was beautifully decorated with flowers of all kinds, and he could truly say that even now, at the distance of thirty years, he had the most vivid recollection of the concert...The audience was so enraptured with his [Chopin's] playing that he was called forward again and again.

In connection with what Mr. Goldschmidt and the writer in the Gazette musicale say about the difficulty of admission and a sifted list, I have to record, and I shall do no more than record, Franchomme's denial. "I really believe," he said to me, "that this is a mere fiction. I saw Chopin every day; how, then, could I remain ignorant of it?"

To complete my account of Chopin's last concert in Paris, I have yet to add some scraps of information derived from Un nid d'autographes, by Oscar Comettant, who was present at it, and, moreover, reported on it in Le Siecle. The memory of the event was brought back to him when on looking over autographs in the possession of Auguste Wolff, the successor of Camille Pleyel, he found a ticket for the above described concert. As the concert so was also the ticket unlike that of any other artist. "Les lettres d'ecriture anglaise etaient gravees au burin et imprimees en taille-douce sur de beau papier mi-carton glace, d'un carre long elegant et distingue." It bore the following words and figures:—

SOIREE DE M. CHOPIN, DANS L'UN DES SALONS DE MM. PLEYEL ET CIE., 20, Rue Rochechouart, Le mercredi 16 fevrier 1848 a 8 heures 1/2. Rang....Prix 20 francs....Place reservee.

M. Comettant, in contradiction to what has been said by others about Chopin's physical condition, states that when the latter came on the platform, he walked upright and without feebleness; his face, though pale, did not seem greatly altered; and he played as he had always played. But M. Comettant was told that Chopin, having spent at the concert all his moral and physical energy, afterwards nearly fainted in the artists' room.

In March Chopin and George Sand saw each other once more. We will rest satisfied with the latter's laconic account of the meeting already quoted: "Je serrai sa main tremblante et glacee. Je voulu lui parler, il s'echappa." Karasowski's account of this last meeting is in the feuilleton style and a worthy pendant to that of the first meeting:—

A month before his departure [he writes], in the last days of March, Chopin was invited by a lady to whose hospitable house he had in former times often gone. Some moments he hesitated whether he should accept this invitation, for he had of late years less frequented the salons; at last—as if impelled by an inner voice—he accepted. An hour before he entered the house of Madame H...

And then follow wonderful conversations, sighs, blushes, tears, a lady hiding behind an ivy screen, and afterwards advancing with a gliding step, and whispering with a look full of repentance: "Frederick!" Alas, this was not the way George Sand met her dismissed lovers. Moreover, let it be remembered she was at this time not a girl in her teens, but a woman of nearly forty-four.

The outbreak of the revolution on February 22, 1848, upset the arrangements for the second concert, which was to take place on the 10th of March, and, along with the desire to seek forgetfulness of the grievous loss he had sustained in a change of scene, decided him at last to accept the pressing and unwearied invitations of his Scotch and English friends to visit Great Britain. On April 2 the Gazette musicale announced that Chopin would shortly betake himself to London and pass the season there. And before many weeks had passed he set out upon his journey. But the history of his doings in the capital and in other parts of the United Kingdom shall be related in another chapter.



CHAPTER XXX.



DIFFERENCE OF STYLE IN CHOPIN'S WORKS.——THEIR CHARACTERISTICS DISCUSSED, AND POPULAR PREJUDICES CONTROVERTED.——POLISH NATIONAL MUSIC AND ITS INFLUENCE ON CHOPIN.——CHOPIN A PERSONAL AS WELL AS NATIONAL TONE-POET.—A REVIEW OF SOME OF HIS LESS PERFECT COMPOSITIONS AND OF HIS MASTERPIECES: BOLERO; RONDEAU; VARIATIONS; TARANTELLE; ALLEGRO DE CONCERT; TWO SONATAS FOR PIANOFORTE (OP. 38 AND 58); SONATA (OP. 65) AND GRAND DUO CONCERTANT FOR PIANOFORTE AND VIOLONCELLO; FANTAISIE; MAZURKAS; POLONAISES; VALSES; ETUDES; PRELUDES; SCHERZI; IMPROMPTUS; NOCTURNES; BERCEUSE; BARCAROLE; AND BALLADES——-THE SONGS.——VARIOUS EDITIONS.



Before we inquire into the doings and sufferings of Chopin in England and Scotland, let us take a general survey of his life-work as a composer. We may fitly do so now; as at the stage of his career we have reached, his creative activity had come to a close. The last composition he published, the G minor Sonata for piano and violoncello, Op. 65, appeared in October, 1847; and among his posthumous compositions published by Fontana there are only two of later date—namely, the mazurkas, No. 2 of Op. 67 (G minor) and No. 4 of Op. 68 (F minor), which came into existence in 1849. Neither of these compositions can be numbered with the master's best works, but the latter of them is interesting, because it seems in its tonal writhings and wailings a picture of the bodily and mental torments Chopin was at the time enduring.

A considerable number of the master's works I have already discussed in Chapters III., VIII., and XIII. These, if we except the two Concertos, Op. II and 21 (although they, too, do not rank with his chefs-d'oeuvre), are, however, for us of greater importance biographically, perhaps also historically, than otherwise. It is true, we hear now and then of some virtuoso playing the Variations, Op. 2, or the Fantasia on Polish airs, Op. 13, nay, we may hear even of the performance of the Trio, Op. 8; but such occurrences are of the rarest rarity, and, considering how rich musical literature is in unexceptionable concert-pieces and chamber compositions, one feels on the whole pleased that these enterprising soloists and trio-players find neither much encouragement nor many imitators. While in examining the earlier works, the praise bestowed on them was often largely mixed with censure, and the admiration felt for them tempered by dissatisfaction; we shall have little else than pure praise and admiration for the works that remain to be considered, at least for the vast majority of them. One thing, however, seems to me needful before justice can be done to the composer Chopin: certain prejudices abroad concerning him have to be combated. I shall, therefore, preface my remarks on particular compositions and groups of compositions by some general observations.

It is sometimes said that there are hardly any traces of a development in the productions of Chopin, and that in this respect he is unlike all the other great masters. Such an opinion cannot be the result of a thorough and comprehensive study of the composer's works. So far from agreeing with those who hold it, I am tempted to assert that the difference of style between Chopin's early and latest works (even when juvenile compositions like the first two Rondos are left out of account) is as great as that between Beethoven's first and ninth Symphony. It would be easy to classify the Polish master's works according to three and even four (with the usual exceptions) successive styles, but I have no taste for this cheap kind of useless ingenuity. In fact, I shall confine myself to saying that in Chopin's works there are clearly distinguishable two styles—the early virtuosic and the later poetic style. The latter is in a certain sense also virtuosic, but with this difference, that its virtuosity is not virtuosity for virtuosity's sake. The poetic style which has thrown off the tinsel showiness of its predecessor does not, however, remain unchanged, for its texture becomes more and more close, and affords conclusive evidence of the increasing influence of Johann Sebastian Bach. Of course, the grand master of fugue does not appear here, as it were, full life-size, in peruke, knee-breeches, and shoe-buckles, but his presence in spite of transformation and attenuation is unmistakable. It is, however, not only in the closeness and complexity of texture that we notice Chopin's style changing: a striving after greater breadth and fulness of form are likewise apparent, and, alas! also an increase in sombreness, the result of deteriorating health. All this the reader will have to keep in mind when he passes in review the master's works, for I shall marshal them by groups, not chronologically.

Another prejudice, wide-spread, almost universal, is that Chopin's music is all languor and melancholy, and, consequently, wanting in variety. Now, there can be no greater error than this belief. As to variety, we should be obliged to wonder at its infiniteness if he had composed nothing but the pieces to which are really applicable the epithets dreamy, pensive, mournful, and despondent. But what vigour, what more than manly vigour, manifests itself in many of his creations! Think only of the Polonaises in A major (Op. 40, No. 1) and in A flat major (Op. 53), of many of his studies, the first three of his ballades, the scherzos, and much besides! To be sure, a great deal of this vigour is not natural, but the outcome of despair and maddening passion. Still, it is vigour, and such vigour as is not often to be met with. And, then, it is not the only kind to be found in his music. There is also a healthy vigour, which, for instance, in the A major Polonaise assumes a brilliantly-heroic form. Nor are serene and even joyous moods so rare that it would be permissible to ignore them. While thus controverting the so-called vox Dei (are not popular opinions generally popular prejudices?) and the pseudo-critics who create or follow it, I have no intention either to deny or conceal the Polish master's excess of languor and melancholy. I only wish to avoid vulgar exaggeration, to keep within the bounds of the factual. In art as in life, in biography as in history, there are not many questions that can be answered by a plain "yea" or "nay". It was, indeed, with Chopin as has been said of him, "his heart was sad, his mind was gay. "One day when Chopin, Liszt, and the Comtesse d'Agoult spent the after-dinner hours together, the lady, deeply moved by the Polish composer's playing, ventured to ask him "by what name he called the extraordinary feeling which he enclosed in his compositions, like unknown ashes in superb urns of most exquisitely-chiselled alabaster? "He answered her that—

her heart had not deceived her in its melancholy saddening, for whatever his moments of cheerfulness might be, he never for all that got rid of a feeling which formed, as it were, the soil of his heart, and for which he found a name only in his mother-tongue, no other possessing an equivalent to the Polish word zal [sadness, pain, sorrow, grief, trouble, repentance, &c.]. Indeed, he uttered the word repeatedly, as if his ear had been eager for this sound, which for him comprised the whole scale of the feelings which is produced by an intense plaint, from repentance to hatred, blessed or poisoned fruits of this acrid root.

After a long dissertation on the meaning of the word zal, Liszt, from whose book this quotation is taken, proceeds thus:—

Yes, truly, the zal colours with a reflection now argent, now ardent, the whole of Chopin's works. It is not even absent from his sweetest reveries. These impressions had so much the more importance in the life of Chopin that they manifested themselves distinctly in his last works. They little by little attained a kind of sickly irascibility, reaching the point of feverish tremulousness. This latter reveals itself in some of his last writings by a distortion of his thought which one is sometimes rather pained than surprised to meet. Suffocating almost under the oppression of his repressed transports of passion, making no longer use of the art except to rehearse to himself his own tragedy, he began, after having sung his feeling, to tear it to pieces.

Read together with my matter-of-fact statements, Liszt's hyperbolical and circumlocutional poetic prose will not be misunderstood by the reader. The case may be briefly summed up thus. Zal is not to be found in every one of Chopin's compositions, but in the greater part of them: sometimes it appears clearly on the surface, now as a smooth or lightly-rippled flow, now as a wildly-coursing, fiercely-gushing torrent; sometimes it is dimly felt only as an undercurrent whose presence not unfrequently becomes temporarily lost to ear and eye. We must, however, take care not to overlook that this zal is not exclusively individual, although its width and intensity are so.

The key-note [of Polish songs] [says the editor and translator into German of an interesting collection of Folk-songs of the Poles][FOOTNOTE: Volkslieder der Polen. Gesammelt und ubersetzt von W. P. (Leipzig,1833).] is melancholy—even in playful and naive songs something may be heard which reminds one of the pain of past sorrows; a plaintive sigh, a death- groan, which seems to accuse the Creator, curses His existence, and, as Tieck thinks, cries to heaven out of the dust of annihilation:

"What sin have I committed?"

These are the after-throes of whole races; these are the pains of whole centuries, which in these melodies entwine themselves in an infinite sigh. One is tempted to call them sentimental, because they seem to reflect sometimes on their own feeling; but, on the other hand, they are not so, for the impulse to an annihilating outpouring of feeling expresses itself too powerfully for these musical poems to be products of conscious creativeness. One feels when one hears these songs that the implacable wheel of fate has only too often rolled over the terrene happiness of this people, and life has turned to them only its dark side. Therefore, the dark side is so conspicuous; therefore, much pain and poetry—unhappiness and greatness.

The remarks on Polish folk-music lead us naturally to the question of Chopin's indebtedness to it, which, while in one respect it cannot be too highly rated, is yet in another respect generally overrated. The opinion that every peculiarity which distinguishes his music from that of other masters is to be put to the account of his nationality, and may be traced in Polish folk-music, is erroneous. But, on the other hand, it is emphatically true that this same folk-music was to him a potent inspirer and trainer. Generally speaking, however, Chopin has more of the spirit than of the form of Polish folk-music. The only two classes of his compositions where we find also something of the form are his mazurkas and polonaises; and, what is noteworthy, more in the former, the dance of the people, than in the latter, the dance of the aristocracy. In Chopin's mazurkas we meet not only with many of the most characteristic rhythms, but also with many equally characteristic melodic and harmonic traits of this chief of all the Polish dances.

Polish national music conforms in part to the tonality prevailing in modern art-music, that is, to our major and minor modes; in part, however, it reminds one of other tonalities—for instance, of that of the mediaeval church modes, and of that or those prevalent in the music of the Hungarians, Wallachians, and other peoples of that quarter.

[FOOTNOTE: The strictly diatonic church modes (not to be confounded with the ancient Greek modes bearing the same names) differ from each other by the position of the two semitones: the Ionian is like our C major; the Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian. &c., are like the series of natural notes starting respectively from d, c, f, g, a, &c. The characteristic interval of the Hungarian scale is the augmented second (a, b, c, d#, e, f, g#, a).]

The melodic progression, not always immediate, of an augmented fourth and major seventh occurs frequently, and that of an augmented second occasionally. Skips of a third after or before one or more steps of a second are very common. In connection with these skips of a third may be mentioned that one meets with melodies evidently based on a scale with a degree less than our major and minor scales, having in one place a step of a third instead of a second. [FOOTNOTE: Connoisseurs of Scotch music, on becoming acquainted with Polish music, will be incited by many traits of the latter to undertake a comparative study of the two.] The opening and the closing note stand often to each other in the relation of a second, sometimes also of a seventh. The numerous peculiarities to be met with in Polish folkmusic with regard to melodic progression are not likely to be reducible to one tonality or a simple system of tonalities. Time and district of origin have much to do with the formal character of the melodies. And besides political, social, and local influences direct musical ones—the mediaeval church music, eastern secular music, &c.—have to be taken into account. Of most Polish melodies it may be said that they are as capricious as they are piquant. Any attempt to harmonise them according to our tonal system must end in failure. Many of them would, indeed, be spoiled by any kind of harmony, being essentially melodic, not outgrowths of harmony.

[FOOTNOTE: To those who wish to study this subject may be recommended Oskar Kolberg's Piesni Ludu Polskiego (Warsaw, 1857), the best collection of Polish folk-songs. Charles Lipinski's collection, Piesni Polskie i Ruskie Luttu Galicyjskiego, although much less interesting, is yet noteworthy.]

To treat, however, this subject adequately, one requires volumes, not pages; to speak on it authoritatively, one must have studied it more thoroughly than I have done. The following melodies and snatches of melodies will to some extent illustrate what I have said, although they are chosen with a view rather to illustrate Chopin's indebtedness to Polish folk-music than Polish folk-music itself:—

[11 music score excerpts illustrated here]

Chopin, while piquantly and daringly varying the tonality prevailing in art-music, hardly ever departs from it altogether—he keeps at least in contact with it, however light that contact may be now and then in the mazurkas.

[FOOTNOTE: One of the most decided exceptions is the Mazurka, Op. 24, No. 2, of which only the A fiat major part adheres frankly to our tonality. The portion beginning with the twenty-first bar and extending over that and the next fifteen bars displays, on the other hand, the purest Lydian, while the other portions, although less definite as regards tonality, keep in closer touch with the mediaeval church smode [sic: mode] than with our major and minor.]

Further, he adopted only some of the striking peculiarities of the national music, and added to them others which were individual. These individual characteristics—those audacities of rhythm, melody, and harmony (in progressions and modulations, as well as in single chords)—may, however, be said to have been fathered by the national ones. As to the predominating chromaticism of his style, it is not to be found in Polish folk-music; although slight rudiments are discoverable (see Nos. 6-12 of the musical illustrations). Of course, no one would seek there his indescribably-exquisite and highly-elaborate workmanship, which alone enabled him to give expression to the finest shades and most sudden changes of gentle feelings and turbulent passions. Indeed, as I have already said, it is rather the national spirit than the form which manifests itself in Chopin's music. The writer of the article on Polish music in Mendel's Conversations-Lexikon remarks:—

What Chopin has written remains for all times the highest ideal of Polish music. Although it would be impossible to point out in a single bar a vulgar utilisation of a national theme, or a Slavonic aping of it, there yet hovers over the whole the spirit of Polish melody, with its chivalrous, proud, and dreamy accents; yea, even the spirit of the Polish language is so pregnantly reproduced in the musical diction as perhaps in no composition of any of his countrymen; unless it be that Prince Oginski with his polonaises and Dobrzynski in his happiest moments have approached him.

Liszt, as so often, has also in connection with this aspect of the composer Chopin some excellent remarks to offer.

He neither applied himself nor exerted himself to write Polish music; it is possible that he would have been astonished to hear himself called a Polish musician.

[FOOTNOTE: Liszt decidedly overshoots here the mark, and does so in a less degree in the rest of these observations. Did not Chopin himself say to Hiller that he wished to be to his countrymen what Uhland was to the Germans? And did he not write in one of his letters (see p. 168): "You know how I wish to understand, and how I have in part succeeded in understanding, our national music"?]

Nevertheless, he was a national musician par excellence...He summed up in his imagination, he represented in his talent, a poetic feeling inherent in his nation and diffused there among all his contemporaries. Like the true national poets, Chopin sang, without a fixed design, without a preconceived choice, what inspiration spontaneously dictated to him; it is thus that there arose in his music, without solicitation, without effort, the most idealised form of the emotions which had animated his childhood, chequered his adolescence, and embellished his youth...Without making any pretence to it, he collected into a luminous sheaf sentiments confusedly felt by all in his country, fragmentarily disseminated in their hearts, vaguely perceived by some.

George Sand tells us that Chopin's works were the mysterious and vague expression of his inner life. That they were the expression of his inner life is indeed a fact which no attentive hearer can fail to discover without the aid of external evidence. For the composer has hardly written a bar in which, so to speak, the beating of his heart may not be felt. Chopin revealed himself only in his music, but there he revealed himself fully. And was this expression of his inner life really "mysterious and vague"? I think not! At least, no effusion of words could have made clearer and more distinct what he expressed. For the communications of dreams and visions such as he dreamt and saw, of the fluctuating emotional actualities such as his sensitive heart experienced, musical forms are, no doubt, less clumsy than verbal and pictorial ones. And if we know something of his history and that of his nation, we cannot be at a loss to give names and local habitations to the impalpable, but emotionally and intellectually-perceptible contents of his music. We have to distinguish in Chopin the personal and the national tone-poet, the singer of his own joys and sorrows and that of his country's. But, while distinguishing these two aspects, we must take care not to regard them as two separate things. They were a duality the constitutive forces of which alternately assumed supremacy. The national poet at no time absorbed the personal, the personal poet at no time disowned the national. His imagination was always ready to conjure up his native atmosphere, nay, we may even say that, wherever he might be, he lived in it. The scene of his dreams and visions lay oftenest in the land of his birth. And what did the national poet dream and see in these dreams and visions? A past, present, and future which never existed and never will exist, a Poland and a Polish people glorified. Reality passed through the refining fires of his love and genius and reappeared in his music sublimated as beauty and poetry. No other poet has like Chopin embodied in art the romance of the land and people of Poland. And, also, no other poet has like him embodied in art the romance of his own existence. But whereas as a national poet he was a flattering idealist, he was as a personal poet an uncompromising realist.

The masterpieces of Chopin consist of mazurkas, polonaises, waltzes, etudes, preludes, nocturnes (with which we will class the berceuse and barcarole), scherzos and impromptus, and ballades. They do not, however, comprise all his notable compositions. And about these notable compositions which do not rank with his masterpieces, either because they are of less significance or otherwise fail to reach the standard of requisite perfectness, I shall first say a few words.

Chopin's Bolero, Op. 19, may be described as a Bolero a la polonaise. It is livelier in movement and more coquettish in character than the compositions which he entitles polonaises, but for all that its physiognomy does not on the whole strike one as particularly Spanish, certainly not beyond the first section of the Bolero proper and the seductive strains of the Pililento, the second tempo of the introduction. And in saying this I am not misled by the points of resemblance in the rhythmical accompaniment of these dances. Chopin published the Bolero in 1834, four years before he visited Spain, but one may doubt whether it would have turned out less Polish if he had composed it subsequently. Although an excellent imitator in the way of mimicry, he lacked the talent of imitating musical thought and character; at any rate, there are no traces of it in his works. The cause of this lack of talent lies, of course, in the strength of his subjectivism in the first place, and of his nationalism in the second. I said the Bolero was published four years before his visit to Spain. But how many years before this visit was it composed? I think a good many years earlier; for it has so much of his youthful style about it, and not only of his youthful style, but also of his youthful character—by which I mean that it is less intensely poetic. It is not impossible that Chopin was instigated to write it by hearing the Bolero in Auber's "La Muette de Portici" ("Masaniello"), which opera was first performed on February 28, 1828. These remarks are thrown out merely as hints. The second composition which we shall consider will show how dangerous it is to dogmatise on the strength of internal evidence.

Op. 16, a lightsome Rondeau with a dramatic Introduction, is, like the Bolero, not without its beauties; but in spite of greater individuality, ranks, like it, low among the master's works, being patchy, unequal, and little poetical.

If ever Chopin is not Chopin in his music, he is so in his Variations brillantes (in B flat major) sur le Rondeau favori: "Je vends des Scapulaires" de Ludovic, de Herold et Halevy, Op. 12. Did we not know that he must have composed the work about the middle of 1833, we should be tempted to class it with the works which came into existence when his individuality was as yet little developed. [FOOTNOTE: The opera Ludovic, on which Herold was engaged when he died on January 19, 1833, and which Halevy completed, was produced in Paris on May 16, 1833. From the German publishers of Chopin's Op. 12 I learned that it appeared in November, 1833. In the Gazette musicale of January 26, 1834, may be read a review of it.] But knowing what we do, we can only wonder at the strange phenomenon. It is as if Chopin had here thrown overboard the Polish part of his natal inheritance and given himself up unrestrainedly and voluptuously to the French part. Besides various diatonic runs of an inessential and purely ornamental character, there is in the finale actually a plain and full-toned C flat major scale. What other work of the composer could be pointed out exhibiting the like feature? Of course, Chopin is as little successful in entirely hiding his serpentining and chromaticising tendency as Mephistopheles in hiding the limp arising from his cloven foot. Still, these fallings out of the role are rare and transient, and, on the whole, Chopin presents himself as a perfect homme du monde who knows how to say the most insignificant trifles with the most exquisite grace imaginable. There can. be nothing more amusing than the contemporary critical opinions regarding this work, nothing more amusing than to see the at other times censorious Philistines unwrinkle their brows, relax generally the sternness of their features, and welcome, as it were, the return of the prodigal son. We wiser critics of to-day, who, of course, think very differently about this matter, can, nevertheless, enjoy and heartily applaud the prettiness and elegance of the simple first variation, the playful tripping second, the schwarmerische melodious third, the merry swinging fourth, and the brilliant finale.

From Chopin's letters we see that the publication of the Tarantelle, Op. 43, which took place in the latter part of 1841, was attended with difficulties and annoyances. [FOOTNOTE: Herr Schuberth, of Leipzig, informed me that a honorarium of 500 francs was paid to Chopin for this work on July 1, 1841. The French publisher deposited the work at the library of the Conservatoire in October, 1841.] What these difficulties and annoyances were, is, however, only in part ascertainable. To turn from the publication to the composition itself, I may say that it is full of life, indeed, spirited in every respect, in movement and in boldness of harmonic and melodic conception. The Tarantelle is a translation from Italian into Polish, a transmutation of Rossini into Chopin, a Neapolitan scene painted with opaque colours, the south without its transparent sky, balmy air, and general brightness. That this composition was inspired by impressions received from Rossini's Tarantella, and not from impressions received in Italy (of which, as has already been related, he had a short glimpse in 1839), is evident. A comparison of Chopin's Op. 43 with Liszt's glowing and intoxicating transcription of Rossini's composition may be recommended as a study equally pleasant and instructive. Although not an enthusiastic admirer of Chopin's Tarantelle, I protest in the interest of the composer and for justice's sake against Schumann's dictum: "Nobody can call that beautiful music; but we pardon the master his wild fantasies, for once he may let us see also the dark sides of his inner life."

The Allegro de Concert, Op. 46, which was published in November, 1841, although written for the pianoforte alone, contains, nevertheless, passages which are more distinctly orchestral than anything Chopin ever wrote for the orchestra. The form resembles somewhat that of the concerto. In the first section, which occupies the place of the opening tutti, we cannot fail to distinguish the entrances of single instruments, groups of instruments, and the full orchestra. The soloist starts in the eighty-seventh bar, and in the following commences a cadenza. With the a tempo comes the first subject (A major), and the passage-work which brings up the rear leads to the second subject (E major), which had already appeared in the first section in A major. The first subject, if I may dignify the matter in question with that designation, does not recur again, nor was it introduced by the tutti. The central and principal thought is what I called the second subject. The second section concludes with brilliant passage-work in E major, the time—honoured shake rousing the drowsy orchestra from its sweet repose. The hint is not lost, and the orchestra, in the disguise of the pianoforte, attends to its duty right vigorously. With the poco rit. the soloist sets to work again, and in the next bar takes up the principal subject in A minor. After that we have once more brilliant passage-work, closing this time in A major, and then a final tutti. The Allegro de Concert gives rise to all sorts of surmises. Was it written first for the pianoforte and orchestra, as Schumann suspects? Or may we make even a bolder guess, and suppose that the composer, at a more advanced age, worked up into this Allegro de Concert a sketch for the first movement of a concerto conceived in his younger days? Have we, perhaps, here a fragment or fragments of the Concerto for two pianos which Chopin, in a letter written at Vienna on December 21, 1830, said he would play in public with his friend Nidecki, if he succeeded in writing it to his satisfaction? And is there any significance in the fact that Chopin, when (probably in the summer of 1841) sending the manuscript of this work to Fontana, calls it a Concerto? Be this as it may, the principal subject and some of the passage-work remind one of the time of the concertos; other things, again, belong undoubtedly to a later period. The tutti and solo parts are unmistakable, so different is the treatment of the pianoforte: in the former the style has the heaviness of an arrangement, in the latter it has Chopin's usual airiness. The work, as a whole, is unsatisfactory, nay, almost indigestible. The subjects are neither striking nor important. Of the passage-work, that which follows the second subject contains the most interesting matter. Piquant traits and all sorts of fragmentary beauties are scattered here and there over the movement. But after we have considered all, we must confess that this opus adds little or nothing to the value of our Chopin inheritance.

[FOOTNOTE: In justice to the composer I must here quote a criticism which since I wrote the above appeared in the Athenaum (January 21, 1888):—"The last-named work [the Allegro de Concert, Op. 46] is not often heard, and is generally regarded as one of Chopin's least interesting and least characteristic pieces. Let us hasten to say that these impressions are distinctly wrong; the executive difficulties of the work are extremely great, and a mere mastery of them is far from all that is needed. When M. de Pachmann commenced to play it was quickly evident that his reading would be most remarkable, and in the end it amounted to an astounding revelation. That which seemed dry and involved became under his fingers instinct with beauty and feeling; the musicians and amateurs present listened as if spellbound, and opinion was unanimous that the performance was nothing short of an artistic creation. For the sake of the composer, if not for his own reputation, the pianist should repeat it, not once, but many times." Notwithstanding this decided judgment of a weighty authority—for such everyone will, without hesitation, acknowledge the critic in question to be—I am unable, after once more examining the work, to alter my previously formed opinion.]

As a further confirmation of the supposed origin of the Allegro de Concert, I may mention the arrangement of it for piano and orchestra (also for two pianos) by Jean Louis Nicode.

[FOOTNOTE: Nicode has done his work well so far as he kept close to the text of Chopin; but his insertion of a working-out section of more than seventy bars is not justifiable, and, moreover, though making the work more like an orthodox first movement of a concerto, does not enhance its beauty and artistic value.]

To the Sonata in B flat minor, Op. 35 (published in May, 1840), this most powerful of Chopin's works in the larger forms, Liszt's remark, "Plus de volonte que d'inspiration," is hardly applicable, although he used the expression in speaking of Chopin's concertos and sonatas in general; for there is no lack of inspiration here, nor are there traces of painful, unrewarded effort. Each of the four pieces of which the sonata consists is full of vigour, originality, and interest. But whether they can be called a sonata is another question. Schumann, in his playful manner, speaks of caprice and wantonness, and insinuates that Chopin bound together four of his maddest children, and entitled them sonata, in order that he might perhaps under this name smuggle them in where otherwise they would not penetrate. Of course, this is a fancy of Schumann's. Still, one cannot help wondering whether the composer from the first intended to write a sonata and obtained this result—amphora coepit institui; currente rota cur urceus exit?—or whether these four movements got into existence without any predestination, and were afterwards put under one cover. [FOOTNOTE: At any rate, the march was finished before the rest of the work. See the quotation from one of Chopin's letters farther on.] With all Schumann's admiration for Chopin and praise of this sonata, it appears to me that he does not give Chopin his due. There is something gigantic in the work which, although it does not elevate and ennoble, being for the most part a purposeless fuming, impresses one powerfully. The first movement begins with four bars grave, a groan full of pain; then the composer, in restless, breathless haste, is driven by his feelings onward, ever onward, till he comes to the lovely, peaceful second subject (in D flat major, a real contrast this time), which grows by-and-by more passionate, and in the concluding portion of the first part transcends the limits of propriety—VIDE those ugly dissonances. The connection of the close of the first part with the repetition of this and the beginning of the second part by means of the chord of the dominant seventh in A flat and that in D flat with the suspended sixth, is noteworthy. The strange second section, in which the first subject is worked out, has the appearance rather of an improvisation than of a composition. After this a few bars in 6/4 time, fiercely wild (stretto) at first, but gradually subsiding, lead to the repeat in B flat major of the second subject—the first subject does not appear again in its original form. To the close, which is like that of the corresponding section in the first part (6/4), is added a coda (2/2) introducing the characteristic motive of the first subject. In the scherzo, the grandest movement and the climax of the sonata, the gloom and the threatening power which rise to a higher and higher pitch become quite weird and fear-inspiring; it affects one like lowering clouds, rolling of thunder, and howling and whistling of the wind—to the latter, for instance, the chromatic successions of chords of the sixth may not inappropriately be likened. The piu lento is certainly one of the most scherzo-like thoughts in Chopin's scherzos—so light and joyful, yet a volcano is murmuring under this serenity. The return of this piu lento, after the repeat of the first section, is very fine and beneficently refreshing, like nature after a storm. The Marche funebre ranks among Chopin's best-known and most highly-appreciated pieces. Liszt mentions it with particular distinction, and grows justly eloquent over it. I do not altogether understand Schumann's objection: "It is still more gloomy than the scherzo," he says, "and contains even much that is repulsive; in its place an adagio, perhaps in D flat, would have had an incomparably finer effect." Out of the dull, stupefied brooding, which is the fundamental mood of the first section, there rises once and again (bars 7 and 8, and 11 and 12) a pitiable wailing, and then an outburst of passionate appealing (the forte passage in D flat major), followed by a sinking helplessness (the two bars with the shakes in the bass), accompanied by moans and deep breathings. The two parts of the second section are a rapturous gaze into the beatific regions of a beyond, a vision of reunion of what for the time is severed. The last movement may be counted among the curiosities of composition—a presto in B flat minor of seventy-five bars, an endless series of triplets from beginning to end in octaves. It calls up in one's mind the solitude and dreariness of a desert. "The last movement is more like mockery than music," says Schumann, but adds, truly and wisely—

and yet one confesses to one's self that also out of this unmelodious and joyless movement a peculiar dismal spirit breathes upon us, who keeps down with a strong hand that which would revolt, so that we obey, as if we were charmed, without murmuring, but also without praising, for that is no music. Thus the sonata concludes, as it began, enigmatically, like a sphinx with a mocking smile.

J. W. Davison, in the preface to an edition of Chopin's mazurkas, relates that Mendelssohn, on being questioned about the finale of one of Chopin's sonatas (I think it must have been the one before us), said briefly and bitterly, "Oh, I abhor it!" H. Barbedette remarks in his "Chopin," a criticism without insight and originality, of this finale, "C'est Lazare grattant de ses ongles la pierre de son tombeau et tombant epuise de fatigue, de faim et de desespoir." And now let the reader recall the words which Chopin wrote from Nohant to Fontana in the summer of 1839:—

I am composing here a Sonata in B flat minor, in which will be the funeral march which you have already. There is an Allegro, then a Scherzo, in E flat minor, the March, and a short Finale of about three pages. The left hand unisono with the right hand are gossiping after the March [ogaduja po Marszu].

The meaning of which somewhat obscure interpretation seems to be, that after the burial the good neighbours took to discussing the merits of the departed, not without a spice of backbiting.

The Sonata in B minor, Op. 58, the second of Chopin's notable pianoforte sonatas (the third if we take into account the unpalatable Op. 4), made its appearance five years later, in June, 1845. Unity is as little discernible in this sonata as in its predecessor. The four movements of which the work consists are rather affiliated than cognate; nay, this may be said even of many parts of the movements. The first movement by far surpasses the other three in importance: indeed, the wealth of beautiful and interesting matter which is here heaped up—for it is rather an unsifted accumulation than an artistic presentation and evolution—would have sufficed many a composer for several movements. The ideas are very unequal and their course very jerky till we come to the second subject (D major), which swells out into a broad stream of impassioned melody. Farther on the matter becomes again jerky and mosaic-like. While the close of the first part is very fine, the beginning of the second is a comfortless waste. Things mend with the re-entrance of the subsidiary part of the second subject (now in D flat major), which, after being dwelt upon for some time and varied, disappears, and is followed by a repetition of portions of the first subject, the whole second subject (in B major), and the closing period, which is prolonged by a coda to make the close more emphatic and satisfying. A light and graceful quaver figure winds with now rippling, now waving motion through the first and third sections of the scherzo; in the contrasting second section, with the sustained accompaniment and the melody in one of the middle parts, the entrance of the bright A major, after the gloom of the preceding bars, is very effective. The third movement has the character of a nocturne, and as such cannot fail to be admired. In the visionary dreaming of the long middle section we imagine the composer with dilated eyes and rapture in his look—it is rather a reverie than a composition. The finale surrounds us with an emotional atmosphere somewhat akin to that of the first movement, but more agitated. After eight bold introductory bars with piercing dissonances begins the first subject, which, with its rhythmically differently-accompanied repetition, is the most important constituent of the movement. The rest, although finely polished, is somewhat insignificant. In short, this is the old story, plus de volonte que d'inspiration, that is to say, inspiration of the right sort. And also, plus de volonte que de savoir-faire.

There is one work of Chopin's to which Liszt's dictum, plus de volnte que d'inspiratio, applies in all, and even more than all its force. I allude to the Sonata (in G minor) for piano and violoncello, Op. 65 (published in September, 1847), in which hardly anything else but effort, painful effort, manifests itself. The first and last movements are immense wildernesses with only here and there a small flower. The middle movements, a Scherzo and an Andante, do not rise to the dignity of a sonata, and, moreover, lack distinction, especially the slow movement, a nocturne-like dialogue between the two instruments. As to the beauties—such as the first subject of the first movement (at the entrance of the violoncello), the opening bars of the Scherzo, part of the ANDANTE, &c.—they are merely beginnings, springs that lose themselves soon in a sandy waste. Hence I have not the heart to controvert Moscheles who, in his diary, says some cutting things about this work: "In composition Chopin proves that he has only isolated happy thoughts which he does not know how to work up into a rounded whole. In the just published sonata with violoncello I find often passages which sound as if someone were preluding on the piano and knocked at all the keys to learn whether euphony was at home." [FOOTNOTE: Aus Moscheles' Leben; Vol. II., p. 171.] An entry of the year 1850 runs as follows: "But a trial of patience of another kind is imposed on me by Chopin's Violoncello Sonata, which I am arranging for four hands. To me it is a tangled forest, through which now and then penetrates a gleam of the sun." [FOOTNOTE: Ibid., Vol. II., p. 216.] To take up after the last-discussed work a composition like the Grand Duo Concertant for piano and violoncello, on themes from "Robert le Diable," by Chopin and A. Franchomme, is quite a relief, although it is really of no artistic importance. Schumann is right when he says of this DUO, which saw the light of publicity (without OPUS number) in 1833:14 [FOOTNOTE: The first performance of Meyerbeer's "Robert le Diable" took place at the Paris Opera on November 21, 1831.] "A piece for a SALON where behind the shoulders of counts and countesses now and then rises the head of a celebrated artist." And he may also be right when he says:—