The Rondo for my Concerto is not yet finished, because the right inspired mood has always beep wanting.  If I have only the Allegro and the Adagio completely finished I shall be without anxiety about the Finale.  The Adagio is in E major, and of a romantic, calm, and partly melancholy character.  It is intended to convey the impression which one receives when the eye rests on a beloved landscape that calls up in one’s soul beautiful memories—­for instance, on a fine, moonlit spring night.  I have written violins with mutes as an accompaniment to it.  I wonder if that will have a good effect?  Well, time will show.

   August 21, 1830.—­Next month I leave here; first, however, I
   must rehearse my Concerto, for the Rondo is now finished.

For an account of the rehearsals of the Concerto and its first public performance at Chopin’s third Warsaw concert on October u, 1830, the reader is referred to the tenth chapter (p. 150). [Footnote:  In the following remarks on the concertos I shall draw freely from the critical commentary on the Pianoforte Works of Chopin, which I contributed some years ago (1879) to the Monthly Musical Record.]

Chopin, says Liszt, wrote beautiful concertos and fine sonatas, but it is not difficult to perceive in these productions “plus de volonte que d’inspiration.”  As for his inspiration it was naturally “imperieuse, fantasque, irreflechie; ses allures ne pouvaient etre que libres.”  Indeed, Liszt believes that Chopin—­

did violence to his genius every time he sought to fetter it by rules, classifications, and an arrangement that was not his own, and could not accord with the exigencies of his spirit, which was one of those whose grace displays itself when they seem to drift along [alter a la derive]....The classical attempts of Chopin nevertheless shine by a rare refinement of style.  They contain passages of great interest, parts of surprising grandeur.

With Chopin writing a concerto or a sonata was an effort, and the effort was always inadequate for the attainment of the object—­a perfect work of its kind.  He lacked the peculiar qualities, natural and acquired, requisite for a successful cultivation of the larger forms.  He could not grasp and hold the threads of thought which he found flitting in his mind, and weave them into a strong, complex web; he snatched them up one by one, tied them together, and either knit them into light fabrics or merely wound them into skeins.  In short, Chopin was not a thinker, not a logician—­his propositions are generally good, but his arguments are poor and the conclusions often wanting.  Liszt speaks sometimes of Chopin’s science.  In doing this, however, he misapplies the word.  There was nothing scientific in Chopin’s mode of production, and there is nothing scientific in his works.  Substitute “ingenious” (in the sense of quick-witted and possessed of genius, in the sense of the German geistreich) for “scientific,”