As previously stated, the work had already in September, 1828, been for some time at Vienna in the hands of Haslinger; it was probably commenced as far back as 1827, but it did not appear in print till 1830. [Footnote:  It appeared in a serial publication entitled Odeon, which was described on the title-page as:  Ausgewahlte grosse Concertstucke fur verschiedene Instrumente (Selected Grand Concert-Pieces for different instruments).] On April 10 of that year Chopin writes that he expects it impatiently.  The appearance of these Variations, the first work of Chopin published outside his own country, created a sensation.  Of the impression which he produced with it on the Viennese in 1829 enough has been said in the preceding chapter.  The Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung received no less than three reviews of it, two of them—­that of Schumann and one by “an old musician”—­were accepted and inserted in the same number of the paper (1831, Vol. xxxiii., No. 49); the third, by Friedrich Wieck, which was rejected, found its way in the following year into the musical journal Caecilia.  Schumann’s enthusiastic effusion was a prophecy rather than a criticism.  But although we may fail to distinguish in Chopin’s composition the flirting of the grandee Don Juan with the peasant-girl Zerlina, the curses of the duped lover Masetto, and the jeers and laughter of the knavish attendant Leporello, which Schumann thought he recognised, we all obey most readily and reverently his injunction, “Hats off, gentlemen:  a genius!” In these words lies, indeed, the merit of Schumann’s review as a criticism.  Wieck felt and expressed nearly the same, only he felt it less passionately and expressed it in the customary critical style.  The “old musician,” on the other hand, is pedantically censorious, and the redoubtable Rellstab (in the Iris) mercilessly condemnatory.  Still, these two conservative critics, blinded as they were by the force of habit to the excellences of the rising star, saw what their progressive brethren overlooked in the ardour of their admiration—­namely, the super-abundance of ornament and figuration.  There is a grain of truth in the rather strong statement of Rellstab that the composer “runs down the theme with roulades, and throttles and hangs it with chains of shakes.”  What, however, Rellstab and the “old musician”—­for he, too, exclaims, “nothing but bravura and figuration!”—­did not see, but what must be patent to every candid and unprejudiced observer, are the originality, piquancy, and grace of these fioriture, roulades, &c., which, indeed, are unlike anything that was ever heard or seen before Chopin’s time.  I say “seen,” for the configurations in the notation of this piece are so different from those of the works of any other composer that even an unmusical person could distinguish them from all the rest; and there is none of the timid groping, the awkward stumbling of the tyro.  On the contrary, the composer presents himself with an ease and boldness which cannot but command admiration.