Troubled by the ghosts of the past he had raised, the composer, hollow eyed, fled the apartment.  All this must have been at Majorca, for op. 40 was composed or finished there.  Ailing, weak and unhappy as he was, Chopin had grit enough to file and polish this brilliant and striking composition into its present shape.  It is the best known and, though the most muscular of his compositions, it is the most played.  It is dedicated to J. Fontana, and was published November, 1840.  This Polonaise has the festive glitter of Weber.

The C minor Polonaise of the same set is a noble, troubled composition, large in accents and deeply felt.  Can anything be more impressive than this opening?

[Musical score excerpt]

It is indeed Poland’s downfall.  The Trio in A flat, with its kaleidoscopic modulations, produces an impression of vague unrest and suppressed sorrow.  There is loftiness of spirit and daring in it.

What can one say new of the tremendous F sharp minor Polonaise?  Willeby calls it noisy!  And Stanislaw Przybyszewski—­whom Vance Thompson christened a prestidigious noctambulist-has literally stormed over it.  It is barbaric, it is perhaps pathologic, and of it Liszt has said most eloquent things.  It is for him a dream poem, the “lurid hour that precedes a hurricane” with a “convulsive shudder at the close.”  The opening is very impressive, the nerve-pulp being harassed by the gradually swelling prelude.  There is defiant power in the first theme, and the constant reference to it betrays the composer’s exasperated mental condition.  This tendency to return upon himself, a tormenting introspection, certainly signifies a grave state.  But consider the musical weight of the work, the recklessly bold outpourings of a mind almost distraught!  There is no greater test for the poet-pianist than the F sharp minor Polonaise.  It is profoundly ironical—­what else means the introduction of that lovely mazurka, “a flower between two abysses”?  This strange dance is ushered in by two of the most enigmatic pages of Chopin.  The A major intermezzo, with its booming cannons and reverberating overtones, is not easily defensible on the score of form, yet it unmistakably fits in the picture.  The mazurka is full of interrogation and emotional nuanciren.  The return of the tempest is not long delayed.  It bursts, wanes, and with the coda comes sad yearning, then the savage drama passes tremblingly into the night after fluid and wavering affirmations; a roar in F sharp and finally a silence that marks the cessation of an agitating nightmare.  No “sabre dance” this, but a confession from the dark depths of a self-tortured soul.  Op. 44 was published November, 1841, and is dedicated to Princesse de Beauvau.  There are few editorial differences.  In the eighteenth bar from the beginning, Kullak, in the second beat, fills out an octave.  Not so in Klindworth nor in the original.  At the twentieth bar Klindworth differs from the original as follows.  The Chopin text is the upper one: