Opus 24 begins with the G minor Mazurka, a favorite because of its comparative freedom from technical difficulties.  Although in the minor mode there is mental strength in the piece, with its exotic scale of the augmented second, and its trio is hearty.  In the next, in C, we find, besides the curious content, a mixture of tonalities—­Lydian and mediaeval church modes.  Here the trio is occidental.  The entire piece leaves a vague impression of discontent, and the refrain recalls the Russian bargemen’s songs utilized at various times by Tschaikowsky.  Klindworth uses variants.  There is also some editorial differences in the metronomic markings, Mikuli being, according to Kullak, too slow.  Mention has not been made, as in the studies and preludes, of the tempi of the Mazurkas.  These compositions are so capricious, so varied, that Chopin, I am sure, did not play any one of them twice alike.  They are creatures of moods, melodic air plants, swinging to the rhythms of any vagrant breeze.  The metronome is for the student, but metronome and rubato are, as de Lenz would have said, mutually exclusive.

The third Mazurka of op. 24 is in A flat.  It is pleasing, not deep, a real dance with an ornamental coda.  But the next!  Ah! here is a gem, a beautiful and exquisitely colored poem.  In B flat minor, it sends out prehensile filaments that entwine and draw us into the centre of a wondrous melody, laden with rich odors, odors that almost intoxicate.  The figuration is tropical, and when the major is reached and those glancing thirty-seconds so coyly assail us we realize the seductive charm of Chopin.  The reprise is still more festooned, and it is almost a relief when the little, tender unison begins with its positive chord assertions closing the period.  Then follows a fascinating, cadenced step, with lights and shades, sweet melancholy driving before it joy and being routed itself, until the annunciation of the first theme and the dying away of the dance, dancers and the solid globe itself, as if earth had committed suicide for loss of the sun.  The last two bars could have been written only by Chopin.  They are ineffable sighs.

And now the chorus of praise begins to mount in burning octaves.  The C minor Mazurka, op. 30, is another of those wonderful, heartfelt melodies of the master.  What can I say of the deepening feeling at the con anima!  It stabs with its pathos.  Here is the poet Chopin, the poet who, with Burns, interprets the simple strains of the folk, who blinds us with color and rich romanticism like Keats and lifts us Shelley-wise to transcendental azure.  And his only apparatus a keyboard.  As Schumann wrote:  “Chopin did not make his appearance by an orchestral army, as a great genius is accustomed to do; he only possesses a small cohort, but every soul belongs to him to the last hero.”