Opus 56, in B major, is elaborate, even in its beginning.  There is decoration in the ritornelle in E flat and one feels the absence of a compensating emotion, despite the display of contrapuntal skill.  Very virtuoso-like, but not so intimate as some of the others.  Karasowski selects No. 2 in C as an illustration.  “It is as though the composer had sought for the moment to divert himself with narcotic intoxication only to fall back the more deeply into his original gloom.”  There is the peasant in the first bars in C, but the A minor and what follows soon disturb the air of bonhomie.  Theoretical ease is in the imitative passages; Chopin is now master of his tools.  The third Mazurka of op. 56 is in C minor.  It is quite long and does not give the impression of a whole.  With the exception of a short break in B major, it is composed with the head, not the heart, nor yet the heels.

Not unlike, in its sturdy affirmation, the one in C sharp minor, op. 41, is the next Mazurka, in A minor, op. 59.  That Chopin did not repeat himself is an artistic miracle.  A subtle turn takes us off the familiar road to some strange glade, wherein the flowers are rare in scent and odor.  This Mazurka, like the one that follows, has a dim resemblance to others, yet there is always a novel point of departure, a fresh harmony, a sudden melody or an unexpected ending.  Hadow, for example, thinks the A flat of this opus the most beautiful of them all.  In it he finds legitimately used the repetition in various shapes of a single phrase.  To me this Mazurka seems but an amplification, an elaboration of the lovely one in the same key, op. 50, No. 2.  The double sixths and more complicated phraseology do not render the later superior to the early Mazurka, yet there is no gainsaying the fact that this is a noble composition.  But the next, in F sharp minor, despite its rather saturnine gaze, is stronger in interest, if not in workmanship.  While it lacks Niecks’ beautes sauvages, is it not far loftier in conception and execution than op. 6, in F sharp minor?  The inevitable triplet appears in the third bar, and is a hero throughout.  Oh, here is charm for you!  Read the close of the section in F sharp major.  In the major it ends, the triplet fading away at last, a mere shadow, a turn on D sharp, but victor to the last.  Chopin is at the summit of his invention.  Time and tune, that wait for no man, are now his bond slaves.  Pathos, delicacy, boldness, a measured melancholy and the art of euphonious presentiment of all these, and many factors more, stamp this Mazurka a masterpiece.

Niecks believes there is a return of the early freshness and poetry in the last three Mazurkas, op. 63.  “They are, indeed, teeming with interesting matter,” he writes.  “Looked at from the musician’s point of view, how much do we not see novel and strange, beautiful and fascinating withal?  Sharp dissonances, chromatic passing notes, suspensions and anticipations, displacement