of accent, progressions of perfect fifths—­the horror of schoolmen—­sudden turns and unexpected digressions that are so unaccountable, so out of the line of logical sequence, that one’s following the composer is beset with difficulties.  But all this is a means to an end, the expression of an individuality with its intimate experiences.  The emotional content of many of these trifles—­trifles if considered only by their size—­is really stupendous.”  Spoken like a brave man and not a pedant!

Full of vitality is the first number of op. 63.  In B major, it is sufficiently various in figuration and rhythmical life to single it from its fellows.  The next, in F minor, has a more elegiac ring.  Brief and not difficult of matter or manner is this dance.  The third, of winning beauty, is in C sharp minor—­surely a pendant to the C sharp minor Valse.  I defy anyone to withstand the pleading, eloquent voice of this Mazurka.  Slender in technical configuration, yet it impressed Louis Ehlert so much that he was impelled to write:  “A more perfect canon in the octave could not have been written by one who had grown gray in the learned arts.”

The four Mazurkas, published posthumously in 1855, that comprise op. 67 were composed by Chopin at various dates.  To the first, in G, Klindworth affixes 1849 as the year of composition.  Niecks gives a much earlier date, 1835.  I fancy the latter is correct, as the piece sounds like one of Chopin’s more youthful efforts.  It is jolly and rather superficial.  The next, in G minor, is familiar.  It is very pretty, and its date is set down by Niecks as 1849, while Klindworth gives 1835.  Here again Niecks is correct, although I suspect that Klindworth transposed his figures accidentally.  No. 3, in C, was composed in 1835.  On this both biographer and editor agree.  It is certainly an early effusion of no great value, although a good dancing tune.  No. 4 A minor, of this opus, composed in 1846, is more mature, but in no wise remarkable.

Opus 68, the second of the Fontana set, was composed in 1830.  The first, in C, is commonplace; the one in A minor, composed in 1827, is much better, being lighter and well made; the third, in F major, 1830, weak and trivial, and the fourth, in F minor, 1849, interesting because it is said by Julius Fontana to be Chopin’s last composition.  He put it on paper a short time before his death, but was too ill to try it at the piano.  It is certainly morbid in its sick insistence in phrase repetition, close harmonies and wild departure—­in A—­from the first figure.  But it completes the gloomy and sardonic loop, and we wish, after playing this veritable song of the tomb, that we had parted from Chopin in health, not disease.  This page is full of the premonitions of decay.  Too weak and faltering to be febrile, Chopin is here a debile, prematurely exhausted young man.  There are a few accents of a forced gayety, but they are swallowed up in the mists of dissolution—­the dissolution of one of the most sensitive brains ever wrought by nature.  Here we may echo, without any savor of Liszt’s condescension or de Lenz’s irony:  “Pauvre Frederic!”