Alas! for the validity of subjective criticism.  Franz Liszt told Vladimir de Pachmann the programme of the Fantaisie, as related to him by Chopin.  At the close of one desperate, immemorial day, the pianist was crooning at the piano, his spirits vastly depressed.  Suddenly came a knocking at his door, a Poe-like, sinister tapping, which he at once rhythmically echoed upon the keyboard, his phono-motor centre being unusually sensitive.  The first two bars of the Fantaisie describe these rappings, just as the third and fourth stand for Chopin’s musical invitation, entrez, entrez!  This is all repeated until the doors wide open swinging admit Liszt, George Sand, Madame Camille Pleyel nee Mock, and others.  To the solemn measures of the march they enter, and range themselves about Chopin, who after the agitated triplets begins his complaint in the mysterious song in F minor.  But Sand, with whom he has quarrelled, falls before him on her knees and pleads for pardon.  Straightway the chant merges into the appealing A flat section—­this sends skyward my theory of its interpretation—­and from C minor the current becomes more tempestuous until the climax is reached and to the second march the intruders rapidly vanish.  The remainder of the work, with the exception of the Lento Sostenuto in B—­where it is to be hoped Chopin’s perturbed soul finds momentary peace—­is largely repetition and development.  This far from ideal reading is an authoritative one, coming as it does from Chopin by way of Liszt.  I console myself for its rather commonplace character with the notion that perhaps in the re-telling the story has caught some personal cadenzas of the two historians.  In any case I shall cling to my own version.

The F minor Fantaisie will mean many things to many people.  Chopin has never before maintained so artistically, so free from delirium, such a level of strong passion, mental power and exalted euphony.  It is his largest canvas, and though there are no long-breathed periods such as in the B flat minor Scherzo, the phraseology is amply broad, without padding of paragraphs.  The rapt interest is not relaxed until the final bar.  This transcendental work more nearly approaches Beethoven in its unity, its formal rectitude and its brave economy of thematic material.

While few men have dared to unlock their hearts thus, Chopin is not so intimate here as in the mazurkas.  But the pulse beats ardently in the tissues of this composition.  As art for art, it is less perfect; the gain is on the human side.  Nearing his end Chopin discerned, with ever widening, ever brighter vision, the great heart throb of the universe.  Master of his material, if not of his mortal tenement, he passionately strove to shape his dreams into abiding sounds.  He did not always succeed, but his victories are the precious prizes of mankind.  One is loath to believe that the echo of Chopin’s magic music can ever fall upon unheeding ears.  He may become old-fashioned, but, like Mozart, he will remain eternally beautiful.