[Musical score excerpt]

Kullak’s is exactly the same as above.  It is the so-called Chopin fingering, as contrasted with the so-called Czerny fingering—­ though in reality Clementi’s, as Mr. John Kautz contends.  “In the latter the third and fifth fingers fall upon C sharp and E and F sharp and A in the right hand, and upon C and E flat and G and B flat in the left.”  Klindworth also employs the Chopin fingering.  Von Bulow makes this statement:  “As the peculiar fingering adopted by Chopin for chromatic scales in thirds appears to us to render their performance in legatissimo utterly unattainable on our modern instruments, we have exchanged it, where necessary, for the older method of Hummel.  Two of the greatest executive artists of modern times, Alexander Dreyschock and Carl Tausig, were, theoretically and practically, of the same opinion.  It is to be conjectured that Chopin was influenced in his method of fingering by the piano of his favorite makers, Pleyel and Wolff, of Paris—­who, before they adopted the double echappement, certainly produced instruments with the most pliant touch possible—­and therefore regarded the use of the thumb in the ascending scale on two white keys in succession—­the semitones EF and BC—­as practicable.  On the grand piano of the present day we regard it as irreconcilable with conditions of crescendo legato.”  This Chopin fingering in reality derives directly from Hummel.  See his “Piano School.”

So he gives this fingering: 

[Musical score excerpt] He also suggests the following phrasing for the left hand.  This is excellent: 

[Musical score excerpt]

Riemann not only adopts new fingering for the double note scale, but also begins the study with the trill on first and third, second and fourth, instead of the usual first and fourth, second and fifth fingers, adopted by the rest.  This is his notion of the run in chromatic thirds: 

[Musical score excerpt]

For the rest the study must be played like the wind, or, as Kullak says:  “Apart from a few places and some accents, the Etude is to be played almost throughout in that Chopin whisper.  The right hand must play its thirds, especially the diatonic and chromatic scales, with such equality that no angularity of motion shall be noticeable where the fingers pass under or over each other.  The left hand, too, must receive careful attention and special study.  The chord passages and all similar ones must be executed discreetly and legatissimo.  Notes with double stems must be distinguished from notes with single stems by means of stronger shadings, for they are mutually interconnected.”

Von Bulow calls the seventh study, the one in C sharp minor, a nocturne—­a duo for ’cello and flute.  He ingeniously smooths out the unequal rhythmic differences of the two hands, and justly says the piece does not work out any special technical matter.  This study is the most lauded of all.  Yet I cannot help agreeing with Niecks, who writes of it—­he oddly enough places it in the key of E:  “A duet between a He and a She, of whom the former shows himself more talkative and emphatic than the latter, is, indeed, very sweet, but, perhaps, also somewhat tiresomely monotonous, as such tete-a-tetes naturally are to third parties.”