Beautiful in a different way is the A flat study which follows.  Again the problem is a rhythmical one, and again the composer demonstrates his exhaustless invention and his power of evoking a single mood, viewing all its lovely contours and letting it melt away like dream magic.  Full of gentle sprightliness and lingering sweetness is this study.  Chopin has the hypnotic quality more than any composer of the century, Richard Wagner excepted.  After you have enjoyed playing this study read Kullak and his “triplicity in biplicity.”  It may do you good, and it will not harm the music.

In all the editions save one that I have seen the third study in D flat begins on A flat, like the famous Valse in D flat.  The exception is Klindworth, who starts with B flat, the note above.  The study is full of sunny, good humor, spiritualized humor, and leaves the most cheering impression after its performance.  Its technical object is a simultaneous legato and staccato.  The result is an idealized Valse in allegretto tempo, the very incarnation of joy, tempered by aristocratic reserve.  Chopin never romps, but he jests wittily, and always in supremely good taste.  This study fitly closes his extraordinary labors in this form, and it is as if he had signed it “F.  Chopin, et ego in Arcady.”

Among the various editions let me recommend Klindworth for daily usage, while frequent reference to Von Bulow, Riemann and Kullak cannot fail to prove valuable, curious and interesting.

Of the making of Chopin editions there is seemingly no end.  In 1894 I saw in manuscript some remarkable versions of the Chopin Studies by Leopold Godowsky.  The study in G sharp minor was the first one published and played in public by this young pianist Unlike the Brahms derangements, they are musical but immensely difficult.  Topsy-turvied as are the figures, a Chopin, even if lop-sided, hovers about, sometimes with eye-brows uplifted, sometimes with angry, knitted forehead and not seldom amused to the point of smiling.  You see his narrow shoulders, shrugged in the Polish fashion as he examines the study in double-thirds transposed to the left hand!  Curiously enough this transcription, difficult as it is, does not tax the fingers as much as a bedevilment of the A minor, op. 25, No. 4, which is extremely difficult, demanding color discrimination and individuality of finger.

More breath-catching, and a piece at which one must cry out:  “Hats off, gentlemen!  A tornado!” is the caprice called “Badinage.”  But if it is meant to badinage, it is no sport for the pianist of everyday technical attainments.  This is formed of two studies.  In the right hand is the G flat study, op. 25, No. 9, and in the left the black key study, op. 10, No. 5.  The two go laughing through the world like old friends; brother and sister they are tonally, trailing behind them a cloud of iridescent glory.  Godowsky has cleverly combined the two, following their melodic curves as nearly as is possible.  In some places he has thickened the harmonies and shifted the “black key” figures to the right hand.  It is the work of a remarkable pianist.  This is the way it looks on paper at the beginning: