The plaintive little mazurka of two lines, the seventh prelude, is a mere silhouette of the national dance.  Yet in its measures is compressed all Mazovia.  Klindworth makes a variant in the fourth bar from the last, a G sharp instead of an F sharp.  It is a more piquant climax, perhaps not admissible to the Chopin purist.  In the F sharp minor prelude No. 7, Chopin gives us a taste of his grand manner.  For Niecks the piece is jerky and agitated, and doubtless suggests a mental condition bordering on anxiety; but if frenzy there is, it is kept well in check by the exemplary taste of the composer.  The sadness is rather elegiac, remote, and less poignant than in the E minor prelude.  Harmonic heights are reached on the second page—­surely Wagner knew these bars when he wrote “Tristan and Isolde”—­while the ingenuity of the figure and avoidance of a rhythmical monotone are evidences of Chopin’s feeling for the decorative.  It is a masterly prelude.  Klindworth accents the first of the bass triplets, and makes an unnecessary enharmonic change at the sixth and seventh lines.

There is a measure of grave content in the ninth prelude in E. It is rather gnomic, and contains hints of both Brahms and Beethoven.  It has an ethical quality, but that may be because of its churchly rhythm and color.

The C sharp minor prelude, No. 10, must be the “eagle wings” of Schumann’s critique.  There is a flash of steel gray, deepening into black, and then the vision vanishes as though some huge bird aloft had plunged down through blazing sunlight, leaving a color-echo in the void as it passed to its quarry.  Or, to be less figurative, this prelude is a study in arpeggio, with double notes interspersed, and is too short to make more than a vivid impression.

No.  II in B is all too brief.  It is vivacious, dolce indeed, and most cleverly constructed.  Klindworth gives a more binding character to the first double notes.  Another gleam of the Chopin sunshine.

Storm clouds gather in the G sharp minor, the twelfth prelude, so unwittingly imitated by Grieg in his Menuetto of the same key, and in its driving presto we feel the passionate clench of Chopin’s hand.  It is convulsed with woe, but the intellectual grip, the self-command are never lost in these two pages of perfect writing.  The figure is suggestive, and there is a well defined technical problem, as well as a psychical character.  Disputed territory is here:  the editors do not agree about the twelfth and eleventh bars from the last.  According to Breitkopf & Hartel the bass octaves are E both times.  Mikuli gives G sharp the first time instead of E; Klindworth, G sharp the second time; Riemann, E, and also Kullak.  The G sharp seems more various.