It is sometimes said that there are hardly any traces of a development in the productions of Chopin, and that in this respect he is unlike all the other great masters.  Such an opinion cannot be the result of a thorough and comprehensive study of the composer’s works.  So far from agreeing with those who hold it, I am tempted to assert that the difference of style between Chopin’s early and latest works (even when juvenile compositions like the first two Rondos are left out of account) is as great as that between Beethoven’s first and ninth Symphony.  It would be easy to classify the Polish master’s works according to three and even four (with the usual exceptions) successive styles, but I have no taste for this cheap kind of useless ingenuity.  In fact, I shall confine myself to saying that in Chopin’s works there are clearly distinguishable two styles—­the early virtuosic and the later poetic style.  The latter is in a certain sense also virtuosic, but with this difference, that its virtuosity is not virtuosity for virtuosity’s sake.  The poetic style which has thrown off the tinsel showiness of its predecessor does not, however, remain unchanged, for its texture becomes more and more close, and affords conclusive evidence of the increasing influence of Johann Sebastian Bach.  Of course, the grand master of fugue does not appear here, as it were, full life-size, in peruke, knee-breeches, and shoe-buckles, but his presence in spite of transformation and attenuation is unmistakable.  It is, however, not only in the closeness and complexity of texture that we notice Chopin’s style changing:  a striving after greater breadth and fulness of form are likewise apparent, and, alas! also an increase in sombreness, the result of deteriorating health.  All this the reader will have to keep in mind when he passes in review the master’s works, for I shall marshal them by groups, not chronologically.

Another prejudice, wide-spread, almost universal, is that Chopin’s music is all languor and melancholy, and, consequently, wanting in variety.  Now, there can be no greater error than this belief.  As to variety, we should be obliged to wonder at its infiniteness if he had composed nothing but the pieces to which are really applicable the epithets dreamy, pensive, mournful, and despondent.  But what vigour, what more than manly vigour, manifests itself in many of his creations!  Think only of the Polonaises in A major (Op. 40, No. 1) and in A flat major (Op. 53), of many of his studies, the first three of his ballades, the scherzos, and much besides!  To be sure, a great deal of this vigour is not natural, but the outcome of despair and maddening passion.  Still, it is vigour, and such vigour as is not often to be met with.  And, then, it is not the only kind to be found in his music.  There is also a healthy vigour, which, for instance, in the A major Polonaise assumes a brilliantly-heroic form.  Nor are serene and even joyous moods so rare that it would