his nocturnes are often weaker than his first conceptions, meaning the first portions of the nocturnes.  Now, although the middle parts in the present instances are, on the contrary, slower movements, yet the judgment holds good; at least, with respect to the first nocturne, the middle part of which has nothing to recommend it but the effective use of a full and sonorous instrumentation, if I may use this word in speaking of one instrument.  The middle part of the second (f, D flat, Molto piu lento), however, is much finer; in it we meet again, as we did in some other nocturnes, with soothing, simple chord progressions.  When Gutmann studied the C sharp minor nocturne with Chopin, the master told him that the middle section (the Molto piu lento, in D flat major) should be played as a recitative:  “A tyrant commands” (the first two chords), he said, “and the other asks for mercy.”  Regarding the first nocturne (in F minor) of Op. 55, we will note only the flebile dolcezza of the first and the last section, and the inferiority of the more impassioned middle section.  The second nocturne (in E flat major) differs in form from the other nocturnes in this, that it has no contrasting second section, the melody flowing onward from begining to end in a uniform manner.  The monotony of the unrelieved sentimentality does not fail to make itself felt.  One is seized by an ever-increasing longing to get out of this oppressive atmosphere, to feel the fresh breezes and warm sunshine, to see smiling faces and the many-coloured dress of Nature, to hear the rustling of leaves, the murmuring of streams, and voices which have not yet lost the clear, sonorous ring that joy in the present and hope in the future impart.  The two nocturnes, Op. 62, seem to owe their existence rather to the sweet habit of activity than to inspiration.  At any rate, the tender flutings, trills, roulades, syncopations, &c., of the first nocturne (in B major), and the sentimental declarations and confused, monotonous agitation of the second (in E major), do not interest me sufficiently to induce me to discuss their merits and demerits.

One day Tausig, the great pianoforte-virtuoso, promised W. von Lenz to play him Chopin’s “Barcarolle,” Op. 60 (published in September, 1846), adding, “That is a performance which must not be undertaken before more than two persons.  I shall play you my own self (meinen Menschen).  I love the piece, but take it up only rarely.”  Lenz, who did not know the barcarolle, thereupon went to a music-shop and read it through attentively.  The piece, however, did not please him at all; it seemed to him a long movement in the nocturne-style, a Babel of figuration on a lightly-laid foundation.  But he found that he had made a mistake, and, after hearing it played by Tausig, confessed that the virtuoso had infused into the “nine pages of enervating music, of one and the same long-breathed rhythm (12/8), so much interest, so much motion, and so much action,” that he regretted the long piece was not longer.  And now let us hear what remarks Tausig made with regard to the barcarolle:—­