In spite of the charm which he recognised in some of Schubert’s melodies, he did not care to hear those whose contours were too sharp for his ear, where feeling is as it were denuded, where one feels, so to speak, the flesh palpitate and the bones crack under the grasp of anguish.  A propos of Schubert, Chopin is reported to have said:  “The sublime is dimmed when it is followed by the common or the trivial.”

I shall now mention some of those composers with whom Chopin was less in sympathy.  In the case of Weber his approval, however, seems to have outweighed his censure.  At least Mikuli relates that the E minor and A flat major Sonatas and the “Concertstuck” were among those works for which his master had a predilection, and Madame Dubois says that he made his pupils play the Sonatas in C and in A flat major with extreme care.  Now let us hear Lenz:- -

He could not appreciate Weber; he spoke of “opera,” “unsuitable for the piano” [unklaviermassig]!  On the whole, Chopin was little in sympathy with the German spirit in music, although I heard him say:  “There is only one school, the German!”

Gutmann informed me that he brought the A flat major Sonata with him from Germany in 1836 or 1837, and that Chopin did not know it then.  It is hard enough to believe that Liszt asked Lenz in 1828 if the composer of the “Freischutz” had also written for the piano, but Chopin’s ignorance in 1836 is much more startling.  Did fame and publications travel so slowly in the earlier part of the century?  Had genius to wait so long for recognition?  If the statement, for the correctness of which Gutmann alone is responsible, rests on fact and not on some delusion of memory, this most characteristic work of Weber and one of the most important items of the pianoforte literature did not reach Chopin, one of the foremost European pianists, till twenty years after its publication, which took place in December, 1816.

That Chopin had a high opinion of Beethoven may be gathered from a story which Lenz relates in an article written for the “Berliner Musikzeitung” (Vol.  XXVI).  Little Filtsch—­the talented young Hungarian who made Liszt say:  “I shall shut my shop when he begins to travel”—­having played to a select company invited by his master the latter’s Concerto in E minor, Chopin was so pleased with his pupil’s performance that he went with him to Schlesinger’s music-shop, asked for the score of “Fidelio,” and presented it to him with the words:—­“I am in your debt, you have given me great pleasure to-day, I wrote the concerto in a happy time, accept, my dear young friend, the great master work! read in it as long as you live and remember me also sometimes.”  But Chopin’s high opinion of Beethoven was neither unlimited nor unqualified.  His attitude as regards this master, which Franchomme briefly indicated by saying that his friend loved Beethoven, but had his dislikes in connection with him, is more fully explained by Liszt.