To this Rellstab adds:  “Whether Mr. Chopin has written this letter himself, I do not know, and will not assert it, but print the document that he may recognise or repudiate it.”  The letter was not repudiated, but I do not think that it was written by Chopin.  Had he written a letter, he surely would have written a less childish one, although the German might not have been much better than that of the above.  But my chief reasons for doubting its genuineness are that Chopin made no artistic tour in Germany after 1831, and is not known to have visited Leipzig either in 1833 or 1834.]

However, we should not be too hard upon Rellstab, seeing that one of the greatest pianists and best musicians of the time made in the same year (in 1833, and not in 1831, as we read in Karasowski’s book) an entry in his diary, which expresses an opinion not very unlike his.  Moscheles writes thus:—­

I like to employ some free hours in the evening in making myself acquainted with Chopin’s studies and his other compositions, and find much charm in the originality and national colouring of their motivi; but my fingers always stumble over certain hard, inartistic, and to me incomprehensible modulations, and the whole is often too sweetish for my taste, and appears too little worthy of a man and a trained musician.

And again—­

I am a sincere admirer of Chopin’s originality; he has furnished pianists with matter of the greatest novelty and attractiveness.  But personally I dislike the artificial, often forced modulations; my fingers stumble and fall over such passages; however much I may practise them, I cannot execute them without tripping.

The first criticism on Chopin’s publications which I met with in the French musical papers is one on the “Variations,” Op. 12.  It appeared in the “Revue musicale” of January 26, 1834.  After this his new works are pretty regularly noticed, and always favourably.  From what has been said it will be evident that Karasowski made a mistake when he wrote that Chopin’s compositions began to find a wide circulation as early as the year 1832.

Much sympathy has been undeservedly bestowed on the composer by many, because they were under the impression that he had had to contend with more than the usual difficulties.  Now just the reverse was the case.  Most of his critics were well-disposed towards him, and his fame spread fast.  In 1834 (August 13) a writer in the “Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung” remarks that Chopin had the good fortune to draw upon himself sooner than others the attention not only of the pianists, although of these particularly, but also of a number of the musicians generally.  And in 1836 even Rellstab, Chopin’s most adverse critic, says:  “We entertain the hope of hearing a public performance of the Concerto [the second, Op. 21] in the course of the winter, for now it is a point of honour for every pianist to play Chopin.”  The composer, however, cannot be said to have enjoyed popularity; his works were relished only by the few, not by the many.  Chopin’s position as a pianist and composer at the point we have reached in the history of his life (1833-1834) is well described by a writer in the “Revue musicale” of May 15, 1834:—­