Chopin’s Bolero, Op. 19, may be described as a Bolero a la polonaise.  It is livelier in movement and more coquettish in character than the compositions which he entitles polonaises, but for all that its physiognomy does not on the whole strike one as particularly Spanish, certainly not beyond the first section of the Bolero proper and the seductive strains of the Pililento, the second tempo of the introduction.  And in saying this I am not misled by the points of resemblance in the rhythmical accompaniment of these dances.  Chopin published the Bolero in 1834, four years before he visited Spain, but one may doubt whether it would have turned out less Polish if he had composed it subsequently.  Although an excellent imitator in the way of mimicry, he lacked the talent of imitating musical thought and character; at any rate, there are no traces of it in his works.  The cause of this lack of talent lies, of course, in the strength of his subjectivism in the first place, and of his nationalism in the second.  I said the Bolero was published four years before his visit to Spain.  But how many years before this visit was it composed?  I think a good many years earlier; for it has so much of his youthful style about it, and not only of his youthful style, but also of his youthful character—­by which I mean that it is less intensely poetic.  It is not impossible that Chopin was instigated to write it by hearing the Bolero in Auber’s “La Muette de Portici” ("Masaniello"), which opera was first performed on February 28, 1828.  These remarks are thrown out merely as hints.  The second composition which we shall consider will show how dangerous it is to dogmatise on the strength of internal evidence.

Op. 16, a lightsome Rondeau with a dramatic Introduction, is, like the Bolero, not without its beauties; but in spite of greater individuality, ranks, like it, low among the master’s works, being patchy, unequal, and little poetical.

If ever Chopin is not Chopin in his music, he is so in his Variations brillantes (in B flat major) sur le Rondeau favori:  “Je vends des Scapulaires” de Ludovic, de Herold et Halevy, Op. 12.  Did we not know that he must have composed the. work about the middle of 1833, we should be tempted to class it with the works which came into existence when his individuality was as yet little developed. [Footnote:  The opera Ludovic, on which Herold was engaged when he died on January 19, 1833, and which Halevy completed, was produced in Paris on May 16, 1833.  From the German publishers of Chopin’s Op. 12 I learned that it appeared in November, 1833.  In the Gazette musicale of January 26, 1834, may be read a review of it.] But knowing what we do, we can only wonder at the strange phenomenon.  It is as if Chopin had here thrown overboard the Polish part of his natal inheritance and given himself up unrestrainedly and voluptuously to the French part.  Besides various diatonic runs of an inessential and purely ornamental