by Chopin’s Violoncello Sonata, which I am arranging for four hands.  To me it is a tangled forest, through which now and then penetrates a gleam of the sun.” [Footnote:  Ibid., Vol.  II., p. 216.] To take up after the last-discussed work a composition like the Grand Duo Concertant for piano and violoncello, on themes from “Robert le Diable,” by Chopin and A. Franchomme, is quite a relief, although it is really of no artistic importance.  Schumann is right when he says of this duo, which saw the light of publicity (without opus number) in 1833:14 [Footnote:  The first performance of Meyerbeer’s “Robert le Diable” took place at the Paris Opera on November 21, 1831.] “A piece for a salon where behind the shoulders of counts and countesses now and then rises the head of a celebrated artist.”  And he may also be right when he says:—­

It seems to me that Chopin sketched the whole of it, and that Franchomme said “yes” to everything; for what Chopin touches takes his form and spirit, and in this minor salon-style he expresses himself with grace and distinction, compared with which all the gentility of other brilliant composers together with all their elegance vanish into thin air.

The mention of the duo is somewhat out of place here, but the Sonata, Op. 65, in which the violoncello is employed, naturally suggested it.

We have only one more work to consider before we come to the groups of masterpieces in the smaller forms above enumerated.  But this last work is one of Chopin’s best compositions, and in its way no less a masterpiece than these.  Unfettered by the scheme of a definite form such as the sonata or concerto, the composer develops in the Fantaisie, Op. 49 (published in November, 1841), his thought with masterly freedom.  There is an enthralling weirdness about this work, a weirdness made up of force of passion and an indescribable fantastic waywardness.  Nothing more common than the name of Fantasia, here we have the thing!  The music falls on our ears like the insuppressible outpouring of a being stirred to its heart’s core, and full of immeasurable love and longing.  Who would suspect the composer’s fragility and sickliness in this work?  Does it not rather suggest a Titan in commotion?  There was a time when I spoke of the Fantasia in a less complimentary tone, now I bow down my head regretfully and exclaim peccavi.  The disposition of the composition may be thus briefly indicated.  A tempo di marcia opens the Fantasia—­it forms the porch of the edifice.  The dreamy triplet passages of the poco a poco piu mosso are comparable to galleries that connect the various blocks of buildings.  The principal subject, or accumulation of themes, recurs again and again in different keys, whilst other subjects appear only once or twice between the repetitions of the principal subject.