to Mendelssohn’s Songs without Words.  I must not omit to mention No. 21, one of the finest of the collection, with its calming cantilena and palpitating quaver figure.  Besides the set of twenty-four preludes, Op. 28, Chopin published a single one, Op. 45, which appeared in December, 1841.  This composition deserves its name better than almost anyone of the twenty-four; still, I would rather call it an improvisata.  It seems unpremeditated, a heedless outpouring when sitting at the piano in a lonely, dreary hour, perhaps in the twilight.  The quaver figure rises aspiringly, and the sustained parts swell out proudly.  The piquant cadenza forestalls in the progression of diminished chords favourite effects of some of our more modern composers.  The modulation from C sharp minor to D major and back again (after the cadenza) is very striking and equally beautiful.

It can hardly be said, although Liszt seemed to be of a different opinion, that Chopin created a new type by his preludes—­they are too unlike each other in form and character.  On the other hand, he has done so by his four scherzos—­Op. 20 (in B minor), published in February, 1835; Op. 31 (B flat minor), published in December, 1837; Op. 39 (C sharp minor), published in October, 1840; and Op. 54 (in E major), published in December, 1843.  “How is ‘gravity’ to clothe itself, if ‘jest’ goes about in dark veils?” exclaims Schumann.  No doubt, scherzo, if we consider the original meaning of the word, is a misnomer.  But are not Beethoven’s scherzos, too, misnamed?  To a certain extent they are.  But if Beethoven’s scherzos often lack frolicsomeness, they are endowed with humour, whereas Chopin’s have neither the one nor the other.  Were it not that we attach, especially since Mendelssohn’s time, the idea of lightness and light-heartedness to the word capriccio, this would certainly be the more descriptive name for the things Chopin entitled scherzo.  But what is the use of carping at a name?  Let us rather look at the things, and thus employ our time better.  Did ever composer begin like Chopin in his Premier Scherzo, Op. 20?  Is this not like a shriek of despair? and what follows, bewildered efforts of a soul shut in by a wall of circumstances through which it strives in vain to break? at last sinking down with fatigue, dreaming a dream of idyllic beauty? but beginning the struggle again as soon as its strength is recruited?  Schumann compared the second scherzo, Op. 31, to a poem of Byron’s, “so tender, so bold, as full of love as of scorn.”  Indeed, scorn—­an element which does not belong to what is generally understood by either frolicsomeness or humour—­plays an important part in Chopin’s scherzos.  The very beginning of Op. 31 offers an example.

[Footnote:  “It must be a question [the doubled triplet figure A, B flat, d flat, in the first bar], taught Chopin, and for him it was never question enough, never piano enough, never vaulted (tombe) enough, as he said, never important enough.  It must be a charnel-house, he said on one occasion.” (W. von Lenz, in Vol.  XXVI. of the Berliner Musikzeitung.)]