 CHAPTER VI. The Studies. Titanic Experiments. October 20, 1829. Frederick Chopin, aged 20, wrote to his friend Titus Wojcicki from Warsaw. I have composed a study in my own manner, and November 14 the same year. I have written some studies in your presence I would play them well. Thus, quite simply, and without booming of cannon or brazen proclamation by Bell, did the great Polish composer announce an event of supreme interest and importance to the piano-playing world. Next thanks these studies were published in the summer of 1833, July or August, and were numbered Opus 10. Another set of studies, Opus 25, did not find a publisher until 1837, although some of them were composed at the same time as the previous work. A Polish musician, who visited the French capital in 1834, heard Chopin play the studies contained in Opus 25. The C Minor Study, Opus 10, number 12, commonly known as the Revolutionary, was born at Stuttgart, September 1831, while under the excitement caused by the news of the taking of Warsaw by the Russians on September 8, 1831. These dates are given so as to route, effectually, any dalatory suspicion that Liszt influenced Chopin in the production of his masterpieces. Nina Rahman, in her exhaustive biography of Franz Liszt, openly declares that Numbers 9 and 12 of Opus 10 and Numbers 11 and 12 of Opus 25 reveal the influence of the Hungarian virtuoso. Figures prove the fallacy of her assertion. The influence was the other way, as Liszt's three concert studies show, not to mention other compositions. When Chopin arrived in Paris his style had been formed. He was the creator of a new piano technique. The three studies, known as the Trois Novel etudes, which appeared in 1840 in Moschels and Fetis Method of Methods, were published separately afterward. Their date of composition we do not know. Many are the editions of Chopin's studies, but after going over the ground one finds only about a dozen worthy of study and consultation. Karasowski gives the date of the first complete edition of the Chopin works as 1846, with Gebettner and Wolf Warsaw as publishers. Then according to Naxx, following Telfsen, Clindworth, Bolton Bach, Schultz, Peters, Breitkopf and Hartl, McCooley, Schilbert, Kant, Stangrabber, better known as Merckys, and Schlesinger, edited by the great pedagogue Theodore Kulak. Zabershororenka has edited Clindworth for the London edition of Augner and Kow. McCooley criticized the Telfsen edition, yet both men had been Chopin pupils. This is a significant fact and shows that little reliance can be placed on the brave talk about tradition. Yet McCooley had the assistance of a half dozen of Chopin's favorite pupils, and in addition Ferdinand Hiller. Hermann Stolls, who edited the works for Peters, faced his results on careful inspection of original French, German and English editions, besides consulting M. Georges Mathias, a pupil of Chopin. If Fontana, Wolff, Gutmann, McCooley and Telfsen, who copied from the original Chopin manuscripts under the supervision of the composer, cannot agree, then upon what foundation are reared the structures of the modern critical editions? The early French, German and Polish editions are faulty, indeed useless, because of misprints and errata of all kinds. Every succeeding edition has cleared away some of these errors, but only in Karl Klindworth has Chopin found a worthy, though not faultless, editor. His edition is a work of genius, and was called by von Bülow, the only model edition. In a few sections others, such as Culec, Dr. Hugo Ruhmann and Hans von Bülow, may have outstripped him. But as a whole his editing is amazing for its exactitude, scholarship, fertility and novel fingerings, and sympathetic insight and phrasing. This edition appeared at Moscow from 1873 to 1876. The 27 studies of Chopin have been separately edited by Riemann and von Bülow. Let us narrow our investigations and critical comparisons to Klindworth, von Bülow, Culec and Riemann. Karl Reneke's edition of the studies in Breitkopf and Hartl's collection offers nothing new, neither Dumurtke, Schultz, and Mickleley. The latter one should keep at hand because the possible freedom from impurities in his text, but a phrasing or fingering he contributes little. It must be remembered that with the studies, while they completely exhibit the entire range of Chopin's genius, the place the thing after all. The poetry, the passion of the ballads, and Scherzi wind throughout these technical problems like a flaming scheme. With the modern avidity for exterior as well as interior analysis, Mickleley, Reneke, Mertke and Schultz, evidence little sympathy. It is then from the masterly editing of Kulak von Bülow, Riemann and Klindworth, that I shall draw copiously. They have, in their various ways, given us a clue to their musical individuality, as well as their precise scholarship. Klindworth is the most genially intellectual, von Bülow the most pedagogic, and Kulak is poetic. While Riemann is scholarly, the latter gives more attention to phrasing than to fingering. The Chopin studies are poems fit for parnassus. Yet they also serve a very useful purpose in pedagogy. Both aspects, the material and the spiritual, should be studied, and with four such guides the student need not go astray. In the first study of the first book, Opus 10, dedicated to Liszt, Chopin at a leap reached new land. Extended chords had been sparingly used by Hummel and Clemente, but to take a dispersed harmony and transform it into an epical study to raise the chord of the tenth to heroic stature. That could have been accomplished by Chopin only. And this first study in C is heroic. Theodor Kulak writes of it. Above a ground base, proudly and boldly striding along, flow mighty waves of sound. The Etude, whose technical end is the rapid execution of widely extended chord figurations, exceeding the span of an octave, is to be played on the basis of forte throughout. With sharply dissonant harmonies the forte is to be increased to fortissimo, diminishing again with consonant ones. Pithy accents. Their effect is enhanced when combined with an elastic recoil of the hand. The irregular, black, ascending and descending staircases of notes strike the neophyte with terror. Like Piranhasi's marvelous aerial architectural dreams, these dizzy aclivities and descents of Chopin exercise a charm, hypnotic, if you will, for eye as well as ear. Here is the new technique in all its nakedness, new in the sense of figure, design, pattern, web, new in a harmonic way. The old order was horrified at the modulatory harshness. The young sprigs of the new, fascinated, and a little frightened. A man who could explode a mind that has sailed the stars must be reckoned with. The nub of modern piano music is in the study, the most formally reckless Chopin ever penned. Kulak gives Chopin's favorite metronome sign, 176 to the quarter, but this editor rightly believes that the majestic grandeur is impaired and suggests 152 instead. The gain is at once apparent. Indeed, Kulak, a man of moderate pulse, is quite right in his strictures on the Chopin tempai, tempai that sprang from expressively light mechanism of the prevailing pianos of Chopin's day. Van Buleau declares that the requisite suppleness of the hand in gradual extension and rapid contraction will be most quickly attained if the player does not disdain, first of all, to impress on the individual fingers the chord which is the foundation of each arpeggio, a sound pedagogic point. He also invades against the disposition to play the octave basses arpeggio. In fact, those basses are the argument of the play. They must be granitic, ponderable, and powerful. The same authority calls attention to a misprint C, which he makes be flat. The last note treble in the 29th bar, Van Buleau gives the Chopin metronomic marking. It remained for Rimen to make some radical changes. This learned and worthy doctor astonished the musical world a few years by his new marks of phrasing in the Beethoven symphonies. They topsy-turvyed the old bowing. With Chopin, new dynamic and agogic accents are rather dangerous, at least to the peace of mind of worshippers of the Chopin fetish. Rimen breaks two bars into one. It is a finished period for him. And by detaching several of the 16ths in the first group, the first and fourth, he makes the accent clearer, at least to the eye. He indicates a la Breve with 88 to the half. In latter studies examples will be given of this phrasing, a phrasing that becomes a mannerism with the editor. He offers no startling finger changes. The value of his criticism throughout the volume seems to be in the phrasing, and this by no means conforms to accepted notions of how Chopin should be interpreted. I intend quoting more freely from Rimen than from the others, but not for the reason that I consider him as cloud by day, and a pillar of fire by night in the desirable land of the Chopin patudes. Rather, because his piercing analysis lays bare the very roots of the shining examples of piano literature, Klindworth contents himself with the straightforward version of the C major study, his fingering being the clearest and most admirable. The McCooley edition makes one addition. It is a line which binds the last note of the first group to the first of the second. The device is useful and occurs only on the upward flights of the arpeggio. This study suggests that its composer wished to begin the exposition of his wonderful technical system with a skeletonized statement. It is the tree stripped of its bark, the flower of its leaves, yet austere as is the result. There is compensating power, dignity, and unswerving logic. This study is the key with which Chopin unlocked not his heart, but the kingdom of technique. It should be played for variety, unisono, with both hands, omitting, of course, the octave bass. Vian Bulo writes cannelly enough that the second study in A minor being chromatically related to Moshele's etude, Op. 70 No. 3, that piece should prepare the way for Chopin's more musical composition. In different degrees of tempo, strength, and rhythmic accent, it should be practiced omitting the thumb and first finger. McCooley's metronome is I. 4.4 to the quarter, Vian Bulo's I. I. IV, Klindworth's the same as McCooley, and Reimann is 72 to the half with an a la breve. The fingering in three of these authorities is almost identical. Reimann has ideas of his own, both in the phrasing and figuration. Look at these first two bars. Vian Bulo orders the middle harmonies to be played throughout distinctly and yet transiently. In German, Fluchtung. In fact, the entire composition, with its murmuring, meandering, chromatic character, is a forerunner to the whispering, weaving, moonlit effects, in some of his later studies. The technical purpose is clear, but not obtrusive. It is intended for the fourth and fifth finger of the right hand, but given in unison with both hands, it becomes a veritable but laudable torture for the thumb of the left. With the repeat of the first bar at 36, Vian Bulo gives the variation in fingering. Kulak's method of fingering is this. Everywhere the two white keys occur in succession, the fifth finger is to be used for C and F in the right hand, and for F and E in the left. He has also something to say about holding the hand sideways so that the back of the hand and arm form an angle. This question of hand position, particularly in Chopin, is largely a matter of individual formation. No two hands are alike. No two pianists use the same muscular movements. Play along the easiest line of resistance. We now have reached a study, the third, in which the more intimately known Chopin reveals himself. This one in E is among the finest flowering of the composer's choice garden. It is simpler, less morbid, sultry and languorous, therefore saner than the much-be-praised study in C-sharp minor, number seven, opus 25. Nix writes that this study may be counted among Chopin's loveliest compositions. It combines classical chastness of contour with the fragrance of romanticism. Chopin told his faithful Goodman that he had never in his life written another such melody, and once when hearing it raised his arms aloft and cried out, oh, ma patre! I cannot vouch for the sincerity of Chopin's utterance, for, as Rensamen writes, they were a very bironic set, these young men, and they took themselves with ludicrous seriousness. Van Bule calls it a study in expression, which is obvious, and thinks it should be studied in company with number six in E-flat minor. This reason is not patent. Emotions should not be hunted in couples, and the very object of the collection, variety and mood as well as mechanism, is thus defeated. But Van Bule was ever an ardent classifier. Perhaps he had his soul compartmentized. He also attempts to regulate the rubato. This is the first of the studies wherein the rubato's rights must be acknowledged. The bars are even mentioned, 32, 33, 36, and 37, where tempo-licence may be indulged. But here is the case which in a taste and feeling must guide. You can no more teach a real Chopin rubato, not the mockish imitation, then you can make a donkey comprehend Kant. The metronome is the same in all editions, one hundred to the eighth. Kulak rightly calls this lovely study, ein Wunderschöns poetisches Tonstruck, more in the nocturne than the study style. He gives in the bravura like cadenza an alternate for small hands, but small hands should not touch this piece unless they can grapple the double sixths with ease. Clindworth fingers the study with great care. The figuration in three of the editions is the same. McCulley separating the voices distinctly. Reiman exercises all his ingenuity to make the beginning clear to the eye. What a joy is the next study, number four. How well Chopin knew the value of contrast in tonality and sentiment. A veritable classic is this piece which, despite its dark key color, C-sharp minor as a foil to the preceding one in E, bubbles with life and spurts flame. It reminds one of the story of the Polish peasants who are happiest when they sing in the minor mode. Kulak calls this a bravura study for velocity and lightness in both hands, accentuation fiery. While Van Bule believes that the irresistible interest inspired by the spirited content of this truly classical and model piece of music may become a stumbling block in attempting to conquer the technical difficulties. Hardly. The techniques of this composition do not lie beneath the surface. They are very much in the way of clumsy fingers and heavy wrists. Presto 88 to the half is the metronome indication in all five editions. Clintworth does not comment, but I like his fingering and phrasing best of all. Reiman repeats his trick of breaking a group, detaching a note for emphasis, although he is careful to retain the legato bow. One wonders why this study does not figure more frequently on programs of piano recitals. It is a fine, healthy technical test. It is brilliant, and the coda is very dramatic. Ten bars before the return of the theme there is a stiff digital hedge for the student. A veritable lance of tone is this study, if justly poised. Reiman has his own ideas of the phrasing of the following one. The fifth and familiar, black, key, etude. Examine the first bar. Van Bule would have grown jealous if he had seen this rather fantastic phrasing. It is a trifle too financial, though it must be confessed, looks pretty. I like longer-breathed phrasing. The student may profit by this analysis. The piece is indeed, as Kulak says, full of Polish elegance. Van Bule speaks rather disdainfully of it as a dam in salon etude. It is certainly graceful, delicately witty, a trifle naughty, arch and rugish, and it is delightfully invented. Technically it requires smooth, velvet-tipped fingers and a supple wrist. In the fourth bar, third group, third note of group, Klindworth and Reiman print E-flat instead of D-flat. McCulloch, Kulak and Van Bule use the D-flat. Now which is right? The D-flat is preferable. There are already two E-flats in the bar. The change is an agreeable one. Josephie has made a concert variation for this study. The metronome of the original is given at 1.16 to the quarter. A dark, doleful nocturne is number six in E-flat Minor. Nax praises it in company with the preceding one in E. It is beautiful if music so sad may be called beautiful and the melody is full of stifled sorrow. The study figure is ingenuous, but subordinated to the theme. In the E Major section the piece broadens to dramatic vigor. Chopin was not yet the slave of his mood. There must be a psychical program to this study, some record of a youthful disillusion, but the expression of it is kept well within chased lines. The summation composer had not yet unlearned the value of reserve. The Klindworth reading of this troubled poem is the best the Kulak used Chopin's autographic copy. There is no metronomic sign in this autograph. Telfsen gives 69 to the quarter. Klindworth, 60. Reiman, 69. Bakulay, the same. Van Buleau and Kulak, 60. Kulak also gives several variant from the text, adding an A-flat to the last group in bar two. Reiman and the others make the same addition. The note must have been accidentally omitted from the Chopin autograph. Two bars will illustrate what Reiman can accomplish when he makes up his mind to be explicit, leaving little to the imagination. A luscious touch and a sympathetic soul is needed for this nocturne study. We emerge into a clearer, more bracing atmosphere in the C major study number seven. It is a genuine tokata, with moments of tender twilight, serving a distinct technical purpose, the study of double notes and changing on one key, and is as healthy as the tokata by Robert Schuman. Here is the brave, an undaunted Chopin, a gay cavalier, with the sunshine shimmering about him. There are times when the study seems like light dripping through the trees of a mysterious forest. With the delicato there are pluck-like restlings, and all the while the pianist, without imagination, is exercising wrist and fingers in a technical exercise. Wherever beauty and duty so mated in double harness, Pegasus pulling a cloud, charged with rain over an arid country. For study, playing the entire composition with a wrist-stroke is advisable. It will secure clear articulation, staccato and finger-memory. Van Bula phrases the study in groups of two, Kulak and Sixes, Clindworth and McCulley, the same, while Reiman, in alternate twos, fours and sixes. One sees his logic, rather than hears it. Van Bula plastically reproduces the flitting, elusive character of the study far better than the others. It is quite like him to suggest to the panting an ambitious pupil that the performance in F-sharp major, with the same fingering as the next study in F, number eight, would be beneficial. It certainly would. By the same token, the playing of the F-minor sonata, the appassionata of Beethoven, in the key of F-sharp minor, might produce good results. This was another crotchet of Wagner's friend, and probably was born of the story that Beethoven transposed the Bach fugues in all keys, the same as said of St. Sands. In his notes to the F-major study, Theodore Kulak expiates at length upon his favorite idea, the Chopin must not be played according to his metronomic markings. The original autograph gives ninety-six to the half, the telefs in addition eighty-eight, Clindworth eighty, Van Bula eighty-nine, McCulley eighty-eight, and Reiman the same. Kulak takes the slower tempo of Clindworth, believing that the old hearths and serene ideals of velocity are vanquished, that the shallow dip of the keys in Chopin's day had much to do with the swiftness and lightness of his playing. The noble, more sonorous tone of a modern piano requires greater breadth of style and less speedy passagework. There can be no doubt as to the wisdom of a broader treatment of this charming display-piece, how it makes the piano sound, what a rich, brilliant sweep it secures. It elbows the treble to its last euphonious point, glitters and crusts itself, only to fall away as if the sea were melodic and could shatter and tumble into tuneful foam. The emotional content is not marked. The piece is for the fashionable salon or the concert hall. One catches at its close the overtones of bustling plottets and the clapping of gloved palms. Ductility An aristocratic ease, a delicate touch and fluent technique, will carry off the study with good effect. Technically, it is useful. One must speak of the usefulness of Chopin, even in these imprisoned, iridescent soap bubbles of his. On the fourth line and in the first bar of the Kulak version, there is a chord of the dominant seventh, in disbursed position that does not occur in any other edition. Yet it must be Chopin or one of his disciples, for this autograph is in the Royal Library at Berlin. Kulak thinks it ought to be omitted. Moreover, he slights an e-flat that occurs in all the other editions situated in the fourth group of the twentieth bar from the end. The F minor study, number nine, is the first one of these toned studies of Chopin, in which the mood is more petulant than tempestuous. The melody is morbid, almost irritating, and yet not without certain accents of grandeur. There is a persistency in repetition that foreshadows the Chopin of the latter, sadder years. The figure in the left hand is the first in which a prominent part is given to that member. Not as noble and sonorous the figure as the one in C minor study, it is a distant forerunner of the base, of the D minor prelude. In this F minor study, the stretch is the technical object. It is rather awkward for close knit fingers. The best fingering is von Bülow's. It is five, three, one, four, one, three, for the first figure. All the other editions, except Breiman's, recommend the fifth finger on F, the fourth on C. Von Bülow believes that small hands beginning with his system will achieve quicker results than by the Chopin fingering. This is true. Breiman phrases the study with the multiplicity of legato bows and dynamic accents. Kulak prefers the Telefson metronome 80, rather than the traditional 96. Most of the others use 88 to the quarter, except Breiman, who espouses the more rapid gate of 96. Clindworth, with his 88, strikes a fair medium. The verdict of von Bülow on the following study in A flat number 10 has no uncertainty of tone in its proclamation. He who can play the study in a really finished manner may congratulate himself on having climbed to the highest point of the pianist's parnassus, as it is perhaps the most difficult piece of the entire set. The whole repertory of piano music does not contain a study of perpetum, mobile, so full of genius and fancy as this particular one, is universally acknowledged to be, except perhaps, lists faux fallots. The most important point would appear to lie not so much in the interchange of the groups of legato and staccato as in the exercise of rhythmic contrasts, the alternation of two and three part meter, that is, a four and six, in the same bar. To overcome this fundamental difficulty in the art of musical reproduction is the most important thing here, and with true zeal it may even be accomplished easily. Kulak writes, Harmonic anticipations, a rich rhythmic life originating in the changing articulation of the twelve eighths in groups of three and two each. This etude is an exceedingly pickwind composition, possessing for the hearer a wondrous fantastic charm if played with the proper insight. The metronomic marking is practically the same in all editions, 152 to the quarter notes. The study is one of the most charming of the composer. There is more depth in it than in the G-flat neph major studies, and its effectiveness in the virtuoso sense is unquestionable. A savor of the salon hovers over its perfumed measures, but there is grace, spontaneity, and happiness. Chopin must have been as happy as his sensitive nature would allow when he conceived this vivacious caprice. In all the editions, Ryman's accepted, there is no doubt left as to the alternations of meters. Here are the first few bars von Bülow's, which is normal phrasing. Read Ryman's version of these bars. Ryman is conducive to clear-sided phrasing, and will set the student thinking, but the general effect of accentuation is certainly different. All the editors quoted agree with von Bülow, Klindworth and Kulak. But if this is a marked specimen of Ryman, examine his reading of the phrase wherein Chopin's triple rhythm is supplemented by Dibble. This von Bülow and who will dare cavill. Ryman, the difference is more imaginary than real, for the stems of the accented notes give us the binary meter. But the illustration serves to show how Dr. Ryman is disposed to refine upon the gold of Chopin. Kulak dilates upon a peculiarity of Chopin, the dispersed position of his underlying harmonies. This is a footnote to the eleventh study of Opus 10. Here one must let go the critical view, else strangle in pedagogics. So much has been written, so much that is false, perverted sentimentalism and unmitigated cant, about the nocturnes, that the wonder is the real Chopin lover has not rebelled. There are pearls and diamonds in the jeweled collection of nocturnes. Many are dolerous, few dramatic, and others are sweetly insane and songful. I yield to none in my admiration for the first one of the two in G minor, for the psychical despair in the C sharp minor nocturne, for the noble drama called the C minor nocturne, for the B major, the tuberose nocturne, and for the E, D flat and G major nocturnes. It remains unabated. But in the list there is no such picture painted, a carreau if ever there was one, as this E flat study. Its novel design, delicate arabesques, as if the guitar had been dowered with a soul, and the richness and originality of its harmonic scheme gives us pause to ask if Chopin's invention is not almost boundless. The melody itself is plaintive. A plaintive grace informs the entire piece. The harmonization is far more wonderful. But to us the chord of the tenth and more remote intervals seem no longer daring. Modern composition has deviled the musical alphabet into the very caverns of the grotesque. Yet there are harmonies in the last page of the study that still excite wonder. The fifteenth bar from the end is one that Richard Wagner might have made from that bar to the close. Every group is a masterpiece. Remember, this study is a nocturne, and even the accepted metronomic markings in most editions, seventy-six to the quarter, are not too slow. They might even be slower. A legretto and not a shade speedier. The color scheme is celestial and the ending a sigh. Not unmixed with happiness. Chopin, sensitive poet, had his moments of peace, of divine content. Leave and strew. The dizzy appogiatura leaps in the last two bars set the seal of perfection upon this unique composition. Touching upon the execution one may say that it's not for small hands, nor yet for big fists. The former must not believe that any arrangements or simplified versions will ever produce the aerial effect, the swaying of the tendrils of tone intended by Chopin. Very large hands are tempted by the reach to crush the life out of the study and not arpeggiating it. This I have heard and the impression was indescribably brutal. As for fingering, McCulloch, Von Bülow, Kulik, Raymond and Clindworth all differ, and from them must most pianists differ. Your own grasp, individual sense of fingering and tact will dictate the management of techniques. Von Bülow gives a very sensible pattern to work from, and Kulak is still more explicit. He analyzes the melody and planning the arpeggiating with scrupulous fidelity. He shows why the arpeggiating must be affected with utmost rapidity, bordering on simultaneousness of harmony in the case of many chords. Kulik has something to say about the grace notes, and this bids me call your attention to Von Bülow's change in the appoggiaturo of the last return of the subject. A bad misprint is in the Von Bülow edition. It is in the seventeenth bar from the end, the lowest note in the first bass group, and should read E natural instead of the E-flat that stands. Von Bülow does not use the arpeggio sign after the first chord. He rightly believes it makes unclear for the student the subtleties of harmonic changes in fingering. He also suggests, quite like the fertile Hans Guido, that players who have sufficient patience and enthusiasm for the task would find it worth their while to practice the arpeggio in the reverse way, from top to bottom, or in the contrary motion, beginning with the top note in one hand and the bottom note in the other. A variety of devices like this would certainly help to give greater finish to the task. Doubtless, but consider, man's years are but three score and ten. The phrasing of the various editions examined do not very much. Reiman is accepted, who has to say in this fashion, at the beginning, more remarkable still, is the diversity of opinion regarding the first three bass chord groups in the fifteenth bar from the close. The bottom notes in the Von Bülow and Klindworth editions are B-flat and two A-naturals, and in the Reiman, Kulek, and Makulay editions, the notes are two B-flats in one A-natural. The former sounds more varied, but we may suppose the latter to be correct because of Makulay. Here is the particular bar as given by Reiman. Yet this exquisite flight into the blue, this nocturne which should be played before sundown excited the astonishment of Mendelssohn, the perplexed wrath of Mauchel, and the contempt of Ralstab, editor of the Iris, who wrote in that journal in 1834 of the studies in Opus Ten, those who have distorted fingers may put them right by practicing these studies, but those who have not should not play them, at least not without having a surgeon at hand. What incredible surgery would have been needed to get within the skull of this narrow critic any saver of the beauty of these compositions in the years to come? The Chopin studies will be played for their music without any thought of their technical problems. Now the young eagle begins to face the sun, begins to mount on wind-weaving pinions. We have reached the last study of Opus Ten, the magnificent one in C Minor. Four pages suffice for a background upon which the composer has flung, with overwhelming fury, the darkest, the most demonic expressions of his nature. Here is no veiled surmise, no smothered rage, but all sweeps along in tornadic passion. Karasovsky's story may be true regarding the genesis of this work, but true or not, it is one of the greatest dramatic outbursts in piano literature. Great in outline, pride, force, and velocity, it never relaxes its grim grip from the first shrill dissonance to the overwhelming choral close. This end rings out like the crack of creation. It is elemental. Kulak calls it a bravura study of the very highest order for the left hand. It was composed in 1831 in Stuttgart, shortly after Chopin had received tidings of the taking of Warsaw by the Russians, September 8, 1831. Karasovsky wrote, grief, anxiety, and despair over the fate of his relatives and his dearly beloved father filled the measure of his sufferings. Under the influence of this mood he wrote the C minor etude, called by many the revolutionary etude. Out of the mad and tempestuous storm of passages, for the left hand the melody rises aloft, now passionate, and a non-proudly majestic, until thrills of awe stream over the listener, and the images evoked of Zeus hurling thunderbolts at the world. Next thinks it, superbly grand, and furthermore writes, the composer seems fuming with rage, the left hand rushes impetuously along, and the right hand strikes in with passionate ejaculations. Van Buleau said, this C minor study must be considered a finished work of art in an even higher degree than the study in C sharp minor. All of which is pretty, but not enough to the point. Van Buleau fingers the first passage for the left hand in a very rational manner. Clindworth differs by beginning with the third instead of the second finger, while Ryman, dear innovator, asks the group, second, first, third, and then the fifth finger on D, if you please. Culek is more normal, beginning with the third. Here is Ryman's phrasing and grouping for the first few bars. Notice the half note with peculiar changes of fingering at the end. It gives surety and variety. Van Buleau makes the changes ring on the second and fifth, instead of the third and fifth fingers. Thus Ryman. In the above the accustomed phrasing is altered, for in all other editions the axon falls upon the first note of each group. In Ryman the accentuation seems perverse, but there is no question as to its pedagogic value. It may be ugly, but it is useful, though I should not care to hear it in the concert room. Another striking peculiarity of the Ryman phrasing is his heavy accent on the top E flat in the principal passage for the left hand. He also fingers what Van Buleau calls the chromatic meanderings in an unusual manner, both on the first page and the last. His idea of the enunciation of the first theme is peculiar. McCule places a legata bow over the first three octaves. So does Culek. Van Buleau only over the last two, which gives a slightly different effect, while Clindworth does the same as Culek. The heavy dynamic accents employed by Ryman are unmistakable. They signify the vital importance of the phrases at its initial entrance. He does not use it at the repetition, but throughout both dynamic and agogic accents are unsparingly used, and the study seems to resound with the sullen booming of a park of artillery. The working out section with its anticipations of Tristan and Esolda is phrased by all the editors as it is never played. Here the technical figure takes precedence over the law of phrase, and so most virtuosae place the accent on the fifth finger regardless of the pattern. This is as it should be. In Clindworth there is a misprint at the beginning of the fifteenth bar from the end in the base. It should read E natural not B flat. The metronome is the same in all editions, 160 to the quarter, but speed should give way to breadth at all hazards. Van Bulo is the only editor to my knowledge who makes an enharmonic key change in this working out section. It looks neater, sounds the same, but is it Chopin? He also gives a variant for the public performance by transforming the last run in unisono into a veritable hurricane by interlocked octaves. The effect is brazen. Chopin needs no such clangorous padding in this etude, which gains by legitimate strokes the most startling contrasts. The study is full of tremendous pathos. It compasses the sublime, and in its most torrential moments the composer never quite loses his mental equipose. He too can evoke tragic spirits, and it will send them scurrying back to their dim profound. It has but one rival in the Chopin's studies. Number 12 Opus 25 in the same key. Chopin, the man and his music, by James Hannecker. Chapter 6, Part 2, The Studies, Titanic Experiments Opus 25, twelve studies by Frédéric Chopin, are dedicated to Madame la Contesse d'Ajou. The set opens with a familiar study in A Flat. So familiar that I shall not make further ado about it, except to say that it is delicious, but played often and badly. All that modern editing can do, since Milouki, is to hunt out fresh accentuation. Von Bulov is a worse sinner in this respect, for he discovers quaint nooks and delts for his dynamics undreamed of by the composer. His edition should be respectfully studied, and, when mastered, discarded for a more poetic interpretation. Above all, poetry, poetry, and paddles. Without paddling of the most varied sort, this study will remain as dry as a dog-nord bone. Von Bulov says, the figure must be treated as a double triplet, twice a three, and not three times two, as indicated in the first two bars. Clint Wors makes the group a sex-till-it. Von Bulov has set forth numerous directions in fingering and phrasing, giving the exact number of notes in the bastard-trill at the end. Kulak uses a most ingenious fingering. Look at the last group of the last bar, second line, third page. It is the last word in fingering. Better to end with Robert Schumann's beautiful description of this study, as quoted by Kulak. In treating of the present book of Edudes, Robert Schumann, after comparing Chopin to a strange star seen at a midnight, wrote as follows, Whither his path lies and leads, or how long, how brilliant its cause is yet to be, who can say? As often, however, as it shows itself, there is ever seen the same deep dark glow, the same starry light, and the same austerity, so that even a child could not fail to recognize it. But besides this, I have had the advantage of hearing most of these Edudes played by Chopin himself, and quite, other Chopin that he played them. Of the first one especially, he writes, Imagine that an earlion harp possessed all the musical scales, and that a hand of an artist were to cause them all to indomingual in all sorts of fantastic embellishments, yet in such a way as to leave everywhere audible a deep fundamental tone and a soft continuously singing upper voice, and you will get the right idea of his playing. But it would be an error to think that Schumann permitted every one of the small notes to be distinctly heard. It was rather an undulation of the A-flat major chord, here and there, thrown aloft in you by the pedal. Throughout all the harmonies, one always heard in great tones a wondrous melody, while once only, the middle of a piece, besides that chief song, a tenor voice became prominent in the midst of chords, after the Edude, as of having seen in a dream, a beatific picture which when half awake one would gladly recall. After these words, there can be no doubt as to the mode of delivery. No commentary is required to show that a melodic and other important tones indicated by means of large notes must emerge from within the sweetly whispering waves, and that the upper tones must be combined so as to form a real melody with the finest and most thoughtful shadings. The twenty-fourth bar of this study in A major is so listian that lists must have benefited by its harmonies. And then he played the second in the book in F minor, one in which his individuality displays itself in a manner never to be forgotten, how charming, how dreamy it was, soft as a song of a sleeping child. Schumann wrote this about the wonderful study in F minor, which whispers, not of baleful deed and a dream, as does the last movement of the B flat minor sonata, but is the song of a sleeping child. No comparison could be prettier, for there is a sweet, delicate drone that sometimes issues from child's lips, having a charm for ears not attuned to grosser things. This must have been the study that Schumann played for Henriette Voigt at Leipzig, September twelfth, 1836. In her diary she wrote, The over-excitement of his fantastic manner is imparted to the keen eared. It made me hold my breath. Wonderful is the ease with which his velvet fingers glide. I might almost, say, fly over the keys. He has enraptured me, in a way which hitherto had been unknown to me, what elighted me was a childlike, natural manner which he showed in his demeanour and in his playing. Von Bulow believes the interpretation of this magical music should be without sentimentality, almost without shading, clearly, delicately, and dreamily executed. An ideal pianissimo, an accentless quality, and completely without passion or rubato. There is little doubt this was the way Schumann played it. Liszt is an authority on the subject, and Mr. Matthias corroborates him. Regarding the rhythmical problem to be overcome, the combination of two opposing rhythms, Von Bulow indicates an excellent method, and Kulak devotes part of a page to examples of how to write, then de-left, and finally both hands are to be treated. Kulak furthermore writes, or, if one will, he may also be take himself and fancy to a still green dusky forest, and listen in profound solitude to the mysterious rustling and whispering of tofoliage. What indeed, despite the algebraic character of the tone language, may not a lively fancy conjure out of, or rather in to, this etude. But one thing is to be held fast. It is to be played in that Chopin-like whisper of which, among others, Mendelssohn also affirmed, that for him nothing more enchanting existed. But enough of subjective fancies. This study contains much beauty, and every bar rills over a little harmonic kingdom of its own. It is so lovely that not even the Brahms distortion in double notes, or the version in octaves, can dull its magnetic ruining. At times so delicate is its design, that it recalls a faint fantastic tracery made by frost on glass. In all instances save one, it is written as four unbroken quarter triplet in the bar right hand. Not so Riemann. He has use of his own, both as to fingering and phrasing. Musical score excerpt. Jean Kludzinski's interesting brochure, the works of Frédéric Chopin and their proper interpretation, is made up of three lectures delivered at Warsaw. While the subject is of necessity for shortened, he says some practical things about the use of the pedals in Chopin's music. He speaks of this very study in F Minor, and the enchanting way Rubenstein and Asipova ended it. The echo-like effects on the four C's, the pedal floating the tone. The pedals are half to battle in Chopin playing. One can never play Chopin beautifully enough. Realistic treatment dissipates his dream palaces, shatters his aerial architecture. He may be played broadly, fervently, dramatically, but causally, never. I deprecate the rose-leaves sentimentalism in which he is swallowed by nearly all pianists. Chopin is a sigh, with something pleading in it, writes on one, and it is precisely this notion which has created such havoc among his interpreters. But if excess and feeling is objectionable, so, too, is a healthy reading accorded his works by pianists with more brawn than rain. The real Chopin play is born, and can never be a product of the schools. Schumann thinks the third study in F less novel than character, although here de Masa showed his admirable bravura powers. But, he continues, they are all models of bold, indwelling, creative force, truly poetic creations, though not without small bluts in their details, but on the whole striking and powerful. Yet, if I give my complete opinion, I must confess that his earlier collection seems more valuable to me, not that I mean to imply any deterioration, for these recently published studies were nearly all written at the same time as the earlier ones, and only a few were composed a little while ago, the first in A-flat and the last magnificent one in C-minor, both of which display great mastership. One may be permitted to disagree with Schumann, for Opus 25 contains at least two of Chopin's greatest studies, A-minor and C-minor. The most valuable point of the passage, quoted, is a clenching of the fact that the studies were composed in a bunch, that settles many important psychological details. Chopin had suffered much before going to Paris, had undergone the purification and renunciation of an unsuccessful love affair, and arrived in Paris with his style fully formed. In his case, the style was most emphatically the man. Kullak calls the study in F, a spirited little Caprice, whose kernel lies in the simultaneous application of four different little rhythms to form a single figure in sound, which figure is then repeated continuously to the end. In these repetitions, however, changes of accentuation, fresh modulations, and picante antithesis, serve to make the composition extremely vivacious and defective. He pulls apart the brightly coloured petals of this thematic flower, and reveals it in a chemistry of this delicate growth. Four different voices are distinguished in the kernel. The third voice is a chief one, and after it the first, because they determine the melodic and harmonic contents. Musical score excerpt Kullak and Mikulie dot the C of the first bar, Clint Worth and Ron Bullough do not. As to phrasing and fingering, I pin my faith to Riemann. His version is the most satisfactory. Here are the first bars. The idea is clearly expressed. Musical score excerpt Best of all is a careful accentuation, and, at a place indicated in no other edition that I have examined, with the arrival of the thirty-second notes, Riemann punctuates the theme this way. Musical score excerpt The melody, of course, in profile, is in the eighth notes. This gives meaning to the decorative pattern of the passage. And what charm, buoyancy and sweetness there is in this caprice, it has a tantalising, elusive charm of a hummingbird in full flight. The human element is almost illuminated. We are in the open, the sun blazes in the blue, and all is gay, atmospheric, and eluding. Even where the tone deepens, where the shadows grow cooler and darker in the B major section, there is little hint of reoccupation with sadness. Subtle, arduharmonic shifts, admirable the ever-changing devices of defigration. Riemann accents the B, the E, A, B-flat, C, and F at the close, perilous leaps for the left hand, but they bring into fine relief the exquisite harmonic web. An easy way of avoiding the tricky position in the left hand at this spot, thirteen bars from the close, is to take the upper C and bass with a right-hand thumb, and in the next bar the upper B and bass the same way. This minimises the risk of the skip, and it is perfectly legitimate to do this, in public at least. The ending, to be breathed away, according to Kulak, is verily see-fingered. He also prescribes a most trying fingering for the first group, fourth finger on both hands. This is useful for study, but for performance the third finger is sureer. Von Bulov advises a place to keep the upper part of the body as still as possible, as any haste of movement would destroy the object in view, which is the acquisition of a loose wrist. He also suggests a certain phrasing in bar seventeen, and forbids the sharp cutting manner in playing this for dhatsati at the last return of the subject. Kulak is copious in his directions, and thinks the touch should be light and the hand gliding, and in the B major part, fiery, willful accentuation of the inferior beats. Capricious, fantastic, and graceful, this study is sure by rare spirits. Shuman has a phrase, the study should be executed with amiable bravura. There is a misprint in the Kulak edition, at the beginning of the thirty-second note, an A instead of an F, upsets the tonality, besides being absurd. After fourth study, an A minor, there is little to add to Theodore Kulak, who writes, in the broadest sense of the word, every piece of music is an etude. In a narrow sense, however, we demand of an etude, that it shall have a special ending view, remote facility in something, and lead to the conquest of some particular difficulty, whether of techniques, of rhythm, expression, or delivery. Robert Shuman collected writings, one, two hundred, and one. The present study is less interesting from a technical, than a rhythmical point of view, while the chief beats of the measure, first, third, fifth, and seventh eighths, are represented only by single tones in the bass part, which are to a certain extent free and unconcerned, and void of all encumbrance. The inferior parts of the measure, second, fourth, sixth, and eighth eighths, are burdened with chords, to most of which, moreover, are provided with accents in opposition to the regular beats of the measure. Further, there is associated with these chords, or there may be said to grow out of them, cantileen in the upper voice, which appears in syncopated form opposite to the strong beat of the bass. This cantileen begins on a weak beat, and produces numerous suspensions, which, in view of the time of their entrance, appear as so many retardations and delays of melodic tones. All these things combine to give the composition a wholly peculiar colouring, to render its flow somewhat restless, and to stem the etude as a lesser characteristic piece, a capriccio, which might well be named Anch etude. As regards techniques, two things are to be studied, the staccato of the chords, and the execution of the cantileena. The chords must be formed more by pressure than by striking. The fingers must support it themselves very lightly upon the chord keys, and then rise again with the back of the hand in the most elastic manner. The upward movement of the hand must be very slight. Everything must be done with greatest precision, and not merely in a superficial manner. Where the cantileena appears, every melodic tone must stand apart from the tones of the accompaniment, as if in relief. Hands of fingers for the melodic tones must breast down the keys a lotter to them, with a special force, in doing which the back of the hand may be permitted to turn lightly to dried, sideward stroke, especially when there is a rest in the accompaniment. Compare with this etude the introduction to the capriccio and B minor, with orchestra, by Felix Mendelssohn, first page. Aside from a few ralent underplaces, the etude is to be played strictly in time. I prefer the Clintworth edition of this rather somber, nervous composition, which may be merely an etude, but it also indicates a slightly pathological condition. With its breast-catching syncopations and narrow emotional range, the A minor study has nevertheless moments of power and interest. Grimund's phrasing, while careful, is not more enlightening than Clintworth's. Von Bulov says, The bass must be strongly marked throughout, even when piano, and rolled out in imitation of the upper part. Singularly enough, his is the only edition in which the left hand arpeggios at the close, though in the final bar, both hands may do so. This is editorial quibbling. Stephen Heller remarked that this study reminded him of the first bar of Decchiriae, rather the regium alternum of Modard's Requiem. It is safe to say that a fifth study in E minor is less often heard in the concert room than any one of its companions. I cannot recall having heard it since Annette Asipova gave that famous recital during which she played the entire twenty-seven studies. Yet it is a sonorous piano piece rich in embroideries and general decorative effect in the middle section. Perhaps the rather perverse, capricious, and not altogether amiable character of the beginning has caused pianists to be wary of introducing it at a recital. It is hugely effective, and also difficult, especially if played with the same fingering throughout, as Von Bulov suggests. Neeks quotes Stephen Heller's partiality for this very study. In the Gazette Mudicale, February 24th, 1839, Heller wrote of Chopin's Opus 25, What more do we require to pass one or several evenings in as perfect a happiness as possible? As for me, I seek him this collection of posy. This is the only name appropriate to the works of Chopin, some favourite pieces which I might fix in my memory, rather than others. Who could retain everything? For this reason, I have in my notebook quite particularly marked the numbers four, five, and seven of the present poems. Of these twelve much-loved studies, every one of which has a charm of its own. The three numbers of those are preferred to all the rest. The middle part of this E minor study recalls Talberg. Von Bulov cautions the student against the accenting of the first note with the thumb right hand, as it does not form part of the melody, but only comes in as an unimportant passing note. This refers to the melody in E. He also writes that the addition of the third and the left hand, Clintworth's edition, needs no special justification. I discovered one marked difference in the Clintworth's edition. The leap in the left hand, first variety of the theme, tenth bar from beginning, is receded by an appoggiatura, E natural. The jump is to F-sharp instead of G as in the Mikoli, Kulak, and Riemann editions. Von Bulov uses the F-sharp, but without a ninth below. Riemann phrases a piece so as to get the top melody, B, E, and G, and his stems are below instead of above, as in Mikoli and Von Bulov. Kulak dots the eighth note. Riemann uses a sixteenth thus. Musical score excerpt. Kulak writes that the figure 184 is not found on the older matronomes. This is not too fast for the Capriccio, with its pretty and ingenious rhythmical transformations. As regards the execution of the 130th bar, Von Bulov says, the appoggiatura, prefixes, are to be struck simultaneously with the other parts, as also the shake in bar 134, and following bars. This must begin with the upper auxiliary note. These details are important. Kulak concludes his notes thus. Despite all the little transformations of the motive member which forms a kernel, its recognizability remains essentially unimpaired. Meanwhile, out of these little metamorphoses, there is developed a rich rhythmic life, which the performer must bring out with great precision. If, in addition, he possesses a fine feeling for what is graceful, coquettish, or agreeably capricious, he will understand how to heighten still further the charm of the chief part, which, as far as its character is concerned, reminds one of Etude Opus 25, No. 3. The secondary part, in major, begins, its kernel is formed of a beautiful brode melody, which, if soulfully conceived and delivered, will sing its way deep into the heart of the listener. For the accompaniment in the right hand, we find chord to arpeggiations in triplets, afterwards in sixteenths, calmly ascending and descending, and surrounding the melody as with a veal. They are to be played almost without accentuation. It was Louis Ehlert, who wrote of the celebrated study in G. Sharp Minor, Opus 25 No. 6. Chopin not only versifies an exercise in thirds, he transforms it into such a work of art that in studying it one could soon offend himself on panaces than at a lesson. He deprives every passage of all mechanical appearance by promoting it to become the embodiment of a beautiful thought which, in turn, finds graceful expression in its motion. And indeed, in the piano literature no more remarkable merging of matter and manner exists. The means justifies at the end, and the means employed by the composer are beautiful. There is no other word to describe the style and architectonics of this noble study. It is seldom played in public because of its difficulty. With the Schumann Ducata, the G. Sharp Minor study, stands at a port of the delectable land of double notes. Both compositions have a common ancestry in the Terni Ducata, and both are of the parents of such a sensational offspring as Balagirev's Islemi. In reading through the double note studies for the instrument, it is in the nature of a miracle to come upon Chopin's transfiguration of such a barren subject. This study is first music, then a technical problem. Where two or three pianists are gathered together in the name of Chopin, the conversation is bound to formulate itself thus. How do you finger the double chromatic third in the G. Sharp Minor study? That question answered, your digital politics are known. You are classified, ranged. If you are heterodox, you are eagerly questioned. If you follow Von Bulov and stand by the Terni fingering, you are regarded as the curiosity. As the interpretation of the study is not taxing, let us examine the various fingerings. First, a fingering given by Leopold Godowski. It is for double chromatic thirds. Readers' note. Please visit it to provide a link to archive.org to see the musical score except. End of Readers' note. You will now be presented with a battalion of authorities, so that you may see at a glance the various efforts to climb those slippery chromatic heights. Here is Michouli. Musical score excerpt. Kulaks is exactly the same as a barf. It is the so-called Chopin fingering, as contrasted with the so-called Terni fingering, though in reality Clementi's, as Mr. John Cowds contends. In the latter, the third and fifth fingers fall upon C-sharp and E and F-sharp and A in the right hand, and upon C and E-flat and G and B-flat in the left. Clint Worth also employs the Chopin fingering. Von Bulov makes this statement. As a peculiar fingering adopted by Chopin for chromatic scales and thirds, appears to us to render their performances in Ligardissimo utterly unattainable on our modern instruments, we have exchanged it, where necessary, for the older method of Hummel. Two of the greatest executive artists of modern times, Alexander Dreishock and Carl Tausich, were theoretically and practically of the same opinion. It is to be conducted that Chopin was influenced in his method of fingering by the piano of his favourite makers, Clair and Wolfe of Paris, who, before they adopted the double E-sharpment, certainly produced instruments with the most plying touch possible, and therefore regarded the use of the thump in the ascending scales on two wide keys in succession, the semitones E, F and B-C, as practicable. On the grand piano of the present day, re-regarded as E-reconcilable with conditions of crescendo legato, this Chopin fingering in reality derives directly from Hummel, see his piano skill. So he gives this fingering, musical score excerpt. He also suggests the following phrasing for the left hand, this is excellent, musical score excerpt. Riemann not only adopts new fingering for the double note scale, but also begins a study with a trill on first and third, second and fourth, instead of the usual first and fourth, second and fifth fingers adopted by the rest. This is his notion of the run in chromatic thirds, musical score excerpt. For the rest the study must be played like the wind, or as Coulac says, apart from a few places and some accents, the etude is to be played almost throughout in their Chopin whisper. The right hand must play its thirds, especially the diatonic and chromatic scales, with such equality, but no angularity of motion shall be noticeable where the fingers pass under or over each other. The left hand too must receive careful attention and special study. The chord passages, and all similar ones, must be executed discreetly and legatissimo. Note with double stems must be distinguished, from notes with single stems, by means of stronger shadings, for they are mutually interconnected. Please visit livervox.org Recording by Robert Hoffman Chopin The Man and His Music by James Hunnaker Chapter 6, Part 3 The Studies – Titanic Experiments von Bülow calls the seventh study, the one in C-sharp minor, a nocturne, a duo for cello and flute. He ingeniously smooths out the unequal rhythmic differences of the two hands and justly says the piece does not work out any special technical matter. This study is the most lauded of all, yet I cannot help agreeing with Nikes, who writes of it, he oddly enough places it in the key of E, quote, a duet between a he and a she, of whom the former shows himself more talkative and emphatic than the latter, is indeed very sweet, but perhaps also somewhat tiresomely monotonous, as such tate-a-tates naturally are to third parties. For Chopin's contemporaries this was one of his greatest efforts. Heller wrote, it engenders the sweetest sadness, the most enviable torments, and if in playing it one feels oneself insensibly drawn toward mournful and melancholy ideas, it is a disposition of the soul which I prefer to all others. Alas, how I love these somber and mysterious dreams, and Chopin is the God who created them. In this etude Kleksinski thinks there are traces of weariness of life, and quotes Orlowski, Chopin's friend, quote, he is only afflicted with homesickness, unquote. Willa be calls this study the most beautiful of them all. For me, it is both morbid and elegiac. There is nostalgia in it, the nostalgia of a sick, lacerated soul. It contains in solution all the most objectionable and most endearing qualities of the master. Perhaps we have heard its sweet, highly perfumed measures too often. Its interpretation is a matter of taste. Kulak has written the most ambitious program for it. Here is a quotation from Albert R. Parsons' translation in Schreimer's edition of Kulak. Throughout the entire piece, an elegiac mood prevails. The composer paints with psychological truthfulness a fragment out of the life of a deeply clouded soul. He lets a broken heart, filled with grief, proclaim its sorrow in a language of pain which is incapable of being misunderstood. The heart has lost, not something, but everything. The tones, however, do not always bear the impress of a quiet, melancholy resignation. More passionate impulses awaken, and the still-plaint becomes a complaint against cruel fate. It seeks the conflict and tries through force of will to burst the fetters of pain, or at least to alleviate it through absorption, in a happy past. But in vain. The heart has not lost something, it has lost everything. The musical poem divides into three, or if one views the little episode in B major as a special part, into four parts, strophes, of which the last is an elaborated repetition of the first with a brief closing part appended. The whole piece is a song, or better still, an aria, in which two principal voices are to be brought out. The upper one is an imitation of a human voice, while the lower one must bear the character throughout of an obligato violoncello. It is well known that Chopin was very fond of the violoncello, and that in his piano compositions he imitated the style of passages peculiar to that instrument. The two voices correspond closely, supplementing and imitating each other reciprocally. Between the two a third element exists, an accompaniment of eights in uniform succession without any significance beyond that of filling out the harmony. This third element is to be kept wholly subordinate. The little, one-voiced introduction in recitative style which precedes the aria, reminds one vividly of the beginning of the ballad in G minor, opus 23. The D-flat study, number eight, is called by Van Buleff, quote, the most useful exercise in the whole range of etude literature. It might truly be called l'indispensable di pianesta, if the term, through misuse, had not fallen into disresput. As a remedy for stiff fingers and preparatory to performing in public, playing it six times through is recommended, even to the most expert pianist, unquote. Only six times? The separate study of the left hand is recommended. Kulak finds this study, quote, surprisingly euphonious but devoid of depth of content, unquote. It is an admirable study for the cultivation of double sixths. It contains a remarkable passage of consecutive fifths that set theorists by the ears. Riemann manages to get some new editorial comment upon it. The nimble study, number nine, which bears the title of the butterfly, is in G-flat. Van Buleff transposes it inharmonically to F-sharp, avoiding numerous double flats. The change is not laudable. He holds anything but an elevated opinion of the piece, classing it with a composition of the Charles Mayer order. This is unjust. The study, if not deep, is graceful and certainly very effective. It has lately become the stamping ground for the display of piano athletics. Nearly all modern virtuosi pull to pieces the wings of this gay little butterfly. They smash it, they bang it, and, adding insult to cruelty, they finish it with three chords, mounting an octave each time, thus giving a conventional character to the close, the very thing the composer avoids. The Telefson's edition and Kleenvorth's give these differences. McCully, Van Buleff, and Kulak place the legato bow over the first three notes of the group. Riemann, of course, is different. The metronomic markings are about the same in all editions. Asiatic wildness, according to Van Buleff, pervades the B minor study, opus 25, number 10, although Willoughby claims it to be only a study in octaves, quote, for the left hand. Van Buleff furthermore compares it, because of its monophonic character, to the chorus of derivishes in Beethoven's Ruins of Athens. Nyx says it is, quote, a real pandemonium, for a while holier sounds intervene, but finally hell prevails, unquote. The study is for Kulak, quote, somewhat far-fetched and forced in invention, and leaves one cold, although it plunges on wildly to the end, unquote. Van Buleff has made the most complete edition. Kleenvorth strengthens the first and the seventh eighth notes of the fifth bar before the last by filling in the harmonics of the left hand. This etude is an important one, technically. Because many pianists make little of it does not abate its musical significance, and I am almost inclined to group it with the last two studies of this opus. The opening is portentous and soon becomes a driving whirlwind of tone. Chopin has never penned a lovelier melody than the one in B, the middle section of this etude. It is only to be compared to the one in the same key in the B minor scherzo, while the return to the first subject is managed as consummately as in the E flat minor scherzo from opus 35. I confess to being stirred by this B minor study, with its tempo at a forced draft and with its precipitous close. There is a lushness about the octave melody. The tune may be a little overripe, but it is sweet, sensuous music, and about it hovers the hush of a rich evening in early autumn. And now, the winter wind, the study in A minor, opus 25, number 11. Here even von Buloff becomes enthusiastic. Quote, it must be mentioned as a particular merit of this, the longest and, in every respect, the grandest of Chopin's studies, that, while producing the greatest fullness of sound imaginable, it keeps itself so entirely and utterly unorchestral, and represents piano music in the most accurate sense of the word. To Chopin is due the honor and credit of having set fast the boundary between piano and orchestral music, which through other composers of the Romantic School, especially Robert Schumann, has been defaced and blotted out to the prejudice and damage of both species. Kulak is equally as warm in his praise of it. Quote, one of the grandest and most ingenious of Chopin's etudes, and a companion piece to opus 10, number 12, which perhaps it even surpasses. It is a bravura study of the highest order, and it is captivating through the boldness and originality of its passages, whose rising and falling waves, full of agitation, overflow the entire keyboard, captivating through its harmonic and modulatory shadings, and captivating, finally, through a wonderfully invented little theme which is drawn like a red thread through all the flashing and glittering waves of tone, and which, as it were, prevents them from scattering to all quarters of the heavens. This little theme, strictly speaking, only a phrase of two measures, is, in a certain sense, the motto which serves as a superscription for the etude, appearing first one-voiced, and immediately after four-voiced. The slow time, lento, shows the great importance which is to be attached to it. They who have followed thus far and agree with what has been said cannot be in doubt concerning the proper artistic delivery. To execute the passages quite in the rapid time prescribed, one must possess a finished technique, great facility, lightness of touch, equality, strength, and endurance in the forte passages, together with the clearest distinctness in the pianissimo, all of this must have been already achieved, for the interpreter must devote his whole attention to the poetic contents of the composition, especially to the delivery of the march-like rhythms which possess a life of their own, appearing now calm in circumspect, and a non-bold and challenging, the march-like element naturally requires strict playing time. This study is magnificent, and, moreover, it is music. In bar 15, Von Buloff makes Be Natural the second note of the last group, although all other editions, except Cleanworth, uses a B-flat. Von Buloff has common sense on his side, the B-flat is a misprint. The same authority recommends slow staccato practice with the lid of the piano closed. Then the hurly burly of tone will not intoxicate the player and submerge his critical faculty. Each editor has his notion of the phrasing of the initial sixteenths, thus McCaulay's, which is normal. As regards grouping, Riemann follows Von Buloff, but places his accents differently. The canvas is Chopin's largest, for the idea and its treatment are on a vastly grander scale than any contained in the two concertos. The latter are, after all, miniatures, precious ones, if you will, joined and built with cunning artifice. In neither work is there the restless overflow of this atude, which has been compared to the screaming of the winter blasts. Ah, how Chopin puts to flight those modern men who scheme out a big decorative pattern and then have nothing wherewith to fill it! He never relaxes his theme, and its fluctuating surprises are many. The end is notable for the fact that scales appear. Chopin very seldom uses scale figures in his studies. From Hummel to Thalberg and Hertz, the keyboard had glittered with spangled scales. Chopin must have been sick of them, as sick of them as of the left-hand melody with their prediated accompaniment at the right, a la Thalberg. Scales had been used too much, hence Chopin's sparing employment of them. In the first C-sharp minor study, opus 10, there is a run for the left hand in the coda. In the seventh study, same key, opus 25, there are more. The second study of opus 10 in A minor is a chromatic scale study, but there are no other specimens of the form until the mighty run at the conclusion of this A minor study. It takes prodigious power and endurance to play this work. Predigious power, passion, and no little poetry. It is open-air music, storm music, and at times moves in processional splendor. Small, sold men, no matter how agile their fingers, should avoid it. The prime technical difficulty is the management of the thumb. Kulak has made a variant at the end for concert performance. It is effective. The average metromonic marking is 69 to the half. Kulak thinks the twelfth and last study of opus 25 in C minor, quote, a grand, magnificent composition for practice in broken chord passages for both hands, which requires no comment, unquote. I differ from this worthy teacher. Rather is Nike's more to my taste, quote, number 12, C minor, in which the emotions rise not less high than the waves of arpeggios which symbolize them, unquote. Vambuloff is didactic, quote, the requisite strength for this grandiose bravura study can only be attained by the utmost clearness, and thus only by a gradually increasing speed. It is therefore most desirable to practice it piano also by a way of variety, for otherwise the strength of tone might easily degenerate into hardness, and in the poetic striving after a realistic portrayal of a storm on the piano the instrument, as well as the piece, would come to grief. The pedal is needful to give the requisite effect, and must change with every new harmony, but it should only be used in the latter stages of study, when the difficulties are nearly mastered, unquote. We have our preferences. Mine, in Opus 25, is the C minor study, which, like the prelude in D minor, is full of the sound of great guns. Willoughby thinks otherwise. On page 81, in his life of Chopin, he has the courage to write, quote, had Professor Nyx applied the term monotonous to number 12, we should have been more ready to endorse his opinion, as, although great power is manifested, the very sameness of the form of the arpeggio figure causes a certain amount of monotony to be felt, unquote. The C minor study is, in a degree, a return to the first study in C. While the idea in the former is infinitely nobler, more dramatic and tangible, there is in the latter naked, primeval simplicity, the elemental poussants. Monotonous, a thousand times no. Monotonous, as is the thunder and spray of the sea, when it tumbles and roars on some sullen, savage thaw. Beethoven, in its ruggedness, the Chopin of this C minor study, is as far removed from the musical dandyisms of the Parisian drawing rooms, as is Beethoven himself. It is orchestral in intention and a true epic of the piano. Riemann places half-notes at the beginning of each measure, as a reminder of the necessary clinging of the thumbs. I like Bonvulov's version the best of all. His directions are most minute. He gives the list method of working up the climax in octave triplets. How Liszt must have thundered through this tumultuous work. Before it, all criticism should be silenced that fails to allow Chopin, a place among the greatest creative musicians. We are here in the presence of Chopin the musician, not Chopin the composer for piano. In 1840, Troy Nouvelle Tude, by Frederick Chopin, appeared in the Métode du Métode pour le piano by F. J. Fiti and I. Moshelle. It was odd company for the Polish composer. Internal evidence seems to show, writes Niax, that these weakest of the master's studies, which, however, are by no means uninteresting and certainly very characteristic, may be regarded more than Opus 25 as the outcome of a gleaning. The last decade has added much to the artistic stature of these three supplementary studies. They have something of the concision of the preludes. The first is a masterpiece. In F. Minor, the theme in triplet quarters, broad, sonorous, and passionate, is unequally pitted against four eight notes in the bass. The technical difficulty to be overcome is purely rhythmic, and Kulak takes pains to show how it may be overcome. It is the musical, the emotional content of the study that fascinates. The worthy editor calls it a companion piece to the F. Minor study in Opus 25. The comparison is not an apt one. Far deeper is this new study, and although the doors never swing quite open, we define the tragic issues concealed. Beautiful in a different way is the Ab study which follows. Again, the problem is a rhythmical one, and again the composer demonstrates his exhaustless invention and his power of evoking a single mood, viewing all its lovely contours and letting it melt away like dream magic. Full of gentle sprightliness and lingering sweetness is this study. Chopin has the hypnotic quality more than any composer of the century. Richard Wagner accepted. After you have enjoyed playing this study, read Kulak and his triplicity in Boplicity. It may do you good, and it will not harm the music. In all the editions save one that I have seen, the third study in D-flat begins on A-flat, like the famous Volse in D-flat. The exception is Cleendworth, who starts with B-flat, the note above. The study is full of sunny, good humor, spiritualized humor, and leaves the most cheering impression after its performance. Its technical object is a simultaneous legato and staccato. The result is an idealized Volse in Allegretto tempo, the very incarnation of joy, tempered by aristocratic reserve. Chopin never rumps, but he jests wittily, and always in supremely good taste. This study fitly closes his extraordinary labors in this form, and it is as if he had signed it F. Chopin at Ego in Arcady. Among the various editions, let me recommend Cleendworth for daily usage, while frequent records to von Bülow, Riemann, and Kulak cannot fail to prove valuable, curious, and interesting. Of the making of Chopin editions, there is seemingly no end. In 1894, I saw in manuscript some remarkable versions of the Chopin studies by Leopold Godowski. The study in G-sharp minor was the first one published, and played in public by this young pianist. Unlike the Brahms' derangements, they are musical but immensely difficult. Topsy Turvied, as are the figures, a Chopin, even if lopsided, hovers about, sometimes with eyebrows lifted, sometimes with angry knitted forehead, and not seldom amused to the point of smiling. You see his narrow shoulders, shrugged in the Polish fashion as he examines the study in double-thirds transposed to the left hand. Curiously enough, this transcription, difficult as it is, does not tax the fingers as much as a bedevilment of the A minor, Opus 25, No. 4, which is extremely difficult, demanding color discrimination and individuality of finger. More breath-catching, and a piece at which one must cry out, hats off, gentlemen, a tornado, is the Caprice called Batenage, but if it is meant to Batenage, it is no sport for the pianist of everyday technical attainments. This is formed of two studies, and the right hand is the G-flat study, Opus 25, No. 9, and in the left, the black key study, Opus 10, No. 5. The two go laughing through the world like old friends, brother and sister they are tonally, trailing behind them a cloud of iridescent glory. Godowski has cleverly combined the two, following their melodic curves as nearly as possible. In some places he has thickened the harmonies and shifted the black key figures to the right hand. It is the work of a remarkable pianist. This is the way it looks on paper at the beginning. The same study, G-flat, Opus 10, No. 5, is also treated separately, the melody being transferred to the treble. The butterfly octaves in another study are made to hop nimbly along in the left hand, and the C-major study, Opus 10, No. 7, Chopin's Takata is arranged for the left hand and seems very practical and valuable. Here the adapter has displayed great taste and skill, especially on the third page. The pretty musical idea is not destroyed, but viewed from other points of vantage. Opus 10, No. 2, is treated like a left hand study as it should be. Chopin did not always give enough work to the left hand, and the first study of this Opus in C is planned on brilliant lines for both hands. In Genius is the manipulation of the seldom played Opus 25, No. 5, in E minor. As a study in rhythms and double notes, it is very welcome. The F minor study, Opus 25, No. 2, as considered by the ambidextrous Gadowski, is put in the bass, where it whirls along to the melodic encouragement of a theme of the paraphraser's own in the right. This study has suffered the most of all, for Brahms in his heavy, titanic way set it grinding double sixths, while Isidore Philippe, in his studies for the left hand, has harnessed it to sullen octaves. This Frenchman, by the way, also arranged for left hand alone the G-sharp minor, the D-flat double sixths, the A minor, winter wind studies, the B-flat minor prelude, and, terrible to relate, the last movement of the Chopin B-flat minor sonata. Are the Gadowski transcriptions available? Certainly. In ten years, so rapid as the technical standard advancing, they will be used in the curriculum of students. Whether he has treated Chopin with reverence, I leave my betters to determine. What has reverence to do with the case anyhow? Plato is parsed in the schoolroom, and Beethoven taught in conservatories. Therefore why worry over the question of Godowski's attitude? Besides, he is writing for the next generation, presumably a generation of Rosenthal's. And now, having passed over the salt and stubbly domain of pedagogics, what is the dominant impression gleaned from the twenty-seven Chopin studies? Is it not one of admiration tinged with wonder at the prodigal display of thematic and technical invention? Their variety is great. The aesthetic side is nowhere neglected for the purely mechanical, and in the most poetic of them stuff may be found for delicate fingers. Astounding, canorus, enchanting, alembicated, and dramatic, the Chopin studies are exemplary essays in emotion and manner. In them is mirrored all of Chopin, the planetary as well as the secular Chopin. When most of his piano music has gone the way of all things fashioned by mortal hands, these studies will endure, will stand for the 19th century as Beethoven crystallized the 18th, Bach the 17th centuries in piano music. Chopin is a classic.