had in them more of
humanity and poetry, and the improved subject-matter naturally, indeed
necessarily, chastened, ennobled, and enriched the means and ways
of expression. Of course no hard line can be drawn between the two
periods--the distinctive quality of the one period appears sometimes
in the work of the other: a work of the earlier period foreshadows the
character of the later; one of the later re-echoes that of the earlier.

The compositions which we know to have been written by Chopin between
1829 and 1831 are few in number. This may be partly because Chopin was
rather idle from the autumn of 1830 to the end of 1831, partly because
no account of the production of other works has come down to us. In
fact, I have no doubt that other short pieces besides those mentioned by
Chopin in his letters were composed during those years, and subsequently
published by him. The compositions oftenest and most explicitly
mentioned in the letters are also the most important ones--namely, the
concertos. As I wish to discuss them at some length, we will keep them
to the last, and see first what allusions to other compositions we can
find, and what observations these latter give rise to.

On October 3, 1829, Chopin sends his friend Titus Woyciechowski a waltz
which, he says, was, like the Adagio of the F minor Concerto, inspired
by his ideal, Constantia Gladkowska:--

Pay attention to the passage marked with a +; nobody, except
you, knows of this. How happy would I be if I could play my
newest compositions to you! In the fifth bar of the trio the
bass melody up to E flat dominates, which, however, I need
not tell you, as you are sure to feel it without being told.

The remark about the bass melody up to E flat in the trio gives us a
clue to which of Chopin's waltzes this is. It can be no other than the
one in D flat which Fontana published among his friend's posthumous
works as Op. 70, No. 3. Although by no means equal to any of the waltzes
published by Chopin himself, one may admit that it is pretty; but its
chief claim to our attention lies in the fact that it contains germs
which reappear as fully-developed flowers in other examples of this
class of the master's works--the first half of the first part reappears
in the opening (from the ninth bar onward) of Op. 42 (Waltz in A flat
major); and the third part, in the third part (without counting the
introductory bars) of Op. 34, No. 1 (Waltz in A flat major).