ety of this present chapter could be usurped by a detailed
account of the beauties of the Unheard Chopin--you see I am emulating
the critics with my phrase-making. But I am not the man to accomplish
such a formidable task. I am too old, too disillusioned. The sap of a
generous enthusiasm no longer stirs in my veins. Let the young fellows
look to the matter--it is their affair. However, as I am an inveterate
busybody I cannot refrain from an attempt to enlist your sympathies for
some of my favorite Chopin.

Do you know the _E major Scherzo, Op. 54_, with its skimming,
swallowlike flight, its delicate figuration, its evanescent hintings at
a serious something in the major trio? Have you ever heard Pachmann
_purl_ through this exquisitely conceived, contrived and balanced
composition, truly a classic? _Whaur_ is your Willy Mendelssohn the
_noo_? Or are you acquainted with the _G-sharp minor Prelude_? Do you
play the _E-flat Scherzo_ from the _B minor Sonata_? Have you never shed
a furtive tear--excuse my old-fashioned romanticism--over the bars of
the _B major Larghetto_ in the same work? [The last movement is pure
passage writing, yet clever as only Chopin knew how to be clever without
being offensively gaudy.]

How about the first _Scherzo in B minor_? You play it, but do you
understand its ferocious irony? [Oh, author of _Chopin: the Man and his
Music_, what sins of rhetoric must be placed at your door!] And what of
the _E-flat minor Scherzo_? Is it merely an excuse for blacksmith art
and is the following _finale_ only a study in unisons? There is the
_C-sharp minor Prelude_. In it Brahms is anticipated by a quarter of a
century. The _Polonaise in F-sharp minor_ was damned years ago by Liszt,
who found that it contained pathologic states. What of it? It is
Chopin's masterpiece in this form and for that reason is seldom played
in public. Why? My children, do you not know by this time that the
garden variety of pianoforte virtuoso will play difficult music if the
difficulties be technical not emotional, or emotional and not spiritual?

_The F-sharp minor Polonaise_ is always _drummed_ on the keyboard
because some silly story got into print about Chopin's aunt asking the
composer for a picture of his soul battling with the soul of his pet
foe, the Russians. Militant the work is not, as swinging as are its
resilient rhythms: granted that the gloomy repetitions betray a morbid
dwelling upon some secret, exasperating sorrow