hy specimens of their creator's gift for varying
not only a simple dance form, but also in juggling with a simple melodic
idea so masterfully that the hearer forgets he is hearing a three-part
composition on a keyboard. Chopin was a magician. The first of the
_Mazurkas in C-sharp minor_ bears the early _Op. 6, No. 2_. By no means
representative, it is nevertheless interesting and characteristic. That
brief introduction with its pedal bass sounds the rhythmic life of the
piece. I like it; I like the dance proper; I like the major--you see the
peasant girls on the green footing away--and the ending is full of a sad
charm. _Op. 30, No. 4_, the next in order, is bigger in conception,
bigger in workmanship. It is not so cheerful, perhaps, as its
predecessor in the same key; the heavy basses twanging in tenths like a
contrabasso are intentionally monotone in effect. There is defiance and
despair in the mood. And look at the line before the last--those
consecutive fifths and sevenths were not placed there as a whim; they
mean something. Here is a mazurka that will be heard later than 1955! By
the way, while you are loitering through this Op. 30 do not neglect No.
3, the stunning specimen in D-flat. It is my favorite mazurka.

Now let us hurry on to _Op. 41, No. 1_. It well repays careful study.
Note the grip our composer has on the theme, it bobs up in the middle
voices; it comes thundering at the close in octave and chordal
_unisons_, it rumbles in the bass and is persistently asserted by the
soprano voice. Its scale is unusual, the atmosphere not altogether
cheerful. Chopin could be depressingly pessimistic at times. _Op. 50,
No. 3_, shows how closely the composer studied his Bach. It is by all
odds the most elaborately worked out of the series, difficult to play,
difficult to grasp in its rather disconnected procession of moods. To me
it has a clear ring of exasperation, as if Chopin had lost interest, but
perversely determined to finish his idea. As played by Pachmann, we get
it in all its peevish, sardonic humors, especially if the audience, or
the weather, or the piano seat does not suit the fat little blackbird
from Odessa. _Op. 63, No. 3_, ends this list of mazurkas in C-sharp
minor. In it Chopin has limbered up, his mood is freer, melancholy as it
is. Louis Ehlert wrote of this: "A more perfect canon in the octave
could not have been written by one who had grown gray in the learned
arts." Those last few bars prove that