to complete his "wailing Iliads" the strong hand of the
reviser was necessary, and he also realized that nothing is more
difficult for the genius than to retain his gift. Of all natures the
most prone to pessimism, procrastination and vanity, the artist is most
apt to become ennuied. It is not easy to flame always at the focus, to
burn fiercely with the central fire. Chopin knew this and cultivated
his ego. He saw too that the love of beauty for beauty's sake was
fascinating but led to the way called madness. So he rooted his art,
gave it the earth of Poland and its deliquescence is put off to the day
when a new system of musical aestheticism will have routed the old,
when the Ugly shall be king and Melody the handmaiden of science. But
until that most grievous and undesired time he will catch the music of
our souls and give it cry and flesh.

III

Chopin is the open door in music. Besides having been a poet and giving
vibratory expression to the concrete, he was something else--he was a
pioneer. Pioneer because in youth he had bowed to the tyranny of the
diatonic scale and savored the illicit joys of the chromatic. It is
briefly curious that Chopin is regarded purely as a poet among
musicians and not as a practical musician. They will swear him a
phenomenal virtuoso, but your musician, orchestral and theoretical,
raises the eyebrow of the supercilious if Chopin is called creative. A
cunning finger-smith, a moulder of decorative patterns, a master at
making new figures, all this is granted, but speak of Chopin as
path-breaker in the harmonic forest--that true "forest of numbers"--as
the forger of a melodic metal, the sweetest, purest in temper, and lo!
you are regarded as one mentally askew. Chopin invented many new
harmonic devices, he untied the chord that was restrained within the
octave, leading it into the dangerous but delectable land of extended
harmonies. And how he chromaticized the prudish, rigid garden of German
harmony, how he moistened it with flashing changeful waters until it
grew bold and brilliant with promise! A French theorist, Albert
Lavignac, calls Chopin a product of the German Romantic school. This is
hitching the star to the wagon. Chopin influenced Schumann; it can be
proven a hundred times. And Schumann understood Chopin else he could
not have written the "Chopin" of the Carneval, which quite out-Chopins
Chopin.

Chopin is the musical soul of Poland; he incarnates its political
passion.