should be clearly expressed. The tempo,
marked in both editions, lento assai, is fast. To be precise,
Klindworth gives 66 to the quarter.

The plaintive little mazurka of two lines, the seventh prelude, is a
mere silhouette of the national dance. Yet in its measures is
compressed all Mazovia. Klindworth makes a variant in the fourth bar
from the last, a G sharp instead of an F sharp. It is a more piquant
climax, perhaps not admissible to the Chopin purist. In the F sharp
minor prelude No. 7, Chopin gives us a taste of his grand manner. For
Niecks the piece is jerky and agitated, and doubtless suggests a mental
condition bordering on anxiety; but if frenzy there is, it is kept well
in check by the exemplary taste of the composer. The sadness is rather
elegiac, remote, and less poignant than in the E minor prelude.
Harmonic heights are reached on the second page--surely Wagner knew
these bars when he wrote "Tristan and Isolde"--while the ingenuity of
the figure and avoidance of a rhythmical monotone are evidences of
Chopin's feeling for the decorative. It is a masterly prelude.
Klindworth accents the first of the bass triplets, and makes an
unnecessary enharmonic change at the sixth and seventh lines.

There is a measure of grave content in the ninth prelude in E. It is
rather gnomic, and contains hints of both Brahms and Beethoven. It has
an ethical quality, but that may be because of its churchly rhythm and
color.

The C sharp minor prelude, No. 10, must be the "eagle wings" of
Schumann's critique. There is a flash of steel gray, deepening into
black, and then the vision vanishes as though some huge bird aloft had
plunged down through blazing sunlight, leaving a color-echo in the void
as it passed to its quarry. Or, to be less figurative, this prelude is
a study in arpeggio, with double notes interspersed, and is too short
to make more than a vivid impression.

No. II in B is all too brief. It is vivacious, dolce indeed, and most
cleverly constructed. Klindworth gives a more binding character to the
first double notes. Another gleam of the Chopin sunshine.

Storm clouds gather in the G sharp minor, the twelfth prelude, so
unwittingly imitated by Grieg in his Menuetto of the same key, and in
its driving presto we feel the passionate clench of Chopin's hand. It
is convulsed with woe, but the intellectual grip, the self-command are
never lost in these two pages of perfect writing. The figure is
suggestive, and there