that Riemann even changes the arrangement of the
bars. This prelude is dramatic almost to an operatic degree. Sonorous,
rather grandiloquent, it is a study in declamation, the declamation of
the slow movement in the F minor concerto. Schumann may have had the
first phrase in his mind when he wrote his Aufschwung. This page of
Chopin's, the torso of a larger idea, is nobly rhetorical.

[Musical score excerpt]

What piano music is the nineteenth prelude in E flat! Its widely
dispersed harmonies, its murmuring grace and June-like beauty, are they
not Chopin, the Chopin we best love? He is ever the necromancer, ever
invoking phantoms, but with its whirring melody and furtive caprice
this particular shape is an alluring one. And difficult it is to
interpret with all its plangent lyric freedom.

No. 20 in C minor contains in its thirteen bars the sorrows of a
nation. It is without doubt a sketch for a funeral march, and of it
George Sand must have been thinking when she wrote that one prelude of
Chopin contained more music than all the trumpetings of Meyerbeer.

Of exceeding loveliness is the B flat major prelude, No. 21. It is
superior in content and execution to most of the nocturnes. In feeling
it belongs to that form. The melody is enchanting. The accompaniment
figure shows inventive genius. Klindworth employs a short appoggiatura,
Kullak the long, in the second bar. Judge of what is true editorial
sciolism when I tell you that Riemann--who evidently believes in a
rigid melodic structure--has inserted an E flat at the end of bar four,
thus maiming the tender, elusive quality of Chopin's theme. This is
cruelly pedantic. The prelude arrests one in ecstasy; the fixed period
of contemplation of the saint or the hypnotized sets in, and the
awakening is almost painful. Chopin, adopting the relative minor key as
a pendant to the picture in B flat, thrills the nerves by a bold
dissonance in the next prelude, No. 22. Again, concise paragraphs
filled with the smoke of revolt and conflict The impetuosity of this
largely moulded piece in G minor, its daring harmonics,--read the
seventeenth and eighteenth bars,--and dramatic note make it an
admirable companion to the Prelude in F minor. Technically it serves as
an octave study for the left hand.

In the concluding bar, but one, Chopin has in the F major Prelude
attempted a most audacious feat in harmony. An E flat in the bass of
the third group of sixteenths leaves the whole comp