es it does not reveal
so much ingenuity, but just because the "figure in the carpet" is not
so varied in pattern, its passion is all the deeper. It is another
Ballade, sadder, more meditative of the tender grace of vanished days.

The third Impromptu in G flat, op. 51, is not often played. It may be
too difficult for the vandal with an average technique, but it is
neither so fresh in feeling nor so spontaneous in utterance as its
companions. There is a touch of the faded, blase, and it is hardly
healthy in sentiment. Here are some ophidian curves in triplets, as in
the first Impromptu, but with interludes of double notes, in coloring
tropical and rich to morbidity. The E flat minor trio is a fine bit of
melodic writing. The absence of simplicity is counterbalanced by
greater freedom of modulation and complexity of pattern. The impromptu
flavor is not missing, and there is allied to delicacy of design a
strangeness of sentiment--that strangeness which Edgar Poe declared
should be a constituent element of all great art.

The Fantaisie-Impromptu in C sharp minor, op. 66, was published by
Fontana in 1855, and is one of the few posthumous works of Chopin
worthy of consideration. It was composed about 1834. A true Impromptu,
but the title of Fantaisie given by Fontana is superfluous. The piece
presents difficulties, chiefly rhythmical. Its involuted first phrases
suggest the Bellini-an fioriture so dear to Chopin, but the D flat part
is without nobility. Here is the same kind of saccharine melody that
makes mawkish the trio in the "Marche Funebre." There seems no danger
that this Fantaisie-Impromptu will suffer from neglect, for it is the
joy of the piano student, who turns its presto into a slow, blurred
mess of badly related rhythms, and its slower movement into a long
drawn sentimental agony; but in the hands of a master the C sharp minor
Impromptu is charming, though not of great depth.

The first Impromptu, dedicated to Mlle. la Comtesse de Lobau, was
published December, 1837; the second, May, 1840; the third, dedicated
to Madame la Comtesse Esterhazy, February, 1843. Not one of these four
Impromptus is as naive as Schubert's; they are more sophisticated and
do not smell of nature and her simplicities.

Of the Chopin Valses it has been said that they are dances of the soul
and not of the body. Their animated rhythms, insouciant airs and
brilliant, coquettish atmosphere, the true atmosphere of the ballroom,
seem to sm