ile at Ehlert's poetic exaggeration. The valses are the most
objective of the Chopin works, and in few of them is there more than a
hint of the sullen, Sargasson seas of the nocturnes and scherzi.
Nietzsche's la Gaya Scienza--the Gay Science--is beautifully set forth
in the fifteen Chopin valses. They are less intimate, in the psychic
sense, but exquisite exemplars of social intimacy and aristocratic
abandon. As Schumann declared, the dancers of these valses should be at
least countesses. There is a high-bred reserve despite their
intoxication, and never a hint of the brawling peasants of Beethoven,
Grieg, Brahms, Tschaikowsky, and the rest. But little of Vienna is in
Chopin. Around the measures of this most popular of dances he has
thrown mystery, allurement, and in them secret whisperings and the
unconscious sigh. It is going too far not to dance to some of this
music, for it is putting Chopin away from the world he at times loved.
Certain of the valses may be danced: the first, second, fifth, sixth,
and a few others. The dancing would be of necessity more picturesque
and less conventional than required by the average valse, and there
must be fluctuations of tempo, sudden surprises and abrupt languors.
The mazurkas and polonaises are danced to-day in Poland, why not the
valses? Chopin's genius reveals itself in these dance forms, and their
presentation should be not solely a psychic one. Kullak, stern old
pedagogue, divides these dances into two groups, the first dedicated to
"Terpsichore," the second a frame for moods. Chopin admitted that he
was unable to play valses in the Viennese fashion, yet he has contrived
to rival Strauss in his own genre. Some of these valses are trivial,
artificial, most of them are bred of candlelight and the swish of
silken attire, and a few are poetically morbid and stray across the
border into the rhythms of the mazurka. All of them have been edited to
death, reduced to the commonplace by vulgar methods of performance, but
are altogether sprightly, delightful specimens of the composer's
careless, vagrant and happy moods.

Kullak utters words of warning to the "unquiet" sex regarding the
habitual neglect of the bass. It should mean something in valse tempo,
but it usually does not. Nor need it be brutally banged; the
fundamental tone must be cared for, the subsidiary harmonies lightly
indicated. The rubato in the valses need not obtrude itself as in the
mazurkas.

Opus 18, in E flat, w