ression of its poetical sentiments. Even the middle
part borders upon what I should call the tragic style of ornament. The
ground thought is hidden behind a dense veil, but a veil, too, can be
an ornament."

In another place Ehlert thinks that the F sharp major Nocturne seems
inseparable from champagne and truffles. It is certainly more elegant
and dramatic than the one in F major, which precedes it. That, with the
exception of the middle part in F minor, is weak, although rather
pretty and confiding. The F sharp Nocturne is popular. The "doppio
movemento" is extremely striking and the entire piece is saturated with
young life, love and feelings of good will to men. Read Kleczynski. The
third nocturne of the three is in G minor, and contains some fine,
picturesque writing. Kullak does not find in it aught of the fantastic.
The languid, earth-weary voice of the opening and the churchly refrain
of the chorale, is not this fantastic contrast! This nocturne contains
in solution all that Chopin developed later in a nocturne of the same
key. But I think the first stronger--its lines are simpler, more
primitive, its coloring less complicated, yet quite as rich and gloomy.
Of it Chopin said: "After Hamlet," but changed his mind. "Let them
guess for themselves," was his sensible conclusion. Kullak's programme
has a conventional ring. It is the lament for the beloved one, the lost
Lenore, with the consolation of religion thrown in. The "bell-tones" of
the plain chant bring to my mind little that consoles, although the
piece ends in the major mode. It is like Poe's "Ulalume." A complete
and tiny tone poem, Rubinstein made much of it. In the fourth bar and
for three bars there is a held note F, and I heard the Russian
virtuoso, by some miraculous means, keep this tone prolonged. The tempo
is abnormally slow, and the tone is not in a position where the
sustaining pedal can sensibly help it. Yet under Rubinstein's fingers
it swelled and diminished, and went singing into D, as if the
instrument were an organ. I suspected the inaudible changing of fingers
on the note or a sustaining pedal. It was wonderfully done.

The next nocturne, op. 27, No. I, brings us before a masterpiece. With
the possible exception of the C minor Nocturne, this one in the sombre
key of C sharp minor is the great essay in the form. Kleczynski finds
it "a description of a calm night at Venice, where, after a scene of
murder, the sea closes over a corpse and con