's broadens out to dramatic reaches, but as an
entirety this opus is a little tiresome. Nor do I admire inordinately
the Nocturne in G minor, op. 37, No. 1. It has a complaining tone, and
the choral is not noteworthy. This particular part, so Chopin's pupil
Gutmann declared, is taken too slowly, the composer having forgotten to
mark the increased tempo. But the Nocturne in G, op. 37, No. 2, is
charming. Painted with Chopin's most ethereal brush, without the
cloying splendors of the one in D flat, the double sixths, fourths and
thirds are magically euphonious. The second subject, I agree with
Karasowski, is the most beautiful melody Chopin ever wrote. It is in
true barcarolle vein; and most subtle are the shifting harmonic hues.
Pianists usually take the first part too fast, the second too slowly,
transforming this poetic composition into an etude. As Schumann wrote
of this opus:

"The two nocturnes differ from his earlier ones chiefly through greater
simplicity of decoration and more quiet grace. We know Chopin's
fondness in general for spangles, gold trinkets and pearls. He has
already changed and grown older; decoration he still loves, but it is
of a more judicious kind, behind which the nobility of the poetry
shimmers through with all the more loveliness: indeed, taste, the
finest, must be granted him."

Both numbers of this opus are without dedication. They are the
offspring of the trip to Majorca.

Niecks, writing of the G major Nocturne, adjures us "not to tarry too
long in the treacherous atmosphere of this Capua--it bewitches and
unmans." Kleczynski calls the one in G minor "homesickness," while the
celebrated Nocturne in C minor "is the tale of a still greater grief
told in an agitated recitando; celestial harps"--ah! I hear the squeak
of the old romantic machinery--"come to bring one ray of hope, which is
powerless in its endeavor to calm the wounded soul, which...sends forth
to heaven a cry of deepest anguish." It doubtless has its despairing
movement, this same Nocturne in C minor, op. 48, No. I, but Karasowski
is nearer right when he calls it "broad and most imposing with its
powerful intermediate movement, a thorough departure from the nocturne
style." Willeby finds it "sickly and labored," and even Niecks does not
think it should occupy a foremost place among its companions. The
ineluctable fact remains that this is the noblest nocturne of them all.
Biggest in conception it seems a miniature music dram