comparison, which crushes the
sentiment. Mertke shows the original and Klindworth's reading of a
certain part of the Berceuse, adding a footnote to the examples:

[Two musical score excerpts from Op. 57, one from the original version,
one from Klindworth's edition]

[Footnote: Das tr (flat) der Originale (Scholtz tr natural-flat)
zeigt, dass Ch. den Triller mit Ganzton und nach Mikuli den
Trilleranfang mit Hauptton wollte.] The Barcarolle, op. 60, published
September, 1846, is another highly elaborated work. Niecks must be
quoted here: "One day Tausig, the great piano virtuoso, promised W. de
Lenz to play him Chopin's Barcarolle, adding, 'That is a performance
which must not be undertaken before more than two persons. I shall play
you my own self. I love the piece, but take it rarely.' Lenz got the
music, but it did not please him--it seemed to him a long movement in
the nocturne style, a Babel of figuration on a lightly laid foundation.
But he found that he had made a mistake, and, after hearing it played
by Tausig, confessed that the virtuoso had infused into the 'nine pages
of enervating music, of one and the same long-breathed rhythm, so much
interest, so much motion, so much action,' that he regretted the long
piece was not longer."

Tausig's conception of the barcarolle was this: "There are two persons
concerned in the affair; it is a love scene in a discrete gondola; let
us say this mise-en-scene is the symbol of a lover's meeting generally."

"This is expressed in thirds and sixths; the dualism of two
notes--persons--is maintained throughout; all is two-voiced,
two-souled. In this modulation in C sharp major--superscribed dolce
sfogato--there are kiss and embrace! This is evident! When, after three
bars of introduction, the theme, 'lightly rocking in the bass solo,'
enters in the fourth, this theme is nevertheless made use of throughout
the whole fabric only as an accompaniment, and ON this the cantilena in
two parts is laid; we have thus a continuous, tender dialogue."

The Barcarolle is a nocturne painted on a large canvas, with larger
brushes. It has Italian color in spots--Schumann said that,
melodically, Chopin sometimes "leans over Germany into Italy"--and is a
masterly one in sentiment, pulsating with amorousness. To me it sounds
like a lament for the splendors, now vanished, of Venice the Queen. In
bars 8, 9, and 10, counting backward, Louis Ehlert finds obscurities in
the middle voices. It is dedi