musical
evolution. Chopin's musical ancestry is easily traced; as Poe had his
Holley Chivers, Chopin had his Field. The germs of his second period
are all there; from op. 1 to opus 22 virtuosity for virtuosity's sake
is very evident. Liszt has said that in every young artist there is the
virtuoso fever, and Chopin being a pianist did not escape the fever of
the footlights. He was composing, too, at a time when piano music was
well nigh strangled by excess of ornament, when acrobats were kings,
when the Bach Fugue and Beethoven Sonata lurked neglected and dusty in
the memories of the few. Little wonder, then, we find this individual,
youthful Pole, not timidly treading in the path of popular composition,
but bravely carrying his banner, spangled, glittering and fanciful, and
outstripping at their own game all the virtuosi of Europe. His
originality in this bejewelled work caused Hummel to admire and
Kalkbrenner to wonder. The supple fingers of the young man from Warsaw
made quick work of existing technical difficulties. He needs must
invent some of his own, and when Schumann saw the pages of op. 2 he
uttered his historical cry. Today we wonder somewhat at his enthusiasm.
It is the old story--a generation seeks to know, a generation
comprehends and enjoys, and a generation discards.

Opus 1, a Rondo in C minor, dedicated to Madame de Linde, saw the light
in 1825, but it was preceded by two polonaises, a set of variations,
and two mazurkas in G and B flat major. Schumann declared that Chopin's
first published work was his tenth, and that between op. 1 and 2 there
lay two years and twenty works. Be this as it may, one cannot help
liking the C minor Rondo. In the A flat section we detect traces of his
F minor Concerto. There is lightness, joy in creation, which contrast
with the heavy, dour quality of the C minor Sonata, op. 4. Loosely
constructed, in a formal sense, and too exuberant for his strict
confines, this op. 1 is remarkable, much more remarkable, than
Schumann's Abegg variations.

The Rondo a la Mazur, in F, is a further advance. It is dedicated to
Comtesse Moriolles, and was published in 1827 (?). Schumann reviewed it
in 1836. It is sprightly, Polish in feeling and rhythmic life, and a
glance at any of its pages gives us the familiar Chopin
impression--florid passage work, chords in extensions and chromatic
progressions. The Concert Rondo, op. 14, in F, called Krakowiak, is
built on a national dance in two-four