ajor gives pause for breathing. It has
a hint of Meyerbeer. But again with smothered explosions the Polonaise
proper appears, and all ends in gloom and the impotent clanking of
chains. It is an awe-provoking work, this terrible Polonaise in E flat
minor, op. 26; it was published July, 1836, and is dedicated to M. J.
Dessauer.

Not so the celebrated A major Polonaise, op. 40, Le Militaire. To
Rubinstein this seemed a picture of Poland's greatness, as its
companion in C minor is of Poland's downfall. Although Karasowski and
Kleczynski give to the A flat major Polonaise the honor of suggesting a
well-known story, it is really the A major that provoked it--so the
Polish portrait painter Kwiatowski informed Niecks. The story runs,
that after composing it, Chopin in the dreary watches of the night was
surprised--terrified is a better word--by the opening of his door and
the entrance of a long train of Polish nobles and ladies, richly robed,
who moved slowly by him. Troubled by the ghosts of the past he had
raised, the composer, hollow eyed, fled the apartment. All this must
have been at Majorca, for op. 40 was composed or finished there.
Ailing, weak and unhappy as he was, Chopin had grit enough to file and
polish this brilliant and striking composition into its present shape.
It is the best known and, though the most muscular of his compositions,
it is the most played. It is dedicated to J. Fontana, and was published
November, 1840. This Polonaise has the festive glitter of Weber.

The C minor Polonaise of the same set is a noble, troubled composition,
large in accents and deeply felt. Can anything be more impressive than
this opening?

[Musical score excerpt]

It is indeed Poland's downfall. The Trio in A flat, with its
kaleidoscopic modulations, produces an impression of vague unrest and
suppressed sorrow. There is loftiness of spirit and daring in it.

What can one say new of the tremendous F sharp minor Polonaise? Willeby
calls it noisy! And Stanislaw Przybyszewski--whom Vance Thompson
christened a prestidigious noctambulist-has literally stormed over it.
It is barbaric, it is perhaps pathologic, and of it Liszt has said most
eloquent things. It is for him a dream poem, the "lurid hour that
precedes a hurricane" with a "convulsive shudder at the close." The
opening is very impressive, the nerve-pulp being harassed by the
gradually swelling prelude. There is defiant power in the first theme,
and the constant referen