brilliant salon piece. It is now not even that,
for it sounds antiquated and threadbare. The passage work at times
smacks of Chopin and Weber--a hint of the Mouvement Perpetuel--and the
'cello has the better of the bargain. Evidently written for my lady's
chamber.

Two Polonaises remain. One, in B flat minor, was composed in 1826, on
the occasion of the composer's departure for Reinerz. A footnote to the
edition of this rather elegiac piece tells this. Adieu to Guillaume
Kolberg, is the title, and the Trio in D flat is accredited to an air
of "Gazza Ladra," with a sentimental Au Revoir inscribed. Kleczynski
has revised the Gebethner & Wolff edition. The little cadenza in
chromatic double notes on the last page is of a certainty Chopin. But
the Polonaise in G flat major, published by Schott, is doubtful. It has
a shallow ring, a brilliant superficiality that warrants Niecks in
stamping it as a possible compilation. There are traces of the master
throughout, particularly in the E flat minor Trio, but there are some
vile progressions and an air of vulgarity surely not Chopin's. This
dance form, since the death of the great composer, has been chiefly
developed on the virtuoso side. Beethoven, Schubert, Weber, and even
Bach--in his B minor suite for strings and flute--also indulged in this
form. Wagner, as a student, wrote a Polonaise for four hands, in D, and
in Schumann's Papillons there is a charming specimen. Rubinstein
composed a most brilliant and dramatic example in E flat in Le Bal. The
Liszt Polonaises, all said and done, are the most remarkable in design
and execution since Chopin. But they are more Hungarian than Polish.

XIII. MAZURKAS:--DANCES OF THE SOUL

I

"Coquetries, vanities, fantasies, inclinations, elegies, vague
emotions, passions, conquests, struggles upon which the safety or
favors of others depend, all, all meet in this dance."

Thus Liszt. De Lenz further quotes him: "Of the Mazurkas, one must
harness a new pianist of the first rank to each of them." Yet Liszt
told Niecks he did not care much for Chopin's Mazurkas. "One often
meets in them with bars which might just as well be in another place.
But as Chopin puts them perhaps nobody could have put them." Liszt,
despite the rhapsodical praise of his friend, is not always to be
relied upon. Capricious as Chopin, he had days when he disliked not
only the Mazurkas, but all music. He confessed to Niecks that when he
played a half hour for a