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Janotha continues firm in her belief although authorities do not justify her position. All this petty pother arose since Niecks' comprehensive biography appeared. So sure was he of his facts that he disposed of the pseudo-date in one footnote.
From these alone we may almost reconstruct the real Chopin, the inner Chopin, whose conventional exterior so ill prepared the world for the tragic issues of his music. The first Scherzo is a fair model. There are a few bars of introduction the porch, as Niecks would call it a principal subject, a trio, a short working-out section, a skilful return to the opening theme, and an elaborate coda.
Niecks, for example, finds this very dance bleak and joyless, of intimate emotional experience, and with "jarring tones that strike in and pitilessly wake the dreamer." So there is no predicating the content of music except in a general way; the mood key may be struck, but in Chopin's case this is by no means infallible.
Niecks gives specimens of what the ingenious publisher, without a sense of humor, did with some of Chopin's compositions: Adieu a Varsovie, so was named the Rondo, op. 1; Hommage a Mozart, the Variations, op. 2; La Gaite, Introduction and Polonaise, op. 3 for piano and 'cello; La Posiana what a name! the Rondo a la Mazur, op. 5; Murmures de la Seine, Nocturnes op. 9; Les Zephirs, Nocturnes, op. 15; Invitation a la Valse, Valse, op. 18; Souvenir d'Andalousie, Bolero, op. 19 a bolero which sounds Polish!
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."
Thus, quite simply and without booming of cannon or brazen proclamation by bell, did the great Polish composer announce an event of supreme interest and importance to the piano-playing world. Niecks thinks these studies were published in the summer of 1833, July or August, and were numbered op. 10.
Its song is almost declamatory and not at all sentimental unless so distorted as Niecks would have us imagine. The intermediate portion is wavering and passionate, like the middle of the F sharp major Nocturne. It shows no decrease in creative vigor or lyrical fancy. The posthumous nocturne in E minor, composed in 1827, is weak and uninteresting.
Whether he played at court the Queen can tell; Niecks cannot. He met Jenny Lind-Goldschmidt and liked her exceedingly as did all who had the honor of knowing her. She sided with him, woman-like, in the Sand affair echoes of which had floated across the channel and visited him in Paris in 1849. Chopin gave two matinees at the houses of Adelaide Kemble and Lord Falmouth June 23 and July 7.
The following authentic account of the last hours of Chopin appears here for the first time in English, translated by Mr. Hugh Craig. In Liszt's well-known work on Chopin, second edition, 1879, mention is made of a conversation that he had held with the Abbe Jelowicki respecting Chopin's death; and in Niecks' biography of Chopin some sentences from letters by the Abbe are quoted.
Gutmann, Chopin's pupil, who nursed him to the last, declared the Preludes to have been composed before he went away with Madame Sand, and to Niecks personally he maintained that he had copied all of them.
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