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But it is useless to specify. They are all jewels of the first water. Some years ago I wrote in "The Nation" that if all pianoforte music in the world were to be destroyed, excepting one collection, my vote should be cast for Chopin's preludes. If anything could induce me to modify that opinion to-day, it would be the thought of Chopin's études. I would never consent to their loss.
So when Evelyn clambered on her father's knee, it was to learn the chants that he hummed from old manuscripts and missals, and it was the contrapuntal fancies of the Elizabethan composers that he gave her to play on the virginal, or the preludes of Bach on the clavichord. Her infantile graces at these instruments were the delight and amazement of her parents.
The pandours attacked it on all sides, and in the beginning killed twenty-three Prussians, and wounded many; but the Prussians having rallied, repulsed the assailants with great loss. These, however, were but a sort of preludes to much more decisive actions which happened soon after. Silesia, which had hitherto been undisturbed this year, began now to feel the effects of war.
These pieces, too, might seem to have been written in order to be played in noble salons lit by massive candelabra, to countesses with bare shoulders. The twenty-four preludes Opus 11, for instance, are full of Chopinesque turns, of Chopinesque morbidezza, of Chopinesque melodies. The harmonic scheme rarely transgresses the limits which Chopin set himself.
It must have been this number that impelled Rubinstein to assert that the Preludes were the pearls of his works. In the Klindworth edition, fifth bar from the last, the editor has filled in the harmonies to the first six notes of the left hand, added thirds, which is not reprehensible, although uncalled for. Kullak makes some new dynamic markings and several enharmonic changes.
My opinion which not only has probability but also the low opus number and the letters in its favour is that most of the Preludes, if not all, were finished or sketched before Chopin went to the south, and that a few, if any, were composed and the whole revised at Palma and Valdemosa.
For Scriabine, the awakening of that aërial palpitant sensibility was such. It devoured him like a fire. One shudders as well as marvels at the destiny of one who came to feel life as it is felt in those last quivering poems "Guirlandes," "Flammes sombres," he entitles them, or in the mysterious Tenth Sonata, that glows with the feverish light of the dream, or in those last haunted preludes.
His PRELUDES, his NOCTURNES, his SCHERZOS, his CONCERTOS, his shortest as well as his longest compositions, are all filled with the national sensibility, expressed indeed in different degrees, modified and varied in a thousand ways, but always bearing the same character.
We know that Gottschalk studied in Paris with Camille Stamaty, and made his first appearance there in 1847. This was shortly before Chopin's death when his interest in music had abated greatly. No doubt Gottschalk played for Chopin for he was the first to introduce the Pole's music in America. Chopin was very particular about the formation of the touch, giving dementi's Preludes at first.
As Aram assisted the beautiful Madeline into the carriage as he listened to her sweet voice as he marked the grateful expression of her soft eyes as he felt the slight yet warm pressure of her fairy hand, that vague sensation of delight which preludes love, for the first time, in his sterile and solitary life, agitated his breast.
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