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Klindworth indicates both. Nor does Kullak follow Mikuli in using a D in the coda. He prefers a D sharp, instead of a natural. I wish the second Ballade were played oftener in public. It is quite neglected for the third in A flat, which, as Ehlert says, has the voice of the people. This Ballade, the "Undine" of Mickiewicz, published November, 1841, and dedicated to Mlle.
Even the middle part borders upon what I should call the tragic style of ornament. The ground thought is hidden behind a dense veil, but a veil, too, can be an ornament." In another place Ehlert thinks that the F sharp major Nocturne seems inseparable from champagne and truffles. It is certainly more elegant and dramatic than the one in F major, which precedes it.
It was Louis Ehlert who wrote of the celebrated study in G sharp minor op. 25, No. 6: "Chopin not only versifies an exercise in thirds; he transforms it into such a work of art that in studying it one could sooner fancy himself on Parnassus than at a lesson.
Schumann found "it contained much that is repulsive," and Liszt raves rhapsodically over it; for Karasowski it was the "pain and grief of an entire nation," while Ehlert thinks "it owes its renown to the wonderful effect of two triads, which in their combination possess a highly tragical element. The middle movement is not at all characteristic. Why could it not at least have worn second mourning?
"Ehlert," MacDowell has written, "was very kind to me, and when I asked him for 'lessons' he refused flatly, but said he would be glad for us to 'study together, as he put it. This rather staggered me, as my idea in leaving Paris was to get a severe and regenerating overhauling.
As Ehlert says, "Noblesse oblige and thus Chopin felt himself compelled to satisfy all demands exacted of a pianist, and wrote the unavoidable piano concerto. It was not consistent with his nature to express himself in broad terms. His lungs were too weak for the pace in seven league boots, so often required in a score.
In 1876 he went to Paris and entered the Conservatoire, where he studied theory under Savard, and the piano under Marmontel. He went to Wiesbaden to study with Ehlert in 1879, and then to Frankfort, where Carl Heyman taught him piano and Joachim Raff composition.
After months of delay, during which young MacDowell worked under the guidance of Ehlert, he at last entered the Frankfort Conservatory, studying composition with Raff, and piano with Heymann. Both proved very inspiring teachers. For Heymann he had the greatest admiration, calling him a marvel, whose technic was equal to anything.
Indeed, if Professor Ehlert had been perfectly sincere I am not quite sure that he would have excepted Beethoven's sonatas. Although they teem with great and beautiful ideas, these sonatas are not really adapted to the intrinsic nature of the pianoforte, and hence fail to arouse the enthusiasm of those whose taste has been formed by the works of Chopin and Schumann.
He, too, had his demon as well as Liszt, and only, as Ehlert puts it, "theoretical fear" of this spirit driving him over the cliffs of reason made him curb its antics. After all the couleur de rose portraits and lollipop miniatures made of him by pensive, poetic persons it is not possible to conceive Chopin as being irascible and almost brutal. Yet he was at times even this.
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