6; in B minor,
of 1829);. and "Trois Valses," Op. 70 (in G flat major, of 1835; in F
minor, of 1843; in D flat major, of 1830). There are further a waltz
in E minor and one in E major (of 1829). [FOOTNOTE: The "Deux Valses
melancoliques" (in F minor and B minor), ecrits sur l'album de Madame
la Comtesse P., 1844 (Cracow: J. Wildt), the English edition of which
(London: Edwin Ashdown) is entitled "Une soiree en 1844," "Deux Valses
melancoliques," are Op. 70. No. 2, and Op. 69, No. 2, of the works
of Chopin posthumously published by Fontana.] Some of these waltzes I
discussed already when speaking of the master's early compositions, to
which they belong. The last-mentioned waltz, which the reader will find
in Mikuli's edition (No. 15 of the waltzes), and also in Breitkopf and
Hartel's (No. 22 of the Posthumous works), is a very weak composition;
and of all the waltzes not published by the composer himself it may be
said that what is good in them has been expressed better in others.

We have of Chopin 27 studies: Op. 10, "Douze Etudes," published in July,
1833; Op. 25, "Douze Etudes," published in October, 1837; and "Trois
nouvelles Etudes," which, before being separately published, appeared in
1840 in the "Methode des Methodes pour le piano" by F. J. Fetis and I.
Moscheles. The dates of their publication, as in the case of many other
works, do not indicate the approximate dates of their composition.
Sowinski tells us, for instance, that Chopin brought the first book of
his studies with him to Paris in 1831. A Polish musician who visited the
French capital in 1834 heard Chopin play the studies contained in Op.
25. And about the last-mentioned opus we read in a critical notice by
Schumann, who had, no doubt, his information directly from Chopin: "The
studies which have now appeared [that is, those of Op. 25] were almost
all composed at the same time as the others [that is, those of Op. 10]
and only some of them, the greater masterliness of which is noticeable,
such as the first, in A flat major, and the splendid one in C minor
[that is, the twelfth] but lately." Regarding the Trois nouvelles Etudes
without OPUS number we have no similar testimony. But internal evidence
seems to show that these weakest of the master's studies--which,
however, are by no means uninteresting, and certainly very
characteristic--may be regarded more than Op. 25 as the outcome of a
gleaning. In two of Chopin's letters of the year 1829, we meet with