mann] study it; for there is plenty of Geist in it and few
difficulties. But I humbly venture to assert that there are between this
composition and Op. 2 two years and twenty works"]

All this, however, is changed in another composition, the Rondeau a
la Mazur, Op. 5, dedicated to the Comtesse Alexandrine de Moriolles (a
daughter of the Comte de Moriolles mentioned in Chapter II), which, like
the Rondo, Op. 1, was first published in Warsaw, and made its appearance
in Germany some years later. I do not know the exact time of its
composition, but I presume it was a year or two after that of the
previously mentioned works. Schumann, who reviewed it in 1836, thought
it had perhaps been written in the eighteenth year of the composer, but
he found in it, some confused passages excepted, no indications of the
author's youth. In this Rondeau a la Mazur the individuality of Chopin
and with it his nationality begin to reveal themselves unmistakably. Who
could fail to recognise him in the peculiar sweet and persuasive flows
of sound, and the serpent-like winding of the melodic outline, the
wide-spread chords, the chromatic progressions, the dissolving of the
harmonies and the linking of their constituent parts! And, as I have
said elsewhere in speaking of this work: "The harmonies are often novel,
and the matter is more homogeneous and better welded into oneness."

Chopin's pianoforte lessons, as has already been stated, came to an end
when he was twelve years old, and thenceforth he was left to his own
resources.

The school of that time [remarks Fontana] could no longer
suffice him, he aimed higher, and felt himself impelled
towards an ideal which, at first vague, before long grew into
greater distinctness. It was then that, in trying his
strength, he acquired that touch and style, so different from
those of his predecessors, and that he succeeded in creating
at last that execution which since then has been the
admiration of the artistic world.

The first stages of the development of his peculiar style may be traced
in the compositions we have just now discussed. In the variations and
first Rondo which Chopin wrote at or before the age of fifteen, the
treatment of the instrument not only proves that he was already as much
in his element on the pianoforte as a fish in the water, but also shows
that an as yet vaguely-perceived ideal began to beckon him onward.
Karasowski, informed by witnesses of the bo