me of our more modern composers. The modulation from
C sharp minor to D major and back again (after the cadenza) is very
striking and equally beautiful.

It can hardly be said, although Liszt seemed to be of a different
opinion, that Chopin created a new type by his preludes--they are too
unlike each other in form and character. On the other hand, he has done
so by his four scherzos--Op. 20 (in B minor), published in February,
1835; Op. 31 (B flat minor), published in December, 1837; Op. 39 (C
sharp minor), published in October, 1840; and Op. 54 (in E major),
published in December, 1843. "How is 'gravity' to clothe itself, if
'jest' goes about in dark veils?" exclaims Schumann. No doubt, scherzo,
if we consider the original meaning of the word, is a misnomer. But are
not Beethoven's scherzos, too, misnamed? To a certain extent they are.
But if Beethoven's scherzos often lack frolicsomeness, they are endowed
with humour, whereas Chopin's have neither the one nor the other. Were
it not that we attach, especially since Mendelssohn's time, the idea
of lightness and light-heartedness to the word capriccio, this would
certainly be the more descriptive name for the things Chopin entitled
SCHERZO. But what is the use of carping at a name? Let us rather look
at the things, and thus employ our time better. Did ever composer begin
like Chopin in his Premier Scherzo, Op. 20? Is this not like a shriek
of despair? and what follows, bewildered efforts of a soul shut in by a
wall of circumstances through which it strives in vain to break? at
last sinking down with fatigue, dreaming a dream of idyllic beauty?
but beginning the struggle again as soon as its strength is recruited?
Schumann compared the second SCHERZO, Op. 31, to a poem of Byron's, "so
tender, so bold, as full of love as of scorn." Indeed, scorn--an
element which does not belong to what is generally understood by either
frolicsomeness or humour--plays an important part in Chopin's scherzos.
The very beginning of Op. 31 offers an example.

[FOOTNOTE: "It must be a question [the doubled triplet figure A, B
flat, d flat, in the first bar], taught Chopin, and for him it was never
question enough, never piano enough, never vaulted (tombe) enough, as he
said, never important enough. It must be a charnel-house, he said on one
occasion." (W. von Lenz, in Vol. XXVI. of the Berliner Musikzeitung.)]

And then, we do not meet with a phrase of a more cheerful nature
which is not clou