humann's saying that
Chopin in his melodies leans sometimes over Germany towards Italy. If
properly told, this love-laden romance cannot fail to produce effect.

Of the pieces that bear the name "Berceuse," Chopin's Op. 57 (published
in June, 1845) is the finest, or at least one of the finest and happiest
conceptions. It rests on the harmonic basis of tonic and dominant. The
triad of the tonic and the chord of the dominant seventh divide
every bar between them in a brotherly manner. Only in the twelfth and
thirteenth bars from the end (the whole piece contains seventy) the
triad of the subdominant comes forward, and gives a little breathing
time to the triad of the tonic, the chord of the dominant having already
dropped off. Well, on this basis Chopin builds, or let us rather say, on
this rocking harmonic fluid he sets afloat a charming melody, which is
soon joined by a self-willed second part. Afterwards, this melody is
dissolved into all kinds of fioriture, colorature, and other trickeries,
and they are of such fineness, subtlety, loveliness, and gracefulness,
that one is reminded of Queen Mab, who comes--

In shape no bigger than an agate-stone
On the fore-finger of an alderman.
Drawn with a team of little atomies
Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep;
Her waggon-spokes made of long spinners' legs,
The cover of the wings of grasshoppers;
The traces of the smallest spider's web;
The collars of the moonshine's watery beams;
Her whip of cricket's bone; the lash of film;
Her waggoner a small grey-coated gnat.

[FOOTNOTE: Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, I., iv., 59-68]

But who does not know the delightful description of the fairy in her
hazel-nut coach, and the amusing story of her frolics and pranks?
By-and-by the nimble motions of the colorature become slower, and
finally glide into the original form of the melody, which, however,
already after the third bar comes to a stand-still, is resumed for a
short phrase, then expires, after a long-drawn chord of the dominant
seventh, on the chord of the tonic, and all is rest and silence.
Alexandre Dumas fils speaks in the "Affaire Clemenceau" of the
"Berceuse" as--

this muted music [musique en sourdine] which penetrated little
by little the atmosphere and enveloped us in one and the same
sensation, comparable perhaps to that which follows a Turkish
bath, when all the senses are confounded in a general
apaisement, when