te of music then was, what composers expressed and what means of
expression they had at their disposal. Much that is now familiar, nay,
even commonplace, was then a startling novelty. The appearance of Chopin
was so wonderful a phenomenon that it produced quite an electrical
effect upon Schumann. "Come," said Berlioz to Legouve in the first
years of the fourth decade of this century, "I am going to let you see
something which you have never seen, and someone whom you will never
forget." This something and someone was Chopin. Mendelssohn being
questioned about his enthusiasm for one of this master's preludes
replied: "I love it, I cannot tell you how much, or why; except,
perhaps, that it is something which I could never have written at
all." Of course, Chopin's originality was not universally welcomed
and appreciated. Mendelssohn, for instance, was rather repelled than
attracted by it; at any rate, in his letters there are to be found
frequent expressions of antipathy to Chopin's music, which seemed to
him" mannered "(see letter to Moscheles of February 7, 1835). But even
the heartless and brainless critic of the Musical World whose nonsense I
quoted in Chapter XXXI. admits that Chopin was generally esteemed by the
"professed classical musicians," and that the name of the admirers
of the master's compositions was legion. To the early popularity of
Chopin's music testify also the many arrangements for other instruments
(the guitar not excepted) and even for voices (for instance, OEuvres
celebres de Chopin, transcrites a une ou deux voix egales par Luigi
Bordese) to which his compositions were subjected. This popularity was,
however, necessarily limited, limited in extent or intensity. Indeed,
popular, in the comprehensive sense of the word, Chopin's compositions
can never become. To understand them fully we must have something of
the author's nature, something of his delicate sensibility and romantic
imagination. To understand him we must, moreover, know something of
his life and country. For, as Balzac truly remarked, Chopin was less a
musician than une ame qui se rend sensible. In short, his compositions
are the "celestial echo of what he had felt, loved, and suffered"; they
are his memoirs, his autobiography, which, like that of every poet,
assumes the form of "Truth and Poetry."

APPENDICES.

APPENDIX I.

THE GOLDEN AGE OP POLISH MUSIC.

(VOL. I., p. 66.)

As yet it is difficult to speak with any de