szt and Von Billow.
Schumann called him "the boldest and proudest poetic spirit of
the times." In addition to this remarkable poetic power, he was a
splendidly-trained musician, a great adept in style, and one of the most
original masters of rhythm and harmony that the records of music show.
All his works, though wanting in breadth and robustness of tone, are
characterized by the utmost finish and refinement. Full of delicate and
unexpected beauties, elaborated with the finest touch, his effects are
so quaint and fresh as to fill the mind of the listener with pleasurable
sensations, perhaps not to be derived from grander works.

Chopin was essentially the musical exponent of his nation; for he
breathed in all the forms of his art the sensibilities, the fires, the
aspirations, and the melancholy of the Polish race. This is not only
evident in his polonaises, his waltzes and mazurkas, in which the wild
Oriental rhythms of the original dances are treated with the creative
skill of genius; but also in the _etudes_, the preludes, nocturnes,
scherzos, ballads, etc., with which he so enriched musical literature.
His genius could never confine itself within classic bonds, but,
fantastic and impulsive, swayed and bent itself with easy grace to
inspirations that were always novel and startling, though his boldness
was chastened by deep study and fine art-sense.

All of the suggestions of the quaint and beautiful Polish dance-music
were worked by Chopin into a variety of forms, and were greatly enriched
by his skill in handling. He dreamed out his early reminiscences in
music, and these national memories became embalmed in the history of
art. The polonaises are marked by the fire and ardor of his soldier
race, and the mazurkas are full of the coquetry and tenderness of his
countrywomen; while the ballads are a free and powerful rendering of
Polish folk-music, beloved alike in the herdsman's hut and the palace of
the noble. In deriving his inspiration direct from the national heart,
Chopin did what Schumann, Schubert, and Weber did in Germany, what
Rossini did in Italy, and shares with them a freshness of melodic power
to be derived from no other source. Rather tender and elegiac than
vigorous, the deep sadness underlying the most sparkling forms of his
work is most notable. One can at times almost recognize the requiem of
a nation in the passionate melancholy on whose dark background his fancy
weaves such beautiful figures and co