running work comes
in; then again, still farther on, where the signature changes to four
sharps, the second subject appears in the treble, somewhat changed,
against some very pretty running work in the bass; and then begins a
charming and elaborate building up to the climax, when the first
subject is brought back in fortissimo form. For the player and for the
hearer this piece, when well treated, is one of the most pleasing piano
solos possible to mention. I do not know, however, that it is
necessary to turn it wrong side out in the effort to find some hidden
or recondite meaning. It is pleasing and well made rather than deeply
impassioned, and it is a mistake to overdo the contrasts in it.

The studies of Chopin form a literature by themselves. In all, there
are twenty-seven published. The first book, opus 10, containing twelve
studies, was composed when Chopin was a boy of sixteen or seventeen,
and I do not think the history of music shows any similar case of
precocity. These studies were vastly more difficult than anything
existing at that time excepting the fugues of Bach, and they spring out
at once, fully armed as it were, with a well-developed style in melody,
in harmonic handling, and especially in the application of the hands to
the piano; thus they turned over an entirely new leaf; and what is more
significant, and to the credit of the young genius, is that he seems to
have divined, by a sort of intuition, the strategic points of modern
piano playing as it was to be, so that in spite of these works having
now been before the musical world more than fifty years and their
having entered into conservatory and boarding-school curricula to an
almost universal extent, the pianist who can play them all in the
manner in which Chopin intended is already an artist. They belong to
the most poetic and sagaciously conceived compositions for the
instrument. The five here selected are not particularly better than
the five next following, or the last numbers of this same opus, and
perhaps no better than those in the second set, the opus 25. The first
study, in C major, has for its object to accustom the hand to wide
extensions, the arpeggio figure nearly always covering a tenth and
sometimes an eleventh. This extension should be accomplished by the
fingers themselves as far as possible, and then by slightly turning the
wrist. To play this study well betokens first-class execution. The
second study, in A minor, has