adapted to the florid beauties of Byzantine
treatment than to the severe Hellenic line. Yet Chopin gave it dignity,
largeness and a classic massiveness. The interior is romantic, is
modern, personal, but the facade shows gleaming minarets, the strangely
builded shapes of the Orient. This B minor Scherzo has the acid note of
sorrow and revolt, yet the complex figuration never wavers. The walls
stand firm despite the hurricane blowing through and around them.
Ehlert finds this Scherzo tornadic. It is gusty, and the hurry and
over-emphasis do not endear it to the pianist. The first pages are
filled with wrathful sounds, there is much tossing of hands and cries
to heaven, calling down its fire and brimstone. A climax mounts to a
fine frenzy until the lyric intermezzo in B is reached. Here love
chants with honeyed tongues. The widely dispersed figure of the melody
has an entrancing tenderness. But peace does not long prevail against
the powers of Eblis, and infernal is the Wilde Jagd of the finale.
After shrillest of dissonances, a chromatic uproar pilots the doomed
one across this desperate Styx.

What Chopin's programme was we can but guess. He may have outlined the
composition in a moment of great ebullition, a time of soul laceration
arising from a cat scratch or a quarrel with Maurice Sand in the garden
over the possession of the goat cart.

The Klindworth edition is preferable. Kullak follows his example in
using the double note stems in the B major part. He gives the A sharp
in the bass six bars before the return of the first motif. Klindworth,
and other editions, prescribe A natural, which is not so effective.
This Scherzo might profit by being played without the repeats. The
chromatic interlocked octaves at the close are very striking.

I find at times--as my mood changes--something almost repellant in the
B minor Scherzo. It does not present the frank physiognomy of the
second Scherzo, op. 31, in B flat minor. Ehlert cries that it was
composed in a blessed hour, although de Lenz quotes Chopin as saying of
the opening, "It must be a charnel house." The defiant challenge of the
beginning has no savor of the scorn and drastic mockery of its
fore-runner. We are conscious that tragedy impends, that after the
prologue may follow fast catastrophe. Yet it is not feared with all the
portentous thunder of its index. Nor are we deceived. A melody of
winning distinction unrolls before us. It has a noble tone, is of a
noble