It seems as though what was death (or rather
euthanasia) to him who felt it, is play for us--surely an immortal
sorrow whose recital will never, never pall--the sorrow of Chopin.
Though why Chopin should have been so sorry we cannot even guess; for
mere sorrow's sake, perhaps; the very luxury of woe--the real sorrow
which has no real cause (like mine in those days); and that is the best
and cheapest kind of sorrow to make music of, after all!
And this great little gypsy pianist, who plays his Chopin so well;
evidently he has not spent his life in Lithuanian forests, but hard at
the key-board, night and day; and he has had a better master than the
wind in the trees--namely, Chopin himself (for it is printed in the
programme). It was his father and mother before him, and theirs, who
heard the voices of the night; but he remembers it all, and puts it all
into his master's music, and makes us remember it, too.
Or else behold the chorus, rising tier upon tier, and culminating in the
giant organ. But their thunder is just hushed.
Some Liliputian figure, male or female, as the case may be, rises on its
little legs amid the great Liliputian throng, and through the sacred
stillness there peals forth a perfect voice (by no means Liliputian).
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