" Which latter statement is slightly
condescending. Recollect, however, Chopin's calm depreciation of
Schumann. Mr. John F. Runciman, the English critic, asserts that
"Chopin thought in terms of the piano, and only the piano. So
when we see Chopin's orchestral music or Wagner's music for the
piano we realize that neither is talking his native tongue--the
tongue which nature fitted him to speak." Speaking of "Chopin and
the Sick Men" Mr. Runciman is most pertinent:
"These inheritors of rickets and exhausted physical frames made
some of the most wonderful music of the century for us. Schubert
was the most wonderful of them all, but Chopin runs him very
close. ... He wrote less, far less than Schubert wrote; but, for
the quantity he did write, its finish is miraculous. It may be
feverish, merely mournful, cadavre, or tranquil, and entirely
beautiful; but there is not a phrase that is not polished as far
as a phrase will bear polishing. It is marvellous music; but, all
the same, it is sick, unhealthy music."
"Liszt's estimate of the technical importance of Chopin's works,"
writes Mr.
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