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Huneker, James, 1860-1921

"Chopin : the Man and His Music"

W.J. Henderson, "is not too large. It was Chopin who
systematized the art of pedalling and showed us how to use both
pedals in combination to produce those wonderful effects of color
which are so necessary in the performance of his music. ... The
harmonic schemes of the simplest of Chopin's works are marvels of
originality and musical loveliness, and I make bold to say that
his treatment of the passing note did much toward showing later
writers how to produce the restless and endless complexity of the
harmony in contemporaneous orchestral music."
Heinrich Pudor in his strictures on German music is hardly
complimentary to Chopin: "Wagner is a thorough-going decadent, an
off-shoot, an epigonus, not a progonus. His cheeks are hollow and
pale--but the Germans have the full red cheeks. Equally decadent
is Liszt. Liszt is a Hungarian and the Hungarians are confessedly
a completely disorganized, self-outlived, dying people. No less
decadent is Chopin, whose figure comes before one as flesh
without bones, this morbid, womanly, womanish, slip-slop,
powerless, sickly, bleached, sweet-caramel Pole!" This has a ring
of Nietzsche--Nietzsche who boasted of his Polish origin.


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