Alas! how I
love these sombre and mysterious dreams, and Chopin is the god
who creates them." In this etude Kleczynski thinks there are
traces of weariness of life, and quotes Orlowski, Chopin's
friend," He is only afflicted with homesickness." Willeby calls
this study the most beautiful of them all. For me it is both
morbid and elegiac. There is nostalgia in it, the nostalgia of a
sick, lacerated soul. It contains in solution all the most
objectionable and most endearing qualities of the master. Perhaps
we have heard its sweet, highly perfumed measures too often. Its
interpretation is a matter of taste. Kullak has written the most
ambitious programme for it. Here is a quotation from Albert R.
Parsons' translation in Schirmer's edition of Kullak.
Throughout the entire piece an elegiac mood prevails. The
composer paints with psychologic truthfulness a fragment out
of the life of a deeply clouded soul. He lets a broken heart,
filled with grief, proclaim its sorrow in a language of pain
which is incapable of being misunderstood.
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