The composition is ineffective, and in spots ugly--
particularly in the stretta--and is no doubt an exercise during
the working years with Elsner. The fact that in the coda the very
suspicious octave pedal-point and trills may be omitted--so the
editorial note urns--leads one to suspect that out of a fragment
Janotha has evolved, Cuvier-like, an entire composition. Chopin
as fugue-maker does not appear in a brilliant light. Is the
Polish composer to become a musical Hugh Conway? Why all these
disjecta membra of a sketch-book?
In these youthful works may be found the beginnings of the
greater Chopin, but not his vast subjugation of the purely
technical to the poetic and spiritual. That came later. To the
devout Chopinist the first compositions are so many proofs of the
joyful, victorious spirit of the man whose spleen and pessimism
have been wrongfully compared to Leopardi's and Baudelaire's.
Chopin was gay, fairly healthy and bubbling over with a pretty
malice. His first period shows this; it also shows how thorough
and painful the processes by which he evolved his final style.
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