"In the minor key laughs and cries, dances and mourns the Slav,"
says Dr. J. Schucht in his monograph on Chopin. Chopin here
reveals not only his nationality, but his own fascinating and
enigmatic individuality. Within the tremulous spaces of this
immature dance is enacted the play of a human soul, a soul that
voices the sorrow and revolt of a dying race, of a dying poet.
They are epigrammatic, fluctuating, crazy, and tender, these
Mazurkas, and some of them have a soft, melancholy light, as if
shining through alabaster--true corpse light leading to a morass
of doubt and terror. But a fantastic, dishevelled, debonair
spirit is the guide, and to him we abandon ourselves in these
precise and vertiginous dances.
XIV. CHOPIN THE CONQUEROR
The Scherzi of Chopin are of his own creation; the type as
illustrated by Beethoven and Mendelssohn had no meaning for him.
Whether in earnest or serious jest, Chopin pitched on a title
that is widely misleading when the content is considered. The
Beethoven Scherzo is full of a robust sort of humor.
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