But with
all their shortcomings these compositions are without peer in the
literature of the piano.
They were published and dedicated as follows: Op. 20, February,
1835, to M. T. Albrecht; op. 31, December, 1837, Comtesse de
Furstenstein; op. 39, October, 1840, Adolph Gutmann, and op. 54,
December, 1843, Mile, de Caraman. De Lenz relates that Chopin
dedicated the C sharp minor Scherzo to his pupil Gutmann, because
this giant, with a prize fighter's fist, could "knock a hole in
the table" with a certain chord for the left hand--sixth measure
from the beginning--and adds quite naively: "Nothing more was
ever heard of this Gutmann--he was a discovery of Chopin's."
Chopin died in this same Gutmann's arms, and, despite de Lenz,
Gutmann was in evidence until his death as a "favorite pupil."
And now we have reached the grandest--oh, banal and abused word--
of Chopin's compositions, the Fantaisie in F minor, op. 49.
Robert Schumann, after remarking that the cosmopolitan must
"sacrifice the small interests of the soil on which he was born,"
notices that Chopin's later works "begin to lose something of
their especial Sarmatian physiognomy, to approach partly more
nearly the universal ideal cultivated by the divine Greeks which
we find again in Mozart.
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