discloses surprising and delicious things.  There is the tall lily in the fountain that nods to the sun.  It drips in cadenced monotone and its song is repeated on the lips of the slender-hipped girl with the eyes of midnight—­and so might I weave for you a story of what I see in the Ballade and you would be aghast or puzzled.  With such a composition any programme could be sworn to, even the silly story of the Englishman who haunted Chopin, beseeching him to teach him this Ballade.  That Chopin had a programme, a definite one, there can be no doubt; but he has, wise artist, left us no clue beyond Mickiewicz’s, the Polish bard Lithuanian poems.  In Leipzig, Karasowski relates, that when Schumann met Chopin, the pianist confessed having “been incited to the creation of the ballades by the poetry” of his fellow countryman.  The true narrative tone is in this symmetrically constructed Ballade, the most spirited, most daring work of Chopin, according to Schumann.  Louis Ehlert says of the four Ballades:  “Each one differs entirely from the others, and they have but one thing in common—­their romantic working out and the nobility of their motives.  Chopin relates in them, not like one who communicates something really experienced; it is as though he told what never took place, but what has sprung up in his inmost soul, the anticipation of something longed for.  They may contain a strong element of national woe, much outwardly expressed and inwardly burning rage over the sufferings of his native land; yet they do not carry with a positive reality like that which in a Beethoven Sonata will often call words to our lips.”  Which means that Chopin was not such a realist as Beethoven?  Ehlert is one of the few sympathetic German Chopin commentators, yet he did not always indicate the salient outlines of his art.  Only the Slav may hope to understand Chopin thoroughly.  But these Ballades are more truly touched by the universal than any other of his works.  They belong as much to the world as to Poland.

The G minor Ballade after “Konrad Wallenrod,” is a logical, well knit and largely planned composition.  The closest parallelism may be detected in its composition of themes.  Its second theme in E flat is lovely in line, color and sentiment.  The return of the first theme in A minor and the quick answer in E of the second are evidences of Chopin’s feeling for organic unity.  Development, as in strict cyclic forms, there is not a little.  After the cadenza, built on a figure of wavering tonality, a valse-like theme emerges and enjoys a capricious, butterfly existence.  It is fascinating.  Passage work of an etherealized character leads to the second subject, now augmented and treated with a broad brush.  The first questioning theme is heard again, and with a perpendicular roar the presto comes upon us.  For two pages the dynamic energy displayed by the composer is almost appalling.  A whirlwind I have called it elsewhere.  It is a storm of the emotions, muscular in its virility.