cadenzas, improvised preludes and short phrases, as Kullak suggests, yet there is unity in the composition, the units of structure and style.  It was music of the future when Chopin composed; it is now music of the present, as much as Richard Wagner’s.  But the realism is a trifle clouded.  Here is the duality of Chopin the suffering man and Chopin the prophet of Poland.  Undimmed is his poetic vision—­Poland will be free!—­ undaunted his soul, though oppressed by a suffering body.  There are in the work throes of agony blended with the trumpet notes of triumph.  And what puzzled our fathers—­the shifting lights and shadows, the restless tonalities—­are welcome, for at the beginning of this new century the chromatic is king.  The ending of this Polonaise is triumphant, recalling in key and climaxing the A flat Ballade.  Chopin is still the captain of his soul—­and Poland will be free!  Are Celt and Slav doomed to follow ever the phosphorescent lights of patriotism?  Liszt acknowledges the beauty and grandeur of this last Polonaise, which unites the characteristics of superb and original manipulation of the form, the martial and the melancholic.

Opus 71, three posthumous Polonaises, given to the world by Julius Fontana, are in D minor, published in 1827, B flat major, 1828, and F minor, 1829.  They are interesting to Chopinists.  The influence of Weber, a past master in this form, is felt.  Of the three the last in F minor is the strongest, although if Chopin’s age is taken into consideration, the first, in D minor, is a feat for a lad of eighteen.  I agree with Niecks that the posthumous Polonaise, without opus number, in G sharp minor, was composed later than 1822—­the date given in the Breitkopf & Hartel edition.  It is an artistic conception, and in “light winged figuration” far more mature than the Chopin of op. 71.  Really a graceful and effective little composition of the florid order, but like his early music without poetic depth.  The Warsaw “Echo Musicale,” to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of Chopin’s death, published a special number in October, 1899, with the picture of a farmer named Krysiak, born in 1810, the year after the composer.  Thereat Finck remarked that it is not a case of survival of the fittest!  A fac-simile reproduction of a hitherto unpublished Polonaise in A flat, written at the age of eleven, is also included in this unique number.  This tiny dance shows, it is said, the “characteristic physiognomy” of the composer.  In reality this polacca is thin, a tentative groping after a form that later was mastered so magnificently by the composer.  Here is the way it begins—­the autograph is Chopin’s: 

[Musical score excerpt]

The Alla Polacca for piano and ’cello, op. 3, was composed in 1829, while Chopin was on a visit to Prince Radziwill.  It is preceded by an introduction, and is dedicated to Joseph Merk, the ’cellist.  Chopin himself pronounced it a brilliant salon piece.  It is now not even that, for it sounds antiquated and threadbare.  The passage work at times smacks of Chopin and Weber—­a hint of the Mouvement Perpetuel—­and the ’cello has the better of the bargain.  Evidently written for my lady’s chamber.