of religion thrown in.  The “bell-tones” of the plain chant bring to my mind little that consoles, although the piece ends in the major mode.  It is like Foe’s “Ulalume.”  A complete and tiny tone poem, Rubinstein made much of it.  In the fourth bar and for three bars there is a held note F, and I heard the Russian virtuoso, by some miraculous means, keep this tone prolonged.  The tempo is abnormally slow, and the tone is not in a position where the sustaining pedal can sensibly help it.  Yet under Rubinstein’s fingers it swelled and diminished, and went singing into D, as if the instrument were an organ.  I suspected the inaudible changing of fingers on the note or a sustaining pedal.  It was wonderfully done.

The next nocturne, op. 27, No.  I, brings us before a masterpiece.  With the possible exception of the C minor Nocturne, this one in the sombre key of C sharp minor is the great essay in the form.  Kleczynski finds it “a description of a calm night at Venice, where, after a scene of murder, the sea closes over a corpse and continues to serve as a mirror to the moonlight.”  This is melodramatic.  Willeby analyzes it at length with the scholarly fervor of an English organist.  He finds the accompaniment to be “mostly on a double pedal,” and remarks that “higher art than this one could not have if simplicity of means be a factor of high art.”  The wide-meshed figure of the left hand supports a morbid, persistent melody that grates on the nerves.  From the piu mosso the agitation increases, and here let me call to your notice the Beethoven-ish quality of these bars, which continue until the change of signature.  There is a surprising climax followed by sunshine and favor in the D flat part, then after mounting dissonances a bold succession of octaves returns to the feverish plaint of the opening.  Kullak speaks of a resemblance to Meyerbeer’s song, Le Moine.  The composition reaches exalted states.  Its psychological tension is so great at times as to border on a pathological condition.  There is unhealthy power in this nocturne, which is seldom interpreted with sinister subtlety.  Henry T. Finck rightfully thinks it “embodies a greater variety of emotion and more genuine dramatic spirit on four pages than many operas on four hundred.”

The companion picture in D flat, op. 27, No. 2, has, as Karasowski writes, “a profusion of delicate fioriture.”  It really contains but one subject, and is a song of the sweet summer of two souls, for there is obvious meaning in the duality of voices.  Often heard in the concert room, this nocturne gives us a surfeit of sixths and thirds of elaborate ornamentation and monotone of mood.  Yet it is a lovely, imploring melody, and harmonically most interesting.  A curious marking, and usually overlooked by pianists, is the crescendo and con forza of the cadenza.  This is obviously erroneous.  The theme, which occurs three times, should first be piano, then pianissimo, and lastly forte.  This opus is dedicated to the Comtesse d’Appony.