he has thrown mystery, allurement, and in them secret whisperings and the unconscious sigh.  It is going too far not to dance to some of this music, for it is putting Chopin away from the world he at times loved.  Certain of the valses may be danced:  the first, second, fifth, sixth, and a few others.  The dancing would be of necessity more picturesque and less conventional than required by the average valse, and there must be fluctuations of tempo, sudden surprises and abrupt languors.  The mazurkas and polonaises are danced to-day in Poland, why not the valses?  Chopin’s genius reveals itself in these dance forms, and their presentation should be not solely a psychic one.  Kullak, stern old pedagogue, divides these dances into two groups, the first dedicated to “Terpsichore,” the second a frame for moods.  Chopin admitted that he was unable to play valses in the Viennese fashion, yet he has contrived to rival Strauss in his own genre.  Some of these valses are trivial, artificial, most of them are bred of candlelight and the swish of silken attire, and a few are poetically morbid and stray across the border into the rhythms of the mazurka.  All of them have been edited to death, reduced to the commonplace by vulgar methods of performance, but are altogether sprightly, delightful specimens of the composer’s careless, vagrant and happy moods.

Kullak utters words of warning to the “unquiet” sex regarding the habitual neglect of the bass.  It should mean something in valse tempo, but it usually does not.  Nor need it be brutally banged; the fundamental tone must be cared for, the subsidiary harmonies lightly indicated.  The rubato in the valses need not obtrude itself as in the mazurkas.

Opus 18, in E flat, was published in June, 1834, and dedicated to Mile.  Laura Harsford.  It is a true ballroom picture, spirited and infectious in rhythms.  Schumann wrote rhapsodically of it.  The D flat section has a tang of the later Chopin.  There is bustle, even chatter, in this valse, which in form and content is inferior to op. 34, No.  I, A flat.  The three valses of this set were published December, 1838.  There are many editorial differences in the A flat Valse, owing to the careless way it was copied and pirated.  Klindworth and Kullak are the safest for dynamic markings.  This valse may be danced as far as its dithyrhambic coda.  Notice in this coda as in many other places the debt Schumann owes Chopin for a certain passage in the Preambule of his “Carneval.”

The next Valse in A minor has a tinge of Sarmatian melancholy, indeed, it is one of Chopin’s most desponding moods.  The episode in C rings of the mazurka, and the A major section is of exceeding loveliness; Its coda is characteristic.  This valse is a favorite, and who need wonder?  The F major Valse, the last of this series, is a whirling, wild dance of atoms.  It has the perpetuum mobile quality, and older masters would have prolonged its giddy arabesques into pages of senseless spinning.  It is quite long enough as it is.  The second theme is better, but the appoggiatures are flippant.  It buzzes to the finish.  Of it is related that Chopin’s cat sprang upon his keyboard and in its feline flight gave him the idea of the first measures.  I suppose as there is a dog valse, there had to be one for the cat.