[30] Spiridion.
[31] Lettres d'un voyageur.
[32] Lucrezia Floriani.
[33] Lucrezia Floriani.
[34] Lucrezia Floriani.
[35] Lucrezia Floriani.
[36] Depuis plusieurs années, les compositions de Chopin étaient très répandues et très goûtées en Angleterre. Les meilleurs virtuoses les exécutaient fréquemment. Nous trouvons dans une brochure publiée à ce moment à Londres, chez M. Wessel et Stappleton, sous le titre An Essay on the works of F. Chopin, quelques lignes tracées avec justesse. L'épigraphe de cette petite brochure est ingénieusement choisie; l'on ne pouvait mieux appliquer qu'à Chopin les deux vers de Shelley: (Peter Bell the third)
He was a mighty poet—and
A subtle-souled psychologist.
L'auteur des pages que nous mentionnons parle avec enthousiasme de cet «originative genius untrammeled by conventionalities, unfettered by pedantry;...» de ces: «outpourings of an unwordly and tristful soul, those musical floods of tears and gushes of pure joyfulness,—those exquisite embodiments of fugitive thoughts,—those infinitesimal delicacies», qui donnent tant de prix aux plus petits croquis de Chopin. L'auteur anglais dit plus loin: «One thing is certain, viz: to play with proper feeling and correct execution the Préludes and Studies of Chopin, is to be neither more nor less than a finished pianist and moreover, to comprehend them thoroughly, to give a life and a tongue to their infinite and most eloquent subtleties of expression, involves the necessity of being in no less a degree a poet than a pianist, a thinker than a musician. Commonplace is instinctively avoided in all the works of Chopin; a stale cadence or a trite progression, a hum-drum subject or a hackneyed sequence, a vulgar twist of the melody or a worn out passage, a meagre harmony or an unskilful counterpoint, may in vain be looked for throughout the entire range of his compositions, the prevailing characteristics of which are, a feeling as uncommon as beautiful, a treatment as original as felicitous, a melody and a harmony as new, fresh, vigorous and striking, as they are utterly unexpected and out of the ordinary track. In taking up one of the works of Chopin you are entering, as it were, a fairy land, untrodden by human footsteps, a path hitherto unfrequented but by the great composer himself; a faith and a devotion, a desire to appreciate, and a determination to understand, are absolutely necessary, to do it anything like adequate justice....... Chopin in his Polonaises and in his Mazoures has aimed at those characteristics which distinguish the national music of his country so markedly from that of all others, that quaint idiosyncrasy, that identical wildness and fantasticality, that delicious mingling of the sad and the cheerful, which invariably and forcibly individualize the music of those northern countries, whose language delights in combination of consonants........»
[37] Schiller, Die Ideale.