that wonderful modulation from five sharps to four flats, and, later
on, the delicious series of modulations in the fourth and fifth bars
after the Tempo Primo. I realized then that modulation is a deeper
source of emotional expression than melody.

In speaking of Chopin's melancholy character, the nocturnes are often
referred to as illustrations of it. They do, indeed, breathe a spirit
of sadness, but the majority represent, as I have said, the dreamy
side of his genius. The real anguish of his heart is not expressed in
the nocturnes but in the preludes and études, strange as these names
may seem for such pathetic effusions of his heart. The étude, opus 10,
No. 6, seems as if it were in a sort of double minor; as much sadder
than ordinary minor, as ordinary minor is sadder than major. Chopin
had abundant cause to be melancholy. He inherited that national
melancholy of the Poles which causes them even to dance to tunes in
minor keys, and which is commonly attributed to the long-continued
political oppression under which they have suffered. But, apart from
this national trait, Chopin had sufficient personal reasons for
writing the greater part of his mazurkas and his other pieces in
minor keys. Like other men of genius, he keenly felt the anguish of
not being fully appreciated by his contemporaries. Moreover, although
he was greatly admired by the French and Polish women in Paris, and
was even conceded a lady-killer, he was, in his genuine affairs of the
heart, thrice disappointed. His first love, who wore his engagement
ring when he left Warsaw, proved faithless to the absent lover, and
married another man. The second love deceived him in the same way,
preferring a Count to a genius. And his third love, George Sand, after
apparently reciprocating his attachment, for a few years, not only
discarded him, but tried to justify her conduct to the world, by
giving an exaggerated portraiture of his weaknesses, in her novel