On the whole his music has few conspicuously unusual chords. The crashing dissonances just before the end of the Scherzo in B minor are exceptional. So are the wild bursts in the prelude in D minor. But there are sequences of chords which, when analyzed, show an amazing boldness. For example, the opening measures of the scherzo in the B-flat minor sonata; the middle section of the study in C minor; the swirl of chords before the coda in the F minor Ballade; the long modulating passage between the A major and E-flat major portions of the G minor Ballade; the whole of the study in broken chords; and countless others. He is fond of shifting the harmony down through chromatic steps, as in the prelude in E minor and the mazurka, opus 17, No. 4. Rushes of chromatic sixths and fourths, such as are in the E minor concerto, at the beginning of the great polonaise in A-flat major, and the scherzo of the B-flat minor sonata, are effects of color more than of harmony. But he gets magnificent harmonic effects by sending wide, whirring chords through half-steps down or up the scale, as in the first _meno mosso_ section of the scherzo in C-sharp minor, or in the cadenza-style passage of the study, opus 10, No. 3. Yet again, before the return of the first motives in the study, opus 25, No. 6, there is a long cascade of diminished seventh chords. Sometimes he leads his music through broader progressions, which are in effect diatonic. The dropping of the music from its dramatic height in the C-sharp minor portion of the ballade in A-flat major, the long descending play with the triplet motive in the middle section of the second scherzo, and all the second part of the scherzo in the B-flat minor sonata offer examples of this bold harmonic stride. One may take up a handful of Chopin’s music almost at random and find signs of his harmonic boldness, and there is hardly a line of it which does not reveal his ever subtle power over chromatic alterations. This is so fine and really so ever present as almost to defy analysis. Yet one or two pages in which it is unusually suggestive may be cited. All the first part of the scherzo in B minor, particularly the second section of it, is but a play with chords which, but for the unpleasant connotation of the word, might almost be said to writhe, so are they twisted and interwoven by a ceaseless alteration of their fundamental notes. By reason of this same chromatic litheness, both the study in C major, opus 10, No. 7, and the coda of the second ballade take on a shimmer of harmonic light.