Is it essentially polyphonic music? The first canon of the pianoforte style is _movement_. That is a mechanical necessity. The strings must be kept in vibration, constantly touched. In music so fine as Chopin’s this movement must be found to have a beauty in itself. It must be ever varied. It must take on an independent character of its own. So far, in studying accompaniment figures, one finds in them an almost never-absent suggestion of such a life. Perhaps one of the greatest proofs of Chopin’s skill is that he rarely attempted more than to suggest it. For he knew above all things his piano. He knew its great power over chords and harmony, that music for it must first of all bring out this richness of vibration of which it was capable. He knew that the logical, consecutive movement of the polyphonic style left his piano more than half dumb. Polyphony was no outlandish book to him. Many an anecdote testifies to his worship of the ‘Well-Tempered Clavichord’; many to his ability to reveal as few, perhaps no others, have been able to do, the beauty of the preludes and fugues in it. But in his own music he submerged polyphony, so to speak, just beneath the sea of moving harmonies. Over and through the fine silver network his harmonies swirl and flow like waters. Only now and then a strand of it shines clear; but always its presence may be seen, though its lines quiver and break. Now and again one comes across measures in his music which do more than hint at the sterling imitative style of the old masters, or that show a grasp of that sort of logical technique which is able to weave a single motive or two into various shapes, a highly concentrated sort of music. These are neither more nor less beautiful than other measures, and surely their value is the value of all his music, not enhanced by the evidence of a highly respected technical skill. The fourth ballade gives surprising examples of this intensive art. The few measures in canonic style which bring back the principal subject are worthy of study; but even more remarkable is the page of music which precedes them. Here, following an episode in which the steady rhythm of the whole great work takes on almost the gaiety of a dance, we come upon music of the most profound character, fully and sonorously scored, rich in harmony, expressive of passion. The bass part is one variant of the chief subject, the treble part is another. Here is skill of the sort that brings praise to Brahms; but in the music of Chopin to mention it is hardly worth while, so little, rather so entirely not at all, is it an end in itself.