On the contrary, some of his
later compositions, especially of the last period, end with exquisite
miniature poems, connected in spirit with the preceding music and yet
distinct--separate inspirations. I refer, especially, to the endings
of his last two nocturnes and to the final bars of the mazurka, opus
59, No. 3.
George Sand has given us a vivid sketch of Chopin's conscientiousness
as a composer. "He shut himself up in his room for entire days," she
says, "weeping, walking about, breaking his pen, repeating and
changing a bar a hundred times, and beginning again next day with
minute and desperate perseverance. He spent six weeks over a single
page, only to go back and write that which he had traced at the first
essay." As regards his creativeness, George Sand says that "it
descended upon his piano suddenly, completely, sublimely, or it sang
itself in his head during his walks, and he made haste to hear it by
rushing to the instrument." I have already mentioned the fact that
when he wrote his last mazurka he was too weak to try it on the piano.
In one of his letters he speaks of a polonaise being ready in his
head.
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