Szulc says that Oskar Kolberg related that he had still in his
possession these Variations on the theme of Der Schweizerbub,
which Chopin composed between his twelfth and seventeenth years
at the house of General Sowinski's wife in the course of "a few
quarter-hours." The Variations sur un air national allemand were
published after the composer's death along with his Sonata, Op.
4, by Haslinger, of Vienna, in 1851. They are, no doubt, the
identical composition of which Chopin in a letter from Vienna
(December 1, 1830) writes: "Haslinger received me very kindly,
but nevertheless would publish neither the Sonata nor the Second
Variations." The First Variations were those on La ci darem, Op.
2, the first of his compositions that was published in Germany.
Without inquiring too curiously into the exact time of its
production and into the exact meaning of "a few quarter-hours,"
also leaving it an open question whether the composer did or did
not revise his first conception of the Variations before sending
them to Vienna, I shall regard this unnumbered work--which, by
the way, in the Breitkopf and Hartel edition is dated 1824--on
account of its greater simplicity and inferior interest, as an
earlier composition than the Premier Rondeau (C minor), Op. 1,
dedicated to Mdme. de Linde (the wife of his father's friend and
colleague, the rector Dr. Linde), a lady with whom Frederick
often played duets. What strikes one at once in both of them is
the almost total absence of awkwardness and the presence of a
rarely-disturbed ease. They have a natural air which is alike
free from affected profundity and insipid childishness. And the
hand that wrote them betrays so little inexperience in the
treatment of the instrument that they can hold their ground
without difficulty and honourably among the better class of light