the repeated use of the chord of the Neapolitan sixth to delay the final cadence and especially by the "unexpected gleaming" of A major (bar 49) in the E minor cadence. This A major enchantingly reflects the E major of the middle section (bar 24). The piece closes with a Picardy third, in E major. Character American music critic James Huneker (1857–1921) calls the étude "a dark doleful nocturne. […] the melody is full of stifled sorrow." Italian composer and editor Alfredo Casella (1883–1947) speaks of "meditated grief" and thinks "it is difficult to conceive an elegy more severe and sober than this study." French pianist Alfred Cortot (1877–1962) on the other hand calls the character of this study "feverish and concentrated" and insists that "below the passionate lament of the upper voice […] we must hear a vital lower part […] uniting with it [yet] preserving its own timbre and its own freedom of rhythm." Tempo Chopin's metronome mark, given in the original French and German editions, is = 69 referring to dotted quarter notes. The English edition has = 69 referring to quarter notes instead. Austrian pianist and composer Gottfried Galston (1879–1950) suggests a tempo of = 50, as "the carrying power of the modern piano's cantabile allows for a broader layout of the cantilena." He also believes that "the tempo of this étude is subjected to the most multifarious fluctuations." Polish pianist and editor Jan Ekier (born 1913) writes in the Performance Commentary to the Polish National Edition that this étude is "always performed slower or much slower than is indicated by [Chopin's] tempo. […] the tempo becomes as much as three times slower than the authentic one, thus changing the metronomic unit from = 69 to = 69. The causes could be discerned in certain performance "traditions" prevailing during the second half of the nineteenth century, which had little in common with those derived directly from Chopin." Technical difficulties In Schumann's 1836 Neue Zeitschrift für Musik article on piano études, the study, together with Op. 10, No. 3, is classified under the category "melody and accompaniment in one hand simultaneously." Cortot states that the attention of the student should be directed to perfecting polyphonic playing, an expressive intensity of tone and legato and believes that finding the individual tone for each of the simultaneous melodic lines is a particular difficulty. He suggests to produce the tone