The work was composed and published between 1835 and 1837,[1] and was dedicated to Countess Adèle Fürstenstein.
As pianist David Dubal has written,[2] Robert Schumann compared this scherzo to a Byronic poem, "so overflowing with tenderness, boldness, love and contempt."
According to Wilhelm von Lenz, a pupil of Chopin, the composer said that the renowned sotto voce opening was a question and the second phrase the answer: "For Chopin it was never questioning enough, never soft enough, never vaulted (tombe) enough.
Dubal wrote that critic James Huneker "exults": "What masterly writing, and it lies in the very heart of the piano!
[4] A fragment is also heard in the movie "Witness to murder", 1954, with Barbara Stanwyck.