Six sections alternate a waltz tune and a faster refrain around a single episode in D♭ major. Almost nothing is developed. The interest lies in where each idea is placed.
Every perfect cadence in the piece belongs to the refrain. The waltz tune reaches for a proper close each time it appears and stops just short.
Nothing is marked louder than piano. The high point is a matter of register and position: the top of the keyboard, reached quietly, at the moment of arrival.
Theme, refrain, episode, refrain, theme, refrain. The pattern is easier to hear than to describe, and the repetition is unusually literal, so the differences between one statement and the next are where the story is told.
A hesitant tune that begins mid-gesture, wanders to the edge of a close and does not make one.
A running line that falls in sequence, then climbs the keyboard to a decisive arrival. The passage is played twice.
Slower and sparer, with a bass that climbs step by step. It dissolves into a single line instead of closing.
The refrain returns almost note for note, its first note an octave lower.
The tune comes back with one added note and still declines to close.
The refrain a last time, and a final bar that leaves its third beat empty.
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Analysis and study materials published as they appear.