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In the 19th century, ¡§Character Piece¡¨ became a new trend in piano composition. Without using large-scale formal structure, it illustrates successfully the individualities of emotional expression in music among different composers. ¡§Barcarolle¡¨¡Xfeaturing special rhythmic patterns¡Xrepresents unique elegancy and lyricism in this category. The historical development of ¡§Character Piece¡¨ in the 19th century leads as an introduction in this thesis, followed by the compositional characteristics of ¡§Barcarolle¡¨ in the second chapter. The major part of this topic focuses on ¡§Barcarolles¡¨ written by four dominant composers in the 19th Cencury: F. Mendelssohn, F. Chopin, G. Faure and S. Rachmaninoff. The stylistic comparisons include the features of form, tonality, rhythmic pattern, melodic structure, and musical texture. The detailed analytical charts are provided to show the similarities and differences among these four remarkable ¡§Barcarolles.¡¨