<h2>V</h2>
<h3>CHOPIN, THE POET OF THE PIANOFORTE</h3></div>
<p>I must ask the reader still to imagine that he is
at a pianoforte recital, although I frankly admit
that I have been guilty of many digressions, so
that it must appear to him as if he had been whisked
from Mendelssohn Hall up to Carnegie Hall, then
down to the Metropolitan Opera House and back to
Mendelssohn Hall again. This, however, as I have
sought to make clear before, is due to the universality
of the pianoforte as an instrument and to the comprehensiveness
of pianoforte music, which in itself illustrates
in great part the development of the art.</p>
<p>At this point, then, of our imaginary pianoforte recital
there is likely to be a group of compositions by
Chopin; and the larger the group, or the more groups
by this composer on the program, the better satisfied
the audience is apt to be. Baker calls Fr�d�ric Chopin
(1810-1849) the “incomparable composer for the pianoforte.”
But he was more. He was an incomparable
composer from every point of view, great, unique, a
tone poet, as well as the first composer who searched
the very soul of the instrument for which he specialized.
Extraordinary as is his significance for that instrument,
his influence extends through it into other
realms of music, and his art is making itself felt to
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this day in orchestra, opera and music-drama as well
as in pianoforte music. For he was an innovator in
form, an intrepid adventurer in harmony and a sublime
singer of melody.</p>
<h4>Tempo Rubato.</h4>
<p>Before the pianist whose recital we are supposed to
be attending will have played many bars of the first
piece in the Chopin group, the individuality of this
composer will become apparent. Melody will pervade
the recital hall like the fragrance of flowers. At the
same time there will be an iridescence not noticeable
in any of the music that preceded Chopin, and produced
as if by cascades of jewels—those remarkable ornamental
notes which yet are not ornamental, but, in
spite of all their light and shade, and their play of
changeable colors, part of the great undercurrent
of melody itself. Here we have then, nearly at the
very outset of the first Chopin piece, the famous <i>tempo
rubato</i>, so-called, which has been explained in various
ways, but which with Chopin really means that while
the rhythm goes calmly on with one hand, the other
weaves a veil of iridescent notes around the melodic
idea. Liszt expressed it exactly when he said: “You
see that tree? Its leaves move to and fro in the wind
and follow the gentle motion of the air; but its trunk
stands there immovable in its form.” Or the <i>tempo
rubato</i> is like a shower of petals from a tree in full
bloom; the firm outline of the tree, its foliage are there,
while we see the delicately tinted blossoms falling from
the branches and filling the air with color and fragrance;
or like the myriad shafts from the facets of a
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jewel, piercing in all directions while the jewel itself
remains immovable, the centre of its own rays; or like
the crisp ripple on a river, while the stream itself flows
on in majesty; or, in one or two passages when Chopin
becomes a cynic, like the twaddle of critics while the
person they criticise calmly goes about his mission.</p>
<h4>The Soul of the Pianoforte.</h4>
<p>What you will notice about these compositions of
Chopin—and I say “these compositions” deliberately,
although I have not named any (for it makes no difference
what pieces of his are on the program, the effect
will be the same)—is the fact that in none of them is
there the slightest suggestion of anything but pianoforte
music. Chopin’s great achievement so far as the
pianoforte is concerned is the fact that he liberated it
completely from orchestral and choral influences, and
made it an instrument sufficient unto itself, brought it
into its own in all its beauty of tone and expression
and enlarged its capacity; sought out its soul and reproduced
it in tone, as no other composer had done before
him or has done since. The recognition of the true
piano tone seems to have been instinctive with him.
It appears in his earliest works. Nothing he ever
wrote suggests orchestra or voice. For the beautiful
singing quality he brings out in much of his music is
a singing quality which belongs to the noble instrument
to which he devoted himself. Not once while listening
to a Chopin composition do you think to yourself, as
you do so often with classical works, like the Beethoven
sonatas, “How well this would sound on the orchestra!”
<span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_119' name='page_119'></SPAN>119</span>
Yet Chopin is as sonorous, as passionate, as
pleading, as melancholy and as rich in effect, although
he is played only on the black and white keys of the
pianoforte, as if he were given forth by a hundred
instrumentalists, so thoroughly did he understand the
instrument for which he wrote. He was the Wagner
of the pianoforte.</p>
<h4>A Clear Melodic Line.</h4>
<p>What you will notice, too, about his music is the general
distinctness of his melody. There may be times,
as in some of his arabesque compositions, like the “F
Minor �tude,” when the effect is slightly blurred. But
this is done purposely, and as a rule there will be found
a clear melodic line running through everything he
wrote. Combined with this melody are weird, exquisite,
entrancing harmonies, and those showers of
<i>tempo rubato</i> notes which glitter like a veil of mist in
the sunlight and yet, although a veil, allow you to see
what is beneath it, like a delicate fabric which seems
rather to emphasize and reveal the very things it is
intended to conceal.</p>
<p>Chopin was a Pole. He had the melancholy of his
race, but also its <i>verve</i>. Profoundly affected by his
country’s sorrow, he also had its haughty spirit. In
Paris, where he spent the most significant years of his
life, he was surrounded by the aristocracy of his own
country who were in exile, and by the aristocracy of
the arts. Liszt speaks of an evening at his salon where
he met, besides some of the Polish aristocrats, people
like Heinrich Heine, Meyerbeer, Delacroix, Nourrit,
<span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_120' name='page_120'></SPAN>120</span>
the tenor, and Bellini. Chopin admired Bellini’s music,
its clear and beautiful melodiousness, and I myself
think that Chopin’s melody often has Italian characteristics,
although it is combined with harmony that
is German in its seriousness, but wholly Chopinesque
in all its essentials. In those numerous groups of
ornamental, or rather semi-ornamental, notes, so many
of them chromatic, and all of them usually designated
by the technical term “passing notes,” signifying that
they are merely incidental to the melody and to the
harmonic structure, there are nevertheless many that
have far greater importance than if they were merely
“passing.” It is in bringing out this significance by
slight accelerations and retards, by allowing a few of
them to flash out here while the others remain slightly
veiled, that the inspired Chopin player shows his true
conception of what the composer meant by <i>tempo
rubato</i>.</p>
<p>It was Liszt, afterward the first to recognize Wagner,
who was the first to recognize Chopin. It was
Liszt also who introduced him to George Sand (Mme.
Dudevant), the great passion of his life. Chopin was
the friend of many women. They adored his poetic
nature, and there is much in his music that is effeminate,
delicate and sensitive; but altogether too much
has been made of this side of his art, and of certain
morbid pieces like some of the Nocturnes. The affair
with George Sand was not only a passion, but was a
tragedy, and like all such tragedies it left on his music
the imprint of something deeper and greater than mere
delicacy and morbidity. Then, too, we have to count
with his patriotism and his sympathy with his struggling
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country, and there is much more of the virile
and heroic in his music than either the average virtuoso
or the average listener allows for.</p>
<h4>The �tudes.</h4>
<p>These contrasts in his music can readily be recognized
when a great pianist makes up the Chopin group
on his program from the �tudes, which are among
the greatest compositions of all times, whether we consider
them as pianoforte music or as music in general.
They touch the soul in many places, and in many and
varied ways, and they reflect the alternate delicacy and
daintiness of his genius as well as its vigor and nobility.
Suppose, for the sake of a brilliant beginning, the
virtuoso chooses to start off with the fifth, the so-called
“�tude on Black Keys,” and flashes it in our
eyes, making the pianoforte play the part of a mirror
held in the sunlight. This gives us one side of Chopin’s
music, its brilliancy; and it is noticeable that while
the tempo of the piece is given as <i>vivace</i>, the style in
which it is to be played is indicated by the direction
<i>brillante</i>.</p>
<p>If the pianist continues with the third �tude, we
shall hear one of the most tender and beautiful melodies
that Chopin ever composed. Let him follow this with
number thirteen, the one in A flat major, and we are
reminded of what Schumann said, in his review of
this book of �tudes, in which he speaks of the A flat
major as “an æolian harp, possessed of all the musical
scales, the hand of the artist causing them all to intermingle
in many varieties of fantastic embellishment,
<span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_122' name='page_122'></SPAN>122</span>
yet in such a way as to leave everywhere audible a deep
fundamental tone and a soft continuously singing
upper voice.”</p>
<p>Schumann heard Chopin himself play this �tude, and
he says that whoever will play it in the way described
will get the correct idea of Chopin’s performance. “But
it would be an error to think that Chopin permitted
every one of the small notes to be distinctly heard. It
was rather an undulation of the A flat major chord
here and there thrown aloft anew by the pedal.
Throughout all the harmonies one always heard in
great tones a wondrous melody, while once only in the
middle of the piece, besides that chief song, a tenor
voice became prominent in the midst of the chords.
After the �tude, a feeling came over one as of having
seen in a dream a beatific picture which, when half
awake, one would gladly recall.”</p>
<h4>Vigor, Passion, and Impetus.</h4>
<p>If now the pianist wishes to show by contrast Chopin
in his full vigor, passionate and impetuous, let him
take the great C Minor �tude, the twelfth, <i>Allegro
con fuoco</i>. “Great in outline, pride, force and velocity,
it never relaxes its grim grip from the first shrill dissonance
to the overwhelming chordal close,” says
Huneker, adding that “this end rings out like the crack
of creation.” It is supposed to be an expression of the
alternating wrath and despair with which Chopin received
the tidings of the taking of Warsaw by the
Russians in September, 1831, for it was shortly after
this that the �tude was composed. No wonder, to
<span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_123' name='page_123'></SPAN>123</span>
quote again from Huneker, that “all sweeps along in
tornadic passion.”</p>
<p>A pianist hardly can go amiss in making his selection
from the twenty-seven �tudes, for the contrasts
which he can effect are obvious, and there is among
these compositions not one which has not its special
merits. There is the tenth, of which Von B�low said
whoever could play it in a really finished manner might
congratulate himself on having climbed to the highest
point of the pianist’s Parnassus, and that the whole
repertory of music for the pianoforte does not contain
a study of perpetual motion so full of genius and fancy
as this especial one is universally acknowledged to be,
excepting, possibly, Liszt’s “Feux Follets.” Then there
is number nineteen in C sharp minor, like a nocturne
with the melody in the left hand, with the right hand
answering as a flute would a ’cello. For contrast take
number twenty-one, the so-called “Butterfly �tude”—a
wretched misnomer, because a pianist gifted with
true musical clairvoyance can work up such a gust
of passion in this �tude that any butterfly would be
swept away as if by a hurricane. Nor, in order to
accomplish this, is it necessary to make such a bravura
piece of the �tude as so many pianists ignorantly do.
We have, too, the “Winter Wind �tude,” in A minor,
Opus 25, number eleven—the twenty-third in the
collection as usually published—planned on a grand
scale and carried out in a manner equal to the
plan.</p>
<p>Von B�low calls attention to the fact that, with all
its sonorousness, “the greatest fullness of sound imaginable,”
it nowhere trespasses upon the domain of
<span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_124' name='page_124'></SPAN>124</span>
the orchestra, but remains pianoforte music in the strictest
sense of the word. “To Chopin,” says Von
B�low, in referring to this �tude, “is due the honor
and credit of having set fast the boundary between
piano and orchestral music which, through other
composers of the romantic school, especially Robert
Schumann, has been defaced and blotted out, to
the prejudice and damage of both species.” While
agreeing with Von B�low that Chopin was the great
liberator of the pianoforte, I cannot agree with the
exception he takes to the music of Robert Schumann.
If he had referred back to the unpianistic classical
sonata form, he would have been more accurate.</p>
<h4>The Pr�ludes.</h4>
<p>I have gone into some detail regarding these �tudes
because I regard them, as a whole, among the greatest
of Chopin’s works. But I once heard Rubinstein play
the entire set of twenty-four Pr�ludes, and I sometimes
wonder, as one often does with the compositions of a
great genius, whether these Pr�ludes, in spite of their
comparative brevity, should not be ranked as high as
anything Chopin ever wrote. According to tradition,
they were composed during the winter of 1838, which
Chopin spent with George Sand at Majorca in the
Balearic Islands. But there is authority for saying
that they received only the finishing touches there, and
are in fact the gleanings of his portfolios.</p>
<p>It seems as if in these twenty-four pieces every phase
of human emotion were brought out. If my memory
is correct, Rubinstein played them as a solo group at
<span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_125' name='page_125'></SPAN>125</span>
a Philharmonic concert, or he may have given them
about the same time at one of his recitals. It was in
1872; and while after this long lapse of time it is
impossible to remember every detail of his performance,
I shall never forget the exquisite tenderness with
which he played the very brief Pr�lude in A major,
the seventh. He simply caressed the keyboard, touched
it as if his fingers were tipped with velvet; and though
into the other compositions of the series he put, according
as their character varied, an immense amount
of passion, or more subdued emotion, I can still hear
this seventh Pr�lude sounding in my memory, note
for note and bar for bar, as he rendered it—a prolonged,
tremulous whisper. Schumann regarded the
Pr�ludes as most remarkable, saying that “in every
piece we find in his own hand ‘Fr�d�ric Chopin wrote
it.’ One recognizes him in his pauses, in his quick-coming
breath. He is the boldest, the proudest poet-soul
of his time.”</p>
<p>Each number in the series is complete in itself, a
mood picture; but the series as a whole, in its collection
of moods, its panorama of emotions, represents
the entire range of Chopin’s art. The fourth in E
minor, covering only a page, is one of the most pathetic
plaints ever penned. The fifteenth in D flat major, with
its continual reiteration of the dominant, like the incessant
drip of rain on a roof, is a nocturne—Chopin
in one of his morbid moments; while the eighteenth
in F minor is as bold a piece of dramatic recitative as
though it had been lifted bodily out of a music-drama.
And so we might run the whole range of the collection,
finding each admirable in itself, yet different from
<span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_126' name='page_126'></SPAN>126</span>
all the others. What a group for a recital these
twenty-four Pr�ludes make!</p>
<h4>Nocturnes.</h4>
<p>If Chopin had not written the Nocturnes I doubt if
those who play and those who comment on him would
err so often in attributing such an excess of morbidness
to him as they do, or lay the charge of effeminacy
against him. Morbid these Nocturnes undoubtedly
are in many parts, and yet they often rise to the
dignity of elegy, and sometimes even of tragedy. Exquisitely
melodious they are, too, and full of the
haunting mystery of night. The one in C sharp minor,
Opus 27, No. 1, is perhaps the most dramatic of the
series, and Henry T. Finck, in his Chopin essay, is
entirely within bounds when he says that it embodies
a greater variety of emotion and more genuine dramatic
spirit on four pages than many operas on four
hundred. There are greater nocturnes than the one
in G, Opus 37, No. 2, but I must nevertheless regard
it as the most beautiful of all. It may bewitch and
unman the player, as Niecks has said, but, on the
other hand, I think its second melody, like a Venetian
barcarolle breathed through the moonlight, is the
most exquisite thing Chopin ever composed; and note
how, without any undulating accompaniment, its
rhythm nevertheless produces a gentle wavy effect.</p>
<p>Probably the most familiar of all the Nocturnes is
the one in E flat, the second in the first set, Opus 9.
It has been played so much that unless it is interpreted
in a perfect manner it comes perilously near to being
hackneyed; but under the hands of a great pianist, who
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unites with absolute independence of all his ten fingers,
the soul of a poet, it becomes an iridescent play of
color, with a sombre picture of melancholy seen through
the iridescence. Remenyi played a violin arrangement
of it with such delicacy and so much poetry of
feeling that he actually reconciled one to its transfer
from the pianoforte to the soprano instrument of four
strings.</p>
<h4>Chopin and Poe.</h4>
<p>John Field, an Irish composer (1782-1837), was
the first to compose nocturnes, and it is not unlikely
that Chopin got the pattern from him. Occasionally
at historical recitals one hears a nocturne by John
Field; but I think that if even those who love to question
the originality of great men were familiar with
the nocturnes of Field, they would realize how far
Chopin went beyond him, making out of a small type
an art form of such poetic content that, in spite of
Field having been first in the lists, Chopin may be
said to have originated the form. Naturally, Field did
not relish seeing himself supplanted by this greater
genius, and he said of Chopin that he composed music
for a sick-room, and had “a talent of the hospital.”
On recital programs Chopin’s nocturnes often appear,
and, when played by a master like Paderewski, who
is sensitive to every shade of Chopin’s genius, they
are heard with an exquisite feeling of sorrow. In
these Nocturnes, Chopin always seems to me like Edgar
Allan Poe in “Ullalume” or in “Annabel Lee”—and
was not Poe one of the only two American poets of
real genius?</p>
<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_128' name='page_128'></SPAN>128</span></div>
<h4>Waltzes and Mazurkas.</h4>
<p>A Chopin waltz will admirably afford contrast in a
group of Chopin pieces on a recital program. Possibly
the waltzes are the most frequently played by
amateurs of all Chopin’s compositions. But, to perpetrate
an Irish bull, even those that have been played
to death still are very much alive. It was Schumann
who said that if these waltzes were to be played for
dancing more than half the dancers should be Countesses,
the music is so aristocratic. Indeed, to listen
to these waltzes is like looking at a dance through a
fairy lens. They seem to be improvisations of the
pianist during a dance, and to reflect the thoughts that
arise in the player’s mind as he looks on, giving out
the rhythm with the left hand, while the melody and
the ornamental note-groups indicate his fancies—love,
a jealous plaint, joy, ecstasy, and the tender whispering
of enamored couples as they glide past. The
slow A minor “Waltz,” with its viola-like left-hand
melody, was Chopin’s favorite, and he was so pleased
when Stephen Heller told him that it was his favorite
one, too, that he invited him to luncheon. (Strange
that we always should regard food as the most appropriate
reward of artistic sympathy!) Each waltz, with
the exception of some of the posthumous ones, has its
individual charm, but to me the most beautiful is the
one in C sharp minor, with its infinite expression of
longing in its leading theme and its remarkable chromatic
descent before the brilliant right-hand passage
that follows in the second episode. These chromatics
should be emphasized, as they are a feature of the
<span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_129' name='page_129'></SPAN>129</span>
passage and form gems of harmonization. But few
pianists seem to appreciate their significance and pay
sole attention to bringing out the upper voice.</p>
<p>Thoroughly characteristic of Chopin, thoroughly in
keeping with his Polish nationality and its traditions,
are the Mazurkas—jewels of music, full of the finest
feeling, the most delicate harmonization, and with a
dash and spirit entirely their own. Weitzmann truly
says that they are the most faithful and animated pictures
of his nation which Chopin has left us, and that
they are masterpieces of their class: “Here he stands
forth in his full originality as the head of the romantic
school of music; in them his novel and alluring melodic
and harmonic progressions are even more surprising
than in his larger compositions.”</p>
<h4>Liszt on the Mazurkas.</h4>
<p>Liszt, too, pauses to pay his tribute to them: “Some
portray foolhardy gaiety in the sultry and oppressive
air of a ball, and on the eve of a battle; one hears the
low sighs of parting, whose sobs are stifled by sharp
rhythms of the dance. Others portray the grief of the
sorely anxious soul amid festivities, whose tumult is
unable to drown the profound woe of the heart. Others,
again, show the tears, premonitions and struggles of
a broken heart, devoured by jealousy, sorrowing over
its loss, but repressing the curse. Now we are surrounded
by a swirling frenzy, pierced by an ever-recurring
palpitating melody like the anxious beating of
a loving but rejected heart; and anon distant trumpet
calls resound like dim memories of bygone fame.”
<span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_130' name='page_130'></SPAN>130</span>
All this is very fine, although a trifle over-sentimental.
The fact is that the Chopin Mazurkas are archly coquettish,
passionately pleading, full of delicate banter,
love, despair and conquest—and always thoroughly
original and thoroughly interesting. In fact Chopin
never is commonplace. A Mazurka or two will add
zest to any group of his works on a recital program.</p>
<p>The Polonaises are Chopin’s battle-hymns. The
roll of drums, the booming of cannon, the rattle of
musketry and the plaint for the dead—all these things
one may hear in some of these compositions. The
mourning notes, however, are missing from the “A
Major Polonaise,” Opus 40, and usually called “Le
Militaire.” It is not a large canvas, but it is heroic
and one of the most virile of all his works. It was of
this polonaise Chopin said that if he could play it as
it should be played, he would break all the strings of
the pianoforte before he had finished.</p>
<h4>Other Works.</h4>
<p>And then the Ballades and the Scherzos. These are
perhaps Chopin’s greatest contributions to the music
of the pianoforte. They are wonderfully original,
wonderfully emotional, yet never to the point of morbidness,
full of his original harmonies, fascinating
rhythms and glow. In the Scherzos he is not gaily
abandoned, as the title would suggest, but often grim
and mocking—tragedy mocking itself.</p>
<p>Chopin also wrote Sonatas—felt himself obliged to,
perhaps, because he was writing for the pianoforte, because
pianoforte music still was in the grip of the thirty-two
<span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_131' name='page_131'></SPAN>131</span>
Beethoven pianoforte sonatas. By no means did
he adhere to the classical form; yet these three sonatas
are not to be counted among his most successful compositions.
One of them, the B flat minor, contains the
familiar funeral march which has been said to “give
forth the pain and grief of an entire nation”—Chopin’s
nation, sorrowing Poland; and, indeed, the middle episode,
the trio of the march, is pathetic to the verge of
tears, while in the other portions the march progresses
to the grave amid the tolling of bells and the heavy
tramp of soldiery. It is played and played, possibly
played too much; and yet, when well played, never
misses leaving a deep impression. Because people will
persist in “playing” certain popular pieces, there is no
reason these should not be enjoyed when interpreted
by a master. There is a vast difference between interpretation
and mere “playing.”</p>
<p>This funeral march is followed in the sonata by
a finale which aptly enough has been described as
night winds sweeping over graves. The funeral march
often is played at recitals as a detached piece. I cannot
see why pianists do not add this finale, which has real
psychological connection with it. The “Berceuse,” a
“Barcarolle,” two “Concertos for Piano and Orchestra,”
which often are slightingly spoken of, and most
unjustly, since they are full of beautiful melody and
most grateful to play—beyond these it does not seem
necessary to go here, unless, perhaps, to mention the
Impromptus, which are full of the most delightful
<i>chiaroscuro</i>, and the great F minor “Fantaisie.”</p>
<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_132' name='page_132'></SPAN>132</span></div>
<h4>A Noble from Head to Foot.</h4>
<p>Because Chopin wrote only for the pianoforte, because
as a rule his pieces are not long, his greatness
was not at first recognized. The conservatives seemed
to think no man could be great unless he wrote sonatas
in four movements for the piano and symphonies for the
orchestra, unless he composed for fifty or sixty instruments
instead of for only one. But although Jumbo
was large, he was not accounted beautiful, and worship
of the big is a mistaken kind of reverence. Chopin’s
briefest mazurka is worth infinitely more than many
sonatas that cover many pages. This composer was
a tone poet of the highest order. While to-day we
regard him mainly as the interpreter of beauty, in his
own day he was an innovator, a reformer and, like his
own Poles, a revolutionist. The pianoforte—the pianoforte
as a solo instrument—sufficed for his most beautiful
dreams, for his most passionate longings. Bie,
in his “History of the Pianoforte and Pianoforte Players,”
tells us that Chopin smiled when he heard that
Czerny had composed another overture for eight pianos
and sixteen persons, and was very happy over it.
“Chopin,” adds Bie, “opened to the two hands a wider
world than Czerny could give to thirty-two.”</p>
<p>Rubinstein, as quoted by Huneker, apostrophizes him
as “the piano bard, the piano rhapsodist, the piano
mind, the piano soul.... Tragic, romantic,
virile, heroic, dramatic, fantastic, soulful, sweet,
dreamy, brilliant, grand, simple—all possible expressions
are found in his compositions and all are
sung by him upon his instrument.” Huneker himself
<span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_133' name='page_133'></SPAN>133</span>
says: “In Chopin’s music there are many pianists,
many styles, and all are correct if they are poetically
musical, logical and individually sincere.” Best of all,
he enlarged the scope for individual expression in
music. Once for all, he got pianoforte music away
from the set form of the classical sonata. “He was
sincere, and his survival when nearly all of Mendelssohn,
much of Schumann, and half of Berlioz have
suffered an eclipse, is proof positive of his vitality.”—Thus
again Huneker. Bie says, in summing up his
position, that his greatness is his aristocracy; that “he
stands among musicians, in his faultless vesture, a
noble from head to foot.” But, above all, he is a searcher
of the human soul, and, because he searched it out on
the pianoforte, is he therefore less great than if he had
drawn it out on the strings, piped it on the reeds, blown
it through the tubes and battered it on the drumheads
of the orchestra?</p>
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<span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_134' name='page_134'></SPAN>134</span>
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