-namely, Theodor Dohler.
Chopin, who went to hear him play some compositions of his master's at
the theatre, does not allude to him again after the concert; but if
he foresaw what a position as a pianist and composer he himself was
destined to occupy, he could not suspect that this lad of seventeen
would some day be held up to the Parisian public by a hostile clique as
a rival equalling and even surpassing his peculiar excellences. By the
way, the notion of anyone playing compositions of Czerny's at a
concert cannot but strangely tickle the fancy of a musician who has the
privilege of living in the latter part of the nineteenth century.

Besides the young pianists with a great future before them Chopin came
also in contact with aging pianists with a great past behind them.
Hummel, accompanied by his son, called on him in the latter part of
December, 1830, and was extraordinarily polite. In April, 1831, the two
pianists, the setting and the rising star, were together at the villa
of Dr. Malfatti. Chopin informed his master, Elsner, for whose masses he
was in quest of a publisher, that Haslinger was publishing the last mass
of Hummel, and added:-- For he now lives only by and for Hummel.

It is rumoured that
the last compositions of Hummel do not sell well, and yet he
is said to have paid a high price for them. Therefore he now
lays all MSS. aside, and prints only Strauss's waltzes.

Unfortunately there is not a word which betrays Chopin's opinion of
Hummel's playing and compositions. We are more fortunate in the case of
another celebrity, one, however, of a much lower order. In one of the
prosaic intervals, of the sentimental rhapsody, indited on December 25,
1830, there occur the following remarks:--

The pianist Aloys Schmitt of Frankfort-on-the-Main, famous
for his excellent studies, is at present here; he is a man
above forty. I have made his acquaintance; he promised to
visit me. He intends to give a concert here, and one must
admit that he is a clever musician. I think we shall
understand each other with regard to music.

Having looked at this picture, let the reader look also at this other,
dashed off a month later in a letter to Elsner:--

The pianist Aloys Schmitt has been flipped on the nose by the
critics, although he is already over forty years old, and
composes eighty-years-old music.

From the contemporary journals we learn that, at the concert mentioned
by Ch