ceptions.

"I should like to be to my people what Uhland was to the Germans," he
once said to a friend. He addressed himself to the heart of this people
and immortalized its joys, sorrows and caprices by the force of his
splendid art. Those who have attempted to interpret him as the
sentimental hero of minor moods, the tone-poet in whom the weakness of
despair predominates, have missed the leaping flames, the vivid
intensity and the heroic manliness permeated with genuine love of beauty
that animated him. True art softens the harshest accents of suffering by
placing superior to it some elevating idea. So in the most melancholy
strains of his music one who heeds well may detect the presence of a
lofty ideal that uplifts and strengthens the travailing soul. It has
been said of him that he had a sad heart but a joyful mind.

The two teachers of Chopin were Adalbert Zwyny, a Bohemian violinist,
who taught the piano, and Joseph Elsner, a violinist, organist and
theorist. "From Zwyny and Elsner even the greatest dunce must learn
something," he is quoted as saying. Neither of these men attempted to
hamper his free growth by rigid technical restraints. Their guidance
left him master of his own genius, at liberty to "soar like the lark
into the ethereal blue of the skies." He respected them both. A revering
affection was cherished by him for Elsner, to whom he owed his sense of
personal responsibility to his art, his habits of serious study and his
intimate acquaintance with Bach.

There is food for thought in the fact that this Prince Charming of the
piano, whose magic touch awakened the Sleeping Beauty of the instrument
of wood and wires, never had a lesson in his life from a mere piano
specialist. Liszt once said Chopin was the only pianist he ever knew
that could play the violin on the piano. If he could do so it was
because he had harkened to the voice of the violin and resolved to show
that the piano, too, could produce thrilling effects. In the same way he
had listened to the human voice, and determined that the song of his own
instrument should be heard. Those who give ear to the piano alone will
never learn the secret of calling forth its supreme eloquence.

We can see and hear this "Raphael of Music" at the piano, so many and so
eloquent have been the descriptions given of his playing. It is easy to
fancy him sweeping the ivory keys with his gossamer touch that enveloped
with ethereal beauty the most unaccustomed of