and directly after him came Schumann, with a luxuriant succession of
deeply moved, imaginative, _quasi_-descriptive, or at any rate
_representative_, pianoforte pieces. Schumann, indeed, did not need to
read a poem in order to find musical ideas flowing in unaccustomed
channels. The ideas took these forms and channels of their own accord,
as we see in his very first pieces, his "_Papillons_," "_Intermezzi_,"
"_Davidsbundlertaenze_" and the like. So, too, with Chopin. There is
very little of the descriptive and the picture-making element in his
works. Nevertheless, they chimed in so well with the unrest, the
somewhat Byronic sentiment, the vague yearning of the period, that
they found a public without loss of time, and established themselves
in the popular taste without having had to find a propaganda movement
for explaining them as the foretokens of a "music of the future."

This representative work in music has been very much helped by the
astonishing development of virtuosity upon the violin, the pianoforte
and other instruments, which distinguishes this century. Beginning
with Paganini, whose astonishing violin playing was first heard during
the last years of the eighteenth century, we have Thalberg, Chopin,
Liszt, Rubinstein, Joachim, Tausig, Leonard, and a multitude of
others, through whose efforts the general appreciation of instrumental
music has been wonderfully stimulated, and the appetite for overcoming
difficulties and realizing great effects so much increased as to have
permanently elevated the standard of complication in musical
discourse, and the popular average of performance.

Nor has virtuosity been confined to single instruments. There have
been two great virtuosi in orchestration, during this century, who
have exercised as great an influence in this complicated and elaborate
department, as the others mentioned have upon their own solo
instruments. The first of these was Hector Berlioz, the great French
master, whose earlier compositions were produced in 1835, when the
instruments of the orchestra were combined in vast masses, and with
descriptive intention, far beyond anything by previous writers. In his
later works, such as the "Damnation of Faust," and the mighty Requiem,
Berlioz far surpassed these efforts, every one of his effects
afterward proving to have been well calculated. Directly after his
early works came the first of that much discussed genius, Richard
Wagner, who besides being one of