the ends
proposed by both were substantially identical, and the genius of both
incontestable. Berlioz had no confidence in Wagner's "endless melody,"
and when he writes about music he does so in the attitude of a humble
follower of the old masters.

III.

The progress in piano playing, in the course of the nineteenth century
has been most extraordinary. The music of Beethoven and Schubert,
composed during the first quarter of this century, and the influence
of the virtuosi prominent during that time, whose activity has been
told in connection with those of the century previous (the operative
principles of which were the ones mainly influencing them); and the
continual strife of the piano makers to increase the resonance,
singing quality and artistic susceptibility of the tone and the
strength and elasticity of the action, as recounted in the
chapter devoted to the history of this, the greatest of modern
instruments--were concentrating influences having the effect of
calling attention to the new instrument in a very remarkable manner.
Add to these causes the meteor-like appearance of Paganini, with his
stupendous execution upon the violin, and its novel possibilities. All
these together seem to have led four gifted geniuses at about the same
time to make independent investigations into the tonal possibilities
of the piano, and the mode of producing effects upon it, in the hope
of creating a new art, and of rivaling the weird successes of the
highly gifted Italian, who apparently had exhausted the possibilities
of the violin. The artists thus occupied in developing the art of
piano playing were Chopin, Liszt, Thalberg and Schumann, and it is far
from easy to determine exactly which one it was who first brought his
influence to bear upon the public; or which one it was who first
arrived at the successful application of the principles of the new
technique, whose essential divergences from the old consisted in a
more flexible use of the fingers, hand and arm, and the co-operation
of the foot for the promotion of blending, and of bringing into
simultaneous use the tonal resources from all parts of the instrument.
In this case, as in so many others of remarkable invention, the
improvements seem to have been made by several independent
investigators acting simultaneously, each one ignorant of the work of
the others. The impulse in the direction of greater freedom had
already found expression in the pianoforte pieces of the