ful technique, in which scales of marvelous
fluency, lightness, clearness and equality, intervened between chord
passages of great breadth and sonority, so that all the resources of
the piano were open to him. But his specialty was that of carrying a
melody in the middle of the piano, playing it by means of the two
thumbs alternately, the other hand being occupied in runs and passages
covering the whole compass of the piano, crossing the melody from
below, or descending upon it from the highest regions of the treble,
and continuing down the keyboard with perfect equality and lightness,
without in the slightest degree disturbing the singing of the melody.
This, of its own accord, went on in the most artistic manner, as if
the pianist had nothing at all else to do than to _sing_ it. The
perfection of Thalberg's melody playing was something wonderful, as
well it might be; for in order to master the art of it, he studied
singing for five years with one of the best teachers of the Italian
school, the eminent Garcia. This, however, was later, after he had
located in Paris.

This trick of treating the melody was not new with Thalberg. It had
previously been done upon the harp by the great Welsh virtuoso, Parish
Alvars (1808-1849), whose European reputation had been acquired by a
succession of great concert tours, and who at length closed his days
in Vienna, where Thalberg lived. There was also an Italian master,
Giuseppe Francesco Pollini (1763-1846), who in 1809 became professor
of the piano in the Conservatory of Milan. Pollini had been a pupil of
Mozart, and dedicated to that great master his first work. Early after
being appointed professor he published a great school for the
pianoforte (1811), in which the art is fully discussed in all its
bearings, and minute directions given for touch and all the rest
appertaining to a concert treatment of the instrument. He was the
first to write piano pieces upon three staves, the middle one being
devoted to the melody; a proceeding afterward followed in some cases
by Liszt and Thalberg. Pollini surrounded his melodies, thus placed in
the middle of the instrument, where at that time the sonority and
singing quality of the pianoforte exclusively lay, with runs and
passages of a brilliant and highly ingenious kind. This was done in
his "_Una de 32 Esercizi in Forma di Toccata_," but he had already, in
1801, published several brilliant pieces in Paris, in which novelties
occur. I have n