whereupon the
salesman, discovering that he had a Schumann enthusiast to deal with,
took advantage of the moment and in the cellar showed him whole
editions of Schumann pianoforte pieces tied up in bundles, exactly as
they had come from the printers. Liszt in some of his earlier concerts
attempted to patronize the Schumann compositions. Their style,
however, was so different from the sensationalism of his own pieces or
the sentiment of Chopin, that the public failed to appreciate them,
and the pianist dropped them. Nevertheless, there were reasons why
Liszt ought to have played these works. The Schumann technique is not
sensational, like that of Liszt, but it has with it one element in
common, already referred to--the pedal legato--and no pianist of that
time was so well prepared to recognize and interpret this element as
Liszt if he had realized his opportunity.

[Illustration: Fig. 87.

ROBERT SCHUMANN.]

In person Schumann was of medium height, inclining to corpulency, with
a very soft and gentle walk and a most invincible habit of silence.
Old residents of Leipsic remember his visits to the rehearsals at the
_Gewandhaus_, where for a whole evening he would sit with his
handkerchief held over his mouth, never speaking a word to any one
from the beginning to the end, and going away as silently as he came.
Nevertheless, it was universally recognized that upon these occasions
Schumann heartily enjoyed himself, and to use his own words again, he
and the music "perfectly understood one another." His mind was
intensely active and fanciful. This is seen in all his pieces. The
rapidity of the musical thought, the strong contrasts of mood, the
proximity of remote chords and modulations, are all indications of
this mental trait. It was this, also, which finally destroyed him. His
mind became unbalanced, and after intermittent attacks of melancholy
his life ended with two years' almost entire oblivion of reason. In
spite of his comparative unpopularity in his own day, no one of the
romantic masters has left so strong an impression upon the composers
who came after him. In my opinion, the four great names which have
been most operative in establishing forms of musical thought and in
creating wholly original and highly poetic and masterly tone-poems by
means of those forms, are Bach, Beethoven, Schumann and Wagner, and
each one of the earlier masters has in his work the prophecy of most
of the qualities of those who come afte