only those names the most prominent in the several countries,
and more particularly the composers who have distinguished themselves
in pianoforte music, the following seem, on the whole, the most worthy
of our attention:

In Germany--Brahms, Dvorak, Raff, D'Albert, Nicode, Moszkowski, Jensen,
Reinecke, Paderewski, and Scharwenka.

In Russia--Rubinstein, Henselt, Tschaikowsky, Balakirew, Glazounow, and
Karganoff.

In France--Stephen Heller, Saint-Saens, Pierne, Faure, Widor, Guyrand,
and Benoit.

In Scandinavia--Grieg, Gade, Svendsen, Kjerulf, and Meyer-Helmund.

In America--Gottschalk, Mason, Wollenhaupt, Foote, Chadwick, MacDowell,
and others.

CHAPTER II.

BRAHMS.

JOHANNES BRAHMS.

Born at Hamburg, May 7, 1833.
Died at Vienna, April 3, 1897.

In Johannes Brahms we have a musical master of the first order. His
quality as master was shown in his marvelous technic, in which respect
no recent composer is to be mentioned as his superior, if any can be
named, since Bach, as his equal. This technic was at first personal,
at the pianoforte, upon which he was a virtuoso of phenomenal rank; but
this renown, great as it is in well-informed circles, sinks into
insignificance beside his marvelous ability at marshaling musical
periods, elaborating together the most dissimilar and apparently
incompatible subjects, and his powers of varying a given theme and of
ever unfolding from it something new. These wonderful gifts--for such
they were, rather than laboriously acquired attainments--Brahms showed
at the first moment when the light of musical history shines upon him.
It was in 1853, when the Hungarian violinist, Edouard Remenyi, found
him at Hamburg and engaged him as accompanist, and having ascertained
his astonishing talents, brought him, a young man of twenty, to Liszt
at Weimar, with his first trio and certain other compositions in
manuscript. The new talent made a prodigious effect upon Liszt, who
needed not that any one should certify to him whether a composer had
genius or merely talent. And that Brahms on his own part made the
regrettable mistake of falling asleep while Liszt in turn was playing
for him his newly completed sonata for pianoforte, is an incident which
was important only for the moment. The Liszt circle took up the Brahms
cult in earnest, played the trio at the chamber concerts, and the
members, when they departed to their homes, generally carried with them
their admiration o