Thus by the combined efforts of all these composers, of Schubert no less than of the three great masters of whom we are more particularly speaking, the symphony came to its full expression. In their relation to the sonata, these three great masters do not stand in the same position of _quasi_-equality. Haydn is here the first, as already in the symphony. But in his sonatas he is always rather hampered, and never attains the flow of his slow melodies for the violin. Mozart, also, while a beautiful player upon the pianoforte of his day, did not possess the prescience of Beethoven, who was able to see over the pianoforte of his time and write as if he felt the assurance of the nobler and yet nobler instruments of these later times. Here he stands with Bach, who in his great Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue requires and confidently expects the breadth of tone and the power of the modern piano. It was Beethoven's fortune to live during the early days of the modern instrument. Just after his death the era of virtuoso piano playing began, the first appearances of Thalberg having been made as early as about 1830. He was himself a great pianist, as we see in the concertos which he wrote, always intending to play them at some concert or other in near prospect. Occasionally indeed he overshot his mark, as notably in the fifth, which, being finished just before his concert in 1809, he found too difficult for his fingers, whereupon he was obliged to fall back on the third. Moreover, the pianists Hummel and Dussek were already before the public, and Clementi had made his concert tours, and established the lines of the classical technique upon its brilliant side. All these influences find their illustration in the music of Beethoven, and especially find illustration in the last and greatest of his pianoforte sonatas. These beautiful tone poems were long regarded as impossible. But the genius of Schumann and Liszt came to their rescue by introducing a new style of touch and technique, which, when once found, proved to be the link missing for the proper interpretation of these till then obscure works.