In her efforts to win appreciation for her husband, Clara was nobly assisted by Liszt. Just like Wagner, Schumann was not at first very favorably impressed with Liszt, owing to the sensational flavor of his early performances. But he soon changed his mind, especially when Liszt played some of his (Schumann's) compositions. "Many things were different from my conception of them, but always '_genial_,' and marked by a tenderness and boldness of expression which even he presumably has not at his command every day. Becker was the only other person present, and he had tears in his eyes." And two days later: "But I must tell you that Liszt appears to me grander every day. This morning he again played at Raimund Haertel's, in a way to make us all tremble and rejoice, some etudes of Chopin, a number of the Rossini soirees, and other things." Of other contemporary pianists Hummel, "ten years behind the time," and Thalberg, whom he liked better as pianist than as composer, are alluded to. Yet he writes in 1830 that he intends going to Weimar, "for the sly reason of being able to _call myself_ a pupil of Hummel." Wieck, his father-in-law, he esteemed greatly as teacher and adviser, but it offended him deeply that Wieck should have followed the common error of estimating genius with a yard-stick, and asked where were his "Don Juan" and his "Freischuetz?" His enthusiasm for Schubert, Chopin, and especially for Bach, finds frequent expression. Bach's "Well-Tempered Clavichord" he declares is his "grammar, and the best of all grammars. The fugues I have analyzed successively to the minutest details; the advantage resulting from this is great, and has a morally bracing effect on the whole system, for Bach was a man through and through; in him there is nothing done by halves, nothing morbid, but all is written for time eternal." Six years later: "Bach is my daily bread; from him I derive gratification and get new ideas--'compared with him we are all children,' Beethoven has said, I believe." One day a caller remarked that Bach was old and wrote in old-fashioned manner: "But I told him he was neither old nor new, but much more than that, namely, eternal. I came near losing my temper." Concerning the unappreciative Mendelssohn, he writes to Clara: "I am told that he is not well disposed toward me. I should feel sorry if that were true, since I am conscious of having preserved noble sentiments toward him. If you know anything let me hear it on occasion; that will at least make me cautious, and I do not wish to squander anything where I am ill-spoken of. Concerning my relations toward him as a musician [1838], I am quite aware that I could learn of him for years; but he, too, some things of me. Brought up under similar circumstances, destined for music from childhood, I would surpass you all--that I feel from the energy of my inventive powers."