About Liszt's pianoforte technique in general it may be said that it derives its efficiency from the teaching of Czerny, who brought up his pupil on Mozart, a little Bach and Beethoven, a good deal of Clementi and Hummel, and a good deal of his (Czerny's) own work. Classicism in the shape of solid, respectable Hummel on the one hand, and Carl Czerny, a trifle flippant, perhaps, and inclined to appeal to the gallery, on the other, these gave the musical parentage of young Liszt. Then appears the Parisian Incroyable and grand seigneur--"Monsieur Lits," as the Parisians called him. Later, we find him imitating Paganini and Chopin, and at the same time making a really passionate and deep study of Beethoven, Weber, Schubert, Berlioz. Thus gradually was formed the master of style--whose command of the instrument was supreme, and who played like an inspired poet. Liszt's strange musical nature was long in maturing its fruits. At the pianoforte his achievements culminate in the two books of studies, twice rewritten, and finally published in 1852 as _Études d'exécution transcendante_, the _Études de concert_ and the _Paganini Studies_; the two concertos and the _Todtentanz_, the _Sonata in B minor_, the _Hungarian Rhapsodies_ and the fine transcriptions of Beethoven's symphonies (the 9th for two pianofortes as well as solo), and of Berlioz's _Symphonie fantastique_, and the symphony, _Harold en Italie_. In his orchestral pieces of Liszt appears--next to Berlioz--as the most conspicuous and most thorough-going representative of programme music, i.e. instrumental music expressly contrived to illustrate in detail some poem or some succession of ideas or pictures. It was Liszt's aim to bring about a direct alliance or amalgamation of instrumental music with poetry. To effect this he made use of the means of musical expression for purposes of illustration, and relied on points of support outside the pale of music proper. There is always danger of failure when an attempt is thus made to connect instrumental music with conceptions not in themselves musical, for the order of the ideas that serve as a programme is apt to interfere with the order which the musical exposition naturally assumes--and the result in most cases is but an amalgam of irreconcilable materials. In pieces such as Liszt's "Poèmes symphoniques," _Ce qu'on entend sur la montagne_ (1848-1856), after a poem by Victor Hugo, and _Die Ideale_ (1853-1857), after a poem by Schiller, the hearer is bewildered by a series of startling orchestral effects which succeed one another apparently without rhyme or reason. The music does not conform to any sufficiently definite musical plan--it is hardly intelligible as music without reference to the programme. Liszt's masterpiece in orchestral music is the _Dante Symphony_ (1847-1855), the subject of which was particularly well suited to his temperament, and offered good chances for the display of his peculiar powers as a master of instrumental effect.