As a great pianist, a composer of original conceptions, a magnetic conductor, an influential teacher, an intelligent writer on musical subjects and a devoted promoter of the interests of art, he stands out in bold relief, one of the grand figures in the history of music. His piano paraphrases and transcriptions are poetic re-settings of tone-creations he had thoroughly assimilated and made his own. In his original works, which Saint-Saens was perhaps the first to appreciate, students are now beginning to discover the ripe fruits of his genius. Faithful ones among the pupils who flocked about him in classic Weimar spread wide his influence, but also much harm was done in his name by charlatans who, calling themselves Liszt pupils, cast broadcast the fallacy that piano pounding was genuine pianistic power. Large hearted, liberal minded, whole souled in his devotion to his art and its true interests, Franz Liszt seemed wholly without personal jealousies, and befriended and brought into public notice a large number of artists. Hector Berlioz declared that to him belonged "the sincere admiration of earnest minds, as well as the involuntary homage of the envious." At the opening of the Baireuth Temple of German Art, in 1876, Richard Wagner paid him this tribute in the midst of a joyful company: "Here is one who first gave me faith in my work when no one knew anything of me. But for him, my dear friend, Franz Liszt, you might not have had a note from me to-day." A rival of Liszt in the concert field, especially before a Parisian public, was Sigismund Thalberg (1812-1871), who visited this country in 1855 and literally popularized the piano in America. Alfred Jaell and Henri Herz, who had preceded him, doubtless prepared the way for his triumphs. He and the "Creole Chopin," Louis Moreau Gottschalk, attracted much attention by several joint appearances in our musical centres of the time. Thalberg was a pupil of Hummel, and felt the influence of his teacher's cold, severely classic style. He possessed a well-trained, fascinating mechanism, with scales, chords, arpeggios and octaves that were marvels of neatness and accuracy, and a tone that was mellow and liquid, though lacking in warmth. His operatic transcriptions, in which a central melody is enfolded in arabesques, chords and running passages, have long since become antiquated, but his art of singing on the piano and many of his original studies still remain valuable to the pianist. When Liszt and Thalberg were in possession of the concert platform, they occupied the attention of cartoonists as fully as Paderewski at a later date. Liszt, his hair floating wildly, was represented as darting through the air on wide-stretched pinions with keyboards attached--a play on Fluegel, the German for grand piano. Thalberg, owing to his dignified repose, was caricatured as posing in a stiff, rigid manner before a box of keys.