The piano follows the lines of the time, which pursues technical purity in all things. In the representative arts certain styles were long seen to predominate, which for limited periods were indifferently transferred to all objects without respect to matter or aim. Renaissance, Gothic, antique, exhibit their churches, their tombs, their doors, their tables, their cupboards, their keys, whether they are bosses or reliefs, marbles or bronzes. In our century technique begins to speak its first word: a chair is to be a chair; a carpet shall be constructed with a view to the aim of carpets; a vase must speak in accordance with the material of vases; and painting must in the first instance be painting. A cupboard is not an entrance to a temple; a table leg not a statue. These are intrusions which art has not often experienced in its history. With music the case was not dissimilar. The fugal style ruled once so mightily that it drew church, dance, salon, fantasia, tune, all indifferently, under its sway. The good fugue was a good tune, and the best tune could only be expressed in contrapuntal form. Now, however, the emancipation had taken place. The organ no longer worked necessarily along with the piano, nor the song with the violin; and the orchestra became conscious of its power as a totality. What the Venetians had once timidly begun was now carried into actual fact; and the artistic form of the étude was the seal of this individualising process. The much-praised Paganini had no longer, like Corelli, to prompt the piano, as far as its content was concerned, from the violin outwardly. Paganini-études, by Schumann, were strict piano-pieces, which as far as form went borrowed nothing from Paganini, and in matter only a groundwork of notes. They strive towards the brilliancy of Paganini’s execution--that astonishing, spiritual technique, which aroused so wonderfully the emulation of a Liszt. And in turn there passed from the piano the brilliancy of a technique which inspired the orchestra to its own special triumphs. The “Queen Mab,” the “Mephistopheles,” the “Feuer-Zauber,” and the “Valkyries’ Ride” did not need to envy the piano. Yet without the fame of the Étude they would never have been so brilliant. [Illustration: Clementi. Engraved by Neidl after Hardy.] We are now coming nearer the personalities themselves. It is no long stride from the virtuosos to the romantic writers; the latter are only to be explained by reference to the former. We pass slowly from the domain of pure virtuosity to that of compositions of deeper meaning; from the realm of the teacher to that of the poet; from piano purism to the longing after poetic interdependence; from the noise of concerts to the intimate retirement of the home.