The index to Cramer’s works does not look promising. The Variations, Impromptus, Rondos, Divertissements; the Victory of Kutusoff; the Two Styles, ancient and modern; the Rendezvous à la Chasse; un jour de Printemps; Hors d’œuvre, grande sonate dans le style de Clementi; or the combined composition, in the fashion of the time, by Cramer, Hummel, Kalkbrenner and Moscheles, of variations on Rule Britannia--all these are equally unattractive. The hundred and five sonatas are almost unknown. Cramer’s importance lies entirely in his Études, which have been frequently reprinted and arranged. Of the various editions the finest is Pauer’s English “édition de luxe,” which is adorned with a fine engraving of Cramer. Here he is all genius and sensibility. The somewhat highly-coloured nose, on which he himself used to jest, attracts no notice in the portrait. “It was Bacchus who put his thumb there,” he would say; “ce diable de Bacchus!” The whole delicate spirit of Cramer breathes in these Études, which to-day are unforgotten and unsurpassed in their kind. Their instructive value lies in the isolation of the technical exercise, which is made less exacting by skilful introduction of contrary motion at the proper point, while the most noble musical forms mount up from them. They are pieces full of character, and without titles, to be heartily reverenced. On the other hand “Cramer’s Pianoforte School,” which went through countless editions in his own time, has now become useless. The most noteworthy thing we find in it is a preface on preludes and codas, which, unlike Clementi’s, does not simply copy the approved models, but sets forth theoretically a series of “styles” in such improvisations, from the simplest chords to melodic development. In the period of public improvisations such instructions were not without their use. Preluding is still a “style” with us; codas we excuse ourselves. But in those days a player saw nothing out of place in the direct connection of such free inventions with the piece before him. And Cramer was still old-fashioned enough not to object to interweave with pieces of Mozart all kinds of flourishes--often, as Moscheles assures us, trivial indeed. Over against Clementi, the genius of teaching, and Cramer, the genius of technique, stands Hummel as the inventor of the modern piano-exercise. Dussek had already, by his unusually full collection of exercises, accustomed the public ear to the new state of things; but Hummel brought the charm of the pianoforte and the effects of the seven octaves within the reach of all. What our amateurs, from the days of Chopin, know so well, that full and satisfying tone, that blazing colouration, is all in Hummel.