hands which introduce the final _point d’orgue_ (four bars in strict tempo); all these are commonplaces of Hummel’s style, and are of interest as an illustration of the fashionable music of the time. [Illustration: A Canonic Impromptu, by J. N. Hummel, from the original edition of his Pianoforte School.] The concerto pieces of Hummel stand in respect of intrinsic value below the solo pieces. His great concerto fantasia, “Oberon’s Magic Horn,” is a banal piece of bravura with artistic references to Oberon. The part of it demanding most execution is the great storm with its thunder and lightning on the piano--a somewhat different performance from the tame storm in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book. But the solo pieces also are of unequal merit. Fashionable compositions, like the Polonaise “La Bella Capricciosa,” which was then eagerly heard, are no longer tolerated. Hummel at his best, as we know him in his immortal Sextet, lives in certain delicate turns, such as are common enough in Wagner’s earlier operas, but were then a style of the time, making use of the melody both of Mozart and of modern days. The better Hummel is also seen in certain Schumann-like movements, full of fire and feeling, such as the fresh pulsating Scherzo “all’antico” of Sonata Op. 106, or the concluding movement of Fantasia Op. 18. Perhaps the Bagatelles (Op. 107) are his most interesting clavier-piece. Even to-day they show no sign of age; there is not a dead note in them. In them the pupil of Mozart is seen in the dainty melodic lines, such as an Audran has revived in our day; but the forerunner of Liszt is equally visible. In the last Bagatelle, the “Rondo all’Ongarese,” he stands precisely between the two epochs. The true spirit of nationality, as Dussek so happily applied it in his sonatas, mingles with classical reminiscences, as the concluding phrase clearly shows. Fugato episodes, derived from tradition, are interwoven with surprising anticipations of that method of variation which works by diatonic movement--a method very familiar to us from Liszt’s Rhapsodies. Hummel then is a kind of Janus. [Illustration: Czerny. Lithograph by Kriehuber, 1833.]