less pedal, clearly, staccato, with spirit and vigour; Beethoven and Ries characteristically, passionately, melodiously, with a view to the _tout ensemble_; Hummel, Meyerbeer, and Moscheles brilliantly, rapidly, and gracefully, with definition in the proper parts, and intelligent but elegant declamation. Thalberg, Liszt, and Chopin, the great innovators, form a class apart. Czerny’s astonishing genius for instruction embraces the whole field of the clavier, with a many-sided capacity that seems almost more than human. A greater teacher there never was than he. He gathers all into his net, even the works of his own pupils; he practises everything, even setting it for three or four pianos; he arranges everything, even isolated passages of great masters; he composes everything, even penny variations and Chinese rondos. In Kalkbrenner we see the lowest type of the time. Externally a fine gentleman and artistic man of the world, he is inwardly hollow and vapid. It is hard even to give an idea of this extreme emptiness; but it is well illustrated in such a piece as the “Charmes de Berlin.” This great virtuoso won his triumphs in the worst kinds of salon-music as well as with all sorts of Études, Concertos, and Sonatas. Le Rêve, Le Fou, La Solitude, Dernières Pensées Musicales, La Mélancolie et La Gaité, La Brigantine, are some of these detestable compositions. But his opera fantasias touch the very nadir. Here a sort of sanction is given to an utter want of taste. After largo introductions, full of feeling, he slices favourite melodies into passages, till the contour of the air is utterly destroyed, and the commonest cadenzas are flung higgledy-piggledy into their artistic forms, and so we rush off into a sweep-dance. The fantasia, once the freest outcome of the musical soul, becomes a wretched conglomeration of fragments of Études. Kalkbrenner once remarked, as Ferdinand Hiller tells us, “Ze Tance is a tream, a referie; it begins with lofe, _passion_, despair, and it ends wid a military march.” The story is true enough. [Illustration: Lithograph by Eichens, after Vogel, 1825.]