introductory adagio as a dialogue, the brilliant advance from the ravishing waltz to Bacchanalian tumult the pure and not virtuoso-like colouring, which rests on this happy invention, raise the work far above all that is merely fashionable. [Illustration: Moscheles in his youth.] The true man of the transition is Moscheles--double-souled, with his concessions to modishness on the one side, and on the other his wealth of invention and his musical intensity. He was born out of due time. He ought to have left virtuosity behind him, in order to be able to give full play to his characteristic, not undramatic, and broad-lined art. To-day he is almost forgotten; no opera, as in Weber’s case, preserved his fame to our times. But his works more than repay study; if our pianists would once again take up his C major concerto, they would be amazed. [Illustration: Moscheles, later, 1859.] In his youth he composed Variations on the Alexander March, with which he was compelled, much against his will, when a ripe composer, to dazzle the world. It was one of the most popular of concert pieces. It is not true that in later years he altered his style and wrote more soberly. His very sober Melancholy Sonata (Op. 49), written fairly early, in one movement, with its charming accompaniment figure, reminds us of the Parsifal tremoli. And on the other hand, a later work, the Danish, Scotch, and Irish Fantasias (this latter on the Last Rose of Summer), are _pot-pourris_ in full modish style. What would the Virginal Book composers of English and Scotch folk-songs have said to these variations? In order to avoid the fashionable appearance, several movements are even written in various tempi, as in a sonata. In his A flat minor Ballade, on the contrary, he has with astonishing dramatic force struck the legendary tone in a free and genuine manner, in a sort of romantic rondo. Moscheles, who was the first master to arrange for piano an orchestral score by another writer (that of the Fidelio, by commission from Beethoven), was unable to escape the operatic rechauffées of the time. His speciality was the putting together of different operatic airs, which formed the favourite repertoire of a singer. He wrote such fantasias on the favourite pieces of Pasta, Henriette Sonntag, Jenny Lind, and Malibran. They are commonplace enough. Yet this same Malibran, after her sudden death, he honoured in an “Hommage,” which was one of his finest pieces. There is in it an unearthly power of invention, a dramatic life, as if drawn from the stage; spirit breathes in every bar; and the interest is sustained to the final sorrowfully rising cross-passages, which strangely forebode the longings of Tristan for the sea.