series of song-like pieces, which he called “Nocturnes,” and in which he put to special use his longing melodies, his dreamy _portamenti_, his rose-chains of airy colourations. Compared with Chopin’s Nocturnes, these must necessarily appear pale and even monotonous; but in his whole essence, in the form of his pieces, and the delicacy of his touch, Field was a prelude to Chopin--as Dussek or Louis Ferdinand were in their kind. When Chopin once played before Alexander Klengel, Clementi’s pupil, the latter was strongly reminded of Field. And when Chopin, after his arrival in Paris, conceived the idea of taking further lessons under Kalkbrenner, whose delicate playing he admired above everything, the latter likewise thought that the style reminded him of Cramer, but the playing of Field. “Were you Field’s pupil?” he asked. Chopin’s true teacher, the forgotten Elsner of Warsaw, had had no share in it. Chopin had formed his own playing, as he formed his own style. In early years he had a mania for width of stretch, and even invented a device for stretching the fingers. The experiment was fortunately more successful than Schumann’s attempt to increase the independence of the fingers by means of a sling. The difference is noteworthy: Chopin aimed at a richer impression of voluptuous fullness in the chords; Schumann at increased independence of part playing. Chopin, as a sensitive artist, laid special stress on the kind of instrument he used. In his youth he would only willingly play on Graf’s pianos; in Paris only on those of Pleyel, whose silvern muffled tone was specially attractive to him. In those of Erard he thought the tone too insistent. “If I am in a bad humour I play an Erard, and easily find there the tone ready-made. But if I am in the humour, and strong enough to make my own tone, I use a Pleyel.” The fingering, also, he regulates for himself. For the sake of a better execution he never objects to put his thumb on a black key in suitable places, or to glide with one finger over two keys, or to let longer fingers pass over the shorter without using the thumb. In his Études he has expressly written marks for many such naturalistic fingerings.