It is due in very great measure to the example of Paganini’s violin-playing that Liszt at this time, with slow, deliberate toil, created modern piano-playing. The world was struck dumb by the enchantment of the Genoese violinist; men did not trust their ears; something uncanny, inexplicable, ran with this demon of music through the halls. The wonder reached Liszt; he ventured on _his_ instrument to give sound to the unheard of: leaps which none before him had ventured to make, “disjunctions” which no one had hitherto thought could be acoustically united: deep tremolos of fifths, like a dozen kettle-drums, which rushed forth into wild chords; a polyphony which almost employed as a rhythmical element the overtones which destroy harmony; the utmost possible use of the seven octaves in chords set sharply one over another; resolutions of tied notes in unceasing octave graces with harmonies thrown in the midst; an employment hitherto unknown of the interval of the tenth to increase the fulness of tone-colour; a regardless interweaving of highest and lowest notes for purposes of light and shade; the most manifold application of the tone-colours of different octaves for the coloration of the tone-effect; the entirely naturalistic use of the tremolo and the glissando; and above all a perfect systematization of the method of interlacing the hands, partly for the management of runs so as to bring out the colour, partly to gain a doubled power by the division, and partly to attain, by the use of contractions and extensions in the figures, a fulness of orchestral chord-power never hitherto practised. This is the last step possible for the piano in the process of individualisation begun by Hummel and continued by Chopin. The three systems of notes, instead of two, appear more frequently; in fact the two hands appear for the most part to play a group of notes which seem to be conceived for three. And precisely by this means the two hands run inside and through one another, as if they were only a single tool of ten fingers. The music appears again to become a corporate unity of tone, as it had already once been in its first beginnings. But, it has now become, out of a universal music, a music for the piano. An historic mission is fulfilled. [Illustration: Der General Bass wird durch List in seinen festen Linien überrumpelt u überwunden. “General” Bass surprised and overcome in his fortress by Liszt. (_List_ means craft, or stratagem. Observe Liszt’s wings, _flügel_, which word also means grand piano. General or “thorough” Bass is a personification of the “classical” school.)] [Illustration: Liszt and Stavenhagen.]