History shows that the piano only flourishes in a pronounced opposition to the opera, which is the other extreme, the triumph of all arts united. The opera seeks to realise the impossible; it calls into requisition a whole world of forces in order to grasp in a sensuous manner the heights of life. It forms a Titanic resolve to build mountains out of sand; an intoxication, an extraordinary consciousness of victory, gives wings to this most daring of experiments. A great man once appeared, who made Dionysus his lord, and sought to win from the stage a mirror of the world and worldly honour. We stand on the fair ruins of his splendid failure. We have been instructed, we have been elevated; but the tragedy of the theatre is too deep. Then come the hours in which we flee to the household-ingle of chamber-music, and strive to disentangle its enlacing lines, in which we see the whole of life included, since it depicts itself without the need of foreign aid. The piano will further be the central point of this introspection. Let us have no concertos, in which this delicate instrument is dragged before the crowd and has to fight a duel with the orchestra. All beautiful compositions notwithstanding, the piano is no concerto-instrument. In concertos the delicate ear is outraged. The piano will not adapt itself for new ideas in the hall, in the midst of virtuosity, or against the orchestra. It must become chaste; it must turn in faith to Bach’s Wohltemperiertes Klavier, the Old Testament, as Bülow called it, of the musician’s creed, and to Beethoven’s Sonatas, the New. It is noteworthy that in Schytte’s “Silhouettes,” or Variations on the same theme in the different styles of various Masters, he nowhere fails so badly as with Bach, who is marked by retardations in the middle voices, or with Beethoven, who is characterised by gloomy rhythm. The true path seems to have been lost. The line through Bach, Beethoven, Schumann, and Brahms, is the only safe line for the piano; and it is the line in music furthest removed from the opera. In those great natures, whether they knew it or not, was a strong repugnance to the opera; and Brahms, whose eulogists said he was the last of his race, will perhaps one day be viewed as the connecting link between the old and a new musical culture. It is in chamber-music alone that we have the right to look for great triumphs in the immediate future; triumphs of which Klinger’s “Radierungen,” Brahms’s “Clarinet Quintet” or Smetana’s “Aus Meinem Leben,” are at once the anticipation and the guarantee. It is for our children to see to it that the great traditions of the past are not forgotten; and that the building which it will fall to them to erect is not unworthy of its foundation. [Illustration]