Liszt went to hear Paganini: "Charmed, stunned, yet seeing clearly at the same time, he could have cried out for sorrow and exultation. This playing! it was the vision of his soul, after which he had sought and grasped and yet could never find or seize. Now here he felt it realised before him. With kindling power it seized his artistic will. Until then Liszt had groped and sought without any conscious aim; following the hidden impulse of his spirit, he had given place to all kinds of whims.... Now, all at once, he was led by Paganini into fixed paths and the lost thread of his development was found again. By Paganini's playing the veil had been torn away which lay between him and his artistic will.... Paganini's playing had fanned the Promethean spark of his genius to a brilliant flame. That for which the poets of the time strove in their literary productions--freedom of form and of subject--he saw here in the domain of reproducing music. With all this the serious defects and onesidedness of the great violinist's capabilities and genius did not escape the youthful pianist. He measured him by the ideals of artistic culture which shone before his own eyes.... He recognised plainly the limits of the influence which Paganini exercised over him, and saw how human was the mission of the artist--a consciousness was awakened that _artistic culture is inseparable from human sympathies, that only a great man can become a great artist_. This conviction drew from his lips the proud but noble words 'Génie oblige.'[42] With indescribable eagerness, and at the same time with exulting triumph, Liszt, after having heard Paganini, turned again to his instrument. He was seldom seen; in public, as a pianist, never. His mother alone was the silent witness of his perseverance and restless working. As Wieland, he hammered at his piano. He, who, already as a boy, had climbed the Parnassus of study, now sat at the instrument often six hours a day and practised; yes, he exercised the language of his spirit, and created for it an organ of expression." The author then goes on to describe the new ideas that came to Liszt when studying the Twenty-four Capricii of Paganini, and how he discovered new combinations, and also that the hand of the pianist had yet much to learn. "With this perception a bridge was built to new technical triumphs in the art of pianoforte playing.... On the one hand he increased the beauty and breadth of sound of this instrument in a marvellous degree, while on the other, he gave at the same time a fatal blow to the modern pianoforte music of his day. This was the new discovery which Liszt made through Paganini, and on the foundation of which he has created an extension of the arena of sound.... Thus Paganini's capriccios gave Liszt the first impulse towards the modern system for the pianoforte, and at the same time prompted him to enter on the territory till then unknown of transferring effects."[43]