The pianoforte naturally attracted intelligent musicians of all grades because it seemed to place the whole of music within the grasp of two hands. Singing came to be regarded as something almost vulgar, the more so since nature has not always distributed voices and brains in equal proportions. As the ethical view of music deepened, musicians of serious intention turned more to the stringed instruments than to the human voice. The instruments could do so much more, they could run about faster, they had in practice a cleaner accuracy of intonation and a more extended compass. It was easy to forget that after all they were nothing more than instruments, and indeed the very fact that they were instruments seemed to give them a magical character that appealed mysteriously to the romantic mind. XI Professor Weissmann has well pointed out that in the romantic days the orchestra dominated music because it was made to represent the unseen supernatural forces against which mere humanity struggled in vain. And the orchestra appealed to many sides of human temperament. It was the appropriate instrument of an age of machinery, and mechanical invention rapidly increased its powers. It appealed to the megalomania of certain types of genius, as well as to the philosophical worshipper of the infinite. It appealed to the plain man by its discipline, by its presentation of a number of nameless individuals doing the same thing at the same moment, and in later days――now, perhaps, more than ever before――by the sight of this huge force controlled and directed by the apparent inspiration of the _virtuoso_ conductor. The great singers, the few who have reached the highest summits of fame, have always wielded an incomparable power over their hearers. But that very element of personality which gives the supreme singer his greatness distracts the listener on any level but the highest. Personality is a capricious thing, and in singing, more than in any other form of music, the listener’s judgment is liable to be distorted by temperamental considerations which have nothing to do with art. In the case of the instrumentalist they can be more easily set aside. Personality is what human nature values more than anything else in the artist. We see it at its plainest when a singer faces an unsophisticated public; when the public is less simple-minded and inexperienced, when the music put before it is less direct and immediate in its expression, the judgment of personality may be misleading, and may easily mislead artistic judgment. A vigorous personality may delude the public into accepting bad music as good; certain types of music, on the other hand, may falsify the judgment of personality. These statements represent merely the obvious extremes; what must be remembered is that this interaction may vary subtly from moment to moment even during the course of one piece of music.