Several points in this manifesto are of importance in indicating what four years of revolutionary Paris had made of Liszt the artist. Though primarily a virtuoso, Liszt had been raised above the mere vain delight of exciting admiration in the crowd. He had made up his mind to become a creative artist with all his powers. He had asserted the artist’s right to do his own thinking, to be a man in any way he saw fit. He had accepted as gospel the romanticist creed that rules must be broken whenever artistic expression demands it and had imbibed to the full the literary and romantic imagery of the school. He had linked up his virtuoso’s sense of the crowd with the only thing that could redeem it and make it an art--the human being’s sense of democracy. And he had outlined with great accuracy (so far as his form of speech allowed) the nature of the music which he was later to compose. We can nowhere find a better description of the music of Liszt at its best than Liszt’s own description of the future ‘humanitarian’ music--which partakes ‘in the largest possible proportions of the characteristics of both the theatre and the church--dramatic and holy, splendid and simple, solemn and serious, fiery, stormy, and calm.’ In this democracy Liszt the virtuoso and Liszt the Catholic find at last their synthesis. How many purely musical influences operated upon Liszt in these years it is hard to say. We know that he felt the message of Meyerbeer and Rossini (such as it was) and raised it to its noblest form in his symphonic poems--the message of magnificence and high romance. But it is fair to say, also, that he appreciated at its true value every sort of music that came within his range of vision--Schubert’s songs, Chopin’s exquisite pianistic traceries, Beethoven’s symphonies, and the fashionable Italian operas of the day. He arranged an astonishing number and variety of works for the piano, catching with wizard-like certainty the essential beauties of each. But probably the most profound musical influence was that of Berlioz, who seemed the very incarnation of the spirit of 1830. Berlioz’s partial freeing of the symphonic form, his radical harmony, and, most of all, his use of the _idée fixe_ or representative melody (which Liszt later developed in his symphonic poems) powerfully impressed Liszt and came to full fruit ten years later. One more influence must be recorded for Liszt’s early Parisian years. It was that of Paganini, who made his first appearance at the capital in 1831. Here was the virtuoso pure and simple. He excited Liszt’s highest admiration and stimulated him to do for the piano what Paganini had done for the violin. In 1826 Liszt had published his first études, showing all that was most characteristic in his piano technique at that time. After Paganini had stormed Paris he arranged some of the violinist’s études for the piano, and the advance in piano technique shown between these and the earlier studies is marked.