Emotionally Chopin ranks perhaps as the greatest of composers. In subjective expression and the evocation of mood, apart from specific suggestion by words or ‘program,’ he is supreme. He is by no means merely the dreamy poet which we sometimes carelessly suppose. Nothing can surpass the force and vigor of his Polonaises, or the liveliness of his Mazurkas. In harmony his invention was as inexhaustible as in melody, and later music has borrowed many a progression from him. Indeed, in this respect he was one of the most original of composers. It has been said that in harmony there has been nothing new since Bach save only Chopin, Wagner, and Debussy. But, however radical his progressions may be, they are never awkward. They have that smoothness and that seeming inevitableness which the artist honors with the epithet, ‘perfection.’ Chopin’s genius was wholly for the piano; in the little writing he did for orchestra or other instruments (mostly in connection with piano solo) there is nothing to indicate that music would have been the richer had he departed from his chosen field. In a succeeding chapter more will be said about his music. As to the man himself, it is all in his music. Any biographical detail which we can collect must pale before the Preludes, the Études, and the Polonaises. * * * * * An ‘average music-lover,’ about 1845, being questioned as to whom he thought the greatest living composer, would almost undoubtedly have replied, ‘Mendelssohn.’ For Mendelssohn had just the combination of qualities which at the time could most charm people, giving them enough of the new to interest and enough of the old to avoid disconcerting shocks. Our average music-lover would have gone on to say that Mendelssohn had absorbed all that was good in romantic music--the freshness, the pictorial suggestiveness, the freedom from dry traditionalism--and had synthesized it with the power and clearness of the old forms. Mendelssohn was the one of the romantic composers who was instantly understood. His reputation has diminished steadily in the last half century. One does not say this vindictively, for his polished works are as delightful to-day as ever. But historically he cannot rank for a moment with such men as Liszt, Schumann, or Chopin. When we review the field we discover that he added no single new element to musical expression. His forms were the classical ones, only made flexible enough to hold their romantic content. His harmony, though fresh, was always strictly justified by classical tradition. His instrumentation, charming in the extreme, was only a restrained and tasteful use of resources already known and used. In a history of musical development Mendelssohn deserves no more than passing mention.