meanings of an opera better than the conductors and singers of the day did. As Liszt travelled about the world on his triumphal tours, or sojourned in the company of the Countess d’Agoult in Switzerland, he sought to confide his impressions to his piano. These impressions were published in the two volumes of the ‘Years of Pilgrimage,’ poetic musical pictures in the idiom of pianistic virtuosity. The first of these pieces was written to picture the uprising of the workmen in Lyons, following the Paris revolution of 1830. Thereafter came impressions of every sort. The chapel of William Tell, the Lake of Wallenstein, the dances of Venice or Naples, the reading of Dante or of Petrarch’s sonnets--all gave him some musical emotion or picture which he sought to translate into terms of the piano. The musical value of these works is highly variable, but at their best, as in certain of the grandiose Petrarch sonnets, they equal the best of his symphonic poems. In these works, too, his experiments in radical harmony are frequent, and at times he completely anticipates the novel progressions of Debussy--whole-toned scale and all. Along with the ‘Years of Pilgrimage’ may be grouped certain other large compositions for the piano, such as the two ‘Legends’ of St. Francis, the six ‘Consolations,’ the brilliant polonaises, the fascinating ‘Spanish Rhapsody,’ and the grandiose _Funerailles_. All of these works are still frequently played by concert pianists. The two grand concertos with orchestra--in E flat major and A major--are of dazzling technical brilliancy. In the second in particular the pianistic resource seems inexhaustible. The thematic material is in Liszt’s finest vein and the orchestral accompaniment is executed in the highest of colors. In the second, too, Liszt not only connects the movements, as was the fashion of the day, but completely fuses them, somewhat in the manner that a Futurist painter fuses the various parts of his picture. Scherzo, andante, and allegro enter when fancy ordains, lasting sometimes but a moment, and returning as they please. In the same way is constructed the superb pianoforte sonata in B minor, a glorious fantasy in Liszt’s most heroic style. It is commonly said that as a sonata this work is structurally weak; it would be truer to say that as a sonata it has no existence. It is the nobility of the work, in its contrapuntal and pianistic mastership, that carries conviction.