Both Schumann and Wagner were reformers interested in the broadening of musical culture, the improvement of taste, and the establishment of a standard of artistic propriety--Wagner on the stage, Schumann in the concert room. The former was successful, the latter only partially so. For, while the standards of the concert room are much higher to-day than they were in Schumann's day, musical taste in the home, which should be guided by these standards, has, if anything, deteriorated. The reason for this lies primarily in one of the inevitable developments of musical romanticism itself--the _genre_ tendency; secondarily, in the fact that, while the Wagnerians were propagandists, writers of copious polemics and agitators, the classic romanticists were purely professional musicians who disdained to write, preferring deeds to words (and incidentally doing far too much), or else, like Hiller, were _feuilletonists_, pleasant gossips about their art and nothing more. The development of the small forms, the miniature, the _genre_ in short, and the corresponding decay of the larger forms was perhaps the most outstanding result of the romantic movement. Wagner alone, the dramatic romanticist, continued to paint large canvases, frescoes in vivid colors. The 'poetic' romanticists were of a lyric turn, and required compact and intimate forms of expression. They had created the song, they had built up a new piano literature out of small pieces, miniatures like Schubert's 'Musical Moments,' Schumann's 'Fantasy Pieces,' Mendelssohn's 'Songs without Words,' Field's 'Nocturnes,' Chopin's Dances, Preludes, and Études. Franz, Jensen, Lassen, and others continued the song; Brahms, with his _Intermezzi_; Henselt, Heller, and Kirchner, with his piano miniatures, the piano piece. The first degenerated into Abt, Curschmann, and worse, the second into the type of thing of which 'The Last Hope' and 'The Maiden's Prayer' were the ultimate manifestations. Sentiment ran over in small gushes and drippings, even the piano study was made the vehicle for a sigh. The sonata of a former day became a sonatina or an 'impromptu' of one kind or another. The parallel thing now happened in other fields. The concert overture of Mendelssohn had in a measure displaced the symphony. What has been called the '_genre_ symphony' of Mendelssohn, Schumann, _et al._ was also in the direction of minimization. Even Brahms in his gigantic works emphasizes the tendency by the intermezzo character of his slow movements, by the orchestral filigree partaking of the chamber music style. Now came the revival of the orchestral suite by Lachner and Raff, the sinfonietta, and the serenade for small orchestra. Again we sense the same trend in the appearance of the choral ballad and in the tremendous output of small dramatic cantatas for mixed or men's voices.