He was, as we have said, an explorer and an innovator by nature; and his music is full of signs of it. Though his treatment of the piano lacks the unfailing and unique instinct of Chopin, nevertheless his compositions opened up a new field of effects. Not all of these are successful. Experiments with overtones such as one finds, for instance, at the end of the Paganini piece in the _Carnaval_ can hardly be said to be worth while. The result is too palpably an isolated effect and nothing more. It is too self-conscious. But he was of great significance in expanding the sonority of the instrument, in the use of the pedal, in the blending of harmonies, in several finer touches of technique. The combination of two distinct themes in the last movement of the _Papillons_, the fluent and sonorous use of double notes in the _Toccata_, the wide skips in the ‛_Arlequin_’ and the ‛_Paganini_’ numbers of the _Carnaval_, the latter with its cross-accents; the _Reconnaissance_ in the same series, with its repeated notes; the rolling figures in the first movement of the _Kreisleriana_; these, among other signs of his originality, are new in pianoforte music. His compositions demand from the pianist an unlimited and a powerful technique, yet it cannot be said of any that it is virtuoso music. He employed his skill not so much to display as to express his ideas. Nowhere does the pianoforte seem more the instrument of intimate and highly romantic sentiment. Of figure work and ornamentation there is very little. His music is not at all dazzling. Much of it is veiled. At the most he is boisterous, as in parts of the _Faschingsschwank_ and the last movements of the _Études Symphoniques_. He rather avoids the high, brilliant registers of the keyboard, stays nearly constantly in the middle of things, deals in solid stuff, not tracery. Perhaps the most distinctive feature of his style is his frequent use of syncopated rhythms. This becomes at times an obsession with him; and there are many passages in his music so continuously off the beat, that the original measure is quite lost, and the syncopation is to all practical purpose without effect. In such passages it seems hardly possible that Schumann intended the original beat to be kept in mind by the accentuation of notes that are of secondary importance; unless, of course, the interest of the music is chiefly rhythmical. Yet in some passages of purely melodic significance this may be done without awkwardness, producing an effect of dissociation of melody and harmony which may be what Schumann heard in his mind.