This is a march theme, simply started at first, then played with the thumb of the right hand, which has time between its separate notes to scamper up and down the keyboard. Notice, too, that when the right hand is soaring too high to be brought back in time for the thumb to perch again on its melody, the thumb of the left hand jumps into the breach and saves the line. Right thumb, left thumb, left thumb, right thumb, either will do. And so the hands are free to jump and run and fly. This emancipation was said to be Thalberg’s accomplishment; but instances of dividing the melody between the two hands may be found in the work of Beethoven, Schubert, and Weber. It were needless to mention Bach in this connection. However, it is just the sort of thing Thalberg needs, and he uses it skillfully and successfully. Meanwhile, the accompaniment grows apace. There are runs of thirds for the right hand, which can thus indulge itself, knowing it need not be home before dark, so to speak, that the left hand thumb can wind the clock and keep the fire burning. There is next a suggestion of pounding chords, but this gives way to a strange shivering run of repeated notes--one remembers how Kuhnau told the story of the frightened Israelites two hundred and fifty years before, there are growing agitation, shrieks of the rising wind, dreadfully raucous repeated octaves, now on E and, with a flash, on F, and a pounding left hand that marches and rushes. It is like the shriek of the approaching locomotive above the roar of its thundering speed. And just as it should crash into view, or into something, there is the sudden stillness of infinite night, and then our march theme, spun like a thread of silver through flying runs. From thumb to thumb it winds, and always pianissimo. The effect must have been one to make a listener breathless with amazement. Little by little crescendo, a change from B-flat major to G-major, a substitution of full chords or octaves for the single thumb notes, and an extension of the runs into the clouds, these bring about the close, a last page where left and right hand together pound out the theme in repeated solid chords, with _tutta la forza_. Sheer noise it is, here; and with all this overpowering bombast the fantasia on ‘Moses’ comes to an end. Such a work is well worth considering. We may not flatter ourselves that even at this day we could resist its power under the hands of a virtuoso. It would not by any means sound flat. But the instinctive response to such sonority would perhaps be a cause for shame to those who were conscious of even a little musical learning. The word trash comes quickly to the lips, and the more readily when we know our sensational heart has beat a trifle faster in spite of our better reason. It is not, then, that the music is feeble or unsuccessful, but that we distrust sensationalism and cherish a professional shame of it.