Hence we find him translating caprices of Paganini into caprices for the pianoforte; and when by so doing he has, so to speak, enlarged his vocabulary enormously, he gives us, in the _Douze Études_, a sort of translation of the pianoforte itself into a cycle of actions. Again he translates a great part of the literature of his day into terms of music: _Consolations_, _Harmonies poétiques et réligieuses_, _Légendes_, _Eclogues_ and other things. Even Dante and Petrarch are so converted, not to mention Sénancourt, Lamartine, Victor Hugo, Byron, and Lenau, with other contemporaries. The Chapel of William Tell, the Lake of Wallenstadt, the cypresses and fountains at the Villa d’Este, even the very Alps themselves pass through his mind and out his fingers. In this process details are necessarily obscured if not obliterated, and the result is a sort of general reproduction in sound that is not characterized by the detailed specialities of the art of music, that is, of the art of Bach, Mozart, and Chopin. And even of Schumann, it may be added, for Schumann’s music runs independently beside poetry, not with it, so closely associated, as Liszt’s runs. The question arises as to how this generalization of music will appear to the world fifty years hence. Is Liszt a radical or a reactionary, after all? Did he open a new life to music, a further development of the pianoforte, or did he, having mastered utterly all the technical difficulties of the pianoforte, throw music back a stage? Internally his music has far less independent and highly organized life than Chopin’s. But by being less delicate is it perhaps more robust, more procreative? At present such hardly seems to be the case. A great part of the pianoforte music of Liszt is sinking out of sight in company with that of Herz and Thalberg--evidently for the same reason; namely, that it is sensationalist music. Its relations to poetry, romanticism, nature or landscape will not preserve it in the favor of a public whose ear little by little prefers rather to listen than to be overpowered. Yet, be his music what it may, he himself will always remain one of the great, outstanding figures in the history of music, the revealer of great treasures long ignored. Whatever the value of his compositions, he himself, the greatest of all pianoforte virtuosi, set the standard of the new virtuosity which, thanks to his abiding example, becomes less and less a skill of display, more and more an art of revelation. FOOTNOTES: [37] W. von Lenz: ‘The Great Piano Virtuosos of Our Time.’ Translated from the German by Madeline R. Baker, New York, 1899. CHAPTER IX IMITATORS AND NATIONALISTS