One protests against the obscurity into which Stephen Heller’s music is rapidly falling. It is too charming to be let go. Yet it has too little strength to stand much longer against the fate that has already pushed Mendelssohn aside. Heller published over one hundred and fifty pieces or rather sets of pieces for the piano. Nearly all of these are in short forms; many of them are not more than a page long. Many of the sets are given fanciful titles. One finds several sets--opus 86, opus 128, and opus 136--of Woodland Sketches (_Im Walde_); two _Promenades d’un solitaire_, _Nuits Blanches_, _Reise um mein Zimmer_, and Thorn, Fruit and Flower pieces, after Jean Paul Richter. Besides these there are many sets of short studies, the most melodious simple studies that have ever been written, for which both student and teacher should still feel grateful; and there are numerous Preludes, Tarantelles and Dances. Heller’s thoughts are fresh and winning, his style is remarkably clear and well adapted to the keyboard. Among the preludes in all keys, opus 81, the second, third, fifteenth, eighteenth, and twenty-second are far more effective than the majority of Mendelssohn’s ‘Songs Without Words.’ The Tarantelles, and one or two of the _Promenades_, are even brilliant. We mention these because they are before us. But on the whole Heller’s pianoforte style is not distinguished by anything except clearness. The parts for the left hand are monotonous, the accompaniment figures rarely more than commonplace. Perhaps these things are evident only by comparison of his music with Chopin or Schumann. Unhappily there is another weakness besides these. His rhythms are unvaried, and his structures of phrases desperately regular. Here, we think, lies the secret of its softness, its lack of virility and power to stand against time. Heller repeats himself. He cannot take one step without (in most cases) going back to take it over again. The process is all the more distressing to the listener because Heller’s steps, or his strides, are so invariably of the same length, and so inexorably deliberate. His harmonies are very like Mendelssohn’s, and his melodies are often sweet. In a way the world has dealt more hardly with Joachim Raff than with Heller; because not more than twenty-five years ago Raff was one of the most played of all composers. Not only his pianoforte works. His symphonies, especially _Im Walde_ and _Leonore_, held quite as high and strong a place in the public favor as the symphonies of Tschaikowsky do at the present day. And now even his pianoforte works are discarded.