Alkan (1813-88) was admired as a player and as a composer by both Chopin and Liszt, and Bülow still later held him in high esteem. An effort is now under way, encouraged by Isadore Philip, and others, to draw his compositions from the obscurity into which they have fallen. They are surprisingly numerous and in many ways astonishing. They include a great number of transcriptions, of études and of pieces of extraordinary realism. His harmonies and melodies suggest Berlioz, with whom he is being more and more compared. They have often a quality that is in a sense bare. They are unusual without connoting a rich world of the unexplored. They hint rather at a deliberate attack upon the old than at the youth of a new system. The general flow of his harmonies, for example, is familiar. Only now and then does something unusual obtrude itself with a sort of harshness. Notice, for example, the chromatic movement of the doubled inner voice in the _cantabile_ section of the short piece ‛_Le tambour bat aux champs_.’ Notice, too, the strange starkness of harmonies in the paraphrase _Super flumina Babylonis_. Technically Alkan stands between Chopin and Liszt, and in this regard his music is very exacting. He demands an equal skill in both hands. Of the three studies published as opus 76, the first is for the left hand alone, with long passages of rapid tremolo like that one finds in the first of Liszt’s Paganini transcriptions. The second is for the right hand alone, demanding an unrestricted movement of the arm in long arpeggios and extremely wide chords. Finally the third is a long piece in unison from beginning to end, far more awkward and more difficult than the last movement of Chopin’s sonata in B-flat minor. The three studies opus 15, _Dans le genre pathétique_, are veritably huge works. Of these the second, _Le vent_, is already well known as one of the effective concert pieces of the new era. The first and last have the strange titles of _Aime-moi_ and _Morte_. Twelve études in minor keys were published as opus 39. One finds again extraordinary titles, such as _Rythme molossique_, _Scherzo diabolico_, and _Le festin d’Europe_. All are exceedingly difficult. Some, like the first, are both startling and interesting as music. There is a more or less famous study in perpetual motion for the right hand which was given the title _Le chemin de fer_, extremely rapid, difficult, and effective.