Contemporary with Mendelssohn, though they seem much nearer to us than he, are three great geniuses of the Nineteenth Century,—Berlioz, Liszt and Wagner. Though all three were admirers of the Classic masters, they formed an entirely new school of music, which was called “The Music of the Future.” It is hard to say to which of these men Music owes the most; for while Wagner was certainly the greatest composer, Berlioz daringly led the way into these new regions where Wagner followed, and Liszt, with his extraordinary influence, his generosity of spirit, his untiring zeal in producing Wagner’s works as well as his lavish gifts to Wagner in times of trouble, was not the least important of the three in making Music what it is to-day. Moreover, Liszt’s own compositions helped to establish in the affections of the public this Music of the Future that became the Music of the Present and that is rapidly taking its place in the Music of the Past ranking as Classic in the first meaning of the word (see page 232). To understand how Music departed from the old roads and took a new path, we must remember that in 1830 with the Revolution that sent Charles IX from the French throne, a new spirit came into the world of literature, art and music. It is known as the Romantic Movement. Writers and painters, full of the excitement of the period and joy at the triumph of republican ideas, sought to portray nature and human nature in truer lines and colors than the traditional rules and measurements of the Classic period. There was a great outburst of literature in France—Gautier, Flaubert, de Musset, de Vigny and Victor Hugo are a few of the names that rise to one’s lips when the Romantic Movement is mentioned. Painters, too, were numerous. There was but one French composer—Berlioz. Just what Victor Hugo expressed in literature, just what Delacroix expressed in painting, Berlioz expressed in music; and Berlioz stands alone, a solitary figure. “Berlioz’s early influences were as much literary as musical. His reading was mainly romantic; his musical gods were Beethoven, Weber and Gluck, whose orchestral writings influenced him most. He knew little of Beethoven’s piano writings and did not like Bach. Into the intellectual world of the Beethoven symphony and the operas of Gluck and Weber, he breathed the newer, more nervous life of the French Romanticists. _Color and sensation_ became as important as form and the pure idea. These influences and his literary instincts led him to graft the programme form on the older symphony. All his music aims at something concrete. Instead of the abstract world of the classical symphonists he gives us definite emotions, or paints definite scenes. His own words: ‘I have taken up music where Beethoven left it’ indicate his position. He is the real beginner of that interpenetration of music and the poetic idea which has transformed modern art.”[74]