But with the piano a new style of playing came into fashion and also a new style of composition. Clementi, Mozart and Beethoven laid the foundations for the modern style of playing. Then followed Hummel and poetic Chopin; and, finally, Liszt, who created modern piano-playing after hearing Paganini’s magical violin. In 1839 Liszt gave the _first piano recital_ ever heard; and he labored all his life to teach pupils to play the piano correctly and poetically and to put his technical knowledge into permanent form for future generations. And this is how he felt towards the instrument: “My piano is to me what his boat is to the seaman, what his horse is to the Arab: nay, more, it has been till now my eye, my speech, my life. Its strings have vibrated under my passions, and its yielding keys have obeyed my every caprice. In my opinion the piano takes the first place in the hierarchy of instruments; it is the oftenest used and the widest spread. In its seven octaves it embraces the whole compass of the orchestra, and a man’s ten fingers are enough to render the harmonies which in an orchestra are only brought out by the combinations of many musicians. We can give broken chords like the harp; long sustained notes like the wind; _staccati_; and a thousand passages which before it seemed only possible to produce on this or that instrument.” By the side of this eulogy we may place the following and quite extraordinary description of the piano written by an English musician named William Gardiner, in 1818, just one hundred years ago. “The pianoforte was scarcely known in the time of Bach; and, from the style of his compositions, it is evident that they were the product of the harpsichord, an instrument of very limited powers, the boldest effects of which were produced by sprinkling the chords in _Arpeggio_, which occasioned a disagreeable jingling. The early sonatas of Haydn, also, bear marks of the influence of this instrument, and possess nothing of the expression of his later works. “The invention of the pianoforte has formed a new era in the art. It has been the means of developing the sublimest ideas of the composer, and the delicacy of its touch has enabled him to give the lightest shades, as well as the boldest strokes of musical expression. It is the only instrument that will represent the effects of a full orchestra; and, since its mechanism has been improved, Beethoven has displayed its powers in a way not contemplated even by Haydn himself.” Modern composers have experimented with the piano as an orchestral instrument. Saint-Saëns uses it efficiently in his great Symphony in C, dedicated to the memory of Liszt. Perhaps the most successful treatment of it has been made more recently by Stravinsky in his Ballet, _Petrushka_. FOOTNOTES [1] Haweis. [2] Haweis. [3] Abele. [4] Haweis. [5] Parker. [6] Heron-Allen. [7] Haweis. [8] From the entrails of sheep. [9] Parker.