Walled from the covetous human waves, safe from the encroaching human tide, Père la Chaise, a mass of bloom and verdure, lies asleep while the Parisian metropolis roars and surges on. Of all the multitudes here gathered to the silence, one at least is alien for never a branch is moaning, never a breeze, for Polish liberty; and never a bird is inspired by such sad, sweet threnody; and never a strip of Polish sky, clear, or cloud-bedarkened, or heavy with the drops of sorrow, is bending o'er chiseled marble of a tomb. Amidst the dead of every high and noble calling, the dead whose deeds enhance the fame of France, that alien's dust is in the jealous keeping of a nation richer because of Poland and her greatest bard. Sixty years have gone since the October day when, within the walls of the Madelaine, the master's funeral measures dirged his death. Since that memorable time many pianoforte composers, men of talent and men of genius, have arisen. These, by their indebtedness to the years of Chopin's productivity, prove him the one epoch-making composer for their instrument since Beethoven, and the one probably without a successor in kind. The certainty that the principal Sonatas of Beethoven, and the Ballades and other chief works of Chopin, overtop all else written for the piano, provokes the question, Which of these composers is foremost in this realm of music? The question at once lends itself to argument. Evidently Chopin abounds in technical difficulties unattempted by Beethoven, and these difficulties are a proof of worth because in fact the unusual but necessary conveyers of a message new to the musical world. It must be conceded that Chopin's daring chromaticisms, transitions and modulations are the inevitable expressions of a genius novel but not forced. Then again, Chopin wrote for the piano not as he found it, but with prophetic knowledge of its future possibilities; to the extent of all this he outrivals Beethoven. It must not be supposed that harmonic complexity is of itself superior to broad and bold simplicity. This truth Handel well knew. He, the master of Fugue, with all contrapuntal devices at command, is renowned for a Doric beauty the despair of the Byzantine and the Rococo. As a harmonist, Beethoven felt not the urge of the unusual; the immense possibilities which he perceived in Bach were enough for his grand and stately measures. Taking from that unexhausted mine, he cut and polished; then, brilliant on their every facet, he strewed the gems along his pages. Because of his many-sided excellence, we hold Beethoven a harmonist superior to Chopin, himself a delver in the Bachian mine. The music of Chopin is recognizable almost from the opening bar, but, as a creator and developer of characteristic themes, Beethoven is unequalled. While Chopin is one of the most inspired melodists, Beethoven sings himself more into the soul.