Chopin is another composer who, although he died in 1849 (Schubert died in 1828), is as modern as the masters just named.  He was as boldly original as Schubert, and as great a magician in the art of arousing deep emotion by means of novel, unexpected modulations.  As an originator of new harmonic progressions he has had only three equals,—­Bach, Schubert, and Wagner.  Harmonies as ultra-modern as those of Wagner’s “Parsifal” may be found in some of the mazurkas of Chopin.  He was, as Rubinstein called him, “the soul of the pianoforte.”  No one before or after him knew how to make that instrument speak so eloquently.  By ingeniously scattering the notes of a chord over the keyboard while holding down the pedal, he practically gave the player three or four hands, and greatly enlarged the harmonic and coloristic possibilities of the pianoforte.  Liszt, Rubinstein, Paderewski, and others have gone farther still in the same direction, but he showed the way, and most of his pieces are as delightful and as modern now as they were on the day when they were written.  He wrote a few sonatas, but the majority of his works are short pieces such as are characteristic of the modern romantic school.

Before Chopin modernized pianoforte music the world’s greatest composers had been Italians, Germans, and Frenchmen.  Chopin’s father was a Frenchman, but his mother was a native of Poland, and he was born in that country.  While his music has the French qualities of elegance and clearness (which every one admires in the works of Gounod, Bizet, Massenet, and other Parisian masters), in its essence it is Polish—­a fact of special significance, for from this time on other nations than the three mentioned—­especially the Slavic and Scandinavian—­begin to play a prominent role in music.  In this brief sketch only the greatest names can be considered,—­such names as Rubinstein, Tschaikowsky, Dvorak, Grieg.

Rubinstein was not only one of the greatest pianists, but one of the most spontaneous and fertile melodists of all times.  His frequently careless workmanship and his foolish, savage hostility to the dominant Wagner movement prevented him from enjoying the fruits of his rare genius.  He felt that, had it not been for the all-absorbing Wagner, he himself might have been as popular as Mendelssohn.  Although a Russian, there is little local color in his music, for the enchanting exotic melodic intervals in his “Persian” songs are Oriental in general, rather than Russian in particular.  Similar exotic intervals may be found in the “Aida” of Verdi, a pure Italian.  Rubinstein, like Mendelssohn and Meyerbeer, was a Hebrew.  His day will yet come, for his Dramatic and Ocean symphonies are among the grandest orchestral works in existence.