The path of progress of an art has little to do with mere chronology.  For here in early days are bold spirits whose influence is not felt until a whole generation has passed of a former tradition.  Nor are these patient pioneers always the best-inspired prophets; the mere fate of slow recognition does not imply a highest genius.  A radical innovation may provoke a just and natural resistance.  Again, a gradual yielding is not always due to the pure force of truth.  Strange and oblique ideas may slowly win a triumph that is not wholly merited and may not prove enduring.

To fully grapple with this mystery, we may still hold to the faith that final victory comes only to pure truth, and yet we may find that imperfect truth will often achieve a slow and late acceptance.  The victory may then be viewed in either of two ways:  the whole spirit of the age yields to the brilliant allurement, or there is an overweighing balance of true beauty that deserves the prize of permanence.  Of such a kind were two principal composers of the symphony:  Franz Liszt and Hector Berlioz.  Long after they had wrought their greatest works, others had come and gone in truer line with the first masters, until it seemed these radical spirits had been quite rejected.

Besides the masters of their own day, Schumann and Mendelssohn, a group of minor poets, like Raff and Goetz, appeared, and at last Brahms, the latest great builder of the symphony, all following and crowning the classical tradition.

The slow reception of the larger works of Liszt strangely agrees with the startling resemblance of their manner to the Russian style that captivated a much later age.  It seemed as if the spirit of the Hungarian was suddenly revived in a new national group.  His humor wonderfully suited the restless and sensational temper of an age that began after his death.

The very harmonies and passionate manner that influence modern audiences evoked a dull indifference in their own day.[A] They roused the first acclaim when presented in the more popular form of the music-drama.  It may well be questioned whether Liszt was not the fountain source of the characteristic harmonies of Wagner’s later opera.

[Footnote A:  Compare the similarity of the themes of the Faust Symphony of Liszt and of the Pathetique of Tschaikowsky in the last chapter of vol. ii, “Symphonies and Their Meaning.”]

Historically considered, that is in their relation to other music preceding and following them, the symphonies of Liszt have striking interest.  They are in boldest departure from all other symphonies, save possibly those of Berlioz, and they were prophetic in a degree only apparent a half-century later.  If the quality of being ahead of his time be proof, instead of a symptom, of genius, then Liszt was in the first rank of masters.  The use of significant motif is in both of his symphonies.  But almost all the traits that startled and moved the world in