[Sidenote:  The Pedals.]

[Sidenote:  Shifting pedal.]

[Sidenote:  Damper pedal.]

Very significant, too, in their relation to the development of the music, were the invention and improvement of the pedals.  The shifting pedal was invented by a Viennese maker named Stein, who first applied it to an instrument which he named “Saiten-harmonika.”  Before then soft effects were obtained by interposing a bit of felt between the hammers and the strings, as may still be seen in old square pianofortes.  The shifting pedal, or soft pedal as it is popularly called, moves the key-board and action so that the hammer strikes only one or two of the unison strings, leaving the other to vibrate sympathetically.  Beethoven was the first to appreciate the possibilities of this effect (see the slow movement of his concerto in G major and his last sonatas), but after him came Schumann and Chopin, and brought pedal manipulation to perfection, especially that of the damper pedal.  This is popularly called the loud pedal, and the vulgarest use to which it can be put is to multiply the volume of tone.  It was Chopin who showed its capacity for sustaining a melody and enriching the color effects by releasing the strings from the dampers and utilizing the ethereal sounds which rise from the strings when they vibrate sympathetically.

[Sidenote:  Liszt.]

[Sidenote:  A dual character.]

It is no part of my purpose to indulge in criticism of composers, but something of the kind is made unavoidable by the position assigned to Liszt in our pianoforte recitals.  He is relied upon to provide a scintillant close.  The pianists, then, even those who are his professed admirers, are responsible if he is set down in our scheme as the exemplar of the technical cult.  Technique having its unquestioned value, we are bound to admire the marvellous gifts which enabled Liszt practically to sum up all the possibilities of pianoforte mechanism in its present stage of construction, but we need not look with unalloyed gratitude upon his influence as a composer.  There were, I fear, two sides to Liszt’s artistic character as well as his moral.  I believe he had in him a touch of charlatanism as well as a magnificent amount of artistic sincerity—­just as he blended a laxity of moral ideas with a profound religious mysticism.  It would have been strange indeed, growing up as he did in the whited sepulchre of Parisian salon life, if he had not accustomed himself to sacrifice a little of the soul of art for the sake of vainglory, and a little of its poetry and feeling to make display of those dazzling digital feats which he invented.  But, be it said to his honor, he never played mountebank tricks in the presence of the masters whom he revered.  It was when he approached the music of Beethoven that he sank all thought of self and rose to a peerless height as an interpreting artist.

[Sidenote:  Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsodies.]