itself.  Of Field, on the other hand, traces are discoverable, and even more distinct ones of Hummel.  The idyllic serenity of the former and the Mozartian sweetness of the latter were truly congenial to him; but no less, if not more, so was Spohr’s elegiac morbidezza.  Chopin’s affection for Spohr is proved by several remarks in his letters:  thus on one occasion (October 3, 1829) he calls the master’s Octet a wonderful work; and on another occasion (September 18, 1830) he says that the Quintet for pianoforte, flute, clarinet, bassoon, and horn (Op. 52) is a wonderfully beautiful work, but not suitable for the pianoforte.  How the gliding cantilena in sixths and thirds of the minuet and the serpentining chromatic passages in the last movement of the last-mentioned work must have flattered his inmost soul!  There can be no doubt that Spohr was a composer who made a considerable impression upon Chopin.  In his music there is nothing to hurt the most fastidious sensibility, and much to feed on for one who, like Jaques in “As you like it”, could “suck melancholy out of a song, as a weasel eggs.”

Many other composers, notably the supremely-loved and enthusiastically-admired Mozart and Bach, must have had a share in Chopin’s development; but it cannot be said that they left a striking mark on his music, with regard to which, however, it has to be remembered that the degree of external resemblance does not always accurately indicate the degree of internal indebtedness.  Bach’s influence on Mendelssohn, Schumann, Chopin, and others of their contemporaries, and its various effects on their styles, is one of the curiosities of nineteenth century musical history; a curiosity, however, which is fully disclosed only by subtle analysis.  Field and especially Hummel are those musicians who—­ more, however, as pianists than as composers (i.e., more by their pianoforte language than by their musical thoughts)—­set the most distinct impress on Chopin’s early virtuosic style, of which we see almost the last in the concertos, where it appears in a chastened and spiritualised form very different from the materialism of the Fantasia (Op. 13) and the Krakowiak (Op. 14).  Indeed, we may say of this style that the germ, and much more than the germ, of almost every one of its peculiarities is to be found in the pianoforte works of Hummel and Field; and this statement the concertos of these masters, more especially those of the former, and their shorter pieces, more especially the nocturnes of the latter, bear out in its entirety.  The wide-spread broken chords, great skips, wreaths of rhythmically unmeasured ornamental notes, simultaneous combinations of unequal numbers of notes (five or seven against four, for instance), &c., are all to be found in the compositions of the two above-named pianist-composers.  Chopin’s style, then, was not original?  Most decidedly it was.  But it is not so much new elements as the development and the different commixture, in degree and kind, of known elements