the young pianist’s estimate of the virtuoso of whom Riehl says:  “The essence of his nature was what the philologists call elegantia—­he spoke the purest Ciceronian Latin on the piano.”  As a knowledge of Kalkbrenner’s artistic personality will help to further our acquaintance with Chopin, and as our knowledge of it is for the most part derived from the libels and caricatures of well-intentioned critics, who in their zeal for a nobler and more glorious art overshoot the mark of truth, it will be worth our while to make inquiries regarding it.

Kalkbrenner may not inaptly be called the Delille of pianist-composers, for his nature and fate remind us somewhat of the poet.  As to his works, although none of them possessed stamina enough to be long-lived, they would have insured him a fairer reputation if he had not published so many that were written merely for the market.  Even Schumann confessed to having in his younger days heard and played Kalkbrenner’s music often and with pleasure, and at a maturer age continued to acknowledge not only the master’s natural virtuoso amiability and clever manner of writing effectively for fingers and hands, but also the genuinely musical qualities of his better works, of which he held the Concerto in D minor to be the “bloom,” and remarks that it shows the “bright sides” of Kalkbrenner’s “pleasing talent.”  We are, however, here more concerned with the pianist than with the composer.  One of the best sketches of Kalkbrenner as a pianist is to be found in a passage which I shall presently quote from M. Marmontel’s collection of “Silhouettes et Medaillons” of “Les Pianistes celebres.”  The sketch is valuable on account of its being written by one who is himself a master, one who does not speak from mere hearsay, and who, whilst regarding Kalkbrenner as an exceptional virtuoso, the continuator of Clementi, the founder ("one of the founders” would be more correct) of modern pianoforte-playing, and approving of the leading principle of his method, which aims at the perfect independence of the fingers and their preponderant action, does not hesitate to blame the exclusion of the action of the wrist, forearm, and arm, of which the executant should not deprive himself “dans les accents de legerete, d’expression et de force.”  But here is what M. Marmontel says:—­

The pianoforte assumed under his fingers a marvellous and never harsh sonorousness, for he did not seek forced effects.  His playing, smooth, sustained, harmonious, and of a perfect evenness, charmed even more than it astonished; moreover, a faultless neatness in the most difficult passages, and a left hand of unparalleled bravura, made Kalkbrenner an extraordinary virtuoso.  Let us add that the perfect independence of the fingers, the absence of the in our day so frequent movements of the arms, the tranquillity of the hands and body, a perfect bearing—­all these qualities combined, and many others which we forget, left the auditor