The pianist Aloys Schmitt has been flipped on the nose by the
   critics, although he is already over forty years old, and
   composes eighty-years-old music.

From the contemporary journals we learn that, at the concert mentioned by Chopin, Schmitt afforded the public of Vienna an opportunity of hearing a number of his own compositions—­which were by no means short drawing-room pieces, but a symphony, overture, concerto, concertino, &c.—­and that he concluded his concert with an improvisation.  One critic, at least, described his style of playing as sound and brilliant.  The misfortune of Schmitt was to have come too late into the world—­respectable mediocrities like him always do that—­he never had any youth.  The pianist on whom Chopin called first on arriving in Vienna was Charles Czerny, and he

was, as he is always (and to everybody), very polite, and asked, “Hat fleissig studirt?” [Have you studied diligently?] He has again arranged an overture for eight pianos and sixteen performers, and seems to be very happy over it.

Only in the sense of belonging rather to the outgoing than to the incoming generation can Czerny be reckoned among the aged pianists, for in 1831 he was not above forty years of age and had still an enormous capacity for work in him—­hundreds and hundreds of original and transcribed compositions, thousands and thousands of lessons.  His name appears in a passage of one of Chopin’s letters which deserves to be quoted for various reasons:  it shows the writer’s dislike to the Jews, his love of Polish music, and his contempt for a kind of composition much cultivated by Czerny.  Speaking of the violinist Herz, “an Israelite,” who was almost hissed when he made his debut in Warsaw, and whom Chopin was going to hear again in Vienna, he says:—­

At the close of the concert Herz will play his own Variations on Polish airs.  Poor Polish airs!  You do not in the least suspect how you will be interlarded with “majufes” [see page 49, foot-note], and that the title of “Polish music” is only given you to entice the public.  If one is so outspoken as to discuss the respective merits of genuine Polish music and this imitation of it, and to place the former above the latter, people declare one to be mad, and do this so much the more readily because Czerny, the oracle of Vienna, has hitherto in the fabrication of his musical dainties never produced Variations on a Polish air.

Chopin had not much sympathy with Czerny the musician, but seems to have had some liking for the man, who indeed was gentle, kind, and courteous in his disposition and deportment.