ingeniously scattering the notes of a chord over the keyboard while
holding down the pedal, he practically gave the player three or four
hands, and greatly enlarged the harmonic and coloristic possibilities of
the pianoforte. Liszt, Rubinstein, Paderewski, and others have gone
farther still in the same direction, but he showed the way, and most of
his pieces are as delightful and as modern now as they were on the day
when they were written. He wrote a few sonatas, but the majority of his
works are short pieces such as are characteristic of the modern
romantic school.

Before Chopin modernized pianoforte music the world's greatest composers
had been Italians, Germans, and Frenchmen. Chopin's father was a
Frenchman, but his mother was a native of Poland, and he was born in
that country. While his music has the French qualities of elegance and
clearness (which every one admires in the works of Gounod, Bizet,
Massenet, and other Parisian masters), in its essence it is Polish--a
fact of special significance, for from this time on other nations than
the three mentioned--especially the Slavic and Scandinavian--begin to
play a prominent role in music. In this brief sketch only the greatest
names can be considered,--such names as Rubinstein, Tschaikowsky,
Dvorák, Grieg.

Rubinstein was not only one of the greatest pianists, but one of the
most spontaneous and fertile melodists of all times. His frequently
careless workmanship and his foolish, savage hostility to the dominant
Wagner movement prevented him from enjoying the fruits of his rare
genius. He felt that, had it not been for the all-absorbing Wagner, he
himself might have been as popular as Mendelssohn. Although a Russian,
there is little local color in his music, for the enchanting exotic
melodic intervals in his "Persian" songs are Oriental in general, rather