the strings that the overtones can enrich and beautify the sound by
causing their corresponding strings to vibrate in sympathy with them.
Those who heard Schumann play say that he used the pedal persistently,
sometimes twice in the same bar to avoid harmonic confusion; and the
same is true of Chopin, concerning whose playing an English amateur
says, after referring to his _legatissimo_ touch: "The wide arpeggios
in the left hand, _maintained in a continuous stream of tone_ by the
strict legato and fine and constant use of the damper pedal, formed an
harmonious substructure for a wonderfully poetic _cantabile_."

I have italicised and emphasized the words _maintained in a continuous
stream of tone_, because it calls attention to one of the numerous
resemblances between the style of Chopin and that of Wagner, who in
his music dramas similarly keeps up an uninterrupted flow of richly
colored harmonies to sustain the vocal part. Schumann relates that he
had the good fortune to hear Chopin play some of his études. "And he
played them very much _à la Chopin_," he says: "Imagine an Æolian harp
provided with all the scales, commingled by an artist's hand into all
manner of fantastic, ornamental combinations, yet in such a way that
you can always distinguish a deeper ground tone and a sweet continuous
melody above--and you have an approximate idea of his playing. No
wonder that I liked best those of the études which he played for me,
and I wish to mention specially the first one, in A flat major, a poem
rather than an étude. It would be a mistake to imagine that he allowed
each of the small notes to be distinctly audible; it was rather a
surging of the A flat major chord, occasionally raised to a new billow
by the pedal; but amid these harmonies a wondrous melody asserted
itself in large tones, and only once, toward the middle of the piece,
a tenor part came out prominently beside the principal melody. After
hearing this étude you feel as you do when you have seen a ravishing