Mendelssohn to many of his shorter piano pieces, including even such works as preludes and fugues, is familiar to us all.  These works, however, but rarely departed from the orthodox forms represented by their names.  His “Songs without Words” have been so often quoted as constituting a new art form that it is well to remember that they are practically all cast in the same mould, that of the most simple song form, with one, and sometimes two more or less similar verses, preceded by a short introduction and ending with a coda.

We may say then, broadly, that Beethoven invested instrumental music with a wonderful poignancy and power of expression, elevating it to the point of being the medium of expressing some of the greatest thoughts we possess.  In so doing, however, he shattered many of the great idols of formalism by the sheer violence of his expression.

Schubert, let me say again, seemed indifferent to symmetry, or never thought of it in his piano music.  Mendelssohn, possibly influenced by his early severe training with Zelter, accepted symmetry of form as the cornerstone of his musical edifice; although he was one of the first in the realms of avowed programme music, he never carried it beyond the boundary of good form.  And, as in speaking a moment ago of the so-called canons of musical art, we compared them with the shadows that great men have cast upon their times, it may be as well to remember that just this formalism of Mendelssohn overshadowed and still overshadows England to the present day.  On the other hand, Beethoven’s last style still shows itself in Brahms, and even in Richard Strauss.  Schumann was different from these three.  His music is not avowed programme music; neither is it, as is much of Schubert’s, pure delight in beautiful melodies and sounds.  It did not break through formalism by sheer violence of emotion, as did Beethoven’s; least of all has it Mendelssohn’s orthodox dress.  It represents, as well as I can put it, the rhapsodical reverie of a great poet to whom nothing seems strange, and who has the faculty of relating his visions, never attempting to give them coherence, until, perhaps, when awakened from his dream, he naively wonders what they may have meant.  It will be remembered that Schumann added titles to his music after it was composed.

To all of this new, strange music, Liszt and Chopin added the wonderful tracery of orientalism.  As I have said before, the difference between these two is that with Chopin this tracery enveloped poetic thought as with a thin gauze; whereas with Liszt, the embellishment itself made the starting point for almost a new art in tonal combination, the effects of which are seen on every hand to-day.  To realize its influence, one need only compare the graceful arabesques of the most simple piano piece of to-day with the awkward and gargoyle-like figuration of Beethoven and his predecessors.  We may justly attribute this to Liszt rather than to Chopin, whose nocturne embellishments are but first cousins to those of the Englishman, John Field, though naturally Chopin’s Polish temperament gave his work that grace and profusion of design which we have called orientalism.