technique to Liszt, who more than any other pianist drew upon himself the admiration of the world, and who through his pupils continued to make his presence felt even after the close of his career as a virtuoso.  But the cause of this false opinion is to be sought not so much in the fact that the brilliancy of his artistic personality threw all his contemporaries into the shade, as in that other fact, that he gathered up into one web the many threads new and old which he found floating about during the years of his development.  The difference between Liszt and Chopin lies in this, that the basis of the former’s art is universality, that of the latter’s, individuality.  Of the fingering of the one we may say that it is a system, of that of the other that it is a manner.  Probably we have here also touched on the cause of Liszt’s success and Chopin’s want of success as a teacher.  I called Chopin a revolutioniser of fingering, and, I think, his full enfranchisement of the thumb, his breaking-down of all distinctions of rank between the other fingers, in short, the introduction of a liberty sometimes degenerating into licence, justifies the expression.  That this master’s fingering is occasionally eccentric (presupposing peculiarly flexible hands and a peculiar course of study) cannot be denied; on the whole, however, it is not only well adapted for the proper rendering of his compositions, but also contains valuable contributions to a universal system of fingering.  The following particulars by Mikuli will be read with interest, and cannot be misunderstood after what has just now been said on the subject:—­

In the notation of fingering, especially of that peculiar to himself, Chopin was not sparing.  Here pianoforte-playing owes him great innovations which, on account of their expedience, were soon adopted, notwithstanding the horror with which authorities like Kalkbrenner at first regarded them.  Thus, for instance, Chopin used without hesitation the thumb on the black keys, passed it even under the little finger (it is true, with a distinct inward bend of the wrist), if this could facilitate the execution and give it more repose and evenness.  With one and the same finger he took often two consecutive keys (and this not only in gliding down from a black to the next white key) without the least interruption of the sequence being noticeable.  The passing over each other of the longer fingers without the aid of the thumb (see Etude, No. 2, Op. 10) he frequently made use of, and not only in passages where the thumb stationary on a key made this unavoidably necessary.  The fingering of the chromatic thirds based on this (as he marked it in Etude, No. 5, Op. 25) affords in a much higher degree than that customary before him the possibility of the most beautiful legato in the quickest tempo and with a perfectly quiet hand.

But if with Chopin smoothness was one of the qualities upon which he insisted strenuously in the playing