proper color and quality. You seem to have come to it absolutely without
preconceived ideas. Your B-minor sonata, however unsatisfactory its
actual quality, remains one of the magistral works of the sort. For few
works better exhibit the various ranges of the instrument, better
contrast different volumes of piano-sound. The sonata actually lies on
different planes, proceeds from various directions, delimits a solid
form, makes even Beethoven's seem flat and two-dimensional by contrast.
Here, almost for the first time, is a sonata that is distinctly music
_of_ the pianoforte. And the modern achievements in pianoforte
composition do not by any means lessen the wonder of your comprehension
of the instrument's dynamics. The new men, Scriabine and the composers
of the modern French school, may have penetrated more deeply than it
was in your power to do, may have achieved where you failed.
Nevertheless, they could not have progressed had it not been for your
way-finding. They are immeasurably indebted to you.

Not even Wagner had an influence on the new age greater than yours, more
largely prepared the way of the newest music. You are indeed the good
friend of all who dream of a new musical language, a new musical syntax
and balance and structure, and set out to explore the vast, vague
regions, the _terra incognita_ of tone. For you are their ancestor. If,
in its general, homophonic nature, your work belongs primarily to the
romantic period, your conviction that the content conditions the form of
every piece makes you the link between classic and modern musical art.
The symphonic poem, whether or not it originates in the overtures of
Beethoven, is mainly your handiwork, since although you yourself were
not sufficiently free of the classic formulas to create a symphonic form
entirely programmatic, as Strauss has subsequently done, you
nevertheless gave him the hint whereby he has profited most. The
impressionists, too, seem to stem from you. The little piece called "Les
jeux d'eau de La Villa d'Este" seems not a little to anticipate their
style. And although you were not responsible for the music of the
nationalistic Russian school, the robust, colorful barbarian in you
nevertheless made you welcome and encourage their work. It made you
write to Borodin and Moussorgsky those cordial letters which pleased
them so much. For at that time they were but obscure workmen, while you
were the very prince of musicians.

Indeed, nothin