Page:Pratt - The history of music (1907).djvu/543

 (d. 1897), a pupil of Chopin in 1844-8, who, after touring in Russia and other Slavic countries, was from 1858 head of the Lemberg conservatory and from 1888 of a school of his own, and whose edition of Chopin's works is critically important. He also composed in Chopin's style.

Akin to Chopin and for a time associated with him at Paris was Stephen Heller (d. 1888), who was born in Hungary in 1815 and trained by Halm at Vienna. From 1827 he became known as a concert-player there, in Hungary and Poland, and later in Germany. After spending some years quietly at Augsburg, in 1838 he went to Paris, where, except for a few tours, he lived for 50 years. His temperament was too sensitive to make him a thoroughly successful virtuoso, but under congenial conditions his playing was full of grace and vivacity. He wrote several hundred short piano works—characteristic pieces, ballades, études, nocturnes, songs without words, dances, etc.—full of healthy poetry, with great daintiness of rhythm and figure. In genuine invention they compare well with Mendelssohn's, in structure are stronger than Chopin's, and in imagination recall Schumann.

199. Salon Music.—In conjunction with the spread of the romantic spirit, the general adoption of pianism as a specialty from about 1825 led to a striking multiplication of small piano works in forms not previously conspicuous. The vogue of these has always been due to their intimate or personal character, and their adaptation to domestic use or the smaller functions of polite society. This type received a powerful impetus from composers like Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn and Chopin. For them this was an inevitable result of their search for tone-forms to express relatively transient moods and fancies—an irrepressible outbreak of lyricism. But the expansion of the style into immense proportions was due to workers of much lower degree, whose call to action was often the mere popular demand for graceful and 'pretty' bagatelles, and whose method had more cleverness than inspiration. The term 'salon music' has acquired a more or less disparaging sense in consequence. Yet all writing in this style is not necessarily sentimentally vapid or structurally mechanical. When the small piano-form has been touched by the hand of genius it has had the same real and concentrated beauty as that of a fine miniature or a delicate aquarelle. And, even in its shallower illustrations, parlor music is a large social force, bringing myriads of persons into touch with tonal art and serving at least as an introduction to larger things. As a type, it is dangerous only when known in its poorer examples alone and when cultivated wholly out of relation to other types.