Historically Schubert leads the way to the piano style of Schumann, and Weber to that of Liszt, and both in company to the great achievements of the romantic period. But their style is a long way from modern pianoforte style--much more closely related to Beethoven than to Chopin. The dependence on the damper pedal for harmonic effects, the extreme separation of the notes of a broken chord, the striving for excessive power by means of sympathetic vibrations of the strings, and, in general, the _pointillage_ use of notes as spots of color in the musical picture, are only in germ in their works. The chorale method of building up harmonies by closely adjacent notes still continues to the detriment of the best pianistic effect. But in the work of the composers immediately following we find the qualities of the piano developed almost to the limit of possible effect.
Keyboard music now tended more and more away from the old chorale and polyphonic style, in which eighteenth century music was ‘thought,’ toward a style which could take its rise from a keyed instrument with pedals. Weber and Schubert achieved only at times this complete freedom in their clavier music. It remained for Schumann, Liszt, and Chopin to reveal the peculiar richness of the piano. Their styles are widely differentiated, yet all truly pianistic and supplementary one to the other. The differences can be derived from the personalities and the outward lives of the three men. Schumann was the unrestrained enthusiast, who was prevented by an accident from becoming a practising virtuoso and was obliged to do his work in his work-room and his inner consciousness. Liszt was, above all, the man of the world, the man who loved to dominate people by his art and understood supremely well how to do it. Chopin was by nature too sensitive ever to be a public virtuoso; he reflected the Paris of the thirties in terms of the individual soul where Liszt reflected it in terms of the crowd. Each of them loved his piano ‘as an Arab his steed,’ in Liszt’s words. Hence Schumann’s music, while supremely pianistic, has little concern for outward effect, and was, in point of fact, slow in winning wide popularity. With an influential magazine and a virtuoso wife to preach and practise his music in the public ear, Schumann nevertheless had to see the more facile Mendelssohn win all the fame and outward success. Schumann’s reputation was for many years an ‘underground’ one. But he was too much a Romantic enthusiast to make any concessions to the superficial taste of the concert hall or drawing room, and continued writing music which sounded badly unless it was very well played, and even then rather austerely separated the sheep from the goats among its hearers. Schumann is, above all, the pianists’ pianist. The musical value and charm of his works is inextricably interwoven with the executant’s delight in mastering it.