accessible-the rich vigour and spiritual freshness of eighteen.

'Whom have we here?' exclaimed the critics when the young virtuoso made his first bow to a Parisian audience, and ravished their ears by the beauty and elegance of his execution. 'Assuredly another Thalberg has arisen amongst us!'

Unknown and unheralded, the youth at once attained the coveted position for which he had studied indefatigably under the skilful teaching of Moscheles-that of the most popular pianist to the music-loving world of Paris.

Ascher felt keenly the obscurity of his birth when compared with the aristocratic parentage of his great rival, and adroitly evaded the delicate snobbery of polite society. It is related that on one occasion, a musical evening at the house of a famous dilettante, he was approached by a grande dame, well known for her enthusiastic support of Thalberg, who exclaimed in tones of irony and chagrin :

'Happy am I to congratulate you, monsieur, on your wonderful execution; it almost equals that of our dear Thalberg, son of Prince Dietrichstein.'

'I am not the son of a Prince, Madame,' answered Ascher, drawing up his form proudly, 'but I am prince in my art!'

Technique, the marvellous manipulation of every resource of the pianoforte, was Ascher's crowning point. His powerful mastery of the bass, whereby he intoned melodies and themes of richness and depth, contrasting delightfully with the silvery sweetness of the variations in the treble, elicited from a celebrated musician the admiring exclamation :

'Mon Dieu! He has no left hand, but two right hands instead!'

Moscheles, the most undoubted critic of his day, and an indisputable authority, was unsparing in his praise of Ascher as a virtuoso, while at the same time condemning his methods as a composer. When we consider the fact that Moscheles was a worshipper at the noble shrine. of Beethoven, from whence the most skilful master of modern music drew his inspiration, we cannot entertain any feelings of surprise that the brilliant and elegant style of Ascher, bestowed only on the light music of the dance, the valse and mazurka, should have found in Moscheles a severe and unsympathetic critic.

This graceful, if meaningless, school of piano variations was the vogue in Paris before the days of Ascher. To quote Mendelssohn's words when he wrote to a friend in Paris: 'Is Herz prejudiced when he says that the Parisians

understand nothing but variations and fantasias?' A query the great composer seemed to put forth in doubt, but which has been proved the truth in the instance of Ascher's success. The celebrated picture by Winterhalter of the Empress Eugénie surrounded by the ladies of her Court affords a melancholy glimpse into the bygone splendours of a Court where fashion reigned supreme. Pleasure was the prevailing sentiment of the hour, and a spirit of shallow pretence the keynote of all that glittering Parisian world. Music, the faithful interpreter of a people's soul, caught the intonation and reflected it back in the myriads of musical ebullitions, aptly termed gouttes d'or, la source, la capricieuse, and numerous other titles as light and fantastic, which, like the falling leaves of autumn, foreshadowed the winter of discontent, soon destined to sweep down upon the gay, frivolous Parisians and the delusive splendours of their Court life.

Ascher's brilliant gifts as an instrumentalist peculiarly fitted him as an exponent of this particular school of pianoforte music. His touch was clear, decisive, and flexible, while the 'two right hands' imparted a power and sonorousness orchestral in its effect, without which his instrumentation would have been scarcely

above the plane of graceful mediocrity. No doubt the secret of those two wonderful right hands might be found in some peculiar method of practice applied to the left hand whereby it acquired that marvellous power-a secret never divulged by Ascher. It was clearly the result of great study and application-no trick, as a humorous raconteur would make us believe proved the case in a trial of sight-reading between Haydn and Mozart, in which the former challenged the latter to write a piece which he could not master at sight, provided he (Mozart) could play it himself; whereupon Mozart accepted the challenge, and wrote a short theme, which he played on the piano, and smilingly bade Haydn proceed, an invitation the master accepted forthwith. Seating himself at the instrument, he began playing, and expressed surprise at the apparent simplicity of the composition, which proved to be quite elementary in style; but when he had played a few bars, a passage occurred wherein the bass and treble chords were widely apart and a sustained note between, which represented the middle of the keyboard. Haydn ceased playing, exclaiming :

'This is impossible! I cannot use my hands at both ends of the piano and strike a note in

the middle at the same time. I have not three but two hands!'

'Very well,' replied Mozart; 'I will show you how it is played!'

Whereupon Mozart proceeded to execute the piece. When he came to the disputed passage, where both hands are stretched to the extreme ends of the keyboard, he suddenly dropped his head and struck the note with the end of his long nose, exclaiming 'So!'

Needless to say that Haydn, whose nose was rather a snub, laughingly admitted that Mozart possessed resources for pianoforte playing which Nature had denied to him.

Combined with his mastery of the pianoforte, Ascher possessed a decided gift for 'posing'; his elegant presence and beautiful hands assisted, no doubt, to a considerable degree his popularity in a Court where all was glittering ostentation, where the charm of person and manner was of infinitely more importance than the charms of intellect combined with simplicity, where a musician or composer of greater genius and brusqueness than Ascher would have knocked long and vainly at the door of the Tuileries.

Ascher amassed a fortune: he derived an almost princely income from his compositions.