Though he founded no new school, he pushed to a fuller development the possibilities to which Beethoven reached out in the Ninth Symphony.
He was the great _virtuoso_ on the orchestra, and on this Briarean instrument he played with the most amazing skill. Others have surpa.s.sed him in the richness of the musical substance out of which their tone-pictures are woven, in symmetry of form, in finish of detail; but no one has ever equaled him in that absolute mastery over instruments, by which a hundred become as plastic and flexible as one, and are made to embody every phase of the composer"s thought with that warmth of color and precision of form long believed to be necessarily confined to the sister arts.
THE END.