Kalkbrenner, a follower of Clementi and famous teacher, was at work in Paris. Dussek, and Berger (Mendelssohn's master) helped elsewhere. Schubert in his compositions afforded food for experiment too.
On the other side Czerny, Woelffl, Herz, Steibelt, and even Hummel—who was considered a good enough pianist to be put forward as Beethoven's rival—upheld the prim style of their youth. Thus began the usual struggle between old and new, ending in the invariable victory for the new. Moscheles and Mendelssohn, though educated in the old traditions, sympathised with modern views, so welding a link between the past and "the wonderful things reported of a Pole—Chopin by name," of whom Schumann told the world in his journal.
In about eighty years both players and instruments had developed beyond recognition, virtuosity became an art in itself, and the piano so increased in importance that instead of being regarded as little worse than an accompaniment, it had become popular as a solo instrument, and long recitals, without the relief of song or strings, were given for it alone.
Partly to avoid the monotony of this one-man entertainment, and partly to induce the public to stop to the end, great pianists, such as Thalberg, Liszt, and Dreyschock began to do strange and wonderful gymnastic tricks. They passed one hand over the other with extraordinary rapidity; divided the melody between two hands and made it sound as if they had not; played octaves glissando; jumped with marvellous agility from one end of the piano to the other; wrote horrible and difficult fantasias of interminable length; played without the music; in short, they did everything they could think of to make a sensation and astonish the public. Vienna and Paris, where the audiences came from gay and sprightly circles and much preferred being amused to being instructed, were delighted. Sober-minded Germany was less so, for—although Liszt created a furore there as well as elsewhere—she had Mendelssohn to keep her in the way she should go. Europe was divided into two distinct camps—the one brilliant, the other scholarly. To the former belonged Leschetizky.
In 1830, the year of his birth, Rubinstein was but a baby; Von Bulow a few months old; Clara Schumann had just given her first concert at the age of ten—(her programme is interesting as showing the kind of music popular at the time: "Rondo Brilliant," by Kalkbrenner, "Variations Brilliantes," by Herz, "Variations" on a thema of her own); Saint-Saëns was born five—Tausig eleven—years later. Dreyschock was already twelve; Henselt sixteen; Thalberg eighteen; Liszt nineteen.
All these artists and many more visited Vienna, and Leschetizky heard them often. They were the source from which he drew inspiration as a young teacher, and whose playing served him as material from which, later on, to build up a system of his own. It is from them, from Schulhoff his friend, and from Czerny his master, that he has worked out the principles known as "The Leschetizky Method."
The explanation of the technical part of this method without practical illustration—that is, without a piano at hand—is impossible; for the description would have to cover not only the account of the manual exercises themselves, but of their application to the instrument. The art of playing the piano cannot be taught by correspondence; although the development of the hand may be. The instrument must be there to give value to the statement. To describe a pianoforte method by the pen does as much good to the pianist as the "Absent Treatment" of a Christian Scientist does to his patient. Indeed, the treatment might, by a rare chance, cure a patient furnished with a fertile imagination; whereas no amount of imagination will make anybody play the piano, even if he read all the treatises written, from the naïve simplicity of Philip Emanuel Bach's "True Art of Piano Playing," to the wonderful complexity of Tobias Mathay, on "The Act of Touch."
With regard to methods in general, Leschetizky is very broad-minded. If a method can teach the pupil to accomplish what is necessary, the process by which it has been done is quite immaterial. Any suggestion that makes for progress would be welcome to him, and though he seems to have drawn all that is serviceable and important into his own system, he says: "I have thought over these things all my life, but if you can find better ways than mine I will adopt them—yes, and I will take two lessons of you and give you a thousand gulden a lesson."