The two composers whose names stand first at the head of this chapter afford a curious parallel and a still more curious contrast to each other. Each has been so wholly possessed by admiration of a great master a little older and a great deal more richly endowed with genius than himself as to lose to a great extent his own artistic personality in that of his ideal. In early life Theodor Kirchner took Schumann as the model of his life's work, and Reinecke in the same way took Mendelssohn.

The contrast between the outward circumstances of the great men has been strangely repeated in the lives of their respective followers; Reinecke seems to have inherited the prosperity and good fortune that were Mendelssohn's, while to Kirchner has fallen an undue share of trouble, though not of the same kind as that which darkened Schumann's days. It is only fair to add that Kirchner has inherited at the same time a double portion of Schumann's spirit.

Born December 10, 1823, at Neukirchen in Saxony, Kirchner, the son of a schoolmaster in very humble circumstances, was brought up at Wittgensdorf, where, at a very early age, he began to learn the organ from his father.