1. Samuel Longfellow, ed., Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, with Extracts from His Journals and Correspondence, 3 vols. (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1891; reprint, New York: Greenwood Press, 1969), 2:60.

In Boston on 19 November 1845 De Meyer gave a private soirée as he had in New York for the leading members of the community and the local musicians, including twenty "distinguished professors." One of the invited guests was John Sullivan Dwight, then music critic for The Harbinger, who remarked on the "genial, hearty manners" of De Meyer, which "established at once a most free and familiar relation between him and his guests." Dwight had just recently published a two-part article on the pros and cons of virtuosos, but it should be noted it was written before his first-hand experience with any of the great pianists. Having voiced reservations about the breed in general, Dwight's glowing account of De Meyer's soirée takes on a special credibility. He went "prepared to be astonished and delighted" but not to hear the "deepest in music":

He began. A soft trill in the highest octave, accompanied with the most delicate pianissimo runs, continuous, clear, cool, liquid, and distinct, as so many little mingled rills of water; nature herself could not satisfy the sense more perfectly; we were children with delight. By degrees he passed into some quaint lively Russian airs, one of which acquired a movement not unlike the Galop Chromatique of Liszt; wonderful variations succeeded, with a constant accession of new force, till he smote the keys with superhuman energy, bringing out such a breadth of harmony, that not inaptly has it been said that he tears up great masses of chords by the roots and flings them about with a furious joy. The workings of his countenance grew most intense, every muscle seemed to protrude, and the brow almost to lift itself off the head, his whole body played, he would straighten back and look round in triumph upon his audience, he would rise from his seat as if upon a race-horse; and finally, with the whole instrument vibrating like twenty, he sprang up into the arms, as it were, of the audience, laughing and shouting, with as much delight as any of them, at the admirable thing which had been accomplished. Criticism was put to flight; the resisting gentlemen were taken off their feet, and there seemed a general impulse to fling their arms about each others' necks, as in Schiller's Hymn to Joy. Joy, indeed, was the sentiment of it; besides that, it had little other; it was the perfect gratification of the senses, and seemed to do one a physical good. No one stopped to consider that it was not the deepest sphere of musical expression: to regret any other sentiment would have been sheer pedantry. . . .

But the master piece of the evening was a Fugue, in which he twisted together a subject from Bach with one from Handel, and wrought the whole out in the extreme of the modern piano style. . . . This was truly great music, and converted the most experienced and cautious judges.