Indeed it may be questioned if his musical nature were affected at all other than favorably by his infirmity. His art was greater than the man, or rather the man in his art was greater than himself; his deafness, even by shutting him within, seems to have increased his individuality, for, from the time of its absolute establishment onward his compositions grew in musical and intellectual value, and each generation finds in them something new to study and to appreciate. He wrote not for his time alone but for all time, and from what we can learn of his life and of the influence of his infirmity upon his character, we are glad to believe that through all the clouds which overcast his career Beethoven's transcendent genius shone supreme, superior to circumstance, and that the world is left none the poorer, possibly the richer, because of the misfortunes which, while they developed the peculiarities and intensified the faults of the individual, served but to enclose and protect the intellect too great to be bounded or controlled by the limitations of a saddened life. [Illustration: Clarence J. Blake] [Music: Fac-simile autograph musical manuscript written by Beethoven. Opening measures of Pianoforte Sonata in A flat, Op. 26.] BEETHOVEN AS COMPOSER. [Illustration] The greatest of all instrumental composers began his career as a pianoforte virtuoso, and his earlier compositions are chiefly for that instrument. During the first years of Beethoven in Vienna, he was more conspicuous as a virtuoso than as a composer, and it is said that Haydn prophesied greater things of him as a performer than a creator of music. The older master could not foresee that Beethoven's influence was destined to live in his epoch-making concertos, trios and sonatas, rather than in his wonderful piano playing. His superiority at Bonn as at Vienna was not so much in display of technical proficiency as in the power and originality of improvisation. When he was only eleven years of age Carl Ludwig Junker heard the boy play, and wrote in most enthusiastic terms of the inexhaustible wealth of his ideas; he also compared him with older players of distinction and preferred Beethoven on account of his more expressive, passionate performance, that spoke directly to the heart. And so Czerny described his improvisation as "most brilliant and striking; in whatever company he might chance to be, he knew how to produce such an effect upon every hearer, that frequently not an eye remained dry, and listeners would break out into loud sobs; for in addition to the beauty and the originality of his ideas, and his spirited style of rendering them, there was something in his expression wonderfully impressive." Ries and many others bear similar testimony. There were other pianists of great parts who lived in Vienna or were heard there: Steibelt, Wölffl, and especially Hummel. But whenever Beethoven met them in friendly or fierce