Factories alone, however, would never have brought about the final victory of the piano if there had been no virtuosos to play them. Clementi in England, Mozart in Germany and Austria, were the workers who won the decisive triumph of the piano. Even Philip Emanuel Bach had much preferred the clavichord to the newer instrument. But Mozart, the first world-virtuoso, the idol of the concert hall, thinking solely of sound-effects in the great halls, never hesitated for a moment between clavicymbal and piano. In 1777, at the age of twenty-one, he made, at Augsburg, the acquaintance of Silbermann’s disciple, Stein, the inventor of the Viennese mechanism. This received the name of “Viennese” when Stein’s children came to Vienna, and there, along with Streicher, the well-known friend of Schiller, established the world-renowned business. Here in this family for the first time appears a new phenomenon in musical society. Round the king of clavier-builders and his musical wife, young Streicher and Nanette Stein, there moves a brisk circle of musical spirits. It is a type which in our time has further gained in importance. With the greater popularity of the art, the social standing of the piano manufacturer has risen; and nothing contributed more to the introduction of the piano into middle-class houses than the reputation of this much-envied Viennese coterie. Old Stein and young Streicher are two clearly-marked types. The latter is a romantic spirit, raves over the just-played “Robbers” of his school-fellow Schiller, forms the plan of going to Hamburg to perfect himself in clavier-playing under Philip Emanuel Bach, but never gets there, since he spends all his time running from town to town with the restless Schiller. Then he gives music lessons; next he meets Nanette Stein, marries her, goes to Vienna, becomes manager of the factory, and makes the invention associated with his name, in which the hammers strike from above. Finally, he becomes a centre of Viennese musical life. What a contrast is this modern industrial prince to the old Stein, working like a mediæval crafts-master there in Augsburg at his claviers, and giving equal devotion to every single part! He has been sketched by Mozart in a well-known letter; and I reprint this picture of the last of the old patriarchal clavier-builders, because it is not less interesting as showing the type than as showing the condition of technique at that time. [Illustration: Streicher’s Pianoforte and Concert Saloon. After the lithograph of Lahn-Sandmann.]