“I must now,” writes Mozart, “begin at once with Stein’s pianoforte. Before I saw anything of Stein’s work I liked Spath’s best; but now I must give the preference to Stein’s, for they damp much better than the Regensburg instruments. If I strike hard, whether I let the fingers lie on the keys or lift them up, the sound is over and done with the very instant I lift my hand. I may come down on the keys as I like, the tone will always be the same; it never hangs fire; it doesn’t get weaker, or grow stronger, or stay on; it’s just all _one_. It’s true you can’t get a pianoforte like that under three hundred florins, but the trouble and diligence he shows is not to be repaid. His instruments have this point that makes them better than others: they are made with an escapement which there isn’t a man in a thousand knows anything of; and without this it is just impossible for a pianoforte to help blocking or sounding again. His hammers, when the piano is played, fall back again the very moment they touch the strings, whether you hold the key down or let it go. When he has finished a piano, so he says, he sits down to it and tests all kinds of passages, runs and leaps, and works and scrapes until the piano’ll do anything; for he works only for the good of music, and not his own merely, or he would be done long before. He often says: ‘If I myself didn’t love music so passionately, or couldn’t do a little on the piano, I should long ago have lost all patience in my work; but I’m just a lover of instruments which don’t try the player and will last.’ His pianos _do_ last, too. He guarantees that the sounding-board won’t warp or break. When he has got a sounding-board ready for a piano, he puts it in the air, rain, snow, sun, or any beastly thing, to warp it, and then he glues crossbars in until it is strong and firm. He’s quite glad when it warps, for you’re about certain nothing more can happen to it. He often cuts into it himself, and glues it again, and so makes it strong. He has three of these pianos ready, and I have played to-day on them for the first time. “The machine which you move with the knee is also made better by him than by others. I scarcely touch it, when off it goes; and as soon as I take my knee the least bit away, you can’t hear the slightest after-sound.” [Illustration: George Frederick Handel. Engraved by Thomson.]