A great opponent of all use of the pedal was Hummel. In our time it is no longer necessary to point out that the pedal, an integral part of the hammer-clavier, deserves not to be rejected, but simply to be treated on its own artistic lines. But Hummel stands, in his theoretic relations, so strongly on the foundations of tradition, that his attitude can excite no surprise. His “Ausführliche theoretisch-praktische Anweisung zum Pianofortespiel,” which appeared in 1828, is the crown of the united exertions of piano theory. This voluminous work, which gained with difficulty a circulation that it soon lost for ever, is a system, carried out into the minutest details, of all the technical capacities of the piano; so systematic, indeed, that here theory, by deductive methods, discovered effects which practice could not have attained alone. It is an unparalleled example of theoretic speculation, and yet really nothing more than the extension of Marpurg’s or Türk’s old-fashioned methods. These countless headings in capital letters, each describing a different class of “passage,” these numbered possibilities of fingering, these pedantic elucidations, beginning always from the first over again, are nothing but, as he calls them, an “Anweisung,” mere directions, abstraction from reflection outward. Any one who has mastered the first part has the second already at his fingers’ ends, but this master of dissection troubles himself not a whit on that point, and knows no economy in pupilage. He is opposed to learning by heart, since the fingers, he says, ought to find the keys without sight: so far is he from the modern view that only a complete mastery of a piece renders adequate interpretation possible. He troubles himself little about a science of touch. He introduces the “manieren”; but, contrary to the method of the eighteenth century, he makes the trill begin on the upper note. So far is a system of execution from his purpose that he can actually write as follows: “Runs and notes going upwards are executed crescendo, downwards diminuendo; but there are cases in which the composer intends the reverse, or that they should be played with even strength.” Hummel’s book is to-day a monument of misguided diligence, great in its patient calculation of permutations, but a dead curiosity. [Illustration: The Brothers Pixis. 1800. Engraved by Sintzenich after Schröder.]