The art of the pianist should be, as Emanuel Bach declared, that of drawing from his instrument sounds of moving beauty, beautiful in quality, in line and in shading. His tools are his ten fingers which he must train to flexibility, strength and security. It is right that as soon as he can play a scale or shake a trill, he should put his skill to test upon a piece of music. So the teacher lays Haydn and Mozart under the clumsy little fingers of boy and girl. ‘Stumble along there on your way to great Beethoven, whom you must approach with firm and tested stride.’ That is the burden of the pædagogic lay. It echoes in the mind of riper age, Haydn and Mozart have been put aside, like the perambulator, the bib and the high table chair; or, like toys, are brought out rarely, to be smiled upon. If they are toys, then maturity should bring a sense of their exquisite beauty and meaning, and may well shudder at the destruction youth made imminent upon them. This it all too rarely does, because only ten fingers in ten thousand can reveal the loveliness of these sonatas, and because, also, ears are rare that now delight in such a revelation. You must give to fingers the skill to spin sound from the keyboard that is like the song of birds, or, if more vocal, is more like the voice of fairies than the voice of man. It is easier to make thunder; and even mock thunder intimidates. So your player will pound Beethoven, and lightning will flash about his head as the sarcastic Heine fancied it about Liszt’s. Some will scent sacrilege and cover their ears from the noise. But let the soulless man play Mozart and his hearers will cover their mouths, as all well-bred people are trained to do when boredom seeks an outlet. Technically Haydn and Mozart may be held to have condemned their music to the sort of galley-service it now performs. Both wrote perhaps the majority of their sonatas for the use of their pupils. Bach wrote the ‘Well-tempered Clavichord’ with what seems to be the same purpose; but Bach’s aim was constantly to educate and to expand the power of the students under his care; whereas both Haydn and Mozart may be often suspected of wishing rather to simplify their music than to tax and strengthen the abilities of their high-born amateurs. There is something comical in the fact that even with this most gracious of intentions both were occasionally accused of writing music that was troublesome, i.e., too difficult. Haydn may have been grieved to be found thus disagreeable. Mozart’s letters sometimes show a delicate malice in enjoyment of it. But one can hear Beethoven snort and rage under a similar reproach.