Beethoven grew up with the new idea of pianoforte music. The pianoforte presented to him in Bonn by Graf Waldstein was probably of the light-toned Viennese make; but as early as 1796 he came in touch with English pianos on a concert trip to Berlin and other cities. In 1803 he came into possession of an Érard, through the generosity of one of his Viennese patrons, Prince Lichnowsky. It never wholly pleased him. His wish was for one of the heavy sonorous English pianos. In 1817 it was fulfilled. Thomas Broadwood sent him an exceptionally powerful and fine one from his establishment in London, in token of admiration. The Érard was given away, the last colossal sonatas were composed. Even after this piano had outworn its usefulness Beethoven kept it by him. Even after he received a piano especially made for him by a Viennese maker named Graf, strung with four strings to a note in consideration of his deafness, he retained his Broadwood. Both were side by side in his room at the Schwarzspanierhaus when he died. III Beethoven developed his technique with the aim of drawing the utmost sonority and variety from the pianoforte. His demands on the instrument were far beyond the capabilities of the Viennese pianos. Streicher, who married Stein’s daughter and carried on the business of the firm in Vienna, exerted his ingenuity constantly to improve his pianos according to the demands of Beethoven, finally gave over the ideal of lightness of action and of tone, largely through Beethoven’s influence. Beethoven left the harpsichord far behind him. He conceived his sonatas for an instrument of vastly greater possibilities. He filled them with passages of chords, of double notes, of powerful arpeggio figures surging from low registers to high, all combined by the pedal, in the use of which he was a great innovator. He refused allegiance to the old ideal of distinctness to which Hummel, Mozart’s pupil, was still loyal, that he might be free when he chose to deal with great masses of sound. The quality of his genius has, of course, much to do with this; but the massiveness which, among other things, distinguishes his pianoforte sonatas from those of Mozart and Haydn is in no little measure due to a new idea of the instrument, which had been born of the possibilities of the English pianofortes, not inherited from the harpsichord. He concerned himself with a new range of effects beyond the powers of his two great predecessors. He found in the pianoforte an instrument fit to express huge ideas and powerful emotions. Of such, therefore, he was free to compose his sonatas.