But, above all, it is by the use of the pedal that Beethoven goes ahead of his predecessors. The building up of great harmonies, either by wide-ranging, rapid figures, or by massive chords piled one on top of the other, was from the start characteristic of him. The trio of the scherzo in the sonata in C major, number three of the first published sonatas, offers a magnificent example, foreshadowing the colossal effects of passages in the sonatas opus 53 and opus 57 and at the beginning of the huge concerto in E-flat major. The extent to which he mastered the difficulties of the keyboard in nearly all directions and his truly great inventiveness in pianistic effects, have filled his works with sheer technical difficulties which must ever task the skill of even the most remarkable virtuosi. He demands velocity and strength in the fingers, great endurance and power, flexibility of the wrist both in its usual up and down movement and in its movement from side to side, a sure free use of the arm. Skill in thirds and sixths, in octaves, in trills, double trills and even triple trills, in wide skips, in repeated notes, all this and more he demands of the player. It is ludicrous to think that certain contemporaries denied him distinction as a pianist, largely because he played according to no recognized method. As if any method of that day or even this could be expected to limit hands that could play, to say nothing of devise, such music as his! He practically exhausted the resources of the pianoforte of his day. Of this he was aware, and his ear, growing ever finer in its appreciation of orchestral color, was at times tired of the limited tones of this single instrument. He is reported to have said of it that it is and remains an unsatisfactory instrument. At times he seems to have written for it as he would write for the orchestra. In the first movement of the ‘Waldstein’ sonata (opus 53) he actually wrote the names of instruments over phrases which they might be fancied playing. This one instance, together with passages which do not seem quite suited to the nature of the piano, must not mislead us, however, to judge the sonatas as orchestral rather than pianistic music.