Cruel fate that invented the pedal! I mean the pedal which raises the
dampers on the piano. A grand acquisition, indeed, for modern times!
Good heavens! Our piano performers must have lost their sense of
hearing! What is all this growling and buzzing? Alas, it is only the
groaning of the wretched piano-forte, upon which one of the modern
_virtuosos_, with a heavy beard and long hanging locks, whose hearing
has deserted him, is blustering away on a bravoura piece, with the pedal
incessantly raised,--with inward satisfaction and vain self-assertion!
Truly time brings into use a great deal that is far from beautiful:
does, then, this raging piano revolutionist think it beautiful to bring
the pedal into use at every bar? Unhappy delusion.

But enough of this serious jesting. Hummel never used the pedal. He was
an extremist; and, in his graceful, clear, elegant, neat, though not
grand playing, often lost fine effects, which would have been produced
by the correct and judicious use of the pedal; particularly on the
instruments of Stein, Brodmann, Conrad Graff, and others then in use,
which were usually lightly leathered, and had a thin, sharp tone. The
use of the pedal, of course always allowing it to fall frequently with
precision, was especially desirable in the upper treble, in cases where
the changes of the harmony were not very frequent; for the tone of those
instruments, although sweet and agreeable, had not much depth, and the
action had but little strength and elasticity. But on our instruments,
frequently too softly leathered, which have a full tone, and are so
strong and penetrating, especially in the bass, it is enough to endanger
one's sense of hearing to be subjected to such a senseless, incessant,
ridiculous, deafening use of the pedal; frequently, moreover, combined
with a hard, stiff touch, and an unsound, incorrect technique. A musical
interpretation in any degree tolerable is out of the question. You
cannot call that art, it cannot even be called manual labor: it is a