out; but, after a few years, this degenerated into a heartless and
worthless dexterity of the fingers, which was carried to the point of
absurdity and resulted in intellectual death. Instead of aiming to
acquire, before all things, a beautiful, full tone on these
rich-sounding instruments, which admit of so much and such delicate
shading, essential to true excellence of performance, the object was
only to increase mechanical facility, and to cultivate almost
exclusively an immoderately powerful and unnatural touch, and to improve
the fingering in order to make possible the execution of passages,
roulades, finger-gymnastics, and stretches, which no one before had
imagined or considered necessary. From this period dates the
introduction of _virtuoso_ performances with their glittering
tawdriness, without substance and without music, and of the frightful
eccentricities in art, accompanied by immeasurable vanity and
self-conceit,--the age of "finger-heroes." It is indeed a melancholy
reflection, for all who retain their senses, that this charlatanry is
made the solitary aim of numberless ignoble performers, sustained by the
applause of teachers and composers equally base. It is sad to see how,
engaged in artificial formalisms and in erroneous mechanical studies,
players have forgotten the study of tone and of correct delivery, and
that few teachers seek to improve either themselves or their pupils
therein. Otherwise they would see and understand that, on a good piano,
such as are now to be found almost everywhere, it is possible with
correct playing, founded on a right method, to play, without external
aids, _forte_, _fortissimo_, _piano_, _pianissimo_,--in a word, with
every degree of shading, and with at least formal expression; and that
this style of playing, with the requisite mechanical skill, sounds far
more pure, and is more satisfactory than when a feeling is affected
through the crude, unskilful, and absurd use of the pedal, especially of
the soft pedal of which we are now speaking. This affectation only gives