necessary to bear in mind a few facts regarding the history of the
pianoforte.

The name of pianoforte was given about a century and a half ago to an
instrument constructed by the Italian Cristofori, who devised a
mechanism for striking the strings with hammers. In the older
instruments--the clarichords and harpsichords--the strings were either
snapped by means of crow's quills, or pushed with a tangent. The new
hammer action not only brought a better tone out of the string, but
enabled the pianist to play any note loud or soft at pleasure; hence
the name _piano-forte_. But the pianoforte itself required many years
before all its possibilities of tone-production were discovered. The
instruments used by Mozart still had a thin short tone, and there was
no pedal for prolonging it, except a clumsy one worked with the
knee--a circumstance which greatly influenced Mozart's style, and is
largely responsible for the fact that his pianoforte works are hardly
ever played to-day in the concert hall. For, as the tone could not be
sustained, it was customary in Mozart's time to hide its meagre frame
by means of a great profusion of runs and trills, and other ornaments,
with which even the slow movements were disfigured. Under the
circumstances, these ornaments were justifiable to some extent, but
to-day they seem not only in bad taste, but entirely superfluous,
because our improved instruments have a much greater power of
sustaining tones.

Czerny, the famous piano teacher, touched in his autobiography on the
peculiarities of Mozart's style. Beethoven, who gave Czerny some
lessons on the piano, made him pay particular attention to the
_legato_, "of which," says Czerny, "he was so unrivalled a master, but
which at that time--the Mozart period, when the short staccato touch