and agreeable harmony, by
spontaneous elegance and cheerfulness, by suave and smooth simplicity.
Their practice in writing for the orchestra and for voices modified
their piano-forte style both as composers and players, but they never
sacrificed that intelligible and simple charm which appeals to the
universal heart to the taste for grand, complex, and eccentric effects,
which has so dominated the efforts of their successors. Mozart's most
distinguished contemporaries bear witness to his excellence as a player,
and his great command over the piano-forte, and his own remarks on
piano-playing are full of point and suggestion. He asserts "that the
performer should possess a quiet and steady hand, with its natural
lightness, smoothness, and gliding rapidity so well developed that the
passages should flow like oil.... All notes, graces, accents, etc.,
should be brought out with fitting taste and expression.... In passages
[technical figures], some notes may be left to their fate without
notice, but is that right? Three things are necessary to a good
performer"; and he pointed significantly to his head, his heart, and
the tips of his fingers, as symbolical of understanding, sympathy, and
technical skill. But it was fated that Clementi should be the Columbus
in the domain of piano-forte playing and composition. He was the father
of the school of modern piano technique, and by far surpassed all his
contemporaries in the boldness, vigor, brilliancy, and variety of his
execution, and he is entitled to be called first (in respect of date)
of the great piano-forte virtuosos, Clementi wrote solely for this
instrument (for his few orchestral works are now dead). The piano, as
his sole medium of expression, became a vehicle of great eloquence and
power, and his sonatas, as pure types of piano-forte compositions, are
unsurpassed, even in this age of exuberant musical fertility.

II.

Muzio Clementi was born at Rome in the year 1752, and was the son of
a silver worker of great skill, who was principally engaged on the
execution of the embossed figures and vases employed in the Catholic
worship. The boy at a very early age evinced a most decided taste
for music, a predilection which delighted his father, himself an
enthusiastic amateur, and caused him to bestow the utmost pains on the
cultivation of the child's talents. The boy's first master was Buroni,
choir-master a tone of the churches, and a relation of the family.
Later, young