to do it
with some conceit. My mother having decked me out in my Sunday best, I
played my best piece, Beethoven's 'Sonata Pathetique.' But what was my
astonishment on finding that I was neither interrupted by bravos nor
overwhelmed by praise! and what were my feelings when Dionys Weber
finally delivered himself thus:

"'Candidly speaking, the boy has talent, but is on the wrong road, for
he makes bosh of great works which he does not understand, and to which
he is utterly unequal. I could make something of him if you could hand
him over to me for three years, and follow out my plan to the letter.
The first year he must play nothing but Mozart, the second Clementi, and
the third Bach; but only that: not a note as yet of Beethoven; and if
he persists in using the circulating libraries, I have done with him for
ever.'"

This scheme was followed out strictly, and Moscheles at the age of
fourteen had acquired a sufficient mastery of the piano to give a
concert at Prague with brilliant success. The young musician continued
to pursue his studies assiduously under Weber's direction until
his father's death, and his mother then determined to yield to his
oft-repeated wish to try his musical fortunes in a larger field, and win
his own way in life. So young Ignaz, little more than a child, went to
Vienna, where he was warmly received in the hospitable musical circles
of that capital. He took lessons in counterpoint from Albrechts-burger,
and in composition from Salieri, and in all ways indicated that serene,
tireless industry which marked his whole after-career. Moscheles spent
eight years at Vienna, continually growing in estimation as artist and
beginning to make his mark as a composer. His own reminiscences of the
brilliant and gifted men who clustered in Vienna are very pleasant, but
it is to Beethoven that his admiration specially went forth. The great
master liked his young disciple much, and proposed to him that he should
set the numbers of "Fidelio" for the piano, a task which, it is needless
to say, was gladly accepted. Moscheles tells us one morning, when he
went to see Beethoven, he found him lying in bed. "He happened to be in
remarkably good spirits, jumped up immediately, and placed himself, just
as he was, at the window looking out on the Schotten-bastei, with the
view of examining the 'Fidelio' numbers which I had arranged. Naturally,
a crowd of street-boys collected under the window, when he roared out,
'Now, wh