This art of improvising, as these masters practised it,—who can explain it or tell how it is done? All we know is that the brain conceives the thought, and on the instant the fingers execute it in ready obedience to the impulse sent out by the brain, the result being a finished performance, not only so far as the melody is concerned, but in harmony and counterpoint as well. Mozart, at the age of fourteen, at Mantua, on his second Italian tour, improvised a sonata and fugue at a public concert, taking the impressionable Italians by storm, and such performances he repeated frequently in after years. Beethoven excelled in this direction as greatly as he afterward did in composition, towering high over his contemporaries. Czerny, pupil of Beethoven and afterward teacher of Liszt, states that Beethoven's improvisations created the greatest sensation during the first few years of his stay in Vienna. The theme was sometimes original, sometimes given by the auditors. In Allegro movements there would be bravura passages, often more difficult than anything in his published works. Sometimes it would be in the form of variations after the manner of his Choral Fantasia, op. 80, or the last movement of the Choral Symphony. All authorities agree as to Beethoven's genius in improvising. His playing was better under these circumstances than when playing a written composition, even when it was written by himself.
Once Hümmel undertook a contest with Beethoven in improvising. After he had been playing for some time Beethoven interrupted him with the question, "When are you going to begin?" It is needless to say that Beethoven, when his turn came to play, distanced the other so entirely that there was no room for comparison.
CHAPTER III
THE NEW PATH
I tremble to the depths of my soul and ask my dæmon: "Why this cup to me?"
—Wagner.
Life at last has found a meaning.
—Wagner: Letter to Frau Wille.