never heard him extemporize more brilliantly, with
more originality or more grandly than on that evening.

"But throughout the entire improvisation there ran in the middle voices,
like a thread, or cantus firmus, the insignificant notes, wholly
insignificant in themselves, which he found on the page of the quartet,
which by chance lay open on the music-stand; on them he built up the
most daring melodies and harmonies, in the most brilliant concert style.
Old Pleyel could only give expression to his amazement by kissing his
hands. After such improvisations Beethoven was wont to break out into a
loud and satisfied laugh."

Czerny says further of his playing: "In rapidity of scale passages,
trills, leaps, etc., no one equaled him,--not even Hummel. His attitude
at the pianoforte was perfectly quiet and dignified, with no approach to
grimace, except to bend down a little towards the keys as his deafness
increased; his fingers were very powerful, not long, and broadened at
the tips by much playing; for he told me often that in his youth he had
practiced stupendously, mostly till past midnight. In teaching he laid
great stress on a correct position of the fingers (according to the
Emanuel Bach method, in which he instructed me); he himself could barely
span a tenth. He made frequent use of the pedal, much more frequently
than is indicated in his compositions. His reading of the scores of
Handel and Gluck and the fugues of Bach was unique, inasmuch as he put a
polyphony and spirit into the former which gave the works a new form."

In his later years the deaf master could no longer hear his own playing
which therefore came to have a pitifully painful effect. Concerning his
manner of conducting, Seyfried says: "It would no wise do to make our
master a model in conducting, and the orchestra had to take great care
lest it be led astray by its mentor; for he had an eye only for his
composition and strove unceasingly by means of manifold gesticulations
to bring out the expression which he desired. Often when he reached a
forte he gave a violent down beat even if the note were an unaccented
one. He was in the habit of marking a diminuendo by crouching down lower
and lower, and at a pianissimo he almost crept under the stand. With a
crescendo he, too, grew, rising as if out of a stage trap, and with
the entrance of a fortissimo he stood on his toes and seemed to take on
gigantic proportions, while he waved his arms about as if tryin