Thalberg was born at Geneva, January 7,1812, and was the natural son of Prince Dietrichstein, an Austrian nobleman, temporarily resident in that city.  His talent for music, inherited from both sides, for his mother was an artist and his father an amateur of no inconsiderable skill, became obvious at a very tender age, following the law which so generally holds in music that superior gifts display themselves at an early period.  These indications of nature were not ignored, for the boy was placed under instruction before he had completed his sixth year.  It is a little singular that his first teacher was not a pianist, though a very superior musician.  Mittag was one of the first bassoonists of his times, and, in addition to his technical skill, a thoroughly accomplished man in the science of his profession.  Thalberg was accustomed to attribute the wonderfully rich and mellow tone which characterized his playing to the influence and training of Mittag.  From this instructor the future great pianist passed to the charge of the distinguished Hummel, who was not only one of the greatest virtuosos of the age, but ranked by his admirers as only a little less than Beethoven himself in his genius for pianoforte compositions, though succeeding generations have discredited his former fame by estimating him merely a “dull classic.”  Contemporaneously with his pupilage under Hummel, he studied the theory of music with Simon Sechter, an eminent contrapuntist.  Even at this early age, for Thalberg must have been less than ten years old, he impressed all by the great precision of his fingering and the instinctive ease with which he mastered the most difficult mechanism of the art of playing.  At the age of fourteen young Thalberg went to London in the household of his father, who had been appointed imperial ambassador to England, and the youth was then placed under the instruction of the great pianist Moscheles.  The latter speaks of Thalberg as the most distinguished of his pupils, and as being, even at that age, already an artist of distinction and mark.  It was a source of much pleasure to Moscheles that his brilliant scholar, who played much at private soirees, was not only recognized by the dilletante public generally, but by such veteran artists as Clementi and Cramer.  Moscheles, in his diary, speaks of the wonderful brilliancy of a grand fancy dress ball given by Thalberg’s princely father at Covent Garden Theatre.  Pit, stalls, and proscenium were formed into one grand room, in which the crowd promenaded.  The costumes were of every conceivable variety, and many of the most gorgeous description.  The spectators, in full dress, sat in the boxes; on the stage was a court box, occupied by the royal family; and bands played in rooms adjoining for small parties of dancers.  “You will have some idea,” wrote Mme. Moscheles, in a letter, “of the crowd at this ball, when I tell you that we left the ballroom at two o’clock and did not get to the prince’s carriage till four.”  One of the interesting features of this ball was that the boy Thalberg played in one of the smaller rooms before the most distinguished people present, including the royal family, all crowding in to hear the youthful virtuoso, whose tacit recognition by his father had already opened to him the most brilliant drawing-rooms in London.