which has culminated, through a series of great players, in the magnificent virtuosoism of Franz Liszt, while the Vienna school has no nearer representative than Tgnaz Moscheles, one of the greatest players in the history of the pianoforte, who, whether judged by his gifts as a concert performer, a composer for the instrument which he so brilliantly adorned, or from his social and intellectual prominence, must be set apart as peculiarly a representative man.  There were other eminent players, such as Hummel, Czerny, and Herz, contemporary with Moscheles and belonging to the same genre as a pianist, but these names do not stand forth with the same clear and permanent luster in their relation to the musical art.

Ignaz Moscheles was born at Prague, May 30, 1794, his parents being well-to-do people of Hebrew stock.  His father, a cloth merchant, was passionately fond of music, and was accustomed to say, “One of my children must become a thoroughbred musician.”  Ignaz was soon selected as the one on whom the experiment should be made, and the rapid progress he made justified the accident of choice, for all of the family possessed some musical talent.  The boy progressed too fast, for he attempted at the age of seven to play Beethoven’s “Sonata Pathetique.”  He was traveling on the wrong road, attempting what he could in no way attain, when his father took him to Dionys Weber, one of the best teachers of the time.  “I come,” said the parent, “to you as our first musician, for sincere truth instead of empty flattery.  I want to find out from you if my boy has such genuine talent that you can make a really good musician of him.”  “Naturally, I was called on to play,” says Moscheles, in his “Autobiography,” “and I was bungler enough 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