Page:Letters to a Young Lady (Czerny).djvu/56

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same titles, grand and difficult pieces by Chopin, Hiller, Hummel, Henselt, Kalkbrenner, Liszt, Potter, Thalberg, and many others, which I shall recommend you to study at some future time, when your execution shall have reached a very high degree of excellence: for most of these pieces are splendid bravura-compositions, intended rather for highly cultivated players, and for public performances, than for the instruction of those who, like you, Miss, have still to climb many steps to arrive at perfection.

Useful as these studies are in general, we must not lose sight of the fact, that every piece, be it a sonata, a rondo, an air with variations, a fantasia, &c. is also a study in its way; and that, for example, we may draw from a concerto, or a set of brilliant variations, equally as much advantage in regard to rapidity of finger, or from a sentimental adagio equally as much improvement in regard to expression, as we can from the practice of any set of studies whatever.

The authors which you have chiefly studied as yet, were well adapted to the purpose; for, at first, pupils require such compositions as combine pleasing and intelligible melody, and modern taste, with passages naturally calculated for preserving a fine position of the hands; as, for example, the easier works of Bertini, Herz, Hünten, Kalkbrenner, Moscheles, &c. &c.