Page:Letters to a Young Lady (Czerny).djvu/26

 daily practice of the scales in all the keys, as you will find them given in a connected arrangement in my Pianoforte School, and illustrated by the requisite explanations.

But these scales have many other various uses. There are few musical compositions in which they are not introduced by the author in some shape or other. In every piece, whether written to day or one hundred years ago, they are the principal means by which every passage and every melody is formed. The diatonic scales, or the chords broken into arpeggios, you will every where find employed innumerable times.

You will now easily imagine, Miss, what an advantage it gives a player when he is perfectly acquainted, in all the keys, with these, from which so many others are derived; and what a command over the entire key-board, and what an easy insight into any musical piece he gains thereby.

Farther, no property is more necessary and important to the player than a well-developed flexibility, lightness, and volubility of the fingers. This cannot be acquired in any way so quickly as by the practice of the scales. For, if we were to try to attain those qualities by the merely studying of different musical compositions, we should spend whole years to accomplish our purpose. Many beautiful pieces