Page:Letters to a Young Lady (Czerny).djvu/92

 in yourself which are so necessary to this purpose. But if you do not allow yourself to be frightened by this, and will repeat these attempts day after day, you will perceive that your powers will become more developed from week to week; and, with a more extended knowledge of thorough-bass, you will soon learn also to avoid faults against harmony.

At first, you must attempt to extemporize only short movements, somewhat similar to preludes or cadences. By degrees you must endeavour to extend these, by interweaving longer melodies, brilliant passages, arpeggioed chords, &c. If, in default of ideas of your own readily offering themselves, you should avail yourself of such as you have learned from other compositions, such assistance is always very excusable.

The scale-passages, and the chords of transition which connect them, are a good means of filling up any little chasm, when no melodious ideas happen to strike the player.

You know that all music may be reduced to simple chords. Just so, simple chords conversely serve as the ground-work on which to invent and play all sorts of melodies, passages, skips, embellishments, &c.

When you have devoted a considerable time to a rational practice in the way here pointed out, you will feel astonished at the great