Page:Letters to a Young Lady (Czerny).djvu/93

, and the variety of applications of which the talent for extemporizing is capable.

You will find that nearly all the forms usual in composition are applicable to extempore-playing. Thus:

We may extemporize variations on themes chosen by ourselves or given for the purpose.

We may put together very interesting potpourris or fantasias from favorite motivos, combining them with brilliant passages, so as to form a striking ensemble.

We may also distinguish ourselves by extemporizing in strict four-part composition, or in the fugue style, &c. &c.

But for all this is required:

Great and highly cultivated facility and rapidity of finger, as well as a perfect command of all the keys, and of every mechanical difficulty. For you may easily imagine, Miss, that the happiest talent avails nothing, when the fingers are incapable of following and obeying its dictates. Besides this, it also requires an intimate acquaintance with the compositions of all the great composers; for only by this means can one’s own talent be awakened, cultivated, and strengthened, so as to enable us to produce music of our own invention.

To this, as you know, must be added a thorough practical knowledge of harmony;