CHAPTER V.
ON THE PEDAL.
I have just returned exhausted and annihilated from a concert, where I have been hearing the piano pounded.

Two grand bravoura movements have been thundered off, with the pedal continually raised; and then were suddenly succeeded by a soft murmuring passage, during which the thirteen convulsed and quivering bass notes of the _fortissimo_ were all the time resounding.

It was only by the aid of the concert programme that my tortured ears could arrive at the conclusion that this confusion of tones was meant to represent two pieces by Doehler and Thalberg.
Cruel fate that invented the pedal! I mean the pedal which raises the dampers on the piano.

A grand acquisition, indeed, for modern times! Good heavens! Our piano performers must have lost their sense of hearing! What is all this growling and buzzing?
Alas, it is only the groaning of the wretched piano-forte, upon which one of the modern _virtuosos_, with a heavy beard and long hanging locks, whose hearing has deserted him, is blustering away on a bravoura piece, with the pedal incessantly raised,--with inward satisfaction and vain self-assertion! Truly time brings into use a great deal that is far from beautiful: does, then, this raging piano revolutionist think it beautiful to bring the pedal into use at every bar?
Unhappy delusion.
But enough of this serious jesting.

Hummel never used the pedal.