35
LETTER V.
(TWO MONTHS LATER.)
ON THE KEYS, ON STUDYING A PIECE, AND ON
PLAYING IN THE PRESENCE OF OTHERS.
You are now well acquainted with all the twenty-four keys, and with the scales and chords belonging to them; and it is with pleasure I learn that you even now daily play through all the scales and passages in them, as diligently as you formerly did those in the twelve major keys; and that you acknowledge the many advantages of these exercises, by which also you save yourself the labour of wading through so many tedious études, or professed studies.
One of the most necessary acquirements for a pianist is to be equally practised and ready in all the keys. There are many who are as much startled at a piece having four or five sharps or flats for its signature, as though they saw a spectre. And, nevertheless, to the fingers all keys are in reality of equal difficulty; for there are as difficult compositions in C major as in C sharp major. Only that the eye
