Mozart, at the age of fourteen, at Mantua, on
his second Italian tour, improvised a sonata and fugue at a public
concert, taking the impressionable Italians by storm, and such
performances he repeated frequently in after years. Beethoven excelled
in this direction as greatly as he afterward did in composition,
towering high over his contemporaries. Czerny, pupil of Beethoven and
afterward teacher of Liszt, states that Beethoven's improvisations
created the greatest sensation during the first few years of his stay in
Vienna. The theme was sometimes original, sometimes given by the
auditors. In Allegro movements there would be bravura passages, often
more difficult than anything in his published works. Sometimes it would
be in the form of variations after the manner of his Choral Fantasia,
op. 80, or the last movement of the Choral Symphony. All authorities
agree as to Beethoven's genius in improvising. His playing was better
under these circumstances than when playing a written composition, even
when it was written by himself.
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