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strange use for a hand so accomplished, and said, “Not much of one, I admit. How about this: Mozart!”
    â€œThe duel was with Mozart?”
    â€œAbsolutely.”
    â€œThe Magic Flute !” exclaimed Robert, as at once Clementi’s opening theme, with the rising repetition of eighth notes, echoed in his mind with the same theme from the Overture to that opera, which he had also attended with his father and had made him dream not of playing the piano but of conducting an orchestra, for he had never seen an orchestra before that.
    Moscheles said not another word but settled his hand on Robert’s hair, patted it twice, and then, without speaking to anyone else, walked modestly through the crowd, which honored him by standing out of his way.
    All the bumpy, endlessly swift way home, Robert could feel that hand in his hair, curling it and otherwise passing on its magic.

Zwickau
    MAY 12 1824
    The great object in life is sensation — to feel
    that we exist — even though in pain .
    Lord Byron
    The new Streicher, a grand, had finally been delivered to the Lyceum from Vienna, and Robert was the first to play it publicly, for the whole school.
    The headmaster, Karl Richter, fetched Robert from his Latin class the moment the piano arrived and took him into the theater where the workmen were consolidating it under the supervision of the tuner, who had come all the way from Leipzig.
    â€œI want you to play the first note,” said Herr Richter to Robert. “For me.”
    â€œWhat note would you like it to be?”
    â€œYou choose,” answered Herr Richter.
    Neither of them could wait, so even before the piano was tuned, Robert stood before it—its bench had not yet arrived, it was coming by land whereas the piano had been shipped by water—and played a B-flat.
    â€œVery nice,” said Herr Richter. “What is it?”
    â€œB-flat,” said Robert. “Listen.”
    He played an A and named it. He played a C and named it. He played now a B-natural and named it. Then he played a brief fugue on those four notes.
    â€œBravo,” said Herr Richter.
    â€œIt’s Bach,” said Robert.
    â€œI thought it sounded familiar.”
    Robert wasn’t sure whether to smile but found himself smiling before discretion could be exercised. “Bach didn’t write it,” he explained. “It’s Bach’s name. I made it up.”
    â€œYou could have fooled me,” said Herr Richter.
    Robert held his tongue this time.
    â€œAnd you certainly did,” Herr Richter supplied the rejoinder and threw his arm around Robert’s shoulder.
    Robert loved Herr Richter’s school. It was, in the perfect adjunct to the education he received at home from his bookish, dreamy, but business-minded father and his father’s library of nearly five thousand volumes, a means of exploding him into the world.
    Herr Richter, in addition to his duties as headmaster of the Lyceum, edited a political review called The Bee, * which prompted the first real discussion father and son had about politics, when Robert learned that his father harbored for all humanity passions Robert had thought were reserved for himself. This made Robert begin to mistrust politics at nearly the same moment he had begun to embrace them. His father learned that his son was not nearly as interested in all humanity—in any humanity, for that matter—as he was in music, which even then he knew could serve no purpose but its own and that of its creator.
    Actually, there was a part of humanity for which Robert harbored the utmost passion, but he did not feel he would be comfortable discussing this with his father, who, for all his love of Byron’s work, seemed almost haughtily disdainful of the poet’s vaunted love life, which any fool should realize, Robert knew, could not be separated from the popularity of his poetry, any more than you could skin a cat and expect people to hold