It is evident that amongst this tumult of activities music could not be lacking. An understanding and pleasure in music awoke in me very early on. Already between my fifth and seventh years I recall bombarding my father, who at the time was visiting nearby Leipzig for his diversion, with requests for him to bring me a keyboard from the fair, and for it to be just so, perhaps a half-ell long. How the instrument builder and the acoustics might accomplish this was naturally of no concern to the boy. Soon thereafter, perhaps at age seven, I had keyboard lessons. But our finances were already very restricted; I had to be satisfied with an old clavichord, then with a Kielenflügel by Oesterlein (at the price of 13 thalers), which, with its sprinkling tones, which were produced by the impact of quill tangents on the strings, had neither duration of sound, nor gave the possibility of distinguishing between forte and piano. And there was also no longer any good teacher available. I certainly carried it far enough, given my age and circumstances, that I even attracted attention in private circles. All that I was lacking was sufficient variety and increasingly challenging tasks. So my studies ended and became an entirely willful phantom; my lessons had to be given up.

Two, if not three years went by in this dreamy activity; the only more solid connection, which still bound me to music, was Türk's piano method and its readings. Thus I often read: there was a composer, Wolf, who had in six (!) sonatas depicted the quarreling of a married couple. The absurdity escaped me, but I grasped the basic notion that music could also reproduce more substantial ideas as well. Just then the first musical lending library had opened in Halle. I hurried to the proprietor and asked for those six sonatas. “Those we don't have”, was the dreary response. What now? To leave empty-handed seemed shameful. “So give me another sonata!” ― I received a sonata (in A-flat, probably op. 26, which begins with the variations) by Beethoven, whom at the time I did not even know by name.