Experience . . .

"Experience has taught me that powerful hands capable of performing whatever is most rapid and light are not always those which show to best advantage in tender and expressive pieces, and I declare in all good faith that I am more pleased with what moves me than with what astonishes me."

François Couperin, L'Art de Toucher le Clavecin, Paris, 1716

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"And may at last my weary age
Find out the peaceful hermitage,
The hairy gown and mossy cell,
Where I may sit and rightly spell
Of every star that heaven doth show,
and every herb that sips the dew,
Till old experience do attain
To something like prophetic strain."

Milton, Il Penseroso, 1633