I have only learned in later years that my babyhood was most precarious that I was a miserably weak child, and nobody, not even the doctor, thought I could live long...Through being kept constantly indoors, my life became different from that of other children...Together with the alphabet she taught me my notes, to amuse me, and as a natural consequence of the musical atmosphere in which we lived...At four years of age I played a little sonata, composed for me by my father, at one of the subscription concerts of the ' Concordia ' Society.