49. We know that Neefe himself “opened an agency for fortepianos and clavichords from the atelier of Friderici … and other recognized masters”; see Ludwig Schiedermair, Der junge Beethoven, 69. Skowroneck (”The Keyboard Instruments,” 161) takes this to suggest that Beethoven’s “association with the clavichord became less important rather than being strengthened when Neefe became his teacher, despite Neefe’s earlier affinity with this instrument.” Surely Beethoven, and everyone else, recognized that the clavichord and the fortepiano occupied two distinct roles in the life of the musician, and this had nothing to do with whatever inclinations Neefe might have continued to hold in the mid-1780s. In this connection, it is instructive to read Cramer’s jeremiad against the fortepiano in his account of Bach’s rondos Magazin der Musik, I/2: 1246–1247), in which Cramer argues that only the clavichord “permits the modifications of tone in every way, opens the widest field to musical expression, and would be quite perfect if it could sustain tone more completely … [and] possessed a more penetrating tone.”