One of the perplexing things about art is that, as the technology for producing it improves, the art gets worse. Bach, for example, never heard a piano until the last few years of his life, nor did he have available to him today’s flute, a piston trumpet, a valve horn, or a clarinet. Mozart had a clarinet available to him (although only an A clarinet, not a B-flat or E-flat clarinet, I think, and not, I think, with the Boehm fingering system) and a piano of sorts (with only sixty-four keys, a wooden frame, and a primitive escapement mechanism). The quality of the music that they wrote, however, has seldom been approached, and never equaled.