n a genuine
desire to develop their musical aims. Music is acquiring a technology as
confusing and as extensive as bacteriology. There seems to be no end to
the new kinds of methods in the minds of furtive and fertile inventors.
Each new method in turn seems to breed another, and so on _ad nauseam_.

"Among other things I would suggest the advisability for pianists to
cultivate some knowledge of the construction of their instrument.
Strange as it may seem, it is nevertheless a fact that the average
pianist knows practically nothing of a piano, being in many cases
entirely unaware of such simple things as how the tone is produced. The
function of the pedals is as unknown to them as geology is to the coal
heaver. This ignorance leads frequently to the employment of motions and
methods that can only be characterized as ridiculous in the extreme.

MUSIC FIRST, THE INSTRUMENT AFTERWARDS

"From the manner in which many ambitious and earnest students play, it
would seem that they had their minds fixed upon something which could
not be conveyed to the world in any other form than that of the sounds
which come from the piano. Of course, the piano has an idiom peculiarly
its own, and some composers have employed this idiom with such natural
freedom that their music suffers when transposed for any other
instrument. The music of Chopin is peculiarly pianistic, but it is,
first of all, music, and any one of the wonderful melodies which came
from the fertile brain of the Polish-French genius could be played upon
one of many different instruments besides the piano. The duty of the
interpreter should surely be to think of the composition as such, and to
interpret it primarily as music, irrespective of the instrument. Some
students sit down before the keyboard to 'play' the piano precisely as
though they were going to play a game of cards. They have learned
certain rules governing the game, and they do not dare disobey these
rules. They think of rules rather than of the ultimate result--the
music itself. The idiom of the Italian language is appropriate here. The
Italians do not say 'I play the piano,' but rather 'I sound the piano.'
(_Suono il pianoforte._) If we had a little more 'sounding' of the
piano, that is, producing real musical effects, and a little less
playing on ivory keys, the playing of our students would be more
interesting.

VARIETY THE SPICE OF ART

"It can hardly be questioned that the genesis of all musical a