all teach the pupil that there are hundreds of things
which no teacher can ever hope to teach. He must make his pupil keenly
alert to this. There are hundreds of things about my own playing which
are virtually impossible to teach. I would not know how to convey them
to others so that they might be intelligently learned. Such things I
have found out for myself by long and laborious experimentation. The
control of my fifth finger in certain fingerings presented endless
problems which could only be worked out at the keyboard. Such things
give an individuality to the pianist's art, something which cannot be
copied.

"Have you ever been in a foreign art gallery and watched the copyists
trying to reproduce the works of the masters? Have you ever noticed that
though they get the form, the design, and even the colors and also that
with all these resemblances there is something which distinguishes the
work of the master from the work of the copyist, something so wonderful
that even a child can see it? You wonder at this? _Pourquoi?_ No one can
learn by copying the secret the master has learned in creating.

THE BASIS OF GREATNESS

"Here we have a figure which brings out very clearly the real meaning of
originality in piano playing and at the same time indicates how every
pupil with or without a teacher should work for himself. Why was the
great Liszt greater than any pianist of his time? Simply because he
found out certain pianistic secrets which Czerny or any of Liszt's
teachers and contemporaries had failed to discover.

"Why has Godowsky--_Ach! Godowsky, der ist wirklich ein grosser
Talent_--how has he attained his wonderful rank? Because he has worked
out certain contrapuntal and technical problems which place him in a
class all by himself. I consider him the greatest master of the
mysteries of counterpoint since the heyday of classical polyphony. Why
does Busoni produce inimitable results at the keyboard? Simply because
he was not satisfied to remain content with the knowledge he had
obtained from others.

"This then is my life secret--work, unending work. I have no other
secrets. I have developed myself along the lines revealed to me by my
inner voice. I have studied myself as well as my art. I have learned to
study mankind through the sciences and through the great literary
treasures, you see; I speak many languages fluently, I have stepped
apace with the crowd, I have drunk the bitter and the sweet from the
chali