an each has his own problem to
solve, and the pianist in particular is frequently brought to the verge
of despair through the fact that the instrument, in requiring the
expenditure of physical and nervous energy, absorbs, so to speak, a
large proportion of the intensity which the music demands.

"With many students the piano is only a barrier--a wall between them and
music. Their thoughts never seem to penetrate farther than the keys.
They plod along for years apparently striving to make piano-playing
machines of themselves, and in the end result in becoming something
rather inferior.

"Conditions are doubtless better now than in former years. Teachers give
studies with some musical value, and the months, even years, of keyboard
grind without the least suggestion of anything musical or gratifying to
the natural sense of the beautiful are very probably a thing of the
past. But here again I fear the teachers in many cases make a perverted
use of studies and pieces for technical purposes. If we practice a piece
of real music with no other idea than that of developing some technical
point it often ceases to become a piece of music and results in being a
kind of technical machinery. Once a piece is mechanical it is difficult
to make it otherwise. All the cogs, wheels, bolts and screws which an
overzealous ambition to become perfect technically has built up are made
so evident that only the most patient and enduring kind of an audience
can tolerate them.

THE PERVERSION OF STUDIES

"People talk about 'using the music of Bach' to accomplish some
technical purpose in a perfectly heart-breaking manner. They never seem
to think of interpreting Bach, but, rather, make of him a kind of
technical elevator by means of which they hope to reach some marvelous
musical heights. We even hear of the studies of Chopin being perverted
in a similarly vicious manner, but Bach, the master of masters, is the
greatest sufferer.

"It has become a truism to say that technic is only a means to an end,
but I very much doubt if this assertion should be accepted without
question, suggesting as it does the advisability of studying something
that is not music and which is believed at some future time to be
capable of being marvelously transformed into an artistic expression.
Properly understood, _technic is art_, and must be studied as such.
There should be no technic in music which is not music _in itself_.

THE UNIT OF MUSICAL EXPRESSION