ds and often find out in advance how they are going to
react to a projected situation; to combine chemical elements in new
ways and thus create new substances; to plan details of organization
in a manufacturing establishment or in an educational institution, and
to be able to forecast how these things are going to work out.

It is this quality of creative imagination that enables the inventor
to project his mind into the future and see a continent spanned by
railways and telephones, and the barrier of an ocean broken down by
means of wireless and aeroplane; and in every case the inventor works
with old and well-known materials, being merely enabled by the power
of his creative faculties (as they are erroneously called) to combine
these known materials in new ways.

In the case of the musician, such creative imagination has always been
recognized as a _sine qua non_ of original composition, but its
necessity has not always been so clearly felt in the case of the
performer. Upon analyzing the situation it becomes evident, however,
that the performer cannot possibly get from the composer his real
message unless he can follow him in his imagination, and thus
re-create the work. As for adding anything original to what the
composer has given, this is plainly out of the question unless the
interpreter is endowed somewhat extensively with creative imagination;
and the possession of this quality will enable him to introduce such
subtle variations from a cut-and-dried, merely _accurate_ rendition as
will make his performance seem really spontaneous, and will inevitably
arouse a more enthusiastic emotional response in the listeners.

Weingartner sums up the value of imagination in the final paragraph of
one of the few really valuable books on conducting at our disposal.[3]

More and more I have come to think that what decides the
worth of conducting is the degree of suggestive power that
the conductor can exercise over the performers. At the
rehearsals he is mostly nothing more than a workman, who
schools the men under him so conscientiously and precisely
that each of them knows his place and what he has to do
there; he first becomes an artist when the moment comes for
the production of the work. Not even the most assiduous
rehearsing, so necessary a prerequisite as this is, can so
stimulate the capacities of the players as the force of
imagination of the conductor. It is