ll the vim out of one's fingers and all the brilliancy out of
one's playing in less than six months. To the next I owe a comprehension
of the elastic touch, with devitalized muscles. This touch I practised
so assiduously that my poor piano was ruined inside of a year, and had
to be sent to the factory for a new keyboard. The next master insisted
on great exactness of finger movements, on working up velocity with
metronome, on fine tone shading and memorizing.

THE DESIRE FOR REAL KNOWLEDGE

Such, in brief, has been my experience with pedagogues and teachers of
the piano. Having passed through it (and in passing having tried various
so-called and unnamed methods) I feel I have reached a vantage ground
upon which I can stand and look back over the course. The desire to know
the experience of the great artists of the keyboard is as strong within
me as ever. What did they not have to go through to master their
instrument? And having mastered it, what do they consider the vital
essentials of piano technic and piano playing? Surely they must know
these things if any one can know them. They can tell, if they will, what
to do and what to avoid, what to exclude as unnecessary or unessential
and what to concentrate upon.

The night Rubinstein's marvelous tones fell upon my childish ears I
longed to go to him, clasp his wonderful hands in my small ones and beg
him to tell me how he did it all. I now know he could not have explained
how, for the greater the genius--the more spontaneous its
expression--the less able is such an one to put into words the manner of
its manifestation. In later years the same impulse has come when
listening to Paderewski, Hofmann and others. If they could only tell us
exactly what is to be done to master the piano, what a boon it would be
to those who are awake enough to profit by and follow the directions and
experiences of such masters.

In recognition of the strength of this desire, months after a
half-forgotten wish had been expressed by me, came a request by _Musical
America_ to prepare a series of interviews with the world famed pianists
who were visiting our shores, and also with prominent teachers who were
making good among us, and who were proving by results attained that they
were safe and efficient guides.

SEARCHING FOR TRUTH

Never was an interesting and congenial labor undertaken with more zest.
The artists were plied with questions which to them may have seemed
prosaic, but whic