n
by the technical elaboration of virtuoso pieces, is only apparent when
they attempt to play a Beethoven _adagio_ or a simple Mozart _rondo_.

"In a number of cases the unsuccessful solo player has a bad effect on
violin teaching. Usually the soloist who has not made a success as a
concert artist takes up teaching as a last resort, without enthusiasm or
the true vocational instinct. The false standards he sets up for his
pupils are a natural result of his own ineffectual worship of the fetish
of virtuosity--those of the musical mountebank of a hundred years ago.
Of course such false prophets of the virtuose have nothing in common
with such high-priests of public utterance as Ysaye, Kreisler and
others, whose virtuosity is a true means for the higher development of
the musical. The encouragement of musicianship in general suffers for
the stress laid on what is obviously technical _impedimenta_. But more
and more, as time passes, the playing of such artists as those already
mentioned, and others like them, shows that the real musician is the
lover of beautiful sound, which technic merely develops in the highest
degree.

"To-day technic in a cumulative sense often is a confession of failure.
For technic does not do what it so often claims to--produce the artist.
Most professional teaching aims to prepare the student for professional
life, the concert stage. Hence there is an intensive _technical_ study
of compositions that even if not wholly intended for display are
primarily and principally projected for its sake. It is a well-known
fact that few, even among gifted players, can sit down to play chamber
music and do it justice. This is not because they cannot grasp or
understand it; or because their technic is insufficient. It is because
their whole violinistic education has been along the line of solo
playing; they have literally been brought up, not to play _with_ others,
but to be accompanied _by_ others.

"Yet despite all this there has been a notable development of violin
study in the direction of _ensemble_ work with, as a result, an attitude
on the part of the violinists cultivating it, of greater humility as
regards music in general, a greater appreciation of the charm of
artistic collaboration: and--I insist--a technic both finer and more
flexible. Chamber music--originally music written for the intimate
surroundings of the home, for a small circle of listeners--carries out
in its informal way many of the idea