the _Conservatoire_ (we went to him three days a week), he would
give me a new _etude_--Gavinies, Rode, Fiorillo, Dont--to prepare for
the next lesson. We also studied all of Paganini, and works by Ernst and
Spohr. For our bow technic he employed difficult passages made into
_etudes_. Scales--the violinist's daily bread--we practiced day in, day
out. Marsick played the piano well, and could improvise marvelous
accompaniments on his violin when his pupils played. I continued my
studies with Marsick even after I left the _Conservatoire_. With him I
believe that three essentials--absolute purity of pitch, equality of
tone and sonority of tone, in connection with the bow--are the base on
which everything else rests.

THE MECHANICAL VERSUS THE NATURAL IN VIOLIN PLAYING

"Sevcik's purely soulless and mechanical system has undoubtedly produced
a number of excellent mechanicians of the violin. But it has just as
unquestionably killed real talent. Kubelik--there was a genuinely
talented violinist! If he had had another teacher instead of Sevcik he
would have been great, for he had great gifts. Even as it was he played
well, but I consider him one of Sevcik's victims. As an illustration of
how the technical point of view is thrust to the fore by this system I
remember some fifteen years ago Kubelik and I were staying at the same
villa in Monte-Carlo, where we were to play the Beethoven concerto, each
of us, in concert, two days apart. Kubelik spent the live-long day
before the concert practicing Sevcik exercises. I read and studied
Beethoven's score, but did not touch my violin. I went to hear Kubelik
play the concerto, and he played it well; but then, so did I, when my
turn came. And I feel sure I got more out of it musically and
spiritually, than I would have if instead of concentrating on its
meaning, its musical message, I had prepared the concerto as a problem
in violin mechanics whose key was contained in a number of dry technical
exercises arbitrarily laid down.

"Technic, in the case of the more advanced violinist, should not have a
place in the foreground of his consciousness. I heard Rubinstein play
when a boy--what did his false notes amount to compared with his
wonderful manner of disclosing the spirit of the things he played!
Plante, the Parisian pianist, a kind of keyboard cyclone, once expressed
the idea admirably to an English society lady. She had told him he was a
greater pianist than Rubinstein,