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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 43915 ***
+
+[Transcriber's Note: Every effort has been made to replicate this
+text as faithfully as possible, including obsolete and variant
+spellings and other inconsistencies. Text that has been changed is
+noted at the end of this ebook.
+
+Illustrations have been moved to appear between paragraphs, which may
+be on a different page than originally published. Page numbers listed
+in the illustrations section of the table of contents reflect their
+position in the original text.]
+
+
+  LIVING MASTERS OF MUSIC
+  EDITED BY ROSA NEWMARCH
+
+
+
+
+  THEODOR LESCHETIZKY
+
+
+
+
+  "If you choose to play!--is my principle
+  Let a man contend to the uttermost
+  For his life's set prize, be it what it will."
+                                     BROWNING
+
+
+[Illustration: _Photo. by H. S. Mendelssohn, London, IV._
+Theodor Leschetizky (signature)]
+
+
+
+
+  THEODOR
+  LESCHETIZKY
+
+  BY ANNETTE HULLAH
+
+
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+
+
+  LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD
+  NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY. MCMVI
+
+
+  Printed by BALLANTYNE & CO. LIMITED
+  Tavistock Street, London
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                              PAGE
+
+    I. 1830-1862                                 1
+
+   II. 1862-1905                                14
+
+  III. THE EVOLUTION OF THE METHOD              25
+
+   IV. THE METHOD                               39
+
+    V. THE LESSONS                              51
+
+   VI. THE CLASS                                66
+
+  VII. THE CENTRE OF THE CIRCLE                 75
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+  LESCHETIZKY AT THE PIANO          _Frontispiece_
+        _From a copyright photograph by
+         Mr. H. S. Mendelssohn, London, W._
+
+                                          _To face
+                                              page_
+  LESCHETIZKY'S VILLA IN THE CARL LUDWIG
+    STRASSE, VIENNA                             14
+
+  LESCHETIZKY IN 1903                           18
+
+  ON THE KAHLENBERG                             22
+
+  DR. ARNE (OLD SCHOOL)                         26
+
+  A GROUP OF PUPILS                             50
+
+  LESCHETIZKY AND MARK HAMBOURG                 70
+
+  LESCHETIZKY AT KARLSBAD                       76
+
+  THE PROFESSOR'S BIRTHDAY                      80
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+1830 TO 1862
+
+
+Theodor Leschetizky was born in Poland at the Castle of Lancut, near
+Lemberg, June 22, 1830. His father, a Bohemian by birth, held the
+position of music-master to the family of Potocka. His mother, Theresa
+von Ullmann, was a Pole.
+
+The Potocki had luxurious tastes. They were cultivated people, who
+cared for beautiful things, and were rich enough to have them. The
+Castle itself, a fine old building, stood in the middle of a large
+park, surrounded by trees and plenty of open land; it contained a
+picture-gallery and a private theatre. This was the home in which
+Leschetizky passed his childhood, seeing life as a delightful thing,
+full of grace and ease, which might have been quite perfect had there
+been no music lessons. But at the age of five he began to learn the
+piano, and had to study two hours a day from the beginning. He loved
+music intensely, and might even have loved practising; but his father,
+according to the parental custom of the day, was so extremely severe
+that the lessons were a misery to both, and, but for his mother's
+gentle help, might have ended in his hating the instrument altogether.
+
+In spite of such troubles, his progress was extraordinary. In four
+years he was ready to play in public, and made his first appearance at
+an orchestral concert in Lemberg. He played a Concertino of Czerny,
+and created a considerable sensation; "but," he says, "I cannot
+remember very much about the music, because at the time my mind was
+entirely taken up with the rats." Concerts were given so rarely in
+those days that any place was considered fit to play in. Leschetizky's
+first concert-room--probably a little more primitive than most--was
+built of wood; the light came in through the cracks, and the floor was
+full of holes, through which climbed the aforesaid rats in hundreds,
+running about fearlessly, not only during rehearsal, but at the
+concert itself.
+
+After this exciting début Leschetizky went about playing everywhere,
+and very quickly became famous as a "wonder-child." Everybody talked
+about him and wanted to hear him; great ladies borrowed him for their
+salons when they could, and fêted and spoilt him, as great ladies
+always do--all of which he enjoyed as much as they did.
+
+When he was ten, his father, pensioned by the Potocka, took his family
+to live in Vienna, where they were already accustomed to spend the
+winter. Joseph Leschetizky's post in the Potocka household had given
+him the opportunity of meeting all the great artists of the time who
+frequented their salon; and in this way Theodore had been able to hear
+the best music from his earliest boyhood. For a year the boy continued
+to study at home with his father, after which he went to the great
+Czerny, whose school was so famous in those days, and to which many
+of the greatest artists, such as Liszt, Thalberg, Döhler, Kullak, and
+Hiller, had belonged.
+
+Himself a fine pianist, Czerny had been a pupil of Clementi and an
+intimate friend and pupil of Beethoven; "a fact of which he was very
+proud," says Leschetizky. "So often, indeed, did he speak of him to
+me that I always felt as if I had known him myself." In the same
+indirect way he became spiritually acquainted with Chopin, whose pupil
+Filtsch was his great friend. A little older than Leschetizky, Filtsch
+was already a beautiful player, whom Chopin loved, of whom he thought
+highly, and who would assuredly have become famous had he lived.
+Leschetizky's readings of the lighter compositions of Chopin are for
+the most part inspired by the remembrance of what he assimilated
+from this gifted boy, and he has changed his rendering very little
+since those days. Czerny cared little for Chopin, either as pianist
+or composer, nor did he willingly teach his music. His mind was too
+limited to understand subtlety, and he felt for it the contempt the
+plain man always feels for what he cannot grasp.
+
+At fourteen Leschetizky began to take pupils himself, and seems to
+have been a prodigy in teaching as well as in playing, for he had
+soon so much to do that his time was quite filled up. His father
+took two rooms for him next door, so that he might carry on his
+musical work without disturbing the household. He was very busy, for,
+besides the teaching and his own practice, there were lessons from
+Sechter in counterpoint and, until his voice broke, he sang in a
+church choir two or three times a week. He played everywhere. He was
+known in Metternich's salon, to Thalberg, to the great Liszt, whom
+he worshipped, to the Court, to Donizetti, who encouraged his early
+attempts at composition, in fact to all the great artists who passed
+through Vienna.
+
+It was at this time that he heard Schulhoff play one evening
+at Dessauer's house. It was a new experience. Hitherto he had
+heard nothing like it. To phenomenal technique he was quite
+accustomed--fireworks could no longer disturb his equanimity--but
+the poetry, exquisite finish and simplicity of Schulhoff's playing
+touched something within him that till then had lain dormant, and he
+recognised at once the incompleteness of his own work.
+
+Schulhoff, though not a pupil of Chopin, knew him well in Paris, and
+had caught something of his manner; yet it was not this--already
+familiar to Leschetizky through Filtsch--but his marvellous power of
+making the piano "sing" that brought to the boy the vision of a new
+world. The public did not understand Schulhoff at first. They rather
+despised this pianist, who played to them in a perfectly simple way.
+They missed their runs and trills and surging octave passages, and
+found him dull. Not so Leschetizky. Here was a pianist who had gone
+further, and attained to something higher than the rest. He too must
+reach the same plane. For months he worked, refusing to play in public
+till he had gained what he had been searching for, and when he emerged
+from his exile, not only his playing, but his point of view had
+entirely altered.
+
+Up to this time, in spite of Filtsch's influence, he had, like others,
+been satisfied that "the perfect finger" was the desirable thing; now
+he recognised a finer ideal. The change in him was to be of farther
+reaching influence than he dreamt of at the time, for it filtered
+through him to his pupils and created in them the germ of what
+developed later into the famous Leschetizky School. Schulhoff's visit
+marked an epoch in Leschetizky's life.
+
+In the same year he took a course in law at the University; and this
+together with his pupils kept him so busy that he was obliged to read
+hard into the early morning hours to get through the double work.
+
+When the Revolution of 1848 came--putting an end to all music in the
+city for the time being--he was ready for a holiday. Having also hurt
+his arm in a duel, therefore unable to practise, he decided to take
+this opportunity of seeing something of the world. He did not see much
+of it, for he went to Italy, and promptly fell so deeply in love with
+everything--and everybody--there, that he had to be removed from the
+source of danger; and a faithful friend hastily took him back to the
+Austrian mountains and kept him there, till both his mind and his city
+were calm enough to permit a safe return to ordinary life.
+
+For four years he worked away steadily at his teaching, playing much
+besides, and leading the gay social life his genial nature loved. He
+also composed his first opera, "Die Bruder von San Marco." Meyerbeer,
+to whom he played it, thought it showed great promise, and urged
+him to finish it, but this he never cared to do, and the work still
+remains as he left it then.
+
+In 1852 Leschetizky decided to go to Russia, and set out in September
+of that year.
+
+His début at the Michael Theatre in St. Petersburg resulted in a small
+circle of pupils, which very soon grew into a large one. His fame as a
+pianist had already preceded him, and shortly after his arrival he was
+commanded to play before Nicholas I.
+
+He tells of the magnificent carriage sent to convey him to the palace,
+of the sumptuous apartment and dainty supper to greet him when he
+got there and, alas, of the intolerable piano, upon which he flatly
+refused to play, and went home instead. Expecting to be ordered out
+of Russia, a little later on he received to his surprise a second
+invitation, accompanied this time by no beautiful carriage, and graced
+by only a very meagre supper served in a miserable little bedroom. But
+the piano was all he could wish, and he played on it so much to their
+Majesties' satisfaction that, his sins forgiven, bedtime discovered
+him once more in the gorgeous apartment of his first visit.
+
+He was very happy in his Russian life. He had many friends, and among
+them Anton Rubinstein. As boys they had played together in Vienna,
+now as young men they were to work together in St. Petersburg.
+Rubinstein was concert-master at the Court of the Grand Duchess Helen,
+the sister of the Emperor Nicholas. Soon after Leschetizky came to
+Russia, Rubinstein wishing to go on tour, asked him to take his place
+until his return. Leschetizky agreed to do so, on the understanding
+that he could live in his own rooms instead of staying in the palace,
+and be allowed to go on with his private teaching at home. Life would
+have been intolerable to him had his freedom been curtailed. His
+duties were to arrange all the music at Court, to give singing lessons
+to the daughter of the Grand Duchess, and to one of her Maids of
+Honour--Madlle. de Fridebourg, who possessed one of the most beautiful
+voices he had ever heard. In 1856 he married this lady. Sixteen years
+later they were divorced.
+
+Leschetizky's connection with the Grand Duchess brought him into touch
+with all the great artists who visited St. Petersburg. The Grand
+Duchess Helen was a remarkable woman, who exercised considerable
+influence over the political affairs of Russia and made her palace
+the centre of culture in the capital. Of wide sympathies and
+unusual intellectual gifts, she was fitted to be the leader of any
+sphere she might choose to rule. Men and women from all parts of
+Europe--military, diplomatic, artistic--visited her salon. She it
+was who started the Russian Imperial Musical Society which, under
+Rubinstein's directorship, eventually founded the Conservatoire; and
+it was in a large measure owing to her influence that Rubinstein,
+Kologrivov, and others were able to carry out their schemes for
+educating the people to a knowledge of good music.
+
+St. Petersburg was very far behind the rest of Europe in regard to the
+status of the musical profession when Leschetizky first went there. It
+was not regarded as an honourable career at all, nor even as a serious
+study. The rich patronised it because it was fashionable; the bargeman
+on the river chanted his song as he went because he loved it; but its
+cultivation as an art was in no sense a conscious necessity of Russian
+life.
+
+Outside aristocratic circles there was little or no music, scarcely
+any one who thought it worth while to make it his life-work. No one
+knew anything about the generation of young native composers then
+growing up. Even Glinka's popularity had waned, and Dargomijsky and
+Balakirev were hardly more than names. The orchestra of the Symphony
+Concerts--given but two or three times in the year by the Court
+Chapel--was made up of students, clerks, or any one who could play,
+and liked to spend his leisure in that way. Till 1850, when Rubinstein
+inaugurated the Sunday Concerts, there were no public orchestral
+performances outside the Court at all; and even twelve years later,
+when the Conservatoire was started, musical life was but just
+awakening, and a little knowledge of the art spreading through the
+city. The ignorance of people in general was incredible. Leschetizky
+tells an amusing story to illustrate this.
+
+One day a rich tradesman came to one of his musical friends to ask
+what his terms would be for giving pianoforte lessons to his daughter.
+He named his price. "Well," said the tradesman, "that certainly is
+expensive--but does it include the black keys as well as the white?"
+
+In a comparatively short time the condition of musical affairs
+improved immensely, for the people at once took advantage of the
+opportunity to hear and learn, and Leschetizky's popularity as a
+teacher increased so rapidly that very soon it became impossible for
+him to take all the pupils himself, and he found it necessary to train
+some of them to work under him as assistants.
+
+In 1862, when the St. Petersburg Conservatoire was opened with Anton
+Rubinstein as director, Leschetizky transferred his class there.
+Though among the pioneers who actively interested themselves in its
+development as a means of popularising the study of music, Leschetizky
+was more taken up with pupils in particular than pupils in general.
+He sympathised to a certain extent with Rubinstein's plans for the
+improvement of the musical condition of the country; at the same
+time his nature, more individualist and less philanthropic than his
+friend's, preferred to work in a smaller field. He could devote
+himself heart and soul to watching and tending the unfolding of any
+young talent, but not to the education of the masses; and it is well
+that it was so, for otherwise a specialist would have been lost to
+the world. His chief care was that each pupil entrusted to him should
+develop to the best of his ability; if pianism in general incidentally
+benefited by the system of study he had built up, so much the better.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+1862-1905
+
+
+During these years Leschetizky played a great deal in public. He was
+famous all over Russia, Austria, and Germany, both as pianist and
+teacher, and pupils collected to join his class from every part of
+Europe.
+
+[Illustration: LESCHETIZKY'S HOUSE IN VIENNA]
+
+In his capacity as Capellmeister he had also to fill the part of
+conductor. In speaking of this part of his career he says: "Conducting
+is not difficult. It is harder to play six bars well on the piano
+than to conduct the whole of the Ninth Symphony of Beethoven." In
+illustration of this view he relates how, when he was once conducting
+the Schumann Concerto, Rubinstein, who was taking the solo, suddenly
+forgot the music so completely that Leschetizky was obliged to stop
+the orchestra. On rushed Rubinstein, playing anything that came into
+his head, till he found himself in the Cadenza, when Leschetizky
+at once passed the word round the orchestra to be ready to come in
+with the theme, if Rubinstein ever got there. Rubinstein did get
+there. Leschetizky brought down the stick, and all went merrily to
+the end. On another occasion he had to conduct an overture that he
+had never seen; but he ran it over in his mind before the concert
+began, and it went without a hitch. He thinks far too much is
+said about a conductor's difficulties. He protests also against
+"virtuoso-conducting." "Why should the orchestra rise? Why should
+so much be said about the way in which things are done? It is the
+_composer_ who should have the applause, not the _conductor_." When a
+concert is over, he would have all the lights put out, the portrait of
+the composer thrown by a lantern on a screen, and make the audience
+applaud that. Leschetizky's own career as a conductor ended when
+Rubinstein came back to take up his position as "Janitor of Music" at
+the Court. Since then he has not sought the opportunity of carrying
+these ideas into practice.
+
+In 1864 he visited England for the first time, making his _début_ at
+one of Ella's Musical Union Concerts, where he played the Schumann
+Quintet and some of his own compositions. Mr. Kuhe happened to be in
+the artists' room at the time, and says that at rehearsal there arose
+a considerable discussion as to the _tempo_ at which the Quintet
+should be taken. Leschetizky, it seems, was accustomed to play it much
+more brilliantly and at a greater speed than Joachim--the first violin
+on this occasion--and nothing would induce him to play it in any other
+way. "I play it so, or not at all." "Very well," replied Joachim, "but
+mind the responsibility rests with _you_." They played it according
+to Leschetizky's rendering, and so great was its success that the new
+_tempo_ became universally popular.
+
+Whatever Leschetizky made up his mind to do he carried through in
+spite of all obstacles. Once, on arriving at a town where he was to
+play in the evening, he found the impresario anxious to give up the
+concert, because that very day another pianist had already played the
+Concerto chosen by Leschetizky. "No matter," said Leschetizky quite
+calmly, "I will play it all the same. The audience will come to hear
+how I do it after the other man." And they did. In England it was
+still the fashion to give extremely long concerts--although not quite
+as long as in the Mendelssohn era, when it is recorded that Benedict
+arranged a concert of thirty-eight numbers. Mr. Kuhe was one of the
+most generous of impresarios in this respect, and Leschetizky never
+lost an opportunity of rallying him on the subject.
+
+While Leschetizky was staying in London Mr. Kuhe gave one of these
+lengthy concerts at Brighton, and the former went down to hear it. But
+when he arrived he was tired after the journey and in the mood for
+a quiet evening; the armchair was comfortable; it began to rain--he
+did not go. Next morning he was walking about the parade enjoying the
+sunshine and the sea air, quite happy and entirely oblivious of the
+concert for the moment, when up came Mr. Kuhe, weary and reproachful:
+"Why did you not come to my concert last night?" Leschetizky stared
+at him, apparently horror-struck, "The concert! Good heavens," he
+exclaimed, "you don't mean to say it is over already!"
+
+Leschetizky came to London two or three times afterwards, but never
+stayed very long. The atmosphere of solidity, musical and climatic,
+depressed him, and he was always glad to get away again to lands where
+the sky was blue and the sun shone.
+
+Among those who had worked with him in St. Petersburg was Annette
+Essipoff. She came to him when she was twelve years old, and he grew
+to be prouder of her than almost any other pupil. "I would have given
+my life, could it have brought her nearer the goal," he says. "She had
+a talent that is met with once in a lifetime--oh, if you could but
+have heard how she played to me sometimes." Later his pride grew into
+love, and she became his second wife.
+
+In 1878, partly on account of her health and his own--weakened by an
+attack of typhoid fever--and partly for the sake of his father, who
+had been living alone for many years, Leschetizky made up his mind to
+leave Russia and settle permanently in Vienna. During the twenty-six
+years that had elapsed since it had been his home, great changes had
+taken place there.
+
+[Illustration: LESCHETIZKY IN 1903]
+
+Vienna had always had a reputation as a musical city. Yet in 1838
+Schumann, though finding it delightfully gay and the opera "splendid,
+surpassing any other," added in his letters home, "... in vain do I
+look for musicians, that is musicians who can play passably well on
+one or two instruments, and who are cultivated men." With the people
+themselves he is pleased enough: "Of all Germans," he writes, "they
+spare their hands the least, and even in their idolatry have been
+known to split their gloves with clapping so much." Incidentally it
+is curious to compare with this Mendelssohn's description of a Berlin
+audience a few years earlier: "When a piece of music comes to an
+end, the whole company sit in solemn silence, each considering what
+his opinion is to be, nobody giving a sign of applause or pleasure,
+and all the while the performer in the most painful embarrassment
+not knowing whether, nor in what spirit, he has been listened to."
+Enthusiastic as Vienna evidently was by nature, her enthusiasm did
+not carry her to the same level as other German cities, where music
+was an every-day occurrence, for she was as much behind Leipzig, for
+instance, as she was in advance of Russia.
+
+At the time of Leschetizky's birth--1830--Vienna had just lost two of
+her greatest composers, Beethoven and Schubert, and for the moment no
+one remained to carry on her tradition as the home of great musicians.
+Schumann and Mendelssohn, it is true, came to and fro. Spohr had
+been there--Paganini, Vieuxtemps, Hummel, Meyerbeer, Cherubini, and
+a host of other executant-composers, including Liszt and Chopin. But
+no great composer was actually living there--nor was to live there
+for many years to come. Her creative spirit seemed to have gone to
+sleep and left her rich only in virtuosi. In 1878, when Leschetizky
+returned from Russia, it was to find her once more restored to her
+former glory. Brahms had come. Goldmark, Brückner, Brüll, Volkmann,
+Johann Strauss were there. For thirty years she had been but a city of
+players. She was again a city of composers.
+
+Leschetizky bought a house and settled down, thinking to rest
+from teaching for a time. But no sooner was it known that he had
+established himself in Vienna, than the inevitable pupils assailed
+him with petitions for lessons, and almost immediately he was hard at
+work again.
+
+He had by now published a considerable number of compositions, many of
+which had become popular; but, never able to devote his whole energies
+to composing, most of his works are valuable solely as admirable
+pianoforte studies, wherein he has expressed his perfect knowledge of
+the instrument. Everything he writes is full of charm and handled with
+a delicacy that is peculiarly his own. Though difficult to play well,
+his works are all effective and repay the trouble of study.
+
+In 1882 his second opera, "Die Erste Falte," was brought out at
+Mannheim. The composer was not present on the first night, for it
+happened that Liszt arrived just as he was starting, and Leschetizky,
+in the joy of seeing his old friend again--they had not met for many
+years--talked on till long after the only train had gone. This opera
+was produced with success in several other German towns, and finally
+in Vienna, under Richter. Vienna was full of interesting musicians
+at this time, all of whom Leschetizky knew: Pauline Lucca, Mariana
+Brandt, Schütt, Richter, Navratil, Rosenthal, Fischof, Grünfeld,
+Brahms, and many more. The Ton-Künstler Verein--a new musical
+club--became the centre where they all met, and where they produced
+and discussed each other's compositions with the freedom of old
+friends.
+
+Leschetizky saw Brahms more often at Ischyl than in Vienna, and spent
+many an evening with him for, though they could not abide each other's
+music, they were excellent friends.
+
+Leschetizky relates how, when he was sitting at the piano composing
+one morning, Brahms walked in and looked over his shoulder to see
+what he was doing. "Ha! What sort of things are you writing this
+morning? I see--quite _little_ things, _little_ things, of course,
+yes." "_Little_ things? Yes, they are, but ten times more amusing than
+yours, I can tell you."
+
+Every great artist who stayed in Vienna came to see Leschetizky,
+and he and Mme. Essipoff were welcomed everywhere as the central
+figures of a brilliant, gifted circle in which it was a privilege to
+be included. In 1892 they separated. Two years later he married his
+secretary, Mme. Donnimirska.
+
+[Illustration: ON THE KAHLENBERG]
+
+Leschetizky had long since definitely given up appearing in public. He
+lost his delight in applause and all the excitements connected with
+platform life very early. Soon, his interests, more and more absorbed
+by his pupils, the ambition to play gradually died out, and he gave
+his whole time to helping those who cared for a public career more
+than he did himself. His last appearance in public was in Frankfort
+in 1887, where he played the E flat Concerto of Beethoven. He says:
+"I did not care for their enthusiasm at all. Nor did I read their
+criticisms, though I was told they were good. If they had been bad I
+would have read them, for bad criticism is very wholesome. We learn
+much from the disagreeable things critics say, for they make us think,
+whereas the good things only make us glad."
+
+Once only during his visit to London in September 1897 he allowed
+himself to be persuaded into playing in public by one of his pupils.
+This was at Mr. Daniel Mayer's reception at the Salle Erard, where
+Leschetizky gave some of his own compositions: "L'Aveu," "La Source,"
+"Barcarolle," and the "Mazurka" in E flat. The storm of applause when
+he finished made speech impossible; but, ever critical of himself, he
+inquired anxiously in a whisper of those intimate friends around him:
+"Oh, children, have I played badly--oh, tell me, have I played badly?"
+
+He stayed a few weeks only, but this time he was so sorry to leave
+London that he has been making plans to come back ever since.
+
+He spends part of every summer at Ischyl, where many years ago he
+bought a beautiful villa, and where for months he lives content
+amongst trees and mountains and the company of an occasional
+sympathetic friend.
+
+Sometimes he goes to Carlsbad for a few weeks, sometimes to
+Wiesbaden, but the winter always find him at home in Vienna, for
+his working year begins in November and--except for a day or two at
+Christmas--continues without a break until the following June.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE EVOLUTION OF THE METHOD
+
+
+Over a hundred and fifty years ago, in the year 1747, John Sebastian
+Bach went to Potsdam to visit Frederick the Great, and while there he
+was asked to try over some of the new fortepianos that had recently
+been made for the King by Silbermann. He did so, and disliked the
+noise extremely. His ears, too long accustomed to the gentle tinkle
+of his beloved clavichord, could not accept this harsh, modern
+instrument, and he returned home thankful that Providence had not
+brought him up on such an abominable invention.
+
+But his son, Carl Philip Emanuel, in the service of the King, and
+having therefore the opportunity to study the Fortepiano at his
+leisure, became so much interested in it that he wrote a book on the
+art of playing it--the first book that exists on piano technique.
+His father's instructions for the clavichord advised players to keep
+the hand as quiet as possible, "to wipe a note off the keys with
+the end-joint of the finger only, as if taking up a coin from a
+table"--"not to be too lavish in the employment of the thumb." Carl
+Philip Emanuel transferred what he could of this to his own book,
+putting in a plea for certain necessary innovations--he thought they
+might look on the thumb with a little more favour: on rare occasions a
+note might be struck, it was inadvisable now to pass the fingers over
+each other backwards if they could do without. They must, above all
+things, maintain an elegant tranquillity, a quiet deportment, being
+careful to sit precisely before the middle of the keyboard, using
+their fingers softly, caressing
+
+                         Those dancing chips
+    O'er whom thy fingers walk with gentle gait.
+
+[Illustration: DR. ARNE (SKETCH BY BARTOLOZZI)
+  _Old style of playing, for new style see Frontispiece_]
+
+In Bach's time, and long afterwards, people never played vigorously.
+They could not. If they had attempted to do so the piano would have
+collapsed at once. They were very delicate instruments, unfitted
+for any but the most tender treatment--which, indeed, is all they ever
+had.
+
+Playing must have been anxious work in those days. There was no pedal
+to swell the sound, or cover up defective technique. The note died
+away immediately after it was struck, making--what distressed Mozart
+so much--"cantabile playing" an impossibility. The touch of the
+keyboard was something like that of a harpsichord, the keys jumping up
+and down with a little jerk; and when the instrument went out of tune
+it was a serious matter.
+
+By the beginning of the nineteenth century all this had changed. The
+mechanism was so much improved that it had developed into a responsive
+medium worth the trouble of studying. Clementi was the first who
+composed specially for the piano; for Mozart and Haydn, concerning
+themselves little with its mechanical resources (what they wrote
+serving equally well for the clavichord or harpsichord), treated it
+merely as a vehicle for the expression of their ideas, well suited to
+the inspiration of the moment. Clementi--whose inspirations were few
+and far between--regarded it from an entirely different standpoint.
+He was interested in the instrument itself; he experimented with it,
+tried what effects could be got out of it, and composed to introduce
+these effects rather than for any other reason. He considered the
+pianist more than the musician, and, in so doing, became the founder
+of a school of playing that regarded mechanical skill as a study in
+itself.
+
+By degrees the piano and its players, developing side by side,
+diverged into two distinct styles--the English and the Viennese.
+The English school grew up, so to speak, of the masculine sex, the
+Viennese of the feminine--their respective instruments being in a
+large measure responsible for the heavy, vigorous qualities of the
+one, and the delicacy and lightness of the other. As long as Mozart
+lived, the Viennese held to their old-time gentleness and quaint
+dignity, but after his death they became more and more brilliant;
+so that, in his "Music in Germany," Dr. Burney could write of them
+as the "most remarkable people for fire and invention" (by which he
+probably meant improvisation) that he had ever heard. In spite of this
+reputation, the manner of performance in those days, tried by present
+standards, would have seemed very dry indeed. Correct, accurate,
+redolent of propriety and good manners, the goal of perfection
+exemplified by such men as Herz, Hunten, and Steibelt, cannot have
+been very interesting. Clementi himself, though no doubt angular and
+stiff, did try to some extent to shake off prim custom. At any rate,
+his was a wider mind, genuinely interested in striving to infuse some
+warmth and colour into his art. He pioneered his cause to the utmost,
+talking about it, writing studies for it, and setting every one
+else doing the same. His ideas were worked out still further by his
+pupils Field and Cramer, who, having a faint inkling of the mysteries
+of "tone-effects," tried to "make the piano sing"--as Field's
+compositions show.
+
+As yet no one had in the least realised what the instrument could
+be made to do. Quantity of notes, not quality, was the chief
+concern; fluency, not beauty of tone, the aim of a good player. The
+perpendicular finger of the Bach era--a relic of the clavichord
+touch--was still fashionable; indeed, up to this time, there was no
+reason why it should not be so, for the music of the day called for
+nothing more forcible. But there were signs that this dull code of dry
+formulæ was soon to become too narrow, and the complaisant pedagogue
+to be driven from his throne. There was need of a change, and the man
+destined to effect it was at hand.
+
+Wiping out their stiffness, poking fun at their propriety, it was
+Beethoven who broke through their foolish little rules and gave them
+something deeper and more vital to think of. Full of dramatic power,
+of orchestral effects, of changing moods, his music outstretched their
+limits entirely. It created a new element and offered them a new
+problem: the study of tone. He demanded of the piano what had never
+been demanded of it before; both the instrument and its players were
+forced to change. Henceforward the art of pianism stood on an entirely
+different level. A new school was growing up.
+
+Weber, who was an immense admirer of Beethoven, and a great influence
+in the musical world, went into the question with enthusiasm--indeed,
+some of his own Sonatas showed a faint dramatic tendency, new figures,
+and a more complicated technique.
+
+Kalkbrenner, a follower of Clementi and famous teacher, was at work
+in Paris. Dussek, and Berger (Mendelssohn's master) helped elsewhere.
+Schubert in his compositions afforded food for experiment too.
+
+On the other side Czerny, Woelffl, Herz, Steibelt, and even
+Hummel--who was considered a good enough pianist to be put forward as
+Beethoven's rival--upheld the prim style of their youth. Thus began
+the usual struggle between old and new, ending in the invariable
+victory for the new. Moscheles and Mendelssohn, though educated in
+the old traditions, sympathised with modern views, so welding a link
+between the past and "the wonderful things reported of a Pole--Chopin
+by name," of whom Schumann told the world in his journal.
+
+In about eighty years both players and instruments had developed
+beyond recognition, virtuosity became an art in itself, and the
+piano so increased in importance that instead of being regarded as
+little worse than an accompaniment, it had become popular as a solo
+instrument, and long recitals, without the relief of song or strings,
+were given for it alone.
+
+Partly to avoid the monotony of this one-man entertainment, and
+partly to induce the public to stop to the end, great pianists,
+such as Thalberg, Liszt, and Dreyschock began to do strange and
+wonderful gymnastic tricks. They passed one hand over the other with
+extraordinary rapidity; divided the melody between two hands and made
+it sound as if they had not; played octaves glissando; jumped with
+marvellous agility from one end of the piano to the other; wrote
+horrible and difficult fantasias of interminable length; played
+without the music; in short, they did everything they could think of
+to make a sensation and astonish the public. Vienna and Paris, where
+the audiences came from gay and sprightly circles and much preferred
+being amused to being instructed, were delighted. Sober-minded Germany
+was less so, for--although Liszt created a _furore_ there as well as
+elsewhere--she had Mendelssohn to keep her in the way she should go.
+Europe was divided into two distinct camps--the one brilliant, the
+other scholarly. To the former belonged Leschetizky.
+
+In 1830, the year of his birth, Rubinstein was but a baby; Von Bulow
+a few months old; Clara Schumann had just given her first concert
+at the age of ten--(her programme is interesting as showing the kind
+of music popular at the time: "Rondo Brilliant," by Kalkbrenner,
+"Variations Brilliantes," by Herz, "Variations" on a thema of
+her own); Saint-Saëns was born five--Tausig eleven--years later.
+Dreyschock was already twelve; Henselt sixteen; Thalberg eighteen;
+Liszt nineteen.
+
+All these artists and many more visited Vienna, and Leschetizky heard
+them often. They were the source from which he drew inspiration as a
+young teacher, and whose playing served him as material from which,
+later on, to build up a system of his own. It is from them, from
+Schulhoff his friend, and from Czerny his master, that he has worked
+out the principles known as "The Leschetizky Method."
+
+The explanation of the technical part of this method without practical
+illustration--that is, without a piano at hand--is impossible; for the
+description would have to cover not only the account of the manual
+exercises themselves, but of their application to the instrument. The
+art of playing the piano cannot be taught by correspondence; although
+the development of the hand may be. The instrument must be there to
+give value to the statement. To describe a pianoforte method by the
+pen does as much good to the pianist as the "Absent Treatment" of a
+Christian Scientist does to his patient. Indeed, the treatment might,
+by a rare chance, cure a patient furnished with a fertile imagination;
+whereas no amount of imagination will make anybody play the piano,
+even if he read all the treatises written, from the naïve simplicity
+of Philip Emanuel Bach's "True Art of Piano Playing," to the wonderful
+complexity of Tobias Mathay, on "The Act of Touch."
+
+With regard to methods in general, Leschetizky is very broad-minded.
+If a method can teach the pupil to accomplish what is necessary, the
+process by which it has been done is quite immaterial. Any suggestion
+that makes for progress would be welcome to him, and though he seems
+to have drawn all that is serviceable and important into his own
+system, he says: "I have thought over these things all my life, but if
+you can find better ways than mine I will adopt them--yes, and I will
+take two lessons of you and give you a thousand gulden a lesson."
+
+Nearly every one can do something well if they are told exactly what
+to do. Leschetizky does not expect to make a silver goblet out of
+a pewter-pot, but he takes the trouble to make the pewter-pot as
+perfect in its way as possible. He does not think the world is made
+for genius. He sees that it is made for the ordinary man. Not in the
+least imbued with "that appreciation of mediocrity that the Creator of
+all things must evidently possess,"--as Ehlert puts it--he knows that
+those who can "reach the heaven" and "come back and tell the world"
+are very few, and it is the cry of the weaker talent that has to be
+answered, and for whom (unfortunately) methods must be worked out.
+Genius has called forth no system. It will express itself well, no
+matter what means it may elect to use.
+
+Broadly speaking, Leschetizky's plan is to cultivate the pupil's
+special gifts, whatever they may be; to leave those things that lie
+beyond his capacity almost entirely alone. He prefers the narrower
+and more perfect field, to unfinished work on a large scale. To spend
+time wrestling with details in which glory can never be attained is
+a waste of energy. The struggle merely serves to emphasise incapacity
+in one direction to the detriment of natural talents in others, and
+generally ends in making the player so nervous that the very thought
+of being asked to play overwhelms him with terror.
+
+People are very ingenious in finding excuses when they do not want
+to play, or when they have played badly. "A bad instrument" is one
+of them. "Artists say too much about the materials they have to
+use," says Leschetizky. "It is hard to find the tools unresponsive
+or uncertain, but do not accustom yourselves to a first-rate piano.
+If you do, it will lead you to think you are responsible for the
+beautiful sounds that come out of it; whereas very likely it is but
+its natural tone--independent of your skill. At home you think: 'What
+a lovely touch I have.' Then you come to me. You play abominably, and
+say it is the fault of my piano. It is not my piano at all. It is you.
+Your hand is not under control, you have not learnt the principles
+of things. If you really know how to produce a certain effect--and
+produce it as the result of your knowledge--not of your piano--you
+can face almost any instrument with a clear conscience. If you leave
+anything to chance, you will be the first to feel it--your audience
+will be the second. A good pianist should be able to make any passable
+instrument sound well, for his knowledge will be so accurate that he
+can calculate to a very fine point how much he must allow for the
+difference and quality of touch."
+
+In Leschetizky's young days even more depended on the player's
+scientific knowledge of how things should be done than now, for people
+were asked to play upon very strange instruments. The mere remembrance
+of them makes him indignant. "When one was invited somewhere to
+dinner," he expostulated one evening when reminiscences brought up
+the subject, "the plates given you to eat upon were not cracked, the
+wine-glasses to drink out of were not dirty, the hostess was not in
+rags, but decked out in her finest, and she gave you the best she
+had to give. That was _at_ dinner. But _after_ dinner! _Mein Gott_,
+she wanted music. She had a piano, but--one or two notes stuck a
+little--could you manage? The pedal squeaked--well, you need not
+use it much, need you? The things on the top of the piano jingled
+rather--but then they were such a bother to move. The tuner came
+yesterday, but he said it is not as good as it used to be--which
+is _so_ strange, for it has scarcely been played upon these twenty
+years--but do play us something! They say times have changed in this
+respect,--perhaps so--but my pupils don't seem to go with the times,
+for they tell me they meet with these things still."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE METHOD
+
+
+"The Leschetizky Method" conveys to most people the idea of a
+technical system by which pianists can be taught to play the piano
+well. Probably this is so because technical perfection is one of the
+most obvious characteristics of his school, and a quality immediately
+comprehensible to the average audience. Virtuosity is, after all, but
+a high development of the natural use of the hands, to which, in a
+less skilled form, every one is habituated from childhood up; common
+ground, whereon all sorts of people, from the prizefighter to the
+juggler, from the juggler to the virtuoso, can meet, it is suitable
+food for even the least intelligent; and unusual feats of execution
+will be marked out long before those points which are of higher
+importance to the interpretation of art strike home.
+
+For this reason certain technical characteristics noticeable in
+Leschetizky's pupils--emphasised rhythm, clearness, inaudible
+pedalling, brilliance in staccato passages--having become associated
+with his teaching, are popularly regarded as the chief things taught
+in his school, and the attainment of them the chief object which his
+pupils have in view.
+
+The majority of students, coming to him in the single expectation of
+finding untold treasures of pianistic wisdom, are surprised to find
+that these treasures play but a small part in his scheme of work,
+and that the larger proportion of their time must be devoted, not
+to the development of manual skill, but to the art of studying the
+music written for the piano. This question of study is the principal
+point of difference between Leschetizky's and other methods. His is
+not a technical system, including advice on musical matters, but a
+system which makes its primary aim the study of the music written for
+the piano; its second, that of the effects to be obtained from the
+instrument; its third, that of the development of the hand.
+
+Though the development of the hand comes last in the three sections,
+Leschetizky in no way depreciates the value of technical ability--it
+is impossible to use the higher faculties without it--but he looks
+upon the period of apprenticeship to its attainment merely as work
+done to perfect a necessary medium for adequate interpretation.
+
+The technical qualities indicative of his teaching have come in
+process of time to be labelled "The Leschetizky Method." Leschetizky
+himself objects to the term, for he has no established technical
+method. The name originated from his assistants, who, having collected
+the most valuable and frequently needed technical exercises, have
+pieced them together and arranged them logically into a connected
+series, through which they put the pupils to be prepared for him.
+
+"I have no technical method," says Leschetizky; "there are certain
+ways of producing certain effects, and I have found those which
+succeed best; but I have no iron rules. How is it possible one
+should have them? One pupil needs this, another that; the hand of
+each differs; the brain of each differs. There can be no rule. I am
+a doctor to whom my pupils come as patients to be cured of their
+musical ailments, and the remedy must vary in each case. There is but
+one part of my teaching that may be called a "Method," if you like;
+and that is the way in which I teach my pupils to learn a piece of
+music. This is invariably the same for all, whether artist or little
+child; it is the way Mme. Essipoff studies, the way _we_ study--and
+_we_ have much talent."
+
+With reference to technique, the gist of what Leschetizky considers
+physically necessary is this: the hand, wrist, and arm must be under
+such complete control that whatever part be called upon to play, it
+shall be able to do so independently of its neighbour. It should be
+possible to contract one part, while leaving the other relaxed; to
+hold one part taut while the other is slack; to put one part in motion
+while the other is at rest. He lays special stress on a few points:
+the development of strength and sensitiveness in the finger-tips;
+clear distinction between the many varieties of touch; the necessity
+of an immaculate pedalling.
+
+There are exercises to obtain these various results, and those of
+which the pupil stands most in need have to be gone through before
+the musical part of his work can be thought of.
+
+As soon as the technical threads are drawn into order they are
+worked into a piece, and the pupil enters on the second stage of
+his study--that which concerns the manipulation of the instrument.
+He will probably begin with some simple composition such as one of
+Mendelssohn's "Songs Without Words," where he can be taught how a
+melody should be played and accompanied. This may be followed by
+something to illustrate the different kinds of staccato and legato
+playing; the many varieties of rhythm, special pedal effects, &c.: an
+example to which every technical detail that has been learnt can be
+applied.
+
+In the very first composition the pupil studies, he learns how to
+work in the new way, which is as follows: he takes the first bar, or
+phrase (according to the amount he can grasp and retain), and dissects
+it till every marking is clear to him. He decides how he will play
+it--with what fingering, touch, pedalling, accent, &c. He practises
+each detail as he comes to it. He puts all the parts together,
+learning it by heart as he goes, finishing one section, making it as
+perfect as he can in every respect, both technically and musically,
+before he attempts the next. What is required of him is, that he shall
+study every piece of music so thoroughly that he knows every detail in
+it, can play any part of it accurately, beginning at any point, and
+that he can visualise the whole without the music--that is, see in his
+mind what is written, without either notes or instrument.
+
+Every pupil must study in this way--bar by bar, slowly and
+deliberately engraving each point on his mind as on a map. "One page a
+day so learnt will give you a trunk-full of music for your répertoire
+at the end of the year," says Leschetizky, "and, moreover, it will
+remain securely in your memory."
+
+Any one with the power of concentration can learn to play by heart--no
+matter how intricate a composition may be--if he will take the trouble
+to study it according to this plan. If, after a work has been studied,
+not only the melody, but the entire composition in detail--_i.e._,
+every note, rest, marking of any kind--cannot be seen and heard by
+the mind's eye and ear, it has never been thoroughly and accurately
+learnt. A lack of exactitude in this respect is the reason why so
+many people who can play quite well when they are alone are absolutely
+stranded before an audience. The presence of other people compels them
+to concentrate their attention on what they are doing, and they find
+they do not actually know what that is. When alone it will probably be
+of little consequence whether they know the music (in Leschetizky's
+interpretation of the word) or not; their fingers having acquired the
+habit of the notes, and their ears of the sound, generally suffice to
+carry them comfortably through. So long as the fingers can go their
+well-worn way, unconscious of what they do, without the hindrance of
+thought, they will be fairly safe; but if for any reason they become
+self-conscious, losing their instinct, they fail instantly.
+
+A blind man on first recovering his sight can no longer locate
+himself. He does not know the meaning of his surroundings. The
+unaccustomed light has obliterated for the moment his only
+safeguard--the sense of touch--and so altered the condition of
+familiar things that they have become strange to him. The player who
+has absorbed the sound and feeling of the notes into his ears and
+fingers, and not into his thinking brain, is in the same case; for if
+the mental faculty is unexpectedly called into action it paralyses for
+the moment the instinctive motor faculties on which he usually relies.
+The learner must therefore thread his way so carefully through the
+network of complications which a musical composition presents, that he
+emerges familiar with every detail; then, if the manual memory fail
+him, the visual or audital one will take its place. Any lapse on the
+part of nature after all these precautions can only be regarded as the
+Act of God, against which no insurance can be taken.
+
+The pupil having now gone through the necessary training to develop
+his hands and to apply them to the best result upon his instrument,
+and having learnt also how to study the music written for it, has
+arrived at the really interesting part of his work--the musical part.
+
+Leschetizky seldom gives the greatest compositions to those whom he
+feels to be still immature. He sees the unfitness of expecting young,
+untried natures to deal with what is an expression of the deepest
+influences of life. They cannot understand. They can only imitate,
+and he shrinks from the task of trying to convey to them what they
+cannot possibly realise in its fullest and most intimate meaning. He
+gives what lies within, or at most just beyond their grasp, so that
+they may have the satisfaction of discovering what they _can_ do, as
+well as what they _cannot_ do. His pupils study several compositions
+at the same time, sometimes variations on some particular difficulty,
+sometimes differing entirely from each other. Development is more
+equable and the mind keeps fresher for its work, if energy can be
+turned into several channels instead of being concentrated along
+one. The more varied the material, the less chance of the faculties
+becoming wearied by the monotony of continued effort in one direction,
+and the better for endurance as a whole.
+
+For this concentrated way of study, this mosaic work, is extremely
+exhausting at first. It needs much patience to analyse everything so
+minutely that the mental picture lacks no detail; but it is worth the
+trouble. Not only is the result good and immediate, but it remains
+firmly fixed in the memory.
+
+Leschetizky, even in the maturity of his career, never practised
+more than three hours a day. He considers that four, or at most five
+hours, should be enough for any one. If it is not, the requisite
+qualities to make a pianist must be lacking. Hours and hours of
+practice do compel certain results in a shorter time than they could
+normally be produced, and, were the supply of energy unlimited, no one
+would hesitate to devote his entire day to practising, in order to
+shorten the road to the goal. But this supply being exhaustible, if
+the student draws it out at a greater speed, or in a greater quantity
+than can naturally be refunded, it will fail prematurely and leave
+his nervous organisation without vitality. Technical power means the
+ability of the hand to carry out the suggestions of the brain, and
+this will be great or small according to the speed at which the hand
+can understand and translate these suggestions into action.
+
+Overwork tends rather to retard than to accelerate the telegraphic
+message, deadening the susceptibility of the wire, and exhausting the
+nervous force to be transmitted.
+
+The newspapers tell of a wonderful man who has acquired such control
+over the different parts of his body that he can contract any muscle
+at will and move his internal organs about as he feels inclined.
+Leschetizky does not require these results in his pupils, but he does
+require the concentration that produces them.
+
+Concentrated thought is the basis of his principles, the corner-stone
+of his method. Without it nothing of any permanent value can be
+obtained, either in art or anything else. No amount of mechanical
+finger-work can take its place; and the player who repeats the same
+passage, wearily expectant that he will accomplish it in process of
+time, is a lost soul on a hopeless quest. Leschetizky enumerates the
+essential qualities of good work as follows: First, an absolutely
+clear comprehension of the principal points to be studied in the music
+on hand; a clear perception of where the difficulties lie, and of the
+way in which to conquer them; the mental realisation of these three
+facts _before_ they are carried out by the hands.
+
+"Decide exactly _what_ it is you want to do in the first place," he
+impresses on every one; "then _how_ you will do it; then play it. Stop
+and think if you played it in the way you meant to do; then only, if
+sure of this, go ahead. Without concentration, remember, you can do
+nothing. The brain must guide the fingers, not the fingers the brain."
+
+This is a rough indication of the method of study through which
+Leschetizky's pupils have gained so much.
+
+His _logia_ are simple and few, for he cares more for what is _done_
+than for what is _said_. To his mind the making of many maxims is an
+impossibility in the study of art. There is but one note penetrating
+throughout all his advice, and one point on which he is inexorable:
+the necessity of concentrated thought.
+
+[Illustration: A GROUP OF LESCHETIZKY'S PUPILS]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE LESSONS
+
+
+One day a stranger came to ask Leschetizky for a few finishing
+lessons. "Will a mud pie give you a fair idea of a mountain?" was the
+Professor's reply. "No," said the stranger, "but then I don't want
+the mountain." "Well, you must go somewhere else for your mud pie; we
+don't keep them here."
+
+The stranger went away to supply his needs elsewhere. Any one in
+Vienna could have told him that Leschetizky inexorably refuses to dole
+out a slice of his system of study. It is not to be had in a popular
+and abridged edition. It is a course of work for serious students, and
+can only be commanded in its entirety.
+
+Leschetizky will only acknowledge as his "qualified pupils" those
+who have had regular lessons with him for at least two years, and
+preferably longer. He considers it impossible for any pupil, however
+gifted, to grasp more than the grammar of his teaching in a few
+months--as some pianists have tried to do. "For," he says, "your house
+still remains to be built when the foundations are laid."
+
+Giving but three lessons a day, he himself is able to undertake very
+few of the hundred and fifty pupils studying his method, and these few
+must necessarily be chosen from among the best. The others have to
+content themselves with the crumbs that fall from his assistants, till
+they are considered ready to join the elect. This preparation may last
+a few weeks, a few months, a year or even longer, the time varying
+with the pupils' progress.
+
+Every now and then they play to the Professor, who, according to
+the stage at which they have arrived, agrees to give them lessons
+fortnightly, monthly--or perhaps not at all for the present.
+
+In former days, when he had more strength, he took the most talented
+of his pupils through the technical training himself; but the present
+plan is better, for he is not naturally of a patient disposition.
+Emerson says a man should be judged by his intentions. If that is
+so, Leschetizky stands high in the scale, for he is full of good
+intentions. They are with him always; but, as a dilapidated American
+was heard to murmur at the end of a bad lesson: "They must have paved
+a considerable stretch of the side-walks in hell by now," for they
+invariably leave him at the moment when they are most wanted.
+
+The Professor intends to make allowances for all difficulties. He
+knows how tenaciously bad habits will stick, how hard they are to
+dislodge, and how long the fingers retain their old established ways,
+in spite of the best will in the world to train them to the new. He
+quite realises what a tax this minute and detailed method of analysis
+is to the unpractised mind, and how irksome are the first steps on
+the road to it. He is full of benevolent sympathy. But when the time
+for the lesson comes, everything but the immediate need of getting
+the thing done in the right way is obliterated from his mind, and in
+the enthusiasm of the moment all traces of this benevolence speedily
+disappear. He forgets the pupil is full of original sin and cannot
+wait for the signs of grace.
+
+This leads to misunderstanding. It leads also to the sudden exit
+of the pupil; to the slamming of doors; to the crushing of music
+on the floor; to grim remarks about a future better spent "in
+tomato-planting." Once it led to total darkness. In the intensity of
+his feelings the master arose, hastily put out the gas, rushed away,
+and left his pupils sitting round the class in silence and gloom until
+things were patched up by some comforting soul outside.
+
+Leschetizky loves his pupils as if they were his own children; but,
+as a good father, he considers his duty better done through the
+aid of discipline than of sympathy, believing the scourge to be of
+greater profit to their musical souls than the prop. Especially
+if he sees they are suffering from parental pampering. He is much
+troubled by parents. They come to him imbued with the notion that
+their particular offspring is quite unusually and supremely gifted,
+and the offspring himself is still more imbued with that notion. It
+is expedient, therefore, to remove these parents to a distance, in
+order that the mist of adoration may disperse, and leave the field
+clear for the child to find his true level. Otherwise valuable time
+may be wasted in making headway against the inability of the parent to
+view discipline in any light but that of cruelty, and of the pupil to
+consider himself other than a sacrifice on the altar of his master's
+whims.
+
+Leschetizky makes unsparing use of his power to analyse character in
+his teaching, unhesitatingly saying anything, however hard to bear,
+that he thinks may be a spur to the pupil's development. He has the
+gift of insight to a very remarkable degree, and although his own
+nature is not pliable enough to unbend to every other, he makes few
+mistakes in his summing up as a whole. Like all highly-strung people
+he is extremely sensitive to personality. This sensibility affects
+him in various ways. In the morning when the door-bell announces the
+arrival of the first pupil, should the Professor chance to be in a
+fastidious frame of mind, he steals downstairs to find out who it
+is, and if on peeping surreptitiously into the room he sees some one
+antipathetic to him, he promptly steals upstairs again and stays there
+a quarter of an hour or more to recover the blow. If the pupil has
+caught a glimpse of his face, he would generally prefer to go home,
+but knowing that if he does, he may never have another lesson, he
+elects to face the worst and wait till the Professor feels inclined to
+come down again. When he comes down--if he has resigned himself to the
+inevitable, and if the pupil be of a tactful disposition--all may yet
+go well; the sinner be received into favour again, and sent home proud
+in the knowledge that he has gained the day and left a legacy of happy
+relations behind him after all.
+
+The early lessons with Leschetizky are at once a revelation and
+an ordeal. If the quality of the pupil's intellect be at all
+strained--and his horizon too circumscribed for him to have found it
+out before--it will now be made quite clear to him.
+
+In the first place he is expected to make all his corrections on the
+spot, for to Leschetizky's rapid brain comprehension is synonymous
+with performance--to understand is to be able to do. He is expected
+to hold these corrections firmly in his head, and to have the wit
+to apply them to new cases immediately. Nerve, quick observation,
+retentive memory, presence of mind must all be his. He must be
+neither too quick nor too slow, being careful not to step in before
+the master has finished what he has to say and the illustration is
+complete, lest there be a sudden pause, and Leschetizky, regarding
+him with a baleful eye, sit back with folded hands, and inquire which
+of the two is to play: "Are you giving the lesson, or am I?" He must
+follow the different kinds of touch, the pedalling, the fingering, the
+variety of effects that may be drawn out of the instrument--all so
+difficult and puzzling in the initial stages--and be able to reproduce
+them on the spot. The most vivid and concentrated interest is exacted
+from him in every detail, infinite patience and unwearied effort.
+
+Leschetizky cannot endure half-heartedness. Caring so intensely for
+music and for all that concerns it, an apathetic attitude is as
+unbearable to him, as disloyalty to his country would be to a patriot,
+and he resents it with his whole nature. Nor does he hesitate to show
+it. Enthusiasm he must and will have. A temperament devoid of it is
+an enigma he cannot solve. He expects a ready appreciation. He likes
+people to talk, to ask him questions, to be cheerful. He cannot bear
+dismal solemnity. If the pupil be of a taciturn order, Leschetizky is
+quite sure something must be seriously wrong with his mind; or that he
+has not understood what he has been told, and is afraid to say so; or,
+what is most probable, that he possesses a very disagreeable character.
+
+With one of these unfortunate dispositions--feminine, strange to
+say--it is on record that Leschetizky once went through an hour
+without a single word. She would not speak, he said, so why should
+he? On coming into the room he softly closed the door, tip-toed to
+the piano, bowed to the pupil, sat down and gave her the whole lesson
+in solemn and mysterious silence, indicating all he wanted by signs
+and dumb show. When the hour was over he rose, bowed with impressive
+gravity as before, glided to the door, and disappeared as silently as
+he had come in.
+
+He enjoys experimenting with his pupils, and inventing special
+fingerings, or special exercises for unusual cases.
+
+He had a pupil who played so accurately by ear that she could not be
+persuaded to study in any other way. It served her faithfully for
+a long time, until one day, when playing in the class, her memory
+failed, and she could not collect herself. Nemesis came at the next
+lesson, for Leschetizky shut down the cover of her keyboard, and left
+her, bereft of all sound, to learn a page of unfamiliar music by means
+of her eyes alone. Another, who was unnerved by the merest trifle, he
+cured by accustoming her to shocks. One day, suddenly jumping up from
+the piano, he stared intently into the garden, exclaiming, "Ha! what
+is that I see out there?" Of course the pupil hurried to the window,
+but, seeing nothing exciting, turned back, startled and perplexed.
+"It's all right," nodded the master suddenly; "go on _exactly_ where
+you left off." This kind of treatment continued till she could stand
+any disturbance with composure.
+
+To another, whose ear was not fine enough to distinguish exactly what
+notes made up a chord when he heard it, Leschetizky taught an entire
+composition by playing it to him bar by bar, bit by bit, until he
+realised it all, both piecemeal and in combination. The harder the
+patient's case, the keener the doctor's interest. Nothing gives him
+greater satisfaction than to find the remedy for some unusual defect.
+He is as proud and pleased as a gleeful child with a new toy, and as
+delightful to watch.
+
+Buried deep in contemplation of the difficulty, he sits perfectly
+silent, motionless save for a periodic puff at his cigar. Presently a
+smile steals cautiously over his face--the clue is signalled. For an
+instant, still tentative and expectant, his hand poised in mid-air,
+he awaits discovery, then all at once up goes the head, out comes the
+pencil, and with an exultant shout he announces: "Now I've got it!"
+As simply and clearly as it can be put, he then explains the point in
+question and why this is its best solution.
+
+One explanation ought to suffice for all time, and the pupil is
+expected to adopt it at once. If he cannot do this and the same
+mistake is made twice, the Professor begins to feel offended; if a
+third time, he shuts up the music in disgust; a fourth (having opened
+it again), he hurls it far away; a fifth (if the pupil is still
+there) one of the two invariably leaves the room. Sometimes, a little
+remorseful, the Professor comes back and stands half hesitating at
+the door of the dining-room, looking sweet and sorry, wishing things
+could have been otherwise, but quite unable for the moment to say
+a single word of comfort to the sufferer. His own powers of memory,
+and of doing instantly with his hands what his brain suggests, are so
+remarkable that he cannot realise in the least what it means to be
+less highly gifted.
+
+He appreciates courage, and respects the buoyant nature that can right
+itself after every rebuff, and bravely holds on, whatever happens,
+seeing in this a token of the best kind of self-confidence. With
+Stevenson he agrees that most of a man's opinions about himself are
+true, and he who finds himself most comfortable on the footstool is
+probably in his right place.
+
+By reason of the Professor's own strong individuality, the adaptable
+pupil has, as a rule, calmer lessons than the more original nature
+that cannot amalgamate itself easily with another person's views.
+Leschetizky's powers of discernment seldom fail him in prophesying who
+will make a stir in the world, and it is precisely by these few that
+his keenest interest is excited, and with whom the storm bursts out
+most easily.
+
+He does not always use his singularly penetrating qualities to
+sad issues. When the initial steps have been overcome, and the
+difficulties thinned out a little, the lesson is a delight from
+beginning to end.
+
+Full of apt similes, weaving them in at every turn, Leschetizky has
+a knack of hitting upon exactly the appropriate figure to make a
+suggestion intelligible and permanent in the mind.
+
+"To make an effective _accelerando_ you must glide into rapidity
+as steadily as a train increases its speed when steaming out of a
+station."
+
+"Teach yourself to make a _rallentando_ evenly by watching the drops
+of water cease as you turn off a tap."
+
+"A player with an unbalanced rhythm reminds me of an intoxicated man
+who cannot walk straight."
+
+"Your fingers are like capering horses, spirited and willing, but
+ignorant of where to go without a guide. Put on your bridle and curb
+them in till they learn to obey you, or they will not serve you well."
+
+On the whole he theorises very little. Everything he says is
+practical, to the point, and can be immediately used to some good end.
+
+"If you are going to play a scale, place your hand in readiness on the
+keyboard in the same position as you would if you were going to write
+a letter--or to take a pinch of snuff."
+
+"The bystander ought to know by the attitude of your hand what chord
+you are going to play _before_ you play it, for each chord has its own
+physiognomy."
+
+"If you play wrong notes, either you do not know _where_ the note is
+or _what_ the note is."
+
+"If there is anything you cannot do after a fair trial, either there
+is something the matter with your hand, or with the way you are
+practising."
+
+"If your wrists are weak, go and roll the grass in the garden."
+
+"If you want to develop strength and sensitiveness in the tips of your
+fingers, use them in every-day life. For instance, when you go out for
+a walk, hold your umbrella with the tips instead of in the palm of
+your hand."
+
+"Practise your technical exercises on a cushion or upon a table
+sometimes. You do not always need the piano to strengthen your
+muscles."
+
+And so on, intermingling advice with illustration, until the lesson
+becomes as entertaining as instructive.
+
+When all goes well, a lesson with Leschetizky is a really wonderful
+experience. His point of view is so interesting, the depth of his
+comprehension so profound, his power of clear exposition so great,
+the parallels he draws between art and life so unexpected, that his
+listener is held under a spell of wondering enthusiasm throughout.
+Both his ear and his memory are very remarkable. He is able to retain
+accurately in his mind every detail in a piece of music on hearing
+it for the first time; and not only to play it through immediately
+afterwards, but to discuss points in it, making a suggestion here, an
+alteration there, exactly as if the music were before his eyes. He
+plays a great deal during the lesson in a fragmentary way, but rarely
+anything straight through. His piano is on the left of the pupil, the
+two instruments standing side by side, their keyboards level.
+
+He sits very still and very straight, never stooping over the keys,
+or swaying about. His hands, often partially resting on the notes,
+are almost flat, the wrists low, the fingers doing all the work, his
+whole figure taut with the tension of concentrated thought.
+
+His playing is as difficult to describe as himself, for it is the
+translation of his nature into sound. Then, as at no other time, his
+varied temperament discloses itself, its contrasts finding in music
+their best interpretation. These sonorous chords weighed out by so
+masterful a hand; this steady beat of measured emphasis; the lilt and
+swing of the rhythm; the fine-pointed staccato; the piquant charm
+with which the dainty notes come dancing off the keys; the melancholy
+tenderness of the soft caressing tone, stealing in unawares--these
+tell the story, more faithfully than any other language, of his
+nature, not only as a musician, but as a man.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE CLASS
+
+
+At five o'clock on a Wednesday afternoon the pupils begin to assemble
+for the class. For the time being, the salon, crammed with chairs,
+has the appearance of a concert-hall; the seats for the students, who
+number over two hundred, cover the whole floor; there is not an inch
+of room to spare.
+
+In former days when there were but fifty or so, the class was quite
+informal. Given solely for the pupils, it had the character of a
+private lesson. Each one played what he knew, and had it corrected
+just as though he were alone; except that the corrections were
+probably fewer and less detailed. No strangers were admitted then,
+as the object of the class was work, and Leschetizky found that the
+presence of outsiders limited his freedom in criticism. The pupils
+were forbidden to clap--because the less talented became discouraged
+when they obtained no applause. The shortcomings of the bad pupil were
+freely commented upon, and discussed comprehensively, without much
+regard to his feelings, this apparent hard-heartedness being designed
+as part of the training. "For," said Leschetizky, "if a pupil has not
+sufficient courage to stand buffetings from me, how will he stand them
+later on from the world?" No peculiarity escaping his vigilant eye, he
+forthwith made some appropriate remark about it, and if he found its
+possessor impervious to a mild hint, very plain words followed.
+
+The Professor knew exactly who was there and who was not, and whoever
+failed to put in an appearance heard about it at the next lesson.
+Every one sat where he or she liked, either round the pianos or at the
+opposite end of the room, where the black sheep were tactfully herded
+out of sight if possible.
+
+If all went well, and there were many to play, Professor occasionally
+called "halt!" In the middle of the evening, the music stopped for
+a few moments and talk and laughter--and sometimes coffee--took its
+place. A rest was very necessary in those days, for the class often
+lasted four or five hours, and no one cared to leave before the end.
+
+When the numbers increased and enlarged this family circle beyond
+all possibility of intimacy, it lost its private character and was
+transformed into a kind of concert--a rehearsal, in fact, for public
+performance.
+
+Now it takes place once a fortnight--formerly once a week--attendance
+is optional instead of obligatory, and it has been found necessary
+to ask a fee. Only the best pupils play; the Professor criticises
+leniently; and guests are very often invited to listen.
+
+Should any great artist be passing through Vienna, Leschetizky is
+delighted if he can induce him to play at one of these evenings--a
+somewhat formidable honour, for the audience has been brought up to a
+very high standard. In truth a great many of the pupils themselves are
+gifted artists, who have already played in public and know enough to
+be appreciative in the most valuable sense.
+
+In this respect it differs from all other pianoforte classes,
+in which, as a rule, the pupils have not yet emerged from the
+Conservatoire shell into public life. Liszt's class was the nearest
+approach to it; but this again differed from it, inasmuch as Liszt's
+gathering was drawn together for the _love_ of music, whereas
+Leschetizky's is entirely for the _study_ of music. Tausig founded
+one on the same lines as Leschetizky, but he had not the patience to
+carry it on for more than a very short time, in spite of the enormous
+success it had during its lifetime. Leschetizky's class now stands
+quite alone, the only assemblage of its kind.
+
+In the year of his Jubilee, 1894, Rubinstein came, and gave the pupils
+two hours of his best. They have heard Liszt, not only at the class,
+but unofficially, for when he came he would often stay on, playing
+for them to dance to afterwards. Naturally Mme. Essipoff frequently
+played. A fragment from the diary of one of Leschetizky's pupils tells
+of one particularly delightful time: "After the two English girls had
+played--(Miss Rihll, Leschetizky's 'Wellen und Wogen' Etuden, and Miss
+Goodson Rameau's 'Gavotte and Variations in A minor,' which they did
+wonderfully well, for the first time)--Professor went upstairs to
+find Mme. Essipoff. She came down a few moments later, and gave us the
+'Handel-Brahms Variations.' It was one majestic sweep from beginning
+to end. Professor sat quite still the whole time, drinking it in, his
+face lit up with tender pride as he listened. When she rose from the
+piano he took both her hands and kissed them reverently, but without a
+single word, for he could not speak, and his eyes were full of tears."
+The Professor very seldom becomes visibly enthusiastic. It takes a
+great deal to draw more than "gut, ganz gut" and a little nod out of
+him; but when by any chance he _is_ roused to show his satisfaction,
+he shows it in a whole-hearted outpouring of praise, immediately
+explaining to every one exactly why he finds the performance so good.
+
+[Illustration: LESCHETIZKY AND MARK HAMBOURG]
+
+To attend the class when the best pupils play is a delightful and
+interesting experience. The diary, already quoted, contains an account
+of one such occasion:--"Now began the really exciting part of the
+evening, for it was little Mark Hambourg's turn. He marched up to the
+piano and sat down as usual, with a jerk, looking like a juvenile
+thundercloud. They went right through the Hummel Septet together
+(Professor taking the second piano part) in such perfect sympathy
+that one could hardly distinguish one from the other. Mark excelled
+himself to-night and put every one else in the shade. There seems to
+be nothing he cannot do, and his electricity is absolutely phenomenal.
+When he stopped, we burst into a storm of applause, but, grim little
+hero that he is, he was off into the dining-room almost before we
+began to clap. Professor turned round to us and murmured, 'he has
+a future--he _can_ play.' The salon was quite dark except where
+Professor sat at the piano. He looked most strange. The light from
+above caught the silver in his hair and made his head sparkle every
+time he moved. His eyes gleamed like two red-brown balls, and though
+he was absolutely motionless you could see he was quivering with
+intensity."
+
+"It was the last class this year, and in spite of Madame Donnimirska's
+protests that there was not enough to go round, Professor insisted on
+several of us staying to supper. We were all too excited and exhausted
+to eat much, but he was as gay and lively as if he had just got up,
+instead of having given a four hours' class; and some of the boys had
+to stay and play billiards with him. They are probably at it still,
+for it is only 3 A.M."
+
+The class is cosmopolitan. A patchwork of nationalities, where no
+one element permanently prevails. Held in an Austrian city, there
+are but few Austrians there; at present Americans in great numbers,
+a few English, many Russians and Poles, one or two French, Germans,
+an occasional Italian or Swede, a sprinkling of the Balkan nations,
+rarely a Greek or a Spaniard. This motley crew interests Leschetizky
+immensely. He catalogues them all, and knows by the country whence the
+specimen hails what its gifts are likely to be.
+
+From the English he expects good musicians, good workers, and bad
+executants; doing by work what the Slav does by instinct; their heads
+serving them better than their hearts.
+
+The Americans he finds more spontaneous. Accustomed to keep all their
+faculties in readiness for the unexpected, their perceptions are
+quick, and they possess considerable technical facility. They study
+perhaps more for the sake of being up to date than for the love of
+music.
+
+The Russians stand first in Leschetizky's opinion. United to a
+prodigious technique, they have passion, dramatic power, elemental
+force, and extraordinary vitality. Turbulent natures, difficult to
+keep within bounds, but making wonderful players when they have the
+patience to endure to the end.
+
+The Pole, less strong and rugged than the Russian, leans more to the
+poetical side of music. Originality is to be found in all he does;
+refinement, an exquisite tenderness, and instinctive rhythm.
+
+The French he compares to birds of passage, flying lightly up in
+the clouds, unconscious of what lies below. They are dainty, crisp,
+clear-cut in their playing, and they phrase well.
+
+The Germans he respects for their earnestness, their patient devotion
+to detail, their orderliness, and intense and humble love of their
+art. But their outlook is a little grey.
+
+The gentle Swedes, in whom he finds much talent, are more sympathetic
+to him; and the Italian he loves, because he _is_ Italian--though he
+cannot, as a rule, play the piano in the very least.
+
+"Ah! what a marvel I could make, could I mix you all up!" he says;
+"what a marvel I could make!" So many of his pupils have become famous
+that it is not possible to speak of more than a few. The few shall be
+those already known to England.
+
+Paderewski, Slivinski, Friedmann represent Poland. Mark Hambourg--whom
+Rubinstein pointed out as his successor--Gabrilowitch, Mme. Essipoff,
+and Mme. Stepanoff are from Russia. Fanny Bloomfield--"my electric
+wonder"--Otto Voss, Ethel Newcomb, from America. Helen Hopekirk--"the
+finest woman musician I have ever known"--is from Scotland. Paula
+Sjalit, and Schütt--best known as a composer--are Austrians; Schwabel
+and Richard Buhlig are Germans; Franchetti is an Italian. Katherine
+Goodson--one of the best pupils Leschetizky has ever had--Evelyn
+Suart, Marie St. Angelo, Douglas Boxall, Ada Thomas, Frank Merrick,
+and Ethel Liggins are all English.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE CENTRE OF THE CIRCLE
+
+
+Of Leschetizky's interests apart from his career there is little to
+be said. They are but the accompaniment to the song. His pupils are
+the axle on which his thoughts turn, the rule by which his day is
+measured. About twelve o'clock he comes down to his work, devoting
+the early hour to the less gifted, or to the beginners, in order to
+give them the benefit of his most tranquil frame of mind. The lessons
+last an hour or more, according to the virtue of the pupil and the
+Professor's own mood. Very often, having forgotten all about time, he
+goes on till some one comes in with a gentle reminder that another
+patient on the verge of nervous prostration is waiting for him in
+the study. Nominally he takes three pupils in the day, but sometimes
+after dinner a spare hour or two is filled up by some one who studies
+with him unofficially. Knowing how difficult it is for some of the
+poorer pupils to find money to pay their expenses, if it comes to his
+knowledge that any of them are in need of funds, he is sure to find
+some tactful and charming way of playing Santa Claus. For one whom he
+loved, a little bank was piled up week by week, the Professor putting
+aside the fees as he received them throughout the whole period of
+study. When the time was over and the boy, packed and ready to start
+on his journey, went to say good-bye, out came the treasure--"just a
+souvenir"--to speed him on his way.
+
+Most of the pupils who come back for a periodic polish receive the
+privilege of friendship, and Leschetizky is quite hurt if they dare to
+raise the question of payment: "Am I not your friend, then? Why do you
+bring me this?"
+
+[Illustration: LESCHETIZKY AT CARLSBAD]
+
+Everything concerning the students is of interest to him. He likes
+to know how they live, how they spend their day, who they see apart
+from their musical life--not in the least from a sense of domestic
+responsibility towards them, but rather from a certain naïve,
+childlike curiosity, a desire to know all about everything that
+comes his way.
+
+Few people realise in what an inspiring atmosphere a great teacher's
+life is passed. The centre of an ever-changing stream of ardent young
+natures, filled with high aspiration, he is always in contact with
+the human being at its noblest and happiest, when life is still a
+fairy-tale, tinged with the promise of a marvellous future. Bound up
+in the service of their art, confident of reaching the goal they have
+promised themselves, these boys and girls form a constant inspiration
+to those who dwell in their midst, and make every other world seem
+prosaic and dull beside their own. Living in such a circle and finding
+therein all the novelty he needs, Leschetizky sees little of outside
+society now.
+
+Though he is seventy-five he can still tire out most of his friends.
+He seems to possess an inexhaustible power of renewing his energies
+and remaining eternally young. Day after day, giving out the nervous
+force of two ordinary people, he yet holds a fund in reserve.
+
+After the day's work is over he can entertain a table-full of people
+for several hours in the evening, begin to play billiards at
+midnight, go to bed at 3 or 4 a.m., and turn up fresh for the lesson
+next morning at 12. After breakfast it is his habit to go out for an
+hour or so with his dog, not so much for the sake of exercise as to
+calm and refresh his mind. He does nothing special to keep himself
+elastic and vigorous; gymnastics, he says, are excellent in theory,
+but what intelligent person could possibly put them into practice?
+"Imagine wasting twenty minutes a day shooting out one's arms and legs
+into positions nobody uses in every-day life!"
+
+About four o'clock the lessons are over, and the Professor is ready
+for dinner; afterwards he usually goes to some café in the town,
+and often, if there are no billiards or cards at home, stays there
+chatting and smoking till long after midnight. The thought of a quiet
+evening at home fills him with dismay. Brilliantly-lit halls, bright
+colours, laughter, and gaiety are the very breath of life to him. He
+explores every form of entertainment, serious or frivolous, that he
+can find. He even enjoys a crowd.
+
+When he was in London one of his greatest pleasures was to ride into
+the City on the top of an omnibus, watching the life of the streets as
+he went. He liked the turmoil and the stir and the endless vista of
+new faces.
+
+Yet he loves outdoor life. Often in the summer-time he and some of his
+favourite pupils make long excursions together, and spend delightful
+hours on the hills, far away from the noise of the town; and there for
+awhile, sitting idle beneath the lights and shades of the beeches,
+they listen to the whispering of the stirring branches. In winter
+there are sleigh-rides, the skaters to watch, and festivals to be kept
+both at home and abroad.
+
+Leschetizky spends Christmas in the old-fashioned German way, enjoying
+it afresh each time it comes round. For a week beforehand he is hard
+at it, buying gifts, tying them up, writing on names, choosing the
+tree, ordering the candles, bustling about and making everybody's
+life a burden, in order that everything should be quite perfectly and
+beautifully done. All this is a profound secret to every one else in
+the house. When the evening comes, the guests are hurried upstairs
+on their arrival, lest they should catch a premature glimpse of the
+wonderful things prepared for them below. Presently the organ peals,
+the doors of the salon are thrown open, and they go down, passing in
+silently and carefully, for everything is dark inside, and in the
+dimness only the outline of a shadowy figure seated at the organ is
+visible. The music, soft at first, grows gradually louder, brighter,
+and more triumphant, until suddenly, when it swells out into a glory
+of sound, some one draws back the curtain of the inner room; and the
+tree, sparkling in a blaze of light, is disclosed to view. No one
+speaks until the music dies away, and Leschetizky closes the organ
+to break the spell. "Now for the presents! The youngest first."
+Notepaper, fans, paper-knives, gloves, calendars, a silk blouse--every
+sort of gift is there, each chosen specially for the donee with
+much care and thought by the Father Christmas of the ceremonies.
+Congratulations over, chairs are cleared away, rugs taken up and the
+room made ready for dancing till supper, Leschetizky playing for at
+least part of the evening. Toasts, speeches, stories, and laughter
+fill the hours till early morning, when, about 5 a.m., a happy, but
+exhausted, procession streams homeward, stopping on the way at some
+café--if it is not yet 6 o'clock--to make sure the hall-porter, with
+his dripping candle and everlasting demand for his ten-kreutzer fee,
+will be safely gone to his lair.
+
+[Illustration: THE PROFESSOR'S BIRTHDAY]
+
+Leschetizky's birthday, his Name-Day, New Year, and Twelfth Night,
+are all opportunities for festivals; so, too, in a small way, are the
+fortnightly suppers after the class.
+
+Entering completely into all that is going on, Leschetizky is a most
+delightful host; the very embodiment of fun, his presence in itself is
+entertainment enough. As a _raconteur_ he stands almost unrivalled,
+and his powers of mimicry are in themselves sufficient to justify a
+career. He is the most appreciative of listeners and the easiest of
+guests, finding pleasure in everything, charming and genial from first
+to last.
+
+Aristocrat in life, as well as in music, he exacts from those around
+him gentle manners and delicate observances. The rough diamond does
+not attract him. His natural love of order desires everything to be in
+its place and suitable to the moment.
+
+Leschetizky is of small build, extremely wiry and highly-strung,
+magnetic from top to toe. The whole man is charged with electricity,
+which sparkles out of him whenever anything evokes it. He gives
+the impression of being the very essence of nervous force, rather
+than the possessor of great physical energy. A certain aristocratic
+spirit reveals itself in the fierceness of his eye, and in his short
+quick step. Of iron will, he waits for no man. He knows what he
+wants and intends to have it. He is, in fact, peremptory. His orders
+must be carried out instantly. If the slave is not up to time--off
+with his head! If he imagines any one to be endowed with a certain
+characteristic, nothing will dissuade him from the notion. Whether
+the person really has this quality or not is beside the question.
+Leschetizky's imagination is so strong that it entirely obliterates
+reality, and the idea that has taken hold of his mind for the time
+being becomes so fixed that argument to the contrary is worse than
+useless. Justice implies dispassionate criticism, and this he reserves
+for musical matters only.
+
+Like all individualistic natures he desires the monopoly of certain
+emotions. He may be sad, but others must not be so. Whatever their
+inward thoughts, externally they must be gay. He must be weaned from
+sadness. The sight of a dismal face affects his entire mood. He
+would ignore the darker side of things entirely, if he could. Not
+because his is a frivolous or superficial nature, merely varied by an
+occasional streak of earnestness, as the whimsical flitting to and fro
+of his fancies might suggest, but because he is a man upon whom has
+flashed at moments a certain comprehension of the unfathomable mystery
+of the world, and who would fain turn away from its solemn to its
+lighter aspects.
+
+He has experienced ill winds and dark days, but they have made him
+neither cynical nor old, nor yet resigned. There is no trace of the
+philosopher in his composition. Platitudes about the imperfection
+of human life, or the need of endurance, bore him inexpressibly. He
+cannot enter into the emotions of the middle-aged. Years have not in
+the least tempered the eagerness of his outlook. He drinks of life now
+as fervently as in his youth.
+
+Mobile and impressionable, therefore always ready for a new friend,
+at the same time he holds loyally to the comrades of old--a rare
+combination in a nature of this type.
+
+Like all people of strong constitution, he lives in continual
+expectation of death; a cold in his head--he is a doomed man; a little
+extra fatigue--his days are closing in; a slight cough--he is ready
+to say good-bye. But sympathy will do much to woo him back to health;
+a sweet face will tide him over the danger, and a good story even
+restore him to life.
+
+Transparent as a child, his face is the index of his mood. There--and
+indeed not only there, but in his whole figure, which unconsciously
+obeys the trend of his mind--his thoughts are inevitably reflected.
+In two or three moments he will become as many different people; dry,
+derisive, dejected, gentle, earnest, even tender--his waywardness is
+difficult to follow. It is rare to meet with a temperament so rich in
+contrasts, so full of unexpected developments. He lives a thousand
+lives, going through sufficient experiences in a year to enrich an
+ordinary person's lifetime. Yet beneath this kaleidoscopic surface
+lie those qualities that have made his work what it is: unfailing
+patience, earnestness, inflexible will, keen interest, and complete,
+unswerving concentration.
+
+His whole being is bound up in his music, and his ideals of it are
+as bright now as they were fifty years ago. The Principles of Music
+Study are to him as important and interesting as the Principles of the
+Universe were to Newton or Herbert Spencer; and it is this firm belief
+in the necessity of his work, and his loving devotion to it, that have
+made him the greatest teacher of the piano that the world has ever had.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Transcriber's Notes:
+
+The transcriber made these changes to the text:
+
+  p. 41, himelf --> himself
+  p. 44, music  or your --> music for your
+  p. 67, training." --> training.
+  p. 69, Variations in A minor,"  --> Variations in A minor,'
+  p. 76, apart rom --> apart from
+
+End of Transcriber's Notes]
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Theodor Leschetizky, by Annette Hullah
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 43915 ***