beat his speed, has taken the slopes of Parnassus by storm. He can play
the Liszt _Don Juan_ paraphrase _faster_ than any machine in existence.
(I refer to the drinking song, naturally.) But how few of us have
attained such transcendental technic? None except Rosenthal, for I
really believe if Karl Tausig would return to earth he would be dazzled
by Rosenthal's performances--say, for example, of the Brahms-Paganini
_Studies_ and, Liszt, in his palmy days, never had such a technic as
Tausig's; while the latter was far more musical and intellectual than
Rosenthal. Other days, other ways!

So tone, not technic alone, is our shibboleth. How many teachers realize
this? How many still commit the sin of transforming their pupils into
machines, developing muscle at the expense of music! To be sure, some of
the old teachers considered the second F minor sonata of Beethoven the
highest peak of execution and confined themselves to teaching Mozart and
Field, Cramer and Mendelssohn, with an occasional fantasia by
Thalberg--the latter to please the proud papa after dessert. Schumann
was not understood; Chopin was misunderstood; and Liszt was _anathema_.
Yet we often heard a sweet, singing tone, even if the mechanism was not
above the normal. I am sure those who had the pleasure of listening to
William Mason will recall the exquisite purity of his tone, the
limpidity of his scales, the neat finish of his phrasing. Old style, I
hear you say! Yes, old and ever new, because approaching more nearly
perfection than the splashing, floundering, fly-by-night, hysterical,
smash-the-ivories school of these latter days. Music, not noise--that's
what we are after in piano playing, the _higher_ piano playing. All the
rest is pianola-istic!

Singularly enough, with the shifting of technical standards, more
simplicity reigns in methods of teaching at this very moment. The reason
is that so much more is expected in variety of technic; therefore, no
unnecessary time can be spared. If a modern pianist has not at _fifteen_
mastered all the tricks of finger, wrist, fore-arm and upper-arm he
should study bookkeeping or the noble art of football. Immense are the
demands made upon the memory. Whole volumes of fugues, sonatas of
Chopin, Liszt, Schumann and the new men are memorized, as a matter of
course. Better wrong notes, in the estimation of the more superficial
musical public, than playing with the music on the piano desk. And then
to top all these ter