success in piano-playing?

Their education is a sufficiently careful one, extending to all branches
of knowledge; but their intellectual advancement in music (although it
has been fostered for years, by constantly listening to good music, and
frequently to the performances of distinguished players, and by a
critical comparison of their own performances with these) is still small
in proportion to their power of execution, and to the mechanical
facility which they have acquired. These are certainly essential to a
correct and agreeable rendering of a piece of music: the compositions
which are to be performed ought, however, never to demand the exercise
of all the mechanical skill which has been acquired, for in that case,
by the struggle with mechanical difficulties, only embarrassment,
discouragement, and anxious haste are apt to take the place of boldness,
confidence in one's self, and command of the music. It is the duty of
teachers, in choosing studies for the improvement of technique, to
select only such as are within the mechanical powers of the pupil, in
order that he may make steady progress, and may acquire a pure and
delicate style of execution, retaining at the same time a lively
interest in his pursuit. But why has the acquirement of this technique
been usually unsuccessful?

1. Because you begin to acquire it too late. In order to gain facility
and flexibility of the fingers and wrist (which a child in the sixth or
seventh year, with a skilful teacher, may acquire in four lessons), from
fifteen to twenty lessons, according to the construction of the hand,
are necessary with persons from ten to fourteen years old. For other
reasons also, we must urge that the mechanical facility should usually
be acquired, or at least a complete foundation for it laid in childhood,
and not left to be formed by a course which is destructive of all
spirit, at an age when labor is performed with self-consciousness,--an
age when our ladies are talking a great deal of musical interpretations,
of tenderness and depth of feeling, of poetry and inspiration in
playing, to which they are led by the possession of our classical piano
compositions and immortal master-works, and by intellectual friends and
teachers aiming at the highest culture. You reply: "But even if your
mode of elementary instruction should meet with faithful disciples, how,
in such young pupils, are we to find perseverance and sense enough to
continue these severe exe