entric
geniuses.

2. Do not devote yourself exclusively to pieces calculated to show the
skill of the performer. Why desire always to show off your power in
octave passages, your trills, your facility in skips, your unprecedented
stretches, or other fantastic feats? You only produce weariness,
satiety, and disgust, or, at least, you make yourselves ridiculous.

3. Play good music in a musical and rational manner. The public are
tired of hearing Potpourris, made up of odds and ends, tedious Etudes,
Rhapsodies, Fantasias without fancy, dismal monotonies and endless,
cheap, silly cadences that mean nothing. Learn to understand the age,
and the world in which you live.

4. Do not make yourselves ridiculous by new inventions in piano-playing.
I mention, for example, one of the most foolish affectations of modern
times. You try to quiver on a note, just as violin and 'cello players
are unfortunately too much inclined to do. Do not expose yourselves to
the derision of every apprentice in piano manufacture. Have you no
understanding of the construction of the piano? You have played upon it,
or have, some of you, stormed upon it, for the last ten years; and yet
you have not taken pains to obtain even a superficial acquaintance with
its mechanism. The hammer, which by its stroke upon the string has
produced the sound, falls immediately when the tone resounds; and after
that you may caress the key which has set the hammer in motion, fidget
round on it as much as you please, and stagger up and down over it, in
your intoxicated passion,--no more sound is to be brought out from it,
with all your trembling and quivering. It is only the public who are
quivering with laughter at your absurdity.

5. Give up the practice of extreme stretches. Widely dispersed harmonies
may sometimes produce a good effect, but not by too frequent and too
eager an employment of them at every opportunity. Even the greatest
beauties in art can lead to mannerism, and this again to one-sidedness.
Art should be many-sided, and you must never produce the impression that
you are inclined to make the means an end. I beg you to reflect that too
much practice of very wide stretches enfeebles the muscles and the power
of the hand and fingers, endangers an even, sound touch, and makes the
best style of playing a doubtful acquisition. Teachers ought therefore
to use great prudence, and only gradually to permit their pupils,
especially young girls, to practise great