ontemporary students. Someone insists
upon a short course of study abroad,--not because it is necessary, but
because it might add to her reputation and make her first flights in the
American concert field more spectacular. Accordingly she goes to Europe,
only to find that she is literally surrounded by budding virtuosos,--an
army of Nathans, any one of whom might easily eclipse her. Against her
personal charm, her new-world vigor, her Yankee smartness, Nathan places
his years of systematic training, his soul saturated in the music and
art of past centuries of European endeavor and perhaps his youth of
poverty which makes success imperative. The young lady's European
teacher frankly tells her that while her playing is delightful for the
salon or parlor she will never do for the great concert hall. She must
learn to play with more power, more virility, more character.
Accordingly he sets her at work along special muscle-building,
tone-cultivating, speed-making lines of technic in order to make up for
the lack of the training which the young lady might easily have had at
home had her parents been schooled to systematic daily study as a
necessity. Her first technical exercises with the new teacher are so
simple that the young woman is on the verge of despair until she
realizes that her playing is really taking on a new and more mature
character. She has been lifting fifty pound weights occasionally. Her
teacher is training her to lift one hundred pound weights every day. She
has been sketching in pastels,--her teacher is now teaching her how to
make Velasquez-like strokes in oils. Her gain is not a mere matter of
loudness. She could play quite as loud before she went to Europe. There
is something mature in this new style of playing, something that
resembles the playing of the other virtuosos she has heard. Who is the
great European master who is working such great wonders for her? None
other than a celebrated teacher who taught for years in America,--a
master no better than dozens of others in America right now. Can the
teachers in America be blamed if the parents and the pupils fail to make
as serious and continued an effort here? Atmosphere,--bosh! Work, long,
hard and unrelenting,--that is the salvation of the student who would
become a virtuoso. With our increasing wealth and advancing culture
American parents are beginning to discover that given the same work and
the same amount of instruction musical education in Americ