u that it is with no little
diffidence that I venture to approach these very subjects about which
they are probably most anxious to learn. In the first place, words tell
very little, and in the second place, my whole career has been so
different from the orthodox methods that I have been constantly
compelled to contrive means of my own to meet the myriads of artistic
contingencies as they have arisen in my work. It is largely for this
reason that I felt compelled recently to refuse a very flattering offer
to write a book on piano playing. My whole life experience makes me
incapable of perceiving what the normal methods of pianistic study
should be. As a result of this I am obliged with my own pupils to invent
continually new means and new plans for work with each student.

"Without the conventional technical basis to work upon, this has
necessarily resulted in several aspects of pianoforte study which are
naturally somewhat different from the commonly accepted ideas of the
technicians. In the first place, the only technical study of any kind I
have ever done has been that technic which has had an immediate relation
to the musical message of the piece I have been studying. In other
words, I have never studied technic independently of music. I do not
condemn the ordinary technical methods for those who desire to use them
and see good in them. I fear, however, that I am unable to discuss them
adequately, as they are outside of my personal experience.

THE AIM OF TECHNIC

"When, as a result of circumstances entirely beyond my control, I
abandoned the study of the violin in order to become a pianist, I was
forced to realize, in view of my very imperfect technical equipment,
that in order to take advantage of the opportunities that offered for
public performance it would be necessary for me to find some means of
making my playing acceptable without spending months and probably years
in acquiring mechanical proficiency. The only way of overcoming the
difficulty seemed to be to devote myself entirely to the musical
essentials of the composition I was interpreting in the hope that the
purely technical deficiencies which I had neither time nor knowledge to
enable me to correct would pass comparatively unnoticed, provided I was
able to give sufficient interest and compel sufficient attention to the
emotional values of the work. This kind of study, forced upon me in the
first instance through reasons of expediency, became a hab