m up what 'Violin Mastery'
really is. And a violin master? He must be a violinist, a thinker, a
poet, a human being, he must have known hope, love, passion and despair,
he must have run the gamut of the emotions in order to express them all
in his playing. He must play his violin as Pan played his flute!"

In conclusion Ysaye sounded a note of warning for the too ambitious
young student and player. "If Art is to progress, the technical and
mechanical element must not, of course, be neglected. But a boy of
eighteen cannot expect to express that to which the serious student of
thirty, the man who has actually lived, can give voice. If the
violinist's art is truly a great art, it cannot come to fruition in the
artist's 'teens. His accomplishment then is no more than a promise--a
promise which finds its realization in and by life itself. Yet Americans
have the brains as well as the spiritual endowment necessary to
understand and appreciate beauty in a high degree. They can already
point with pride to violinists who emphatically deserve to be called
artists, and another quarter-century of artistic striving may well bring
them into the front rank of violinistic achievement!"

II

LEOPOLD AUER

A METHOD WITHOUT SECRETS

When that celebrated laboratory of budding musical genius, the Petrograd
Conservatory, closed its doors indefinitely owing to the disturbed
political conditions of Russia, the famous violinist and teacher
Professor Leopold Auer decided to pay the visit to the United States
which had so repeatedly been urged on him by his friends and pupils. His
fame, owing to such heralds as Efrem Zimbalist, Mischa Elman, Kathleen
Parlow, Eddy Brown, Francis MacMillan, and more recently Sascha Heifetz,
Toscha Seidel, and Max Rosen, had long since preceded him; and the
reception accorded him in this country, as a soloist and one of the
greatest exponents and teachers of his instrument, has been one justly
due to his authority and preeminence.

It was not easy to have a heart-to-heart talk with the Master anent his
art, since every minute of his time was precious. Yet ushered into
his presence, the writer discovered that he had laid aside for the
moment other preoccupations, and was amiably responsive to all
questions, once their object had been disclosed. Naturally, the first
and burning question in the case of so celebrat