His logia are simple and few, for he cares more for what is done than for what is said. To his mind the making of many maxims is an impossibility in the study of art. There is but one note penetrating throughout all his advice, and one point on which he is inexorable: the necessity of concentrated thought.
A GROUP OF LESCHETIZKY'S PUPILS
CHAPTER V
THE LESSONS
One day a stranger came to ask Leschetizky for a few finishing lessons. "Will a mud pie give you a fair idea of a mountain?" was the Professor's reply. "No," said the stranger, "but then I don't want the mountain." "Well, you must go somewhere else for your mud pie; we don't keep them here."
The stranger went away to supply his needs elsewhere. Any one in Vienna could have told him that Leschetizky inexorably refuses to dole out a slice of his system of study. It is not to be had in a popular and abridged edition. It is a course of work for serious students, and can only be commanded in its entirety.
Leschetizky will only acknowledge as his "qualified pupils" those who have had regular lessons with him for at least two years, and preferably longer. He considers it impossible for any pupil, however gifted, to grasp more than the grammar of his teaching in a few months—as some pianists have tried to do. "For," he says, "your house still remains to be built when the foundations are laid."
Giving but three lessons a day, he himself is able to undertake very few of the hundred and fifty pupils studying his method, and these few must necessarily be chosen from among the best. The others have to content themselves with the crumbs that fall from his assistants, till they are considered ready to join the elect. This preparation may last a few weeks, a few months, a year or even longer, the time varying with the pupils' progress.