Karl laughed.
“Yes, very well, indeed,” he said. “It has lots of humour,—and humour in music is rather rare. But don’t cultivate it, or some day you will find yourself in the position of a man who can’t help making puns. A dismal fate. Now, let us leave it—it is admirable—and get to work. I think I told you to study the last of the Noveletten. Play it, please.”
This time, however, there was no laughter and no approbation. Karl looked rather formidable.
“It won’t do,—it won’t do at all,” he said. “You have the notes, but that is absolutely all. It is perfectly empty and dead. A pianola would do as well. What’s the matter? Can’t you read anything into it?”
Martin shrugged his shoulders.
“I know it’s all wrong,” he said. “But I can’t make anything of it. It’s stodgy.”
Karl’s eyes glared rather dangerously from behind his glasses.
“Oh, stodgy, is it?” he said, slowly. “Schumann is stodgy. That is news to me. I must try to remember that.”
Martin looked sideways at his master, but Karl’s face did not relax.
“Stodgy!” he repeated. “I know where the stodginess comes in. Ah, you are either idiotic or you have taken no trouble about it. Because you have found that the mere execution was not difficult to you, you have not troubled to get at the music. I gave you music to learn, and you have brought me back notes. Do not bring a piece to me like that again. If I give you a thing to learn, I do so for some reason. Get up, please.”