"We have an invitation out. Mother has a great deal to arrange, and directions to give. We shall have to go in ten minutes. I must rush to the piano, though I am in rather an inconvenient toilette: I may as well accustom myself to play in it. I shall have to spend three hours this evening without any music. Well, to make up for it, I will occupy myself for the next ten minutes with an exercise for this obstinate fourth finger, though it is pretty dry. That weak finger has been a hindrance to many a fine passage and scale. That is better! Now I can put on my tight gloves. Suppose I should put on the left glove on the way."
Well, my young ladies, how many hours do you think all those minutes would make in a year? But I hear you say, "What is the use of worrying to pick up all those stray minutes, like lost pins? We have a whole hour to practise every day, when nothing prevents." Exactly, when nothing prevents.
I will now tell you a few of my secrets for piano performers.
If in piano-playing, or in any art, you wish to attain success, you must resolve to work every day, at least a little, on the technique. Sickness and other unavoidable interruptions deprive you of days enough.
Practise always with unexhausted energy: the result will be tenfold. Do you not frequently use the time for practising, when you have already been at work studying for five or six hours? Have you then strength and spirit enough to practise the necessary exercises for an hour or more, and to study your music-pieces carefully and attentively, as your teacher instructed you? Is not your mind exhausted, and are not your hands and fingers tired and stiff with writing, so that you are tempted to help out with your arms and elbows, which is worse than no practice at all? But, my dear ladies, if you practise properly, several times every day, ten minutes at a time, your strength and your patience are usually sufficient for it; and, if you are obliged to omit your regular "hour's practice," you have, at any rate, accomplished something with your ten minutes before breakfast, or before dinner, or at any leisure moment. So, I beg of you, let me have my minutes.
Practise often, slowly, and without pedal, not only the smaller and larger études, but also your pieces. In that way you gain, at least, a correct, healthy mode of playing, which is the foundation of beautiful playing. Do you do this when neither your teacher, nor your father or mother is present to keep watch over you? Do you never say, "Nobody is listening"?
Do you take enough healthy exercise in the open air? Active exercise, in all weather, makes strong, enduring piano fingers, while subsisting on indoor-air results in sickly, nervous, feeble, over-strained playing. Strong, healthy fingers are only too essential for our present style of piano-playing, which requires such extraordinary execution, and for our heavy instruments. So I still beg for the minutes: your walks take up hours enough.
Excessive and fatiguing feminine occupations, and drawing, or painting, are by no means consistent with an earnest, practical musical education; not only because both those occupations require so much time, but because they deprive the fingers of the requisite pliability and dexterity, while knitting, according to the latest discoveries, produces an unnatural nervous excitement, which is unfavorable to healthy progress in music. I at least, in my instruction on the piano, have never been able to accomplish much with ladies who are devoted to knitting, crochet, and embroidering. My dear ladies, you who have been born in fortunate circumstances, and have been educated by your parents, without regard to expense, should, at least, allow the poor girl in the country, who is obliged to hide her talents under a bushel, the small privilege of making a collar for your mother's or your aunt's birthday present. I assure you your mother or your aunt, if you surprise them instead with a fine piano performance, will be as much pleased as if you strained your eyes and bent your back for days and nights over the needle-work. And now as regards painting: painting and music, though theoretically so nearly related, agree but poorly in practice; at least, if you are in earnest about either. You say painters often play on the guitar and the flute. That may be true: I will allow them those two instruments. But piano-playing stands on a different footing, even for mere amateurs. Sweet melodies on those instruments may afford an agreeable companionship for the painter in his rambles through the woods and over the hills; but piano-playing should be the friend of a life-time, ennobled by the elevating enjoyment of lofty master-works. Therefore, I beg you, do not dissipate your powers too much. Leave the art of painting to your friends, who are either without talent for music, or who have no opportunity to study it. Our short lives do not allow the successful practice of several arts. Of what advantage to our higher culture is it to be able to do ten things tolerably well; what gain for the future, for humanity, or for the true happiness of the individual? And even if you can succeed in painting something which scarcely can be said to resemble a rose, of what advantage is it, when we have so many real roses to admire?
My dear ladies, I warn you, generally, do not be afraid of the so-called classical, heavy music, especially Beethoven's, if you desire to learn from it, only or chiefly, repose, lightness, facility, elasticity, graceful, delicate playing, and a fine touch. It is necessary to play such music after those brilliant qualities have already been, to a certain degree, acquired by mere studies and appropriate pieces. It is, however, still more foolish and impractical, when parents (who perhaps are skilful musicians, but who have no recollection of their own youth) hold the mistaken opinion that their children ought, from the very beginning, to practise and play only fine classical music, in order that the children's ears may not be injured by false progressions, by insignificant finger exercises, and by easily comprehensible Italian airs, and that they themselves may not be ruined body and soul. Gracious heavens! how much pure music, suited to the piano, have not my daughters, as well as many others whom I have brought up to be fine performers, played and studied!—such, for instance, as the music of Hünten, Czerny, Burgmüller, Kalkbrenner, A. and J. Schmitt, Herz, and many others. Who finds fault now with their musical culture, with their sound taste, or their want of love for classical music? What a long road a child has to travel through Etudes of Cramer, Moscheles, and Chopin, before he comes to Bach's Well-tempered Clavichord, or before he is able, or ought even, to study Beethoven's Sonate Pathétique! It is not well, though quite in the spirit of the times, to condemn without experience, from one's own prejudiced point of view, the methods which those skilled in their business have for years successfully tried and practised. It is possible to make pupils musical in the above way, but they will be only dull, clumsy bunglers on the piano; not fine artists, who alone can give a worthy and noble interpretation of classical music. I desire that my daughters may never forget my well-considered instructions, sustained by the experience of many years; and that they may, in grateful remembrance of their father and teacher, repay to their pupils what they owe to him.
But I see among my audience several beginners in singing, and I beg to be allowed a word to them. So long as many of our German song composers consider it beneath their dignity to study the art of singing in the old Italian master-works, and under the guidance of well-qualified singing masters,—as Gluck, Naumann, Hasse, Händel, Haydn, Mozart, Salieri, Winter, and others have done,—I warn you to take care of your tender voices, which are so easily ruined, and not to allow yourselves to be misled by ingenious opinions, and by music otherwise good. The loss of your voices follows in the footsteps of modern tortures in singing, as you may see sufficiently in all our theatres, or, indeed, may experience yourselves in numberless German songs. Apply also to singing what I have just said about piano-playing: as you should choose for the piano music suited to the piano, so for your studies in singing select only that which is adapted to the voice; under the guidance of prudent and educated teachers, not of modern voice breakers, who allow you to scream, "in order to bring out the voice." When you have acquired a good technique, when your attack is sure, and a certain skilfulness in singing has been developed, then only you may try, by way of experiment, a few pieces of such spirited but unskilled song composers, who frequently commit sins in every line against correct representation, the register of the voice, the breathings, the pronunciation, and a hundred other things.