Would you advise a young man with a good foundation to choose music—that is, concertizing—as a career, or should he keep his music as an accomplishment and avocation?
Your distinguishing between music and concertizing gives direction to my reply; that the question was not answered by your own heart before you asked it prompts me to advise music for you as an avocation. The artist's career nowadays is not so simple as it appears to be. Of a thousand capable musicians there is, perhaps, one who attains to a general reputation and fortune. The rest of them, after spending money, time, and toil, give up in despair, and with an embittered disposition take up some other occupation. If you do not depend upon public music-making for a living; if your natural endowments are not of a very unusually high order, and if your entire personality does not imply the exercise of authority over assemblages of people—spiritual authority, I mean—it were better to enjoy your music in the circle of your friends. It is less risky and will, in all probability, give you much greater satisfaction.
How Much You Can Get From Music
When I hear a concert pianist I want to get more from his playing than æsthetic ear enjoyment. Can you give me a little outline of points for which to look that may help me in my piano study?
There is no pleasure or enjoyment from which we can derive more than we bring with us in the way of receptiveness. As you deepen your study of music and gain insight into its forms, contrapuntal work and harmonic beauties you will derive more and more pleasure from listening to a good pianist the deeper your studies go. What their playing reflects of emotional life you will perceive in the exact measure of your own grasp upon life. Art is a medium connecting, like a telegraph, two stations: the sender of a message and the receiver. Both must be pitched equally high to make the communication perfect.
"It is So Much Easier to Read Flats Than Sharps!"
You would confer a favour upon a teacher by solving a problem for her that has puzzled her all her life; why do all pupils prefer flats to sharps? I am not at all sure that I do not, in some degree, share this preference. Is it a fault of training, or has it any other cause?
Your question is both original and well justified by frequent observation, for it is quite true that people prefer to read flats to sharps. But note it well that the aversion to sharps refers only to the reading, not to the playing. If any one should find it harder to play in sharps, say, after knowing the notes well, it would be a purely subjective deception, due to a mental association of the note-picture with the respective sounds. My personal belief is that the aversion to the reading of sharps is caused by the comparative complexity of the sign itself, and this leads me to think that the whole matter belongs rather to ophthalmology than to either acoustics or music.
Rubinstein or Liszt—Which the Greater?
As between Liszt and Rubinstein, whom do you consider the greater?