Can you imagine anything more fascinating than living in a house where every nook and corner is alive with memories of the past? I could stay here for weeks, but vacation is over and we leave for Munich to-morrow.
January 11.
Here we are again in old München! Every one in the pension expressed him or herself as delighted to see us back, with all that cordiality which is one of the most charming characteristics of the German nature.
I began again my lessons with Thuille on Wednesday. I had sent him at Christmas a little remembrance, as is the custom here. Naturally I expected he would thank me, but I was hardly prepared for what followed. As at his "Herein!" I entered the smoke-wreathed studio, he tossed his cigarette into the waste-basket, jumped up from his desk, and with both hands extended came to meet me.
"Ach! gnädiges Fräulein!" he exclaimed, "you were so kind to remember me in that charming way." Then what do you think he did? He bent over my hand in the most dignified way and kissed it. I felt like an empress holding court, and blushed to the roots of my hair at the honor he had done me. I took my accustomed chair beside his at the piano, inwardly praying that it would not be my ill luck to push off to the floor any one of the dozens of cigarettes which always lie carelessly strewn about. Then I placed my fugue on the music rack. Whatever I bring, be it sonatina, invention, or merely a counterpoint exercise, Thuille daringly plays it out forte. This is so different from the way Mr. Chadwick does. He seldom if ever touches the piano when looking over work, but takes the sheet and leaning back in his chair "hears it in his head," marking the mistakes with a blue pencil. My fugue was pronounced recht gut, which made me very happy, for I had spent several hours over it. When Herr Professor had finished with my work he brought out a piece of music from the cabinet.
"Here is a thing which is worth your while to study," he said. It was Mozart's Serenade in B flat major for wind instruments, including the corno di basetto and the contrafagotto. If you want a task, try to play it from score at sight. Thuille rattled it off as though it were the simplest exercise. I could not repress a sigh when he had finished.
"Ach Gott, my child!" he exclaimed, smiling at my hopeless expression; "I don't expect you to play it now like that. Study the construction and the instrumentation. You will learn much from it."
As I rose to go I noticed a number of loose manuscript sheets on his desk.
"This is a new piece for orchestra I am doing," said he.
A page of full orchestra score always fascinates me. It's rather odd, when you stop to think of it, now isn't it, that all those little black dots with tails to them represent actual sounds of different instruments and that they together produce an harmonic whole? There is as much individuality in the writing of these dots as in handwriting. Thuille's notes are very small, distinct, and closely written. Professor Paine has a large, firm hand. Chadwick's notes appear as though hastily dashed off, although perfectly legible. I remember distinctly the day he showed me the score of his brilliant Symphonic Sketches. It looked interestingly complex, although, to tell the truth, what impressed me most were the original verses which preceded each sketch. They cleverly portray a definite mood, and are, as it were, the key to what follows. Never by any chance do these appear in the program book, so the listener is left to puzzle out for himself just what the composer means to convey.