I did so wish for a word with Fräulein, but she drove home alone with her aunt. As I wrote you, I only see her at table, and so any conversation of a confidential character is out of the question. She is not a girl to practise deception, unless forced by circumstances, hence I fancy that there is something of a serious nature behind her action. Evidently the handsome young man with the sword-cut is the key to the mystery! Very likely she is in love with him, instead of with that disagreeable Blum. Were she an American girl it would not take her long to throw over the uniform and marry the man she loves; as it is, with her family and an officer weighing the balance on the opposite side of the scales, I fear the student's chances are not the most favorable.
After Supper.
At my last lesson Thuille informed me that he and Tasso were going hunting on Saturday. Would I pardon him if he gave me my lesson in his hunting costume? Accordingly to-day he appeared in a wonderful green shirt striped with white, and open at the neck. His jacket, short trousers and gaiters were of some rough cloth, and the effect was decidedly unprofessional.
The train left directly after the lesson, and Tasso was evidently quite alive to the fact, for instead of sleeping under the desk as he usually does, he roamed about restlessly during the entire hour, and finally became so importunate that his master unceremoniously put him out. I had taken in a practice piece scored for wood-wind and horn, including bass clarinet and contra-fagott. The ideas on which I had written the part for bass clarinet were suggested by that bit for the instrument in the third act of "Siegfried" where Brünnhilde is wakened by the all-powerful kiss. Unfortunately my result was not what might have been called an unqualified success. In one measure I had put a rest at the second beat, after writing two notes. This immediately attracted Thuille's attention.
"Why, you've left him hanging in the air! Poor fellow, he's hanging in the air between heaven and earth!" he said laughing, but not unkindly. I thought I ought to laugh too, so I joined in, nervously. It is queer how much more humorously these things strike one after a lesson than at the time they actually happen.
"This is the way he would have to play that," continued the professor. He puckered up his mouth, held his fingers exactly as the player would, squinted at my score with his head on one side, and blew two notes, "Poom! Poom!" Then he took the imaginary instrument suddenly away while his mouth seemed to be forming the same tone. He looked so funny that this time I could not help laughing heartily, and I saw my mistake at once.
Later we came to a horn passage, and in place of the mildly flowing chords in half-notes which I had written he substituted eighth-note phrases. "I thought that would be too fast," said I, in self-defence.
"Study modern scores!" he exclaimed. "Study modern horn parts! But don't forget the classics either; and never study Schumann or Brahms for orchestral writing. They were both poor scorers."
I sometimes wish he employed similes in his explanations; they have such a way of sticking in my head and making me remember. I recall now an especially vivid one which Chadwick once made to his orchestral class: "Here you have your instruments of the orchestra just like so many colors on a palette," he said. "You combine different ones just as you mix your colors, to obtain a desired effect. Your task is to make a complete, finished picture. Choose your subject and go ahead, but take care to select your materials wisely."
If you remember, Professor John K. Paine has also a fondness for illustrating his point in this manner, only he chooses literature instead of art as the source from which to draw his comparisons. I can see us now sitting side by side in that dingy little room in Vaughan House before the new music room existed, taking notes on his lectures, and can hear him saying, "Beethoven is the Shakespeare of music." Do you remember the day when Miss R—— brought her dog into the class, and Professor Paine, after peering at it mildly over his glasses from his seat behind the table, made some witty remark about the increased interest in his lectures which now drew the very beasts to hear him? And later, how kindly but firmly he insisted that Miss R—— leave her pet at home hereafter, inasmuch as he had already punctuated his paper on Haydn, and he did not consider the assistance of the dog, who broke in every now and then with sharp barks, at all necessary.