Walker-My_Musical_Ex.. - Walter Cosand

138
MY MUSICAL EXPERIENCES
said, ' after the exppsure and fatigue of that long,
weary journey, what I must have looked like when I
presented myself as a candidate for admission to the
Conservatorium ! I had, however, immense belief in
my own talent, though I noticed that the professors
looked at one another and shook their heads, when
they heard, in reply to the question, 'Where have
you studied music up to the present time ?' ' I have
studied by myself—both at home, and in the city
where I was learning the book-business.' ' But your
teacher, or your teachers, who were they ?' ' I have
never had any teacher, but have studied by myself.'
I saw them shake their heads at these replies ; but I
was no whit daunted by their looks, and was quite
ready to show them what I could do. Need I tell you
that, even before I had left America, my playing was
nothing—could, indeed, have been nothing—but a
wild chaos, especially in the mazy intricacies of Liszt's
compositions ? You may imagine what it must have
been when want of practice and extreme fatigue were
added to all the other drawbacks ! Yet, so little was
I conscious of my own deficiencies, that, instead of
choosing for my trial-piece before the examiners a
piece of any ordinary difficulty, I attacked a difficult
polonaise of Liszt's, and, with all the presumption
and foolhardiness of unblushing ignorance, would
have played it on to the end, had not the examiners
angrily called out to me to stop—that I knew nothing
—that they had heard quite enough, and would not