Walker-My_Musical_Ex.. - Walter Cosand

DEPPE AND SCHARWENCKA 147
from that date, I was myself, making something Uke
the same reply to a friend who sat beside me as I
played to her in St. Petersburg. I had then been
several months in another great tone-forming school,
in which I was almost entirely restricted to Cramer
but having had a large programme of pieces when I
began to study in that school, and Henselt not
having, like Deppe, desired me to give them up, I
used for a long time to play them occasionally for
myself or others. But the more I set myself to the
delightful task of seeking to produce a clear, telling,
and cantabile tone, the less was I satisfied with any
piece in which this tone was not present. I said so
to the friend to whom I was playing on this particular
occasion, adding, ' I shall play them no more, but
drop them all, "and this with a conviction which comes
from the very centre of my being.'
' Is it possible, my dear friend,' she replied, ' that
you can bring yourself to commit what I cannot help
calling "un suicide moral "?' and as she said this
she actually burst into tears !
' But do listen,' I said to her ;
' don't you note the
difference ?' And then I played the studies of Cramer
which I had studied according to Henselt's method,
afterwards giving her once more some pieces of my
old programme, and she was in a measure convinced
that the latter performance was in truth unsatisfying,
though far more brilliant than the former, far more
calculated to impress the hearer with the idea that
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