Walker-My_Musical_Ex.. - Walter Cosand

3IY MUSICAL EXPERIENCES
lives to pianoforte-playing ! Their aim is—or ought
to be—to reproduce, in all the glow and life and
pulsation of the moment when they were first breathed
into being, those exquisite tone-poems, in which the
master-spirits of the divine art have embodied some
of the subtlest thoughts, the most weird and wonder-
ful fancies—some of the most impassioned yearnings
of the human soul.
But leaving this xvliy for everyone to answer for
himself, the fascination remains as an undeniable
fact—a source at once of joy and pain to the indi-
vidual who has once come under its spell. Joy,
because in all effort, in all quest, there is joy ; and
pain, because we can never attain to our ideal. We
advance, indeed, but only to realize that there are
fresh vistas opening in every direction round us
and when the shadows fall, we only seem to have
reached the true starting-point.
But the spell does not lose its power, and I
could tell of an artist, still with us when I began to
write these experiences, but now departed—a giant
in his art—who, at the age of seventy-six, was still
wrestling aii,d fighting with ' the flesh ' (his name for
technique), in order to render it ever a fitter medium
for embodying his ideal aspirations. I allude to
Adolf von Henselt, composer, artist, and teacher. Of
him I shall speak more later.
The musical natures to whom these pages are
addressed will like to have some little clue to the
;