Walker-My_Musical_Ex.. - Walter Cosand

MY MUSICAL EXPERIENCES
to it as often as I could, and was soon able to play
little pieces by heart ; but I was taught almost
entirely by ear, and could not, even years afterwards,
have spelt out the simplest thing for myself. There
seemed to be (as I look back to those days) a great
natural faoUity in the small fingers, and an instinctive
yearning towards the tender and pathetic in the child-
heart, and withal an ambition of one day doing some-
thing which was to surprise and charm numbers of
people.
In my ninth year I heard for the first time many
voices singing together in church (probably in parts)
and what I felt then I' have never again experienced
with the same degree of intensity. It seemed to me
that the heavens opened, and there was a floating to
and fro of the angel-choirs between earth and heaven.
I was quite overcome, and I began to cry as if my
heart were breaking; and yet I would have died
rather than confess that I was crying because I was
happy—oh, so happy ! I believe they took me home,
thinking that I had a pain somewhere, and did not
know how to tell it, or that I was frightened by the
noise.
It is difficult to believe that, although my family
belonged to the better middle-class, and had much
education, and some culture (my father's library
contained most of the standard works in literature
and history), I yet passed through childhood without
having so much as heard the names of Handel, or
;