Walker-My_Musical_Ex.. - Walter Cosand

222 MY MUSICAL EXPERIENCES
permission of your wife,' I replied; 'and I felt that
I must walk off a little of the excitement caused by
your playing before being able to eat.'
' I am not pleased,' he said, ' that you should have
heard me in my weakness ; for,' he added, ' I have
not been in the mood to-day — heuU war ich gar
nicht aufgelegt.'
' How can you say so, dear Meister,' I ventured to
say— ' even though I can perceive that you vary, that
you are not always on a height, that you have your
low moments. But this only shows that you are
human. You demand from yourself that which is
given to no mortal being.'
He was not displeased at my frankness, but allowed
me to stay and talk with him ; and from day to day
he and his wife grew kinder and more accessible
to me.
A London friend, deeply interested in pianoforteplaying,
who used to write and ask me many
questions as to Henselt's method, told me he had
heard, many years before, from Herr Schachner,
that Henselt advised him, in playing, to imagine
that he was sinking his fingers into warm wax. On
my repeating this to Henselt, he said he had not
spoken of warm wax. ' But I believe I have,' he said,
' told pupils to think that they are going to sink their
fingers in dough.' This is but one instance of
Henselt's abhorrence of anything inelastic. ' An
ass,' he said once, ' can give the notes a knock like