Walker-My_Musical_Ex.. - Walter Cosand

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MV MUSICAL EXPERIENCES
sans ceremonie ; and then he would usually go off to
inspect one of the great Imperial Institutions, over
which he had had supreme rule ever since the year
1863. The title of Excellency and a patent of nobility
accompanied this appointment ; and when one takes
into account that in St. Petersburg alone there are
five such Imperial endowments, three in Moscow, and
one or more in most of the larger cities throughout
this vast empire, and that, furthermore, some of these
institutes count their students by the hundred (that,
for instance, of Nicholas, in St. Petersburg, numbers
six hundred pupils), we shall then be in a position to
realize what an enormous influence over pianoforte-
playing throughout all Eussia was thus placed in
Henselt's hands. It is not, indeed, too much to say
that never before has a single musician had so wide a
sphere of activity opened to him ; and though that
influence only extended over one single department in
music's vast domain—that of pianoforte-playing—still,
if we consider that it was these institutes which
trained all the governesses and female teachers
throughout Eussia, that all the musical instruction
in them was (and is still, as I write this) given by
teachers who had either been actually pupils of
Henselt, or else had been thoroughly drilled by his
lady-professors, it is not too much to assume that for
more than a quarter of a century his influence has
been felt more or less in every home in Eussia where-
there was a pianoforte.