Walker-My_Musical_Ex.. - Walter Cosand

250 MY MUSICAL EXPERIENCES
appreciation by my silence and my moveless attitude
and I was indeed rewarded, for without a word, a look
towards me, he suddenly rose with a light in his eyes,
and a swing of conscious power in his whole form,
and, going over to his pet instrument, he played on it
as I had never but once heard him before during the
three years I had been privileged to know him. This
day all the glow of youth, all the maturity of man-
hood, was there ; it was the artist at his culminatiag
point, and he himself knew it and felt it, for during a
brief moment's pause he observed—and it was more
to himself than to me that the words were addressed
— ' I have attained what I have desired, and am con-
tent ; but it is passing from me. Such moments now
are rare, and each time of late that such is given to me
I say to myself, " It may be perhaps for the last time."
He played the Concert Stuck of Weber, repeating
many parts several times over, and with each repeti-
tion floating up on a higher plane, evolving each time
from the keyboard tones of more intense, more
spiritual beauty ; Weber's Sonata in D Minor, of
which he said when playing it, ' There is heaven and
there is hell here;' his own lovely (rondoia ,- Chopin's
E Minor Concerto ; and then, rising from the piano,
he said, ' I am out of breath, and much heated, and
must rest myself.' On this I moved to go away ; but
he said, ' Stay with me a little, and sit down there,'
motioning to a seat near his arm-chair. How strange,
and often how trifling, are the causes which bring
; '