Walker-My_Musical_Ex.. - Walter Cosand

HENSELT 253
His next step concerned a good many musicians,
and placed them in a worse position than they had
previously held ;
and it naturally excited great opposi-
tion, and made him very unpopular with the St.
Petersburg professors. For perhaps twenty years
most of the pianoforte professors in the Conserva-
torium had been accustomed to teach those pupils
who commenced studying with them until the pupils
had completed their course, and left the Conservatoire.
This is not the order of things in Eome ; for the
pupils of St. Cecilia begin their studies with sub-
professors, then advance to those who are more
highly qualified, and finally reach the classe di per-
fezionamento, over which Sgambati himself presides.
I do not suppose that Eubinstein was following the
order of the St. Cecilian ; but he was resolved to
institute an order of things pretty analogous to that
which I have just described. When he first intimated
his purpose, everyone seemed to think him in the
right ; but when professors, who believed themselves
competent to teach the most advanced classes, found
that they were only asked to take the position of sub-
professors, they at once rebelled, and as a consider-
able number of these were Eussians by birth, and
Eubinstein had wished to place them under professors
whom he invited from Germany and Italy, they not
only turned out in a body, but raised the cry against
Eubinstein that he was favouring foreigners and
depreciating native talent. And such was the bitter-