Walker-My_Musical_Ex.. - Walter Cosand

278 MY MUSICAL EXPERIENCES
the ground of her refusal to hear any artist, or to
recognise any excellence beyond that of his school.
Although I believed, from the first time that I saw
and heard him, that I had found something which
would remain with me, not only in time, but for ever,
yet to recognise that, wherever you took him, Henselt
stood on a tone-plane where none I have ever heard
have come near him,—this was a perception which
grew upon me the more I heard him. Yet I did not
always hear him at his best ; I often heard him when
he could not soar, but just fluttered as it were above
the ground. I was often angry that he would play
his passages over and over again ; but it grew on me,
a film fell from my eyes, as I began to understand
that every repetition with him meant, and was, an
intense upward struggle out of the ' fleshly ' into the
' spiritual.' I understood—as much as disciples may
dare say they understand of something immeasurably
above them—I understood that one may seem to have
achieved much, and yet be on a low plane ; that one
may be gasping and inarticulate, and in pain, just
because the plane we have struggled up to is high,
and one cannot remain on it without growing giddy.
I was not there to hear it, but his last performance
—the swan-song the day before his last illness—was
the overture to Oheron. He fainted after that wonder-
ful performance. He never again was heard in his
strength.
I have read with pleasure and gratitude F. Nieck's