Walker-My_Musical_Ex.. - Walter Cosand

14
MV MUSICAL EXPERIENCES
that my respect for him was profound, and that I
never dreamed of calling any dictum of his into
question ? He was indeed a strict, but a most kind
and sympathetic, teacher. In using the preludes
and fugues of Bach's Clawier Men tempere as finger-
exercises, he made me bring out every single tone
as clearly and distinctly as if each note were a
separate step of a stair—lifting the fingers well, and
taking great care that the action or exertion should
come right from the knuckle-joints. He often said
that when the fingers are tired, it is a sign that one
has practised well ; and he constantly warned me
from letting any other part of my body become
engaged in the work—it took, he said, from 'the
strength that ought to be in the fingers.' He had
a power peculiarly his own of at once stimulating
and tranquillizing. He never stopped one suddenly
to comment on a fault or an oversight; but at the
end of a page, or of a movement, he would say with
a gentleness which did not exclude authority, but, on
the contrary, rather suggested it,
' You did so and
so—did you perceive it ?' and he would then mdicate
what he wished, and make ' me repeat the page or
movement in question, often more than once. He
never allowed me to pause in a passage or page
where I was either uncertain, or had done badly,
but insisted on my going on as if nothing was
wrong. He held that the next best thing to having
played a passage well is to go on and betray no