Walker-My_Musical_Ex.. - Walter Cosand

MY MUSICAL EXPERIENCES
orchestral score, he never once forgot either to bring
or send the score of whatever symphony was about to
be performed at the Philharmonic, of which he was
then the conductor.
Speaking of public playing as a profession, he said,
and with much emphasis, ' Nowadays it is not worth
anyone's while to take up public performance as a
profession ; things are so different to what they were
when I was a boy. Tlien no one ever thought of
giving themselves entirely to it, unless they had a
natural and most unmistakable gift for the "piano-
forte." In the present day the advance in the
mechanical (the means which bring one to a certain
point) is so great, that numbers of clever people,
who have but little natural talent for music, become
players through a system of admirable training.'
For the benefit of those who are pleased to think
and assert that schools and methods are quite
superfluous things, I quote an observation which was
made to us by Sterndale Bennett in the course of the
second winter that I was studying with him.
My mother and I had been one day telling him
about a very gifted friend of ours, who without having
had a single lesson from any master, either at home
or abroad, had yfet, in our opinion, become a good
musician and a very fine performer on the pianoforte.
Sterndale Bennett listened to all we said about our
friend, with the grave smile so peculiarly his own.
He then, without giving either in tone or glance
'