Walker-My_Musical_Ex.. - Walter Cosand

2^ J/r MUSICAL EXPERIENCES
persistence up into the night, that at last an ex-
asperated next-door neighbour not only hammered
to hinder his practice at night, but in the daytime,
whenever he began, would beat counter-time against
the wall, and Mendelssohn had to get a magistrate to
interfere.
The question of facing the public was, he said, a
problem which all could not solve. ' The difficulty
is,' he said, ' to play even before one person just as
you may feel. Some can never do this ; and some
can do it before the few, but cannot face a crowd.
It is a question how much of one's attainments one
can /aire raloir.'
Speaking to my mother of progress in pianoforte-
playing, and trying to convey a clear idea on the
subject to one who, though highly intelligent in many
directions, had yet no artistic perceptions, he said,
' Making progress on the pianoforte is not like walking
along a road, where you can see what you have just
left behind, and what you are just about to walk over.
Here, you advance by leaps and pauses. You seem
to have a barrier before you, and you can't climb
over it, and you keep struggling and striving either
to get over it or push it aside, and some happy day
you find yourself over it, and for a short space you
feel you have made a stride ; but there before you
lies another barrier, and you are restless again, and
the struggle and the effort must begin afresh.'
Sterndale Bennett did not give me his own music