lO TH E ETUD E THE COMMON SENSE OF PIANO TEACHING. B Y EMIL LIEBLING . FAITH may move mountains, but it will not teach piano. When you are told that a certain amount of muscular force, strength, and facility can be acquired without muscular practice, I, for one, cannot take any stock in it. Every muscle of the human body is natu-rally weak. When people speak of stiff fingers they con-found it with weakness. The young man who rows or goes bicycling must develop certain muscles. You do n't think of it. It would seem perfectly useless to say any-thing about it, but there is, after all, prevalent a general drift in music teaching which is inimical to its best in-terests. All muscular practice must be intelligently directed, but it cannot be done away with. One cannot merely think they can play octaves and accomplish it. I am very often asked as to the mode of payment. It is best to be paid in advance. The pupil has it off her mind. It does n't trouble her any more. It is best to insist upon a certain part being paid in advance to in-sure a sufficient continuity of work so as to be able to produce some results. It is really for the interests of both parties concerned to be paid at least a term in ad-vance. The same with professionals taking part in public concerts. When you are asked to play for church festi-vals and the like, of course you are glad to get a bonus. There has never been a great calamity in the world—a tornado, cyclone, or whirlwind—but another calamity follows at once in the shape of a benefit concert. The people who get it up have ample time. They have nothing else to do, but the musician is the one who has finally the real brunt to bear. Another point to performers in a professional way. Never take part in a performance with amateurs. The amateur has the best chance. As to how to get up a class, it is rather a difficult mat-ter for one person to tell another. As to the price, a great many go into a town with a margin. They get started in with a liberal allowance of twenty-five cents a head. They think they can work up. The world will always take you at your own valu-ation. If you are a two-dollar man in a five-dollar town they will pay you two dollars. I don't know as to the five-dollar man in a two-dollar town. As to coming down on your price, that is also a matter of dispute. You inform your pupil your terms are $50 per term. The average person thinks it is a relig-ious duty to try and beat one down. The pupil says, "Well, I thought of appropriating $40 for it ; $50 is a good deal. " It is hard to think of $40 walking out of your office, but that is something that must be learned. To refer, then, to the question of reducing your terms. The very people to whom you reduce them don't believe you. I don't believe there is a first-class teacher who has n't some pupils whom he teaches for nothing. With others we are apt to extend their time, or give them more time than they pay for. We want to know when we do an act of benevolence. I fully appreciate that there might be a great deal of benefit in the competition which will take place for a prize, but I myself have doubts as to the benefit for the many. The 20, say, who compete for this prize, spend the most of their time on the piece they are to play. There is only one out of the 20 who will win it. Only one gets it ; the other 19 get left. Music has, especially in this country, taken such rapid strides that it is really a necessity nowadays. We pro-fessional musicians make a feature of it for our own use. I have attended the public examinations at the schools in Vienna and Berlin and the playing there was not a bit better than the playing at our schools. As far as private teachers are concerned, we have bet-ter work done every day by our first-class teachers than is done in Europe. It is an acknowledged fact to those who are in a position to judge. A pupil wants to go to Europe. We are glad to have her go. We give her letters to Moskowski or other mu-sicians of prominence. She goes over there, but when she comes back she either does not play at all or she does not play as well as when she left. She sometimes stays over there so long that she forgets what we taught her. And some malicious person might urge that if she does not play at all when she returns that a good many more had better be sent. . The class of music played in this country is also bet-ter than that played by amateur players in Europe. Men like Moskowski are astounded by the programmes here. They commence with the conventional Beethoven Sonata, then some Schumann, some Chopin, and then perhaps two or three modern things—always a Liszt Rhapsodie or Fantasie. If a person studies music purely for pleasure, I would n't think of giving the same course of studies as to one who wishes to become a professional. I would not give her a course from Handel or Scarlatti, say. It comes down to the simple thing of selling people the goods they want to buy. I know that all this sounds com-monplace, but nevertheless it is a fact that people come to your office to buy a certain class, the same as they go to a merchant. Some want cotton, some silk. Our pupils do not all want the best. Of course, teachers address themselves in various ways to their pupils. Some address themselves to the pupil's intellect, some to the imagination. I think the latter the safer, but not always the most useful for the pupil. It isn't a good plan to be too positive in changing existing methods. You don't gain anything by it and the pupil is thoroughly discouraged. She says to her-self, if she thinks at all—some do—: "I s it possible I have been wrong all this time? I imagined I had learned something. I wonder if this man can be right ? " It is a question whether the pupil giving up her former way will do better after adopting your method. When a pupil comes to you and says, " Why do you give me such an easy piece ? '' say to her, 1' Why do n't you play it better? " That usually settles her. Now, starting from the supposition that piano playing is a technical matter, what are we to do to get this awful thing of technic ? We have had key-boards and machines invented to show us our iniquity in not being able to play legato. I tried one of them and found I could not play legato. It sounded legato on the piano, but not on the other instrument. We might translate this word technic into execution. Execution is a better word. Execution is simply finger force facility. A friend of mine said in one of his articles that it was hardly worth while to pay a teacher five dol-lars to be told such simple things. I agreed with him. I thought it should be ten dollars. If I did not think I was treading on delicate ground I would discuss the question of being able to play for your pupils. It seems to me that example is, if not every-thing, yet a great deal. When a student desires to study art she goes to the Art Institute and she draws from casts, and when she wants to learn how to color she goes and studies from nature. It is never a matter of explanation so much as a matter of example. Now, there are a great many problems, like the men-tal attitude of the pupil. In teaching you must study your pupil. A girl who comes to you in a self-satisfied frame of mind will underrate the value of your instruc-tion. The pupil who discounts won't believe you. She discounts you. With such cases you must deal firmly. Pupils are apt to forget. If they prepared their lessons perfectly from one week to another the teacher's occupa-tion would be gone. A great deal of time is wasted in scale practice. If pupils will practice a limited amount of scale practice and put intelligent practice into what time they do put on it they will accomplish more. Music teaching as such is really a business and Ave have to learn it. A music teacher is like a young doctor. They have to kill off a great many before they learn how. It takes time to learn how to teach music. When one commences to teach the young teacher wishes at eight o'clock in the morning that the work were over. After you have taught a little while you will wish the day was over at noon, and, after you have taught a great while, in the evening you will wish the day had just begun. It is with the teacher as it is with the young girl who says at sixteen, "Wh o is he? " at twenty, "What is he? " and, I think, ends up by say-ing, "Where is he? " Now, I will simply condense the whole by saying this : If you think you can play and can play, you are a big man, a big artist. If you can play and do n't think you can play, you are silly. If you can't play and think you can play, you are foolish, but if you cannot play and do not think you can play, you had better die right off.—Music. SHOULD TEACHERS EMPLOY COLLECTORS? B Y LOUIS ERNST. JUST how a professional man should conduct the finan-cial side of his affairs, is a question that has demanded and received much discussion in regard to medical prac-titioners. The employment of a collector appears to have worked well for the medical fraternity, and whether music teachers should adopt some similar method is a matter which certainly deserves much careful consideration. A music teacher is all too often devoid of business ability, and attends to the monetary part of his business in a careless manner. Moreover, a teacher is supposed to be a musician pure and simple, to be so wrapped up in music as to be uncon-scious of everything else, and it is considered highly improper on his part to mention money matters. He therefore gives his lessons, industriously denounces nam-by-pamby airs, and extols the grandeur and fascination of classic music, no matter how short of money he may be or his family. Society only permits him to present a handwritten bill setting forth a quarter's lessons from one date to another at so much money, and music used by the pupil so much extra, which is considered an imposition. Pupils' parents recollect divers occasions when the les-sons were not taken because the pupil had a cold, had tickets for the matinee, or had failed to practice. These occasions are supposed to be deducted from the bill, al-though the teacher has derived no benefit from them, and was ready to give the lessons. If it became an understood thing that presently a collector would remind one of the amount owing, and politely offer to call again for it and pupils knew that in this respect all teachers and collectors were alike, might it not induce a more prompt payment of bills ? It may be said that this sort of thing would bring the musical profession to a level with the furniture houses that sell on instalments, but let me urge that there is no good reason why music lessons should be taken and not paid for the same as rocking-chairs or wardrobes. If you buy a piano you must pay for it ; if you buy piano lessons you should pay for them also ; anyhow the matter of musical instruction is merely one of purchase and sale, only the subject is not precisely a commercial commodity ; or else you can put it this way, the lesson time having been purchased or the teacher engaged for so long for so much, the purchase money or time-pay should be paid just as promptly as though one were dealing with a painter, carpenter, or plumber. It ap-pears to be certainly time for teachers' financial affairs to be taken care of in some way, and the teachers them-selves should as certainly have some ideas and prefer-ences on the subject. Just how practicable the collector plan would prove is, of course, problematic, but we can, at least, see how it has worked in the case of the physiciaijp, and the teachers could anyway hope for equally good results. And so the immediate question would seem to be : Is it worth a trial ? What do the teachers say? Let the subject be dis-cussed in THE ETUDE. From what talk I have had with teachers on the sub-ject they fear that the employment of collectors would have two results which they fear. The first of these is that pupils would take offense at such a method, and secondly, that the collectors' commission would eat intc their profits. To the first I would reply by calling attention to the effect with the doctors, and that if all teachers combined little need be feared in this respect. As to the second, how much do teachers now lose through inability to effect collections ? Some of these "bad debts" could be collected by a regular collector when the teacher himself is unable to, and these amounts would, I believe, offset the collector's pay. This arrangement would also have the effect of relieving the musician of a very troublesome depart-ment of his profession, and the results of the arrangement would, I think, be on the whole, good.
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