standpoint. For him music exists simply as music. Its history, its evolution, which latter after all is a matter purely technical, need not concern him at all.

I was brought to this view by a rather startling discovery. I think it will seem equally startling to any one who has studied music in the usual way—the laborious technical development involved in acquiring the mastery of a musical instrument, generally the pianoforte. In discussing Chopin's "Etude" in A flat, Op. 10, No. 10, one of the greatest virtuosos of his day, Hans van Bülow, said that "he who can play this study in a really finished manner may congratulate himself on having climbed to the highest pinnacle of the pianist's Parnassus, as it is perhaps the most difficult piece of the entire set. The whole repertory of piano music does not contain a study of perpetual movement so full of genius and fancy as this particular one is universally acknowledged to be, excepting perhaps Liszt's 'Feux Follets' (Will-o'-the wisps)." In looking over the catalogue of music for the mechanical piano-player I find that this immensely difficult study by Liszt, so difficult that Von Bülow classes it with the Chopin study, "the highest pinnacle of the pianist's Parnassus," is listed with the "popular" pieces. Thus a composition which taxes the resources of the greatest virtuosos to the utmost and which few if any amateurs can play at all, presents no difficulties whatsoever to the pianolist and actually becomes "popular." The same thing is true of the Liszt "Bell Rondo" (La Campanella). This delicate, dainty yet immensely difficult work, which most amateurs know only from hearing it played in pianoforte recitals because they themselves can do no more than stumble through it, is, like the "Feux Follets," a popular piece in the repertory of the pianolist. Such an astounding result is possible only upon the pianola which absolutely eliminates all technical difficulties and leaves the player free to select his music without regard to such difficulties.

Another matter connected with the pianolist's repertory opens up a field for speculation into which, fortunately, it is quite possible for the layman to follow the musician and to appreciate the point I wish to make. As many purchasers of pianolas are people who never have received musical instruction, it might be supposed that the most popular selections for the instrument would be either bits of musical slang like twosteps and ragtime, or, at the best, simple pieces in the recognized classical forms. But the result of the spread of musical taste through this new instrument is wholly different and wholly novel from the standpoint of conventional musical experience. The public, the great musical public created by an instrument which does away with all considerations of technique and leaves the player free to select what he wants to play, no matter how difficult it may be when played on the pianoforte, sweeps aside all conventions which learned commentators, critics and writers on the history and evolution of music have sought to establish and in fact have succeeded in establishing for those who have been obliged to study music in the ordinary way, and boldly selects as first choice from the vast array of compositions Liszt's "Rhapsodie Hongroise" No. 2, with the "Tannhäuser" overture of Wagner a close second. In other words the musical public when left to itself and not led—or led astray—by pedants begins at the right end of musical evolution which is the end, the supreme efflorescence, and not the beginning. Conceding that the evolution of the human race began with the monkey and ends with ourselves, it may be said, metaphorically, that the musical public, when left to itself, declines to monkey with the monkey, but at once proceeds to pluck the full flower of evolution, the human. For if any musical compositions are human documents that term is applicable to the "Second Rhapsody" and to the "Tannhäuser" overture. Each tells a vivid story and tells it according to the canons of art, life and truth. The unfortunate student of music, shackled by instruction that aims mainly at teaching him how to play an instrument and ignores the higher side of art, plods through the classical repertory until he gets an idea that music consists of nothing but symphonies and sonatas, which is as absurd as it would be to say that poetry consists of nothing but sonnets, whereas a couple of dozen good sonnets are enough for the literature of any language.

Indeed, while instruction in the other arts steadily is being modernized and steadily aims to familiarize the student with their higher aspects, little progress has been made in the teaching of music. It still is in a state comparable only with that which existed in the teaching of languages when instruction in these was given according to the system of Ollendorf, with its series of foolish questions and answers:—

"Is this the sword of the grandfather?"

"No, it is the false curl of the grandmother."

A five finger exercise, or an old-fashioned technical study with its dry little theme in the treble and its foolish little answer in the bass, always suggests to me something along the lines of the Ollendorfian phraseology:—

"Is this musical phrase beautiful?"

"No, but it is great for limbering up the little finger."

Often since giving thought to the new instrument which wholly eliminates the question of technique from pianoforte playing, I have wondered if the importance attached to "limbering up the little finger" has not given us a wrong musical perspective; whether compositions musically of little value have not assumed enormous importance in the curriculum and been retained there, because they developed finger facility in certain directions. For example to a pianist the "School of Velocity" by Czerny and the "Gradus ad Parnassum" by Clementi, two series of famous technical studies, mean everything. To the pianolist they mean nothing—need mean nothing. As for the "School of Velocity" he can by simply moving the tempo lever to the right make the pianola play so fast that, if old Czerny still were alive, he would lose his breath listening to it. As for the "Gradus ad Parnassum," the difficulties which Clementi piled up in the pianist's path, the pianolist overleaps as lightly and casually as if wholly unaware of their existence. He may never have heard of these technical works yet, if he has natural musical instinct or has developed it through the piano-player, he will be as correct in his judgment of what to play and how to play it, as if he had devoted his whole life to an arduous study of pianoforte technique. The pianolist's experience with music is wholly musical, while the pianist's is largely technical. For observe, that while a music teacher often selects a piece for his pupil, not so much because it is beautiful but because it follows up and supplements the technical exercise which the pupil has been practicing, the pianolist's point of view in choosing his repertory is not obscured by any consideration of this kind. Scratch a Russian and you find a Tartar; scratch musical instruction of the average kind and you find technique. The pianolist's progress is determined by music's appeal to his soul; the average music pupil's by what he can accomplish with his fingers. In this way, as I already have suggested, certain pieces have acquired an importance far out of proportion to their musical value, and have retained their position not only in the curriculum but, unfortunately, even in the concert repertory.

There is a lot