as you did your hands. Eating always tastes best from a clean table. Just so with the piano: you cannot do clean work on an unclean keyboard.

Now, as to Practice: Let me suggest that you never practise more than an hour, or, at the most, two hours, at a stretch—according to your condition and strength. Then go out and take a walk, and think no more of music. This method of mental unhitching, so to speak, is absolutely necessary in order that the newly acquired results of your work may—unconsciously to yourself—mature in your mind and get, as it were, into your flesh and blood. That which you have newly learned must become affixed to your entire organism, very much like the picture on a photographic plate is developed and affixed by the silver bath. If you allow Nature no time for this work the result of your previous efforts will vanish and you will have to begin all over again with your—photographing. Yes, photographing! For every acoustic or tone picture is, through the agency of the ear, photographed in the brain, and the whole occupation of the pianist consists in the reproduction of the previously received impressions through the fingers, which, with the help of the instrument, retranslate the pictures into audible tones.

After every half hour make a pause until you feel rested. Five minutes will often be sufficient. Follow the example of the painter, who closes his eyes for a few moments in order to obtain upon reopening them a fresh color impression.

A Valuable Little Hint Here, if you will allow me: Watch well that you actually hear every tone you mean to produce. Every missing tone will mean a blotch upon your photographic plate in the brain. Each note must be, not mentally but physically, heard, and to this imperative requirement your speed must ever subordinate itself. It is not at all necessary to practise loudly in order to foster the permanence of impressions. Rather let an inward tension take the place of external force. It will engage, sympathetically, your hearing just as well.

As to the Theory—great energy, great results—I prefer my amended version: great energy, restrained power and moderate manifestation of it. Prepare the finger for great force, imagine the tone as being strong, and yet strike moderately. Continuous loud playing makes our playing coarse. On the other hand, continuous soft playing will blur the tone picture in our mind and cause us soon to play insecurely and wrongly. From time to time we should, of course, practise loudly so as to develop physical endurance. But for the greater part of practice I recommend playing with restrained power. And, incidentally, your neighbours will thank you for it, too.

Do Not Practise Systematically, or "methodically," as it is sometimes called. Systematism is the death of spontaneousness, and spontaneousness is the very soul of art. If you play every day at the same time the same sequence of the same studies and the same pieces, you may acquire a certain degree of skill, perhaps, but the spontaneity of your rendition will surely be lost. Art belongs to the realm of emotional manifestations, and it stands to reason that a systematic exploiting of our emotional nature must blunt it.

With Regard to Finger Exercises: Do not let them be too frequent or too long—at the most a half hour a day. A half hour daily, kept up for a year, is enough for any one to learn to play one's exercises. And if one can play them why should one keep everlastingly on playing them? Can anybody explain, without reflecting upon one's sanity, why one should persist in playing them? I suggest to use these exercises as "preliminary warmers" (as practised in engines). As soon as the hands have become warm and elastic, or pliable—"played in," as we pianists say—drop the exercises and repeat them for the same purpose the next morning, if you will. They can be successfully substituted, however. As compositions they are but lukewarm water. If you will dip your hands, instead, for five minutes into hot water you will follow my own method and find it just as efficacious.

A Rule for Memory Exercises: If you wish to strengthen the receptivity and retentiveness of your memory you will find the following plan practical: Start with a short piece. Analyse the form and manner of its texture. Play the piece a number of times very exactly with the music before you. Then stop playing for several hours and try to trace the course of ideas mentally in the piece. Try to hear the piece inwardly. If you have retained some parts refill the missing places by repeated reading of the piece, away from the piano. When next you go to the piano—after several hours, remember—try to play the piece. Should you still get "stuck" at a certain place take the sheet music, but play only that place (several times, if necessary), and then begin the piece over again, as a test, if you have better luck this time with those elusive places. If you still fail resume your silent reading of the piece away from the piano. Under no circumstances skip the unsafe place for the time being, and proceed with the rest of the piece. By such forcing of the memory you lose the logical development of your piece, tangle up your memory and injure its receptivity. Another observation in connection with memorising may find a place here. When we study a piece we—unconsciously—associate in our mind a multitude of things with it which bear not the slightest relation upon it. By these "things" I mean not only the action of the piano, light or heavy, as it may be, but also the colour of its wood, the colour of the wall paper, discoloration of the ivory on some key of the piano, the pictures on the walls, the angle at which the piano stands to the architectural lines of the room, in short, all sorts of things. And we remain utterly unconscious of having associated them with the piece we are studying—until we try to play the well-learned piece in a different place, in the house of a friend or, if we are inexperienced enough to commit such a blunder, in the concert hall. Then we find that our memory fails us most unexpectedly, and we blame our memory for its unreliableness. But the fact is rather that our memory was only too good, too exact, for the absence of or difference from our accustomed surroundings disturbed our too precise memory. Hence, to make absolutely sure of our memory we should try our piece in a number of different places before relying upon our memory; this will dissociate the wonted environment from the piece in our memory.

With Regard to Technical Work: Play good compositions and construe out of them your own technical exercises. In nearly every piece you play you will find a place or two of which your conscience tells you that they are not up to your own wishes; that they can be improved upon either from a rhythmical, dynamical or precisional point of view. Give these places the preference for a while, but do not fail to play from time to time again the whole piece in order to put the erstwhile defective and now repaired part into proper relation to its context. Remember that a difficult part may "go" pretty well when severed from its context and yet fail utterly when attempted in its proper place. You must follow the mechanic in this. If a part of a machine is perfected in the shop it must still go through the process of being "mounted"—that is, being brought into proper relation to the machine itself—and this often requires additional packing or filing, as the case may be. This "mounting" of a repaired part is done best by playing it in conjunction with one preceding and one following measure; then put two